Mine isn’t really a “Meal”, I used to put margarine spread on white bread and sprinkle a tiny bit of cinnamon and sugar on it as a sweet treat growing up.
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Lentils. They’re a superfood. Cook them with correct technique (hardly any technique needed, honestly) and season them properly
If you live near or attend a large university, the real struggle meal is just food from free events on campus.
When I was a grad student I’d show up to every event on campus where I knew there’d be food and fill up a Tupperware or two. Didn’t matter if it was connected to my department or not.
The rule was if you wanted the grad students to come to a talk you had to put out little cubes of cheese.
Seminar and BEvERages provided
Unrelated: I used to go to tech meetups in my city fairly often. There was one guy who always seemed to be there just for the food. I only knew him by his username (‘Lex R’ - a programming pun) and never talked to him. Tall skinny dude; if I had to guess, I’d say he was around 50ish.
Every meetup without fail, this guy ate so much pizza. One time I counted 11 slices. He also drank at least a 2L of soda - didn’t matter if it was diet or regular, he drank it. About 10 minutes before the meetup ended, he’d put a bunch of leftover slices in a pizza box to take with him. And he had a bottle of some kind in his bag that he’d pour the dregs of all the soda bottles into, and would take that with him too. It was weird because it was a tech meetup, presumably most people were making at least 6 figures.
Until today I had never considered that this might be his only source of food.
Great M.O. that. Why waste time cooking instead of learning? Bet he took that pizza home to watch History Channel.
I once made “Povery rolls”
I took every last scrap of leftover food, all the half bags of frozen veggies and so on from the freezer. Defrosted it all, put it in a stock pot and cooked it till it was a thick stew moved it to a giant bowl and went buck wild with the electric mixer then threw in about 4kg of self raising flour and water. The dough tasted ok, but then I did the same thing with the spice rack… stock cubes, french soup mix… the works. They tasted odd. But I rested the dough, divided them up and baked them anyways.
Fuuuuuuuck they were amazing. They tasted like a family sunday roast dinner flavored heavy doughy roll. It made about 50 of them. I scoured the house for change and found enough to go grab a decent sized packet of powdered gravy mix.
I was genuinely sad when I used the last ones.
Rice and black eyed peas, cooked with some millet leaves for color. Fry slices of onion in about 1 T of oil and pour it over the top. Then sprinkle a mix of fine crushed red pepper, bullion, and salt over it.
Most of West Africa has this in one form or another on the regular.
Struggle broke or struggle sad?
*stuggle
I didn’t realize it until now…
Broke.
Beans and rice are so healthy and cheap, with so many variations. It’s always beans and rice for me.
A can of chili over some cooked rice, add a little salt and extra hot sauce. This was my broke young adult fancy meal.
Was considering saying the same. What are some of your favorite ways? I like refried if I have them, with cheese and cayenne.
Just had refried beans (just cumin & salt) today in breakfast burritos (eggs, potatoes, beans, onion, cilantro, cheese, salsa - we only eat once or twice a day on weekends and cook better stuff) and yeah pintos are one of my favorites.
Channa masala
Black beans on yellow rice is my kids’ favorite, they love black beans.
Red beans (cooked from dry with whatever veg we have) and long grain white rice with hot sauce like Tabasco.
I really like pintos on brown rice with tahini sauce but nobody else in my household likes it.
Chopped raw sweet onion on all of them.
Those sounds tasty. I’ll have to try the brown rice with pintos and tahini, i love hummus with heavy tahini. Thanks for sharing!
Cup of steamed rice. Small tin of tuna - I like the lemon and cracked pepper ones. Splash of soy sauce. 30 seconds in the microwave.
I dry nori sheets out, crush them up and put them in an old pepper mill. Few grinds into a bowl of tuna and rice with a splash of soy and its a ghetto sushi bowl.
Savory oatmeal.
Rolled oats with cold soy milk. Microwave 2-3 mins. Add chilli oil, spice paste, or ramen seasoning.
Tasty and not unhealthy. The plan is to prevent unhealthy food leading to a negative feedback loop.
Rice and beans. Mine are usually white rice and black beans. Beans cooked with a little onion, green pepper and garlic. Salt and pepper. Hot sauce.
I eat it regularly, to the point I have a tiny slow cooker that I pretty much just use to cook beans.
Scramble some eggs plain and mix into rice and some canned corn. Butter + Sriracha + soy/tamari . We call it “bachelor stir-fry” and it’s especially good if you can get your paws on some sesame oil!
A former partner taught me that a drop or two of sesame oil in most things give a nice umami kick.
Long live poverty nachos
Tortilla, can of baked beans, half jar of salsa, microwave, top with hummus
Hummus???
Tortilla chips (cheapest)
Block of government cheese, shredded.
Pickled jalapeños if you have them.
Nuke for 20 seconds.
Tortillas. Just tortillas. Warmed over a gas burner. It’s a comfort food to me now, but there was a time when all I had was tortillas, and it tastes better than my other struggle meal, which was a single cup of rice with whatever spices I had on hand and hadn’t put on the previous day. I lost a lot of weight around then. Still haven’t fully gained it back ten plus years later, and still struggle eating regularly more than once or twice a day.
Used to be rice with a fried egg. In my family we call it Ghibli rice. Nowadays I just bake my own wholemeal bread and that’s the cheapest eats there is. So cheap you can afford the nice butter!
Cook 2 bags of ramen and strain it. Add a can of tomato soup and some cheddar. I like to call them regrettios.
2nd up is ghetto pizzas. Make some toast put on tomato sauce and cheese also pepperoni if you can afford it
“stuggle” ?
damn its been like that all day and you’re the first person to point it out.
One might say it was quite a stuggle.
