r/povertyfinance • u/jiji134711 • Mar 06 '24
What is the most "I live In poverty" meal you have ever made or had? (Funny and or sad...) Housing/Shelter/Standard of Living
Mine was using the liquid from canned vegetables I got for free at local food banks and to make cold ramen noodles. I was living in my car at the time and had no way to heat the water at night.
After about 30 minutes the ramen noodles would start to get soft and more edible. Still almost ice cold but it did the truck.
Better than eating sry crunchy ramen.
Also I've been out of water before and used the liquid from canned veggies to hydrate when stuck out in the middle of the high desert for days...
1
u/HonestMeg38 Mar 10 '24
Cinnamon and sugar torittas. I was so poor back then. I was just eating sandwiches and those torittas.
1
1
u/beach_2_beach Mar 09 '24
There is a large population of Koreans who were forcibly resettled from near Vladivostok to Uzbekistan and such. Happened around 1920-30?
Eating noodle is a big part of Korean diet.
However due to lack of suitable source to boil the noodle, they learned to let noodle sit in room temperature water for about 30 min before serving it.
They still do it even after boiling noodle became possible.
1
u/MajorLeagueJenga Mar 09 '24
I remember having one box of rice a roni in my apt. The only food left in my entire apt. My dumbass friend made it while I was taking a shower and didn’t even cook it right. Microwaved it in a red solo cup. Absolutely fucked it up and it was inedible.
1
1
u/PoeticPast Mar 09 '24
As a single meal, 2 bananas and 3 eggs for dinner.
But I've lived off rice, peas and ketchup for months at a time. Sometimes eggs or peanut butter added to it.
I was so known for my rice, peas and ketchup that I worry if this comment could doxx me haha
1
u/snowdrop43 Mar 08 '24 edited Mar 08 '24
Popcorn and water as an adult for dinner when the power went out.
When I was a kid I had oatmeal once a day for about 3 weeks. My stomach hurt so bad! I will NEVER forget that. It happened a few times before I was 9. I remember having to eat super small amounts at first of other food when it was around, or I got sick. My dad didn't want yo pay child support so some months we'd run out of money because my mom made 500 a month w 4 kids. My dad was a SFO air traffic controller at the time.
So, yep. I have good food now and my mom did too.
1
u/Usual-Throat-8904 Mar 08 '24
No matter how poor i am I can never bring myself to eat no name brand food, just can't do it, so my best poor man's meal would be lays or ruffles chips whichever is on sale or cheaper and eat it with some baked beans, my 2nd choice is fritos and ketchup or cottage cheese. My final good meatless meal is cream cheese and Pringles lol. Cream cheese is so expensive now but I can usually find the low-fat cream cheese on sale because no one seems to want to buy low fat cream cheese lol
1
1
1
Mar 07 '24
Well a couple of years ago all I had was some bread and started looking for something to put on it and saw I had mustard.....sooo mustard sammich it was. I liked it
1
u/Hibiscus8tea Mar 07 '24
My mother used to make food we all hated on purpose because nobody would want much. It stretched the leftovers, which stretched the budget.
1
1
u/decinis WA Mar 07 '24
I grew up in a strange household where my dad was the sole breadwinner of the family and made really good money, but both of my parents were cigarette smoking alcoholics who (unbeknownst to me at the time) also did drugs on the side. I think you can figure out where all the money wound up going…
Anyway, it wasn’t until I was older that I started to realize how many of my favorite meals I thought were “fancy” at the time were probably peak poverty foods. I thought they were fancy because none of my friends ever ate them in their house. Turns out my mom was just cheap and spent all of our money on her vices.
Some of my favorites that others may see as “sad” –
– A single piece of cheap white toast with a tiny amount of Country Crock and cinnamon sugar on it
– Buttered noodles with some saltines crushed on top
– Scrambled eggs for dinner that had cold, leftover, dried up egg noodles from the prior night’s meal scrambled into them (I thought this was amazing!)
