Get the cheap ones from any grocery. No specialty store needed. That's the thing, burritos and pizza are both incredibly cheap to make with ingredients from almost anywhere.
That’s the thing. They see garlic powder or whatever in a recipe, see that a thing of garlic powder costs $5, and think of that $5 as part of the cost of the one meal instead of a small fraction of it
yeah that is definitely something I’ve seen before. People getting mad at youtubers for putting the real cost of ingredients ie. 10 cents for flour per serving or something like that. Very dumb behaviour.
The thing is, people with unstocked kitchens do exist. I get why they would find it frustrating, especially if they're trying to get through until payday, to not be able to afford the ingredients for a cheap recipe.
But the solution there would be to search for recipes with as few ingredients as possible, or sub in premade mixture products e.g. the $2 jar of spaghetti sauce where the ingredients to make it from scratch cost $0.85 per use but $15 to buy all at once.
Another thing is we could really stand to bring back bulk bin sections -- the prices were a bit worse than buying the giant bag IME but still quite useful if what you need is e.g. ~half a cup of flour to measure several tablespoons from.
Also OP isn’t saying they’re stuck eating unseasoned rice and beans every day, they’re saying it’s cheaper to buy DoorDash for every meal instead of stocking a pantry, which might make some degree of intuitive sense at first but stops after a very small number of meals
Seriously. Like, a week ago I decided to have a burrito for dinner and proceeded to have quesadillas for the rest of the week with basically no additional purchasing.
That would be an invalid argument for anyone like me, given that I'd end up staring for half an hour into the abyss that is a dozen local restaurants' menus, trying to decide what I want, before finally ordering the same burrito as yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, and...
this is definitely an issue when you live alone. a lot of dinners turn into one scoop of leftover burrito filling, half of an onion, a handful of wrinkly cherry tomatoes, a can of chickpeas, and a firm ball of spaghetti.
okay, i happened to list ingredients that go pretty well together... what about this: two end slices of toast, a cup of tomato sauce, a slightly moldy orange, and a bit of chicken teriyaki
Looking for an online group where we all post what's leftover in our fridges come Friday and vote one what to try to make :)
Cheese is an impt thing to have lots of to congeal ingredients and make palatable.
Your list is an ok sandwich, sans moldy orange, as long as there is cheese. LOL
cheese is expensive as hell! id probably make croutons out of the bread, attempt to mix tomato sauce and teriyaki into some kind of soup, and just have the orange as a dessert.
I know! I have a bug up my butt about buying takeout or restaurant salads because a) it's so easy and b) the fancy ones just look like someone cleaned out their fridge. But you're right that buying greens and eating them before they go bad takes some planning
basic survival skills *under any economic system other than advanced industrial capitalism* plus the incredible luck to be living in that economic system
I know we’re just arguing with ourselves in the shower on this one but, I call bullshit somebody wanting just ONE burrito and never again for the foreseeable future.
I survived a long commute to college in part by making an entire semester's worth of breakfast breads (banana etc.) ahead and freezing them, to reduce the amount of breakfast meal prep needed (each loaf lasted 4-5 days and covered most of the class week)
I literally picked my mini fridge based primarily on the fact that it has a separate true freezer, instead of a mini freezer box near the back. Love to have spare meals for later.
another cool hack is stocking up on bread when it goes on sale, keep it in the freezer. if you set your toaster up right, just pop the bread in for a perfect defrost
This is exactly what I do when I want to make a quick sandwich and don't want to wait for my bread to thaw. It's such a great way of consuming bread, I genuinely haven't seen any of it mold on me in years now.
Is the idea here that they don’t realize that multiple recipes can share ingredients? The most expensive parts are the protein and cheese and you can use those in a million things.
That's a big part of it. They don't menu plan. They want what they want when they want it. My SIL quit cooking because when she calls the niblets to the table, they inform her they have ordered Taco Bell doordash, where a $3 burrito costs $12.
i don't menu plan because that is cursed nonsense designed to aggravate my executive dysfunctions (and also just not how anyone i know cooks); using up ingredients doesn't require menu planning, it just requires adding them to your next meal
My mother menu-planned. I menu plan. It's easy, it makes shopping much simpler and cheaper, and it takes all the frustration of figuring out what we're having for dinner off the table. I also have adhd. But if it's difficult for you, I get it. I feel that way about day planners.
right, my point was just that it's not a lack of meal planning that's causing any this, because it's very easy to use up the stuff you have in your fridge without that.
The pain is visceral. I’m not above getting Taco Bell from time to time but the whole appeal is cheap junk food. A crappy dinner that hits the spot for $12 and was like a burrito, a cheesy Gordita crunch, and some other bs. Door dashing it is like having Taco Bell on a silver platter.
Yes. Half the ingredients I buy, I'm planning out a few different meals to use them in. Also I make big batches and freeze when it's something that thaws/reheats well.
It's one of my favorite things to not have to cook because I can reheat something I cooked and froze 2 months ago.
For one thing, if there's ground beef involved, you can have a burger the next day (call it a patty melt and use regular bread if you don't want to bother getting buns), and fry some up with garlic to put into tomato sauce to go with a handful of frozen ravioli the day after.
And they don't recognize that being able to eat exactly what you want to for every meal a day with minimal effort is a mind-boggling luxury that if anything is shockingly cheap today
This is how I ended up spending my bachelor years eating basically the same simple meal every day for years at a time
It was easy and cheap enough that I still had the money and energy to go out with friends or order in on occasion for variety (or, frankly, buy way too many books and Steam games)
Now maybe my particular variety of weird brain was such that I actually didn't mind eating rice, mixed vegetables, and Pick A Meat every day, I can see how that would get boring
it saved me the trouble of coming up with ideas, simplified grocery shopping and frankly, variety is kind of a luxury?
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You can also do burritos at every price point. I can do delicious burritos for less that a $1 each but you have to put in some work.
People get really unhinged about it too
Another thing is we could really stand to bring back bulk bin sections -- the prices were a bit worse than buying the giant bag IME but still quite useful if what you need is e.g. ~half a cup of flour to measure several tablespoons from.
this is kinda fun
Cheese is an impt thing to have lots of to congeal ingredients and make palatable.
Your list is an ok sandwich, sans moldy orange, as long as there is cheese. LOL
you can definitely alleviate the issue with better planning, though.
Burrito no because the ingredients could be used for a lot of other things that take a few minutes to prepare.
https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/chicken_freezer_burritos/
my partner and i like to do a production line type thing where we make a ton at once
Or else make something else out of the same ingredients, like a casserole or bean dip or ???
It's one of my favorite things to not have to cook because I can reheat something I cooked and froze 2 months ago.
I’m kidding but lmao humanity is so cooked
That said, it would be a way to not drop $40 on delivery on *every single* meal.
Let’s not entertain the idea that this sort of person will wander in to the { meal planning } space lol
What a burden.
It was easy and cheap enough that I still had the money and energy to go out with friends or order in on occasion for variety (or, frankly, buy way too many books and Steam games)
it saved me the trouble of coming up with ideas, simplified grocery shopping and frankly, variety is kind of a luxury?