Dollar general (no fresh foods)

i highly recommend checking out budgetbytes.com
they will help with low cost recipes

and...http://myfridgefood.com/

Does your Dollar General have a frozen food section? I know people who have been able to get frozen vegetables and frozen meals there.

If no, you should still be able to get condiments, pasta/rice sides, canned vegetables, crackers, nuts, breakfast cereals, possibly some shelf stable milk/plant milk, coffee/tea, canned soups, peanut butter, and possibly some tortillas/bread.

If I was eating from Dollar General, I would probably focus on whatever frozen vegetables they had, combining them with soup, pasta, and rice to create my meals. I would also eat peanut butter sandwiches. I would use cereal, crackers, and nuts for snacks. If you aren't eating meat, protein is probably going to be the hardest thing to get (I'd guess), so I personally would be stocking up on whatever kinds of beans I could get there (baked beans? refried beans?) and ensure I was getting some each day.

For health, focus on your overall calorie goal. Figure out what you want to eat, caloriewise, and stay within that range. The thing with many shelf-stable foods like that is that sometimes people don't find them as filling, so temptation to eat more than you need may be a problem.

Good luck!

ok, I'm going to kick out some of my favorites, but you have to decide if they fit what you like to eat or what your food goals are...

Mac & cheese + can tuna or chicken + cream of mushroom or tomato soup
*bonus flavor if you make the mac with half and half and cheddar before stirring in the rest

can chicken is good as a meat in spaghetti

can biscuits squished flat make excellent mini-pizza crust (pizza sauce is usually canned, plus cheese, and any kind of pepperoni or canned meat like spam are pretty good on top)

mixed vegetables + spaghetti sauce + mozarella cheese, I don't even know why this is good but I guess it's like a veggie spaghetti, I like to use veg-all so you get the starchy potato flavor in there, not all mixed veg have potato

rice plus beans or any vegetable mix + soy sauce particularly with curry or tumeric/paprika/cumin seasonings and some sesame oil if they have it, makes a nice fried rice option and you can add canned meats here if you like, chicken or spam would work nicely

diced tomato + minestrone soup+ mixed vegetable + black beans + can mushrooms - dump them all in a pot and heat, makes a nice vegetable soup with better flavor than the plain minestrone, and this soup is fairly thin so you can add extra pasta if you want to make it more thick & hearty

Those are a few off the top of my head...good luck, hopefully you get transportation and better options soon!

I’m a kid at heart but the chef boyrdees with little meat balls in them are good... bonus if the pasta is in dinosaur shape, and it’s got tomato sauce so there’s your vegetables too. Put a little Parmesan cheese on top and have with a piece of bread and call it a meal.

piercekristy875 wrote: »

Any ideas on how to carry it if I walked yo dg? I was unprepared for this and didn't think about how to carry it all.

Put it in a back pack and strap on a pair of roller blades, who needs a car??
https://youtu.be/gvpT8huOdf0

piercekristy875 wrote: »

Crafty_camper123 wrote: »

Is there an affordable delivery service in your area? One where you can pay them a small fee to pick up your groceries for you? That could open up your options a bit more.

What kind would that be? I don't think I heard of them

You might just have to google it (grocery deliver in my area) , or ask around. We have one in my small town that just started up not too long ago. But it's a local business and not a chain. So I can't help too much there as far as company names go. But he picks up online grocery orders and delivers from resturaunts for people.

Can't you just go to the store every day? Or every couple days so you don't have to buy a bunch of groceries all at once?

I like using the reusable grocery bags, if you can find the more sturdy, thicker ones with longer straps so they fit over your shoulder. I'm usually only walking about 7 blocks to the grocery, so it's not too far, and I go every day or every other day so I'm not getting bags and bags of stuff, just whatever I need now or in the immediate future. If I had to walk a longer distance, I would probably use a backpack so the weight would be more evenly distributed across the shoulders and then maybe just a reusable grocery bag for things that I don't want squished like bread or chips or whatever is light.