Poverty

Several years back, after a divorce, I was in very tight financial straights. I did a lot of PB&J sandwiches. While boring, they are not the worst thing in the world.

Making soups and stews are likewise not difficult, and it's easy to freeze up individual portions. My goal is that each meal cost no more than three dollars, and it's not that hard to get that to two dollars a meal.

For breakfast, bacon, eggs, and toast is quite inexpensive. I also like sausage and bacon (no toast here). That's a very cheap meal. Salads. Don't buy the packaged salad mixes. They are hideously expensive. Instead, buy lettuce, and whatever veggies you like. I'll do the red lettuce, green lettuce, and romaine. Then I toss in cucumber, zucchini, a bit of red onion, maybe some radishes. You might add other veggies like carrot or tomato. In any case, create a large salad, and serve it to yourself in individual servings that you then add salad dressing to. You can keep the undressed salad in some sort of container, and it will last a week, honest. I also like to toss in some croutons. Which you could probably make yourself, but I buy them. You can grill some boneless chicken breast to put on top of the salad and you have a complete meal. For maybe two bucks. See what I mean about cooking at home saves a ton of money?

Many years ago, a coworker, a single man who had not yet learned to cook for himself, complained about how the cost of food was killing him. So I said I'd make him a sandwich for work, for which I charged him 50 cents (this was in the mid 1970s), and he was happy because it was so cheap and I made a small profit. Fortunately, that man has since learned to cook for himself, and while he does eat out reasonably often, isn't dependent on restaurants for all his meals.

Probably the biggest problem about being poor and trying to cook for yourself is if you don't have access to a decent kitchen, or if you can't afford to buy the basics in the first place. It can be very hard, as well I know.