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.
You must log in or # to comment.
Fried chick peas (I use cans since they’re more convenient, but even cheaper dried beans are fine too but you have to soak for 24h and then boil them first). But either way, seriously cheap, loaded with protein and fiber, and delicious:
Rinse beans and dump into a large dry pan on high heat. Move them around until they have mostly dried up and just barely start sticking to the pan. Then add oil - just once or twice around the pan is plenty - and some salt. Then let them fry in that little bit of oil. Move them with a spoon every so often to keep from sticking too much.
After about 15 min you have these golden brown crunchy and slightly salty little things. They’re great, and go with everything as a side dish.
Hot dogs with white bread instead of a bun goes CRAZY imo
Cut the hot dog lengthwise. Brown it in a skillet. Hot dog sandwich.
Disassembled hot dog
It’s like eating with a time limit!
Do you lay the hot dog diagonally?
Struggle broke or struggle sad?
*stuggle
I didn’t realize it until now…
Broke.
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.
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.
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.
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
I had water on stale bread with sugar 💀
Hotdogs in ramen, hands down.
Our poverty “treat” as kids was toast with tomato sauce and a slice of government cheese, for a makeshift pizza.
We would put hot dogs in Mac N Cheese but never ramen, I did learn recently that some people put hot dogs in spaghetti and I wanted to try it but my husband absolutely refuses.
Hot dogs in spaghetti is the bomb. Add some butter and grated cheese and mmmmm delicious
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.
Crunchy peanut butter on a tortilla, rolled up. Add honey if you are feeling boujie
This except toasted on a frying pan and maple syrup instead of honey.
deleted by creator
This was a staple growing up! I still fry some up from time to time, but now we use “fancy” thick bologna because we’re bougie.
deleted by creator
My mom used to make my sisters and I cinnamon toast for breakfast when we were kids, pretty much like you describe only on toast.
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.
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!
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.
Graham crackers with whipped cream on top. This one was very much the bottom of the barrel. 🥲
Ghirardelli brownie mix from Costco, filled up to about 1/3 of a mug mixed with milk and microwaved for 45 seconds to make a little brownie. Serve with ice cream on top, or with a glass of milk. I actually still do this one, it is delicious and costs basically $0 per serving.
Rice + milk + sugar and then mixed up in a bowl into a kind of puree. This goes great as a dessert after rice + frozen vegetables sauteed up from those massive Costco bags lol. If you’re feeling bougie you can shred some cheese on top.
