One bottle of Pepsi, one bottle of amaretto, one cheesecake. DONE. Breakfast of champions.

[apocalypsos]

The article linked in this Jezebel post, in which two food critics at the Post give themselves a challenge to create dinner for under fifty bucks. That's right, fifty American dollars.

Fifty bucks buys me two weeks worth of groceries. Three if I invest in Ramen noodles.

That's not even mentioning that, as the Jezebel post points out, the entire challenge suffers from the same thing a lot of these articles suffer from -- the recipes are always so damn complicated it's hard to find someone who can pull it off.

I'm reminded of the Top Chef episode from this season when the quickfire challenge was basically to make a quick meal in under fifteen minutes (IIRC) from the basic dried and canned goods you'd find in, say, my cupboards. You would think Padma had led all of the contestants' pets out into the kitchen and set them on fire. OH NOES! WE HAVE TO COOK LIKE EVERYDAY PEONS! They moaned, they whined, you expected at any minute that they were about to throw a tantrum.

I adore the uncomplicated cheap recipes in the comments of the Jezebel post. Because when I saw "fifty bucks for one dinner," all I could think was, "A buck for a bag of frozen broccoli, a buck for a bag of frozen cauliflower, a buck for a box of elbow noodles, and a buck for a little tub of butter. And that would feed me for a WEEK, if I were desperate."

Comments

[gweneiriol.livejournal.com]

thanks for the link! I sometimes wonder, the same as I do for clothes designers, what world professional cooks live in.

[trishalynn.livejournal.com]

I wonder that all the time and I'm in luxury Manhattan real estate.

[laurelin-kit.livejournal.com]

Ugh, that made me so mad.

[laurelin-kit.livejournal.com]

Okay, the comments on the article changed my mind. The Top Chef episode still rankled some, but that article is aimed at cooking a fancy, multiple course meal for six in New York City for under $50. That's pretty difficult, especially if you're buying all fresh ingredients. Of course this isn't in line with the rest of the country, and the NYT isn't talking about home cooking, or regular cooking, they were talking about a gourmet dinner party.

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

Dude, I feed five people (including a teenager!) for around $100 a week.

$50 for 2 people? That should be at least three days of groceries, even if you're not buying super-cheap.

Here'd be my $50:

Whole roasting bird: $8 (less if you catch a sale)
Yellow rice: $1.50
Egg noodles: $0.79 (less on sale)
Bag of whole carrots: $0.89
Three whole onions: $0.70 (whole bag is $2-3)
One clove of garlic: $0.30
Can of black beans: $0.60
Dozen eggs: $0.79
Half-gallon of milk: $3
Bag of frozen peas: $1
Bag of self-rising flour: $1.20
2 lb bag of sugar: $0.80
Bag of bread flour: $1.20
2 packs of yeast: $2
Salt: $1
Pepper: $1
Cinnamon: $2
Bag of frozen mixed veggies: $1
Sliced cheese: $2.79
Butter: $3
5 lb bag of taters: $2.50

The above ingredients are only a little more than half of $50, and I can whip you days and days of food from them.

1st night: Roast chicken with garlic, salt, pepper. Include carrots and potatoes.

Strip carcass, strain juice and reserve. Boil bones down for stock, reserve. Divide leftover meat.

2nd Day: Scrambled egg, milk.
lunch: Leftover roast chicken & veggies.
supper: Cook saffron rice, peas, & mix in shredded leftover chicken. Serve with black beans.

3rd day: breakfast: Cinnamon toast
lunch: Leftover chicken & yellow rice/black beans
supper: Last of the roast chicken leftovers

4th day: French toast with cinnamon
lunch: Leftover chicken & yellow rice
supper: Heat reserved stock, add leftover chicken, frozen veggies, onions, salt, pepper, garlic. Make loaf of crusty yeast bread.

5th day: Homemade bread & butter
lunch: leftover soup
supper: Grilled cheese & baked fries

So that's 5 days, and you haven't even used all the groceries you bought! :)

[honorh.livejournal.com]

Where do you get eggs that cheap?! Couldn't find them for that in the States, forget Japan.

Still, if we convert it to ¥5000, I get by on less than that each week. Cereal or eggs for breakfast. Brown rice, veggies, fish and maybe a dumpling in my bento box. Make soup or stew on Sunday and eat it for dinner each day. Simple, healthy, inexpensive.

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

I'm in the States - last week I bought a dozen eggs at Publix (our local grocer) for 79 cents on sale. The large white eggs are never more than a dollar or so (and you can get them super-cheap if you're willing to shop Wal-Mart.)

[denorios.livejournal.com]

Wow, are eggs and milk and stuff really that cheap in the States? Damn!

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Depending on where you shop, if you join their discount club, and when you catch a sale ... yup. (I was boggling at it myself for a moment but then I thought about it and no, if I bounced around to a couple different stores when I shopped I could pull off that list, too.)

