Tips: eating right on $7-$10/day?

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  • PloddingTurtle
    PloddingTurtle Posts: 283 Member
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    Another couple of resources for you given your stated preferences

    Reheating foods without a microwave (there's a video on using an Instant Pot to reheat foods)
    Warm lunch without a microwave

    I don't personally have an issue with using a microwave, other than how the microwave ruins some foods, but I know many people do have concerns. Not going to judge or argue on that. Can you use an Instant Pot at work? They are available in a variety of sizes. It's a tidy appliance that doesn't take up much more room than a microwave. You can plug it in, add a bit of water, and steam your foods under pressure to reheat quickly. There are numerous accessories to facilitate a variety of foods in the reheating process. I have done some limited experiments and found it quite efficient for making/reheating single meals in a couple of minutes.
  • mountainmare
    mountainmare Posts: 294 Member
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    Yes if you are committed to growing some of your own food and/or preparing your own food sourced locally and eating seasonally. You already compromise with grab and go for the sake of convenience. I'm not judging, but to say you want to escape the microwave but not cooking at home is odd to me. There are so many options for good fresh healthy food out there that don't need a microwave or a fast food takeaway
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,390 Member
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    cedric_says wrote: »
    What I mean by that is, is it possible to have quality, affordable, and convenience without compromising or compensating?

    I can cook a very nourishing soup in 30 minutes, or a simply curry, or pasta, or other dishes. Then divide them into several servings and just warm them up again. if you don't like microwave then you could also use a pot. Takes 10 minutes max. In those 10 minutes you might also use a small rice cooker to make a portion of rice to go with curry, chili con carne or whatever you cooked. Thus that's 30 minutes cooking on one day,10 minutes on the following ones.
  • CSARdiver
    CSARdiver Posts: 6,252 Member
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    I do this now and very consistent - eat oatmeal or 2 eggs for breakfast. Coffee from a french press or free at work. Lunch is typically a salad and dinner is some manner of meat and vege and baked potatoes. Save a lot of money by buying whole fryers over chicken breast and we also buy our beef by the 1/2 or 1/4.

    Soup extends the budget a lot as do most stocks. Also makes for creative use of spices and bringing new life to leftovers.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,966 Member
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    cedric_says wrote: »
    My average day is looking like a breakfast burrito from Del Taco in the morning for around $5. Then in the afternoon or evening I'll stop at el pollo loco for a double chicken bowl ($6-$9) and or I'll stop at the super market for .5 to 1 lb of steak or chicken to cook ($5-$7). My average day is probably around $15 per day.

    My main concern with re-heating leftovers is I don't like to use the microwave. Whether you believe using the microwave is okay or not doesn't mean much to me. I'd rather be safe and wait a few extra minutes to cook on the stove then increase my chances of complications later in life.. however, getting a hot meal in the middle of the day without is extremely difficult unless you can use a hot plate at work.

    After considering a few of your recommendations, I suppose I could make make a few breakfast burritos myself at home all at once and wrap them in foil. (easy to re-heat without the microwave) In the afternoon, I could probably eat a salad but I don't like them much. Drink a protein shake in the afternoon and cook when I get home from work or re-heat a chicken bowl when I get home.

    If you refrigerate your chicken or meat promptly after cooking in initially, you could just eat it cold rather than reheat it. There are noodles and grains (precooked, dehydrated) that you can heat with hot water from the coffee maker or water dispenser, if you have that available. Dump the cold chicken or meat and maybe veggies (prepped and packed from home) on top of the cooked noodles or grains. No microwave. Still sort of hot.
  • livingleanlivingclean
    livingleanlivingclean Posts: 11,752 Member
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    you could buy a thermos pot - heat your lunch in the morning, take it in the thermos and it should still be at least warm by lunchtime.
  • PloddingTurtle
    PloddingTurtle Posts: 283 Member
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    I know a tow truck driver who spends most of the day on the road and who prefers a hot lunch. He used to be a junkfood/fastfood addict. Now he wraps his healthy lunch up in a foil packet and places it on the manifold of his engine while driving to heat it up. Inspired people gonna do creative things to meet their goals.

