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.

[laurelin-kit.livejournal.com]

Ugh, that made me so mad.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.