[denorios.livejournal.com]

Damn. I'm living in the wrong country! You'd be looking at $4 for a dozen eggs here, not to mention about $1.50 for a pint of milk and about the same for a loaf of bread.

[proscription.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what I pay for grocceries-- I live in NYC, though so there is no walmart, and everything is more expensive in general. I'm not complaining, at all, I'm just saying in rural areas you can live of less money then in the cities. Its a give and take!

[trishalynn.livejournal.com]

I'm also in NYC and $50 buys me groceries for 15 days, give or take a day. However, it's all pretty much the same kinds of meals (pasta and sauce, chicken in some sort of sauce, frozen vegetables under $1.50 a package, etc.) and I can't even supplement with mac and cheese if I wanted to because I'm trying to limit myself to meals with 30% USRDA sodium due to having had high blood pressure wehn I was smoking.

I either haven't learned the trick to eating well when you're poor or I just am not a skilled enough buyer.

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

Some of it could be gotten cheaper at Wal-Mart (or stores like Big Lots), too - a gallon jug of milk is about $3.50 at Wal-Mart - I just tend to buy at the regular store, so I used their prices.

[florahart]

A gallon of milk is $1.99 in my supermarket, but eggs range from $1.89 to $3.50 or so a dozen. I haven't seen eggs under a buck a dozen in probably 15 years (anywhere), other than like, hugely on sale because of Easter eggs or something. However, I'm about as far from you as I can get and still be in the lower 48, so.

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

But see, milk is a LOT more expensive here - gallons are $4-something, but eggs are cheap (heck, even the free-range eggs are about $2.69/dz). Just depends on what farmers you're close to, I guess.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

It's not so cheap in some areas where you'd think it would be, though. I live in Kansas in the middle of farm country, and staples like eggs, bread, and milk are twice what harmonyfb says s/he pays even at the cheapest stores. I've never understood that.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

I just realized what I said is the exact opposite of what proscription said above. I've lived in the rural Midwest my whole life, and I've never known food to be cheap. And in review, I also realize the prices on bags of onions and potatoes harmonyfb mentioned were much less than what I pay here in town. My husband and I spend a good $125/week on groceries for 2, and we can easily get to $200/week if we buy something for a nice dinner and lots of fresh fruits and veggies.

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

Holy crap, where do you LIVE? I've never seen some of those groceries that cheap!

(Caveat: I now live in Metro DC, which I came to by way of 3 years in NYC and 25 years in Boston.)

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

I live in Florida (and used to live in TN). The up side to living here is that fresh fruits and vegetables (long as you buy in-season) are pretty reasonable, too.

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

Ah, see, reading this and your other comments... the "alternative" supermarkets (Aldi's, Bloom, any kind of Job Lot store, even a Wal-Mart with a grocery section) are all over 40 minutes' drive away. Wegman's is the best of the big-box bunch for us and they're still 30 minutes away. We have to make do with Safeway (EVIL) and Giant mainly, and sometimes run over to Trader Joe's for good produce.

That's the disadvantage of more urbanized living. In NYC there were always good farmer's markets but that's markedly less true here in DC/NoVA, which makes me sadface. :-(

And about the only thing I used to like about Florida when I used to visit my grandparents there was Publix, hehe. Man they have a great bakery!

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

I know - Publix's bakery is awesome. Mmmm, 5-grain Italian bread.

[tinylegacies.livejournal.com]

How big of a chicken are you using to get that many meals out of it?

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

Just a regular baking chicken (they're pretty plump) - and I'm assuming two people eating smallish portions (for my family of five, we get supper, lunch for one or maybe 2 people, and shreds for soup out of a baking chicken.) The soup doesn't necessarily have to have much meat in it, because you've got all the good juices and stock from the roasting and the boiling of the carcass.

For more than 2, of course, you'll have to buy some additional groceries (10 lb bag of taters, 2 chickens or perhaps a pot roast, if they're on sale for a reasonable price, etc).

It's also helpful if you can stock up at sales and then freeze them (for example: buying turkeys when they go down to 29 cents/lb after Thanksgiving, butchering them and freezing them for eating over the next 3-6 months.) Whenever Publix has a sale on top sirloin ($2.99/lb one time! Cheaper than ground beef! But usually $3.99/lb) I buy one or two and put them back for future eating. If you slice them up and cook them, they're great over salad for cheap suppers (and one average-size top sirloin will feed all five of us with enough steak leftover for 2 lunchboxes.)

And making your own bread is tons cheaper than buying it - it takes a little work, but it tastes better, too.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_bounce_/]

Yeah, that's $70 Australian so, if I make my lunch every day, that's a week and a half - two weeks' food for me. More if I stock up and hit the Vic markets on Saturday morning for the cheap cuts of meat,

[honorh.livejournal.com]

How may people are they cooking for? Twenty? 'Cause if you give me fifty bucks, I can make it stretch for two weeks, if necessary.

