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

[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.