Check your local goodwill and thrift stores for cooking supplies.
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I mean that in the same sense that everyone should work food service or retail at some point in their lives so they don’t treat people in those jobs like crap. I don’t wish poverty on anyone but having to experience that struggle would illuminate more people’s opinions. Think the guys voting to cut programs that help families in need have used such programs themselves? For most of them probably not.
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Cooking often involves less expenditure of time than fast food [1]. Meanwhile cooking (as noted) has substantial capital expenses. Not mentioned is that the US right wing considers a working kitchen (in particular a refrigerator) to be an undeserved luxury for the poor right up there with health care.
[1] Yes, food deserts, transportation, etc.
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Different folks will have different obstacles.
As @gracchus noted, for some it’s access to groceries - if you don’t have a car and the nearest sensibly priced fresh food is a few kilometres away, but 7-11 is a block and a Chinese takeaway place is three - then that’s the barrier for you. If your apartment has a tiny kitchen, that’s doubly an obstacle because it’s that much harder to make big purchases when you do get to go to a proper grocery store.
As @Tsu_Dho_Nimh notes, if your don’t have cookware to begin with, there’s also a capital cost obstacle to starting to cook, before you even start buying ingredients.
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It’s not just fast food. I had had years of living below the poverty line in Chicago and knew all the tricks for making cheap food in bulk, which worked fine there, but then when I lived in NYC I did the math, and discovered that even though I am a good cook, and vegetarian so I don’t even have to worry about the cost of meat, it was less expensive to order food from a restaurant within a block or two than buy basic supplies in the grocery store. This is because the cost of groceries was high, home delivery was free (other than the tip), and most of the restaurants offered simple ma-and-pa ‘ethnic’ cuisine with nutritious and cheap options. You’d get enough food for at least 2 meals for the cost of making yourself one meal. Plus, renting an apartment with a full kitchen is a heck of a lot more expensive than one with a kitchenette or (literally) one with no actual kitchen at all.
My closest friends when I lived there were from the hills in North Carolina (actual hillbillies) and they lived on beans and rice, which was the only cheaper option, but not by much. It’s what they were used to from home anyway so that’s what they did.
Three different parts of the country, with three different ways of dealing with food costs.
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My advice would be the same as many others here. Rice and beans, plus a few veggies and maybe a little meat for a balanced diet, will last you a long time. It comes out to something like $2/meal when all is said and done. That’s like the cost of a large soda at a fast food place.
I also recommend spices, even though it’s counterintuitive. Learning to use spices will make the food taste less boring, and will keep you away from fast food, which is less healthy and still more expensive. Spices will cost a little money up front, but they last so long that it still works out…
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people telling me that eating fast food is easier and cheaper
Easier yes, but cheaper? Whoever thought that?
Plus, not everyone enjoys cooking. I’d much rather do the washing up, or walk somewhere to get pre-cooked food, or spend weeks eating unappetising food, as long as I don’t have to bother cooking.
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And a working refrigerator! Which some republicans lawmakers have declared a “luxury” that people on welfare don’t need to have provided for them.
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What’s to enjoy?
- Put ingredients in crock pot
- Leave
- Come back to nice home-cooked meal.
It’s just that simple.
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Step before 1; have crockpot, step before that; have enough money to buy crockpot.
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I think it’s telling that he started out by cooking on a camp stove, but moved to a regular stove.
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I got one new for $20. I could have paid even less if I had hit up the thrift stores or garage sales and got one second-hand.
ETA: still a one-time expense, and you’ll cook food that’s cheaper and better than fast food even with this one-time hit.
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Personally I’m more a rice cooker person, but yeah, I get it.
However, its still time and money spent getting the tools needed to save money cooking. Its like a tasty paradox!
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You leave your hob on while you leave the house? Do you want house fires? Because this is how you get house fires.
And it doesn’t really help when I’m hungry at step 0, but not step 4.
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Thrift shops are your friend. I got an apartment out of state for half of last year, and outfitted my whole kitchen for about 40 bucks. That includes one of those knife blocks of assorted knives, enough silverware and dishes for 10 dinner guests, a food processor and a few pots and pans.
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There are a lot of one-time hits, yes. But after that, it’s like $2/meal. Even with the one-time hits, it’s still less than the cost of fast food.
Last night my dinner was a burrito and no drink, grabbed quickly on my way from one place to another. $7.75.
Meanwhile, I found the following stuff on Amazon:
- 20lb bag of rice: $12
- 40oz can of beans: $ 22.50
- bell peppers: $8.50/lb * 3lb = $25.50
- 3lb onion: $14.50
- spice blend: $12lb/8oz
That’s a month’s worth of food for $86.50, with half the bag of rice left over. Taking a $20 hit for the crock pot, that’s $106.50, or the cost of 14 burritos.
Obviously, don’t buy veggies from Amazon, and don’t buy them faster than you can use them. Also, it will be boring to eat this day in/day out, but nonperishable ingredients keep for a long time. Not arguing against eating fast food, but the meals that you do eat at home are less expensive than fast food.
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So you’re saying that if I don’t attend to my crock pot, it will catch fire? That’s not how crock pots work.
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Crock pots are meant to be left unattended by definition. It’s no more dangerous and leaving the house with the TV on.
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My addition to this is shop for spices also at international/hispanic/asian markets. At the mexican grocery store a mile from me i can buy giant bottles of all kinds of spices and dried herbs for cheap. Buying a small bottle of the same things would cost a fortune at a regular grocery store. And if someone doesn’t have easy access to said places to shop go to the international/hispanic aisle at your supermarket and look for spices there. More often than not you’ll find some there also for cheaper than the standard fare in the spice aisle.
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Growing up, my (single) mother was working. Usually two, sometimes three jobs.
As much as she might have liked to have had the time to come home and cook for us, she was instead trying to keep our apartment.
Back then, no one questioned her choices, but I wonder now, in this modern era, if she’d be admonished repeatedly for bringing home fast food to us semi-regularly because it was all she could do at 10PM after 12 hours work.
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