Oh, I see--six. Six! My amazing spaghetti alla norma (word_smuggler's Actual Italian Recipe) for six wouldn't cost a fraction of that budget, and I could throw in a caprese salad and non-alcoholic beverages just for kicks.

What world do these people live in?

[denorios.livejournal.com]

Hell, I could feed myself for a week for less than $50 and I live in England where pretty much everything is twice as expensive!

[girl-wonder.livejournal.com]

Ugh. When I was living in college, I'd briefly have weeks where I could not afford groceries until my paycheck, so I'd end up surviving on a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, jelly, and carrots for a week or so. I am such a foodie, but I hate the shows that are like, "This is cheap, *and* easy!" and I'm like, "It is neither: class fail!"

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

When I was living in Manhattan, I managed to get by for most of a year on a weekly grocery budget of $15 - $25.

Now, that said... food is OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive in Manhattan. I put on 12 of the 35 pounds I'd previously lost, during that year, because $20 a week buys Ramen, peanut butter, and Wonderbread. Those dollar boxes of pasta almost never happen in NYC. Ramen is 2/$1 instead of 4/$1 or 8/$1 like it is in the 'burbs. A $50 dinner in NYC is not the same as a $50 dinner almost anywhere else. (Bear in mind that a 16x18 studio on the Upper East Side, in an average building, was renting for $1750 / month... two years ago.)

But yeah, they live in their own little bubble that has nothing to do with the rest of the world.

[trishalynn.livejournal.com]

I was in some average buildings not too long ago and saw a decent studio on the UES on like 93rd street for around $1500 a month. Alas, it was the best of the four we'd seen, and that even included a 1 bedroom apartment that was less.

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

It was my ex's studio, heh. 96th and something. York? Three blocks east of Lex. When he moved in the rent was $1550 but they jacked it over time.

I, on the other hand, was paying $800 a month for a 15x12 bedroom with two closets and a river view, on 141st. But then the rent control finally broke and that gorgeous 3-bed with the 12-ft ceilings became a $3000 a month rental. Woe.

(And my fiancé wonders why I still feel that DC isn't terribly expensive...)

[dargie.livejournal.com]

I really am losing patience with all the preciousness of contemporary foodies. It's a sad day when a joke makes it to the top of my food list: NEVER eat at a restaurant that serves foam.

[florahart]

all I could think was, "A buck for a bag of frozen broccoli, a buck for a bag of frozen cauliflower, a buck for a box of elbow noodles, and a buck for a little tub of butter. And that would feed me for a WEEK, if I were desperate."

And leave you $46 for important things like coffee.

*nods*

I spend about $150 a week on groceries because I have teenage boys, but man, I'm looking forward to the day they feed themselves and I can go to a budget more along the lines of like $50-60 a week. Without being particularly frugal or eating crappy food.

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

::nods:: All I can say is, thank goodness my teenager's a girl.

(Though the 8 year old boy is starting to eat everything that's not nailed down. I weep for my future grocery budget.)

[luna-k.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I could get a week's worth of groceries out of $50.

And thanks for letting us know about the cheap recipes in the comments. I'm always up for that.

[shei.livejournal.com]

Oh, man. With 50$ I can feed myself for a long time if I forgo chocolate and other sweets.

[liz-w.livejournal.com]

It was the New York Times, not the Post, and Frank Bruni responded in the comments section:

More than a few readers noted that it's not only easy but TYPICAL in most circumstances, for most people, to cook dinner at home for under $8.50 a person. No argument here. That's absolutely true and an absolutely fair point, and I wish I'd considered my words more carefully, or used them more accurately. What I meant to convey, and what I stand by, is this: it's not easy to do dazzle at $8.50 a person. It's not easy to do at least three courses that will each demonstrate enough creativity, finesse and pizazz to stand out next to a sequence of courses being prepared by a similarly talented home cook. What Kim and Julia were being asked to do--and I think this is clear in context---is stage a full-blown DINNER PARTY for under $8.50 a person, meaning they were really on the hook for even more than three courses. And they were being asked to stage a full-blown dinner party worth raving about. I think doing that for under $50 for six people isn't anything close to a cinch, and I think the cost ceiling, viewed that way, wasn't and isn't a terribly forgiving one.

I certainly wouldn't spend $50 on dinner every day, but a budget of $50 for a dinner party for six people -- when the focus is specifically the FOOD -- didn't really seem all that outrageous to me for a special event.

[earis.livejournal.com]

Word to all of that.

As a grad student, I invest heavily in pasta, lentils, and rice.

And now, in brown wheat.

Seriously, you can do anything with this sort of stuff

[brigidsblest.livejournal.com]

...I thought Scotch was the breakfast of champions.

I think I've been doing it wrong.