    I have some hot and cold options I like for both breakfast and lunch. I know I have to prep in advance and have my breakfasts and lunches made and individually packaged in the refrigerator on Sunday night if I want to stay on plan for the upcoming week, so that's what I do.
  • cynthialperkins
    cynthialperkins Posts: 15 Member
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    I think that you can have quality and affordable together easily, but it won't be as convenient as less healthy or affordable takeout. I think anything worth doing is going to require some effort, and that may mean having to compromise something else.
    Lasagna's a great convenience food. I mix a lot of spinach and some bean flour (garbanzo or mung) into the ricotta/cottage cheese/plain yogurt mix, sometimes some cooked carrots. I'll cook two or three pans of it, refrigerate, cut it into meal portions and freeze. I can eat lasagna for several days before I get sick of it; then I take a break and come back later.
    For quick evening meals, buy a pork loin and some boneless chicken breast, slice thinly and freeze spread out on a cookie sheet. Once the fillets are frozen, you can pop them off and bag them in the freezer. They cook in a skillet faster than KFC can assemble a bowl!
    For microwave-free lunches, it would be good to have something like tuna salad/chicken salad/peanut butter and jelly...
  • Evamutt
    Evamutt Posts: 2,330 Member
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    I buy low fat ground turkey & ground beef, weigh, make into patties & freeze & buy the veggie steamers. All easy & quick to cook. If you want to make it quicker, you can cook patties before freezing & keep some in the fridge. The way to mix it up is to put different seasonings on them & serve with different veggies, rice potatoes, etc
  • Evamutt
    Evamutt Posts: 2,330 Member
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    want to add that I got the big bag of normandy style veggies at coscto, precooked a big batch & put some butter, Parmesan cheese & garlic powder on them, delicious
  • RaeBeeBaby
    RaeBeeBaby Posts: 4,245 Member
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    PloddingTurtle wrote: »
    I know a tow truck driver who spends most of the day on the road and who prefers a hot lunch. He used to be a junkfood/fastfood addict. Now he wraps his healthy lunch up in a foil packet and places it on the manifold of his engine while driving to heat it up. Inspired people gonna do creative things to meet their goals.

    I have some hot and cold options I like for both breakfast and lunch. I know I have to prep in advance and have my breakfasts and lunches made and individually packaged in the refrigerator on Sunday night if I want to stay on plan for the upcoming week, so that's what I do.

    Thanks for my MFP chuckle of the day! I'd be afraid my lunch would fall off and then I'd be out of luck, but then I don't know much about how big trucks are made. Maybe that's not even a possibility. IDK but it made me laugh. :lol:
  • RaeBeeBaby
    RaeBeeBaby Posts: 4,245 Member
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    Another idea for a quick hot breakfast is oatmeal. I buy the quick oats and make up a huge batch of my own oatmeal mix which includes oats, nuts, seeds, dried fruit and coconut (or whatever I have on hand). I put about 1/2 cup of this in a bowl and pour boiling water over it just to cover, then put a plate over the top to steam for a couple minutes. I often get this ready the night before, so all I have to do is boil water.

    I'll add fruit and yogurt and it's a complete hot breakfast. Of course the more you add to the oats, the more calories and expense but it's not that much. If I'm going somewhere early I put the oats in a mason jar, pop the lid on and take it with me. Pretty handy.
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,013 Member
    edited July 2018
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    cedric_says wrote: »
    My average day is looking like a breakfast burrito from Del Taco in the morning for around $5. Then in the afternoon or evening I'll stop at el pollo loco for a double chicken bowl ($6-$9) and or I'll stop at the super market for .5 to 1 lb of steak or chicken to cook ($5-$7). My average day is probably around $15 per day.

    My main concern with re-heating leftovers is I don't like to use the microwave. Whether you believe using the microwave is okay or not doesn't mean much to me. I'd rather be safe and wait a few extra minutes to cook on the stove then increase my chances of complications later in life.. however, getting a hot meal in the middle of the day without is extremely difficult unless you can use a hot plate at work.

    After considering a few of your recommendations, I suppose I could make make a few breakfast burritos myself at home all at once and wrap them in foil. (easy to re-heat without the microwave) In the afternoon, I could probably eat a salad but I don't like them much. Drink a protein shake in the afternoon and cook when I get home from work or re-heat a chicken bowl when I get home.

    I generally don't fear microwaving, but the two in the breakroom at work make weird noises and get super hot and I seriously wonder if I'm going to end up growing a tail from using them!

    My compromise is I use them to reheat my lunch once or twice a week, bring something I can eat cold twice or 3x a week, and buy lunch once a week. It's a nice happy medium I can live with.

    For cold lunches, I'll make a sandwich or wrap, and a piece of fruit. Or I'll make a big batch of pasta or barley salad (pasta or barley, chopped veggies, bottled dressing, and then either beans or tuna or leftover shredded chicken or the like). On rare occasions I'll be on a green salad kick and bring that.

