My advice was going to be peanut butter, but someone beat me to it. Make sure it has sugar in it (almost all of it does).

Also, the expression is “hunger pangs.”

For calorie dense you can’t do better than fat. Oil might be ‘expensive’ but it is one of the cheapest things to buy on a per calorie basis and you only need a teaspoon to fry an egg or make mashed potatoes taste half-decent. You would be surprised how much better potatoes and eggs can be with a little fresh chill pepper or coriander if you can find it. The better it tastes the easier it is to eat. One more tip… Canned condensed milk. It’s cheap, calorie dense and delicious. A spoon a day will last weeks. Delicious in tea and coffee. Good luck!

The only thing you’re really missing is some pulses/beans/legumes, and some more veg.

Buy yourself some more grains (jumbo oats go well as a porridge, they go well in soups, and you can use them to make flapjack (250g oat, 125 butter, 125 sugar, 3 table spoon of golden syrup, mix flatten in a tray bake at 200c for 15-30 mins, or in a covered pan on the hob), energy dense and can have other stuff added (dried fruit, ginger, choc chips, etc))

You could also add pasta and rice as two other carbs that effectively cost next to nothing, lentils and beans can give you the protein that you need, alongside the eggs

And buy an A-Z multivitamin+mineral if you don’t have them already, if you’re malnourished you won’t be feeling great to begin with.

Keep tins of tomatoes and beans around for when you do feel adventurous

Try lentils and Dahl if beans don’t agree with you

Find a local Asian/Indian supermarket and stock up on essential spices: ginger, cumin, pepper, paprika, chilli flakes. This is how the rest of the world doesn’t become bored living on potatoes/rice and lentils

I am the same as you, I eat 1 meal in the evening and don’t have an appetite for the rest of the day

Flour should be in your budget. Learn how to make a pan fried wheat tortilla - super quick and easy. Then you can look up Turkish flatbread or Italian focaccia. That will spice up your routine.

Fried potatoes, refried potatoes (from boiled leftovers).

Make sauces with nothing but a bit of butter, flour, instant buillon cube/powder. Optional: cream, milk, onions, garlic, anything that was left in the pan from something you just fried.

You can also steam some potatoes with canned meat in a pot.

But onion - I think - would be a great game changer.
And if you can plant some rosemary or thyme in a garden or pot on the windowsill. Those are hardy plants and won’t likely die on you and they taste amazing with potatoes, especially freshly picked.

Someone recommended you setup a donation link for a more varied diet… I second that.

Have you had your Vitamin B1 levels checked? Asking for two reasons, one is your diet seems like it would be low in thiamine, the second is thiamine deficiency can cause or exacerbate a lot of conditions that cause low or no appetite.

Like half of America is thiamine deficient, so I am sure the supplement would be helpful to you. If you DM me I would buy it for you.

The biggest thing you can do is to make the food you eat more enjoyable and eat more of it. I would have no appetite and starve if i had to eat your diet. The good news is that it’s possible to eat a lot better, but still very cheaply. Also you really need to eat two or preferably three or even four meals daily if you want to gain weight.

I would remove eggs and cheese as they aren’t a good value. Add black beans, chickpeas, and lentils, which are good over rice (very cheap, especially if you buy them dry in bulk). Pasta too. Add spices, cheap hot sauce, tomato sauce, etc and it becomes a good meal. Try oatmeal for breakfast too. I would also make sure that you are getting as many fruits and vegetables as possible (apples, bananas, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, etc. not too expensive but will complete the meals and provide good nutrition). Also consider pan frying the potatoes - it’s tastier than boiling.

How about bananas? If you can get yourself to eat a banana some time during the day separate from your main meal, that’s all bonus. Plus it’s got lots of vitamins you definitely need.

Corn and corn meal are also cheap and high energy. Grits are a poor person food staple in parts of the world for a reason.

Onions aren’t the highest energy density veggie, but they are cheap and make other food taste MUCH better. Green onions in particular are one of my favorites. The best part is you can take the green onions and put them in a glass on your window sill with an inch of water. Trim the tops and cook with them. They will keep growing back for quite a while, so very cost effective. Just make sure you change the water every couple days so they don’t get slimy.

Quesadillas

Use more oil, butter and sugar.

Potatoes are not ideal when trying to gain weight, is pasta / noodles so much more expensive? If so, buy flour and mix it with 1 egg per 100g and add some water or milk. Cook chunks of it in salted water.

Try to get your hands on the cheapest nuts you can find and eat as much as you can.

Humans measure our food in dietary calories, and our caloric food can be broken down into four groups. In order of ascending caloric density:

• Carbohydrates, like potatoes and other plants.
• Protein - beans, meat
• Fats (oil,.butter, etc)
• Alcohol

Those of us in affluent countries tend to have too much caloric intake, so strive to limit using fad diets like dropping the bottom or the top while keeping vitamins and those proteins human bodies can’t generate.

If you have the opposite problem and limited funds, you need to think in a budget of “calories in vs money spent.” Bread and potatoes are relatively low-calorie, so may not be enough to have an effect.

Two actual suggestions:

1. If you’re buying store-bought bread, investigate if you can bake your own. I can make a loaf of covid-era sourdough for almost just the cost of flour, and since the flour was milled it keeps a long time and I can stretch dollars buy buying in bulk.

2: if you do have a kitchen anyway, consider beans. Good bean recipes can be very cheap if you start with dried instead of canned, are relatively calorically dense, and respond very well to long cooking. Especially if you need something easy to chew.

Isn’t buying pre-baked bread usually more expensive than raw ingredients?

Anyway, what’s more important is that you have enough energy for your everyday life.
As long as you don’t start feeling weak at any time of the day, even lower weight should be pretty fine.

If your lack of weight is due to heavy physical labour, you can check if glucose powder has a higher calorie count per $ as compared to bread in your area.
Remember though, glucose powder will mean even lesser essential nutrients, so take the advice of bean people. Dehydrated beans should be cheaper than canned ones. It will take longer to prep for eating though. And simple stuff like ginger, garlic and onion can make the thing way more appetising.

Have you heard of ARFID? A close family member, as well as my close friend’s autistic child have this disorder. Low appetite and the visceral reactions to various food items are common with this disorder

Have you tried eating more butter with your bread and potatoes?

please buy some fruits and vegetables from time to time. Actually a lot of time. Different vegetables and fruit. Some nuts too. Eating the same meal every day is very unhealthy and can have very bad l andasting consequences for your health, especially in combination with stress (i know this from my personal experience of being poor and autistic unfortunately). And “hunger pains”? This is already very not ok.

Maybe start a gofundme campaign to at least temporarily somewhat mitigate the money problem? I’ll gladly send you a few bucks, if it helps you avoid what i got through.

Add more sugar to everything for cheap calories that will generally trigger more hunger. Also liquids are a good way to add calories without triggering fullness as much.