    I'll say I think living without compromising is a naive goal, kind of like "insisting on perfection". Human civilization would not exist without compromise. Life is imperfect. If you consult 10 different you tube channels and 10 different popular blogs, you will get 20 different definitions of what "perfect" is and around 1,000 different things to be afraid of. People have been living with microwaves since at least the 1970's and the population is still growing and average life expectancy hasn't plummeted.

    Get okay with compromise. That's where the ice cream is!
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    cedric_says wrote: »
    What I mean by that is, is it possible to have quality, affordable, and convenience without compromising or compensating?

    Yes. You will have to do pre-planning to make this happen. You have total control over the foods you prepare yourself, so you control the quality. Set an afternoon aside and prepare the meat of choice, then package it up for later meals. I will buy a family pack of hamburger meat and bake all the meat balls at once. They are made in to a meal right there and the extras are frozen for later. It takes no more time to bake a single serving of meat balls as it does to bake them all at once. Economical, quality, and time saving.

    If you don't like salad, eat peas. Like frozen peas. Get yourself this:
    bzlx5v0w1tjn.jpg
    You can now steam your frozen vegetables without a microwave.

    I also recommend this:
    jbvb18ct8sok.jpg
    You can steam your entire meal at once.
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    Point a radiation meter at the sun some time. Then at your computer screen, and finally at your running microwave.
  • rsclause
    rsclause Posts: 3,103 Member
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    ritzvin wrote: »
    cedric_says wrote: »
    My average day is looking like a breakfast burrito from Del Taco in the morning for around $5. Then in the afternoon or evening I'll stop at el pollo loco for a double chicken bowl ($6-$9) and or I'll stop at the super market for .5 to 1 lb of steak or chicken to cook ($5-$7). My average day is probably around $15 per day.

    My main concern with re-heating leftovers is I don't like to use the microwave. Whether you believe using the microwave is okay or not doesn't mean much to me. I'd rather be safe and wait a few extra minutes to cook on the stove then increase my chances of complications later in life.. however, getting a hot meal in the middle of the day without is extremely difficult unless you can use a hot plate at work.

    After considering a few of your recommendations, I suppose I could make make a few breakfast burritos myself at home all at once and wrap them in foil. (easy to re-heat without the microwave) In the afternoon, I could probably eat a salad but I don't like them much. Drink a protein shake in the afternoon and cook when I get home from work or re-heat a chicken bowl when I get home.

    There's a good chance the fast food chains are microwaving your breakfast burrito and the chicken in the salad bowl anyway (especially items where they mix cheese in with the minced meat, they often microwave for at least a few seconds to melt the cheese into the other ingredients).

    Oh you would have loved my microwave. It was very small and fit on a shelf below a cabinet. It was so old a hole in the bottom had formed where it rusted out. Used it that way for years. Finally redid and got rid of that micro.
  • deannalfisher
    deannalfisher Posts: 5,600 Member
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    rsclause wrote: »
    ritzvin wrote: »
    cedric_says wrote: »
    My average day is looking like a breakfast burrito from Del Taco in the morning for around $5. Then in the afternoon or evening I'll stop at el pollo loco for a double chicken bowl ($6-$9) and or I'll stop at the super market for .5 to 1 lb of steak or chicken to cook ($5-$7). My average day is probably around $15 per day.

    My main concern with re-heating leftovers is I don't like to use the microwave. Whether you believe using the microwave is okay or not doesn't mean much to me. I'd rather be safe and wait a few extra minutes to cook on the stove then increase my chances of complications later in life.. however, getting a hot meal in the middle of the day without is extremely difficult unless you can use a hot plate at work.

    After considering a few of your recommendations, I suppose I could make make a few breakfast burritos myself at home all at once and wrap them in foil. (easy to re-heat without the microwave) In the afternoon, I could probably eat a salad but I don't like them much. Drink a protein shake in the afternoon and cook when I get home from work or re-heat a chicken bowl when I get home.

    There's a good chance the fast food chains are microwaving your breakfast burrito and the chicken in the salad bowl anyway (especially items where they mix cheese in with the minced meat, they often microwave for at least a few seconds to melt the cheese into the other ingredients).

    Oh you would have loved my microwave. It was very small and fit on a shelf below a cabinet. It was so old a hole in the bottom had formed where it rusted out. Used it that way for years. Finally redid and got rid of that micro.

    that is about the status of my microwave currently - i think its 10+ years old

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