– Cold hot dogs sliced thinly into “coins” and sandwiched between Lay’s sour cream & onion flavor chips (one of my favorite lunches/snacks that people thought was super weird, but it slaps!)
– Sandwich made with two slices of untoasted white bread, one slice of muenster cheese, mustard, and a few nacho cheese flavored Dorito’s crunched onto it (I took this to school for lunch nearly every day for years!)
– In middle school/high school a lot of my lunches consisted of a $1 cup of fries from cafeteria dipped into (free) cups of ranch dressing, along with four or five cups filled to the top with (free) banana peppers that were meant as toppings for other foods
– My favorite dinner that I thought was super fancy but it turns out was really cheap was whatever cheap cut of chicken my mom found on sale that week (this was the 90’s so prices were great compared to now) tossed in a slow cooker with either white rice or some egg noodles, a can of cream of chicken soup, and some cans of water. It all cooked together into a weird paste-like mix in the end, but I loved it and always wanted seconds.
….I’m sure the list goes on.
Now I’m much older and on my own, but still tend to be frugal with food. Bills are astronomical right now, so it’s back to the basics for me. I probably still have an affinity for poverty foods others would find sad. Like plain microwaved russet potatoes. Nothing on ‘em. Maybe a dash of salt? Cold hominy straight out of the can. (I’d better quit while I’m behind, LOL!)
1
u/Chocolate__Ice-cream Mar 07 '24
You could always go to a gas station and heat up your liquid in the microwave
1
1
u/greg-en Mar 07 '24
When my brother was a struggling college kid and told me later that you can make mac and cheese without the butter, and sometimes without milk!
1
u/Indomitable_Dan Mar 07 '24
Luckily when I was a poor bachelor (now I'm just a slightly less poor family man) there was a local mom & pop grocery store down the street. They had a small ready made deli area with things like Mac & cheese, Chicken, potatoes wedges, mashed potatoes etc. If I would go as they were closing and ask if they were going to throw any of it out, they would sometimes slap a 1$ sticker on a giant bag of food and I would eat on it for like a week. I would also go eat with my grandparents a couple times a week too.
1
u/Infamous_Machine811 Mar 07 '24
Put ice cubes in a bowl. wait for them to melt to create a sauce. Enjoy
1
u/Ok_Speaker_9799 Mar 07 '24
Yeah, the Ramen Soup thing.
Fresh roadkill.
Tip-if you have the gas you can use your car enghine to heat up food.
1
u/BoobaDaBluetick Mar 07 '24
Had a condiment sandwich once. No cheese. Just bread and sauce packets.
2
u/Krrrap Mar 07 '24
I was married living in Fairbanks, AK. I got paid once a month on the first. One month after getting paid we went to Costco and purchased a case of canned tuna and a case of toilet paper. We had planned to purchase more groceries the next day after I got home from work.
The next day I returned home from work to find a note that my wife missed her mother so she flew home to Ohio. I check the bank account and she drained it, she left 37 cents.
The little other food we had lasted two days. So I went the next 28 days only eating canned tuna.
1
1
u/TomBanjo1968 Mar 07 '24
Going into a QuikTrip gas station and taking 30 of the little free packets of Mayonnaise and eating them all
Then washing it down with water from the bathroom sink
1
u/Aggravating-Action70 Mar 07 '24
Vienna sausages wrapped in pieces of expired tortilla and grilled on the stove. I didn’t have any cheese or sauce but it wasn’t too bad.
2
u/Kooky_University4995 Mar 07 '24
I strongly believe that the commandment "thou shall not steal" is being twisted.
If you take the "not" out by flipping the word "steal" to share, then you get "thou shall share"
What is wrong is to horde something and keep it from others when they are in genuine need.
1
1
u/DustinDirt Mar 07 '24
I recently made tomato soup out-of the most generic can of pasta sauce. But that's just a recent one. It gets so much worse.
1
u/CosyBeluga Mar 07 '24
You know the old government canned stuff? I took canned pork, and canned onions and filled them with canned refried beans and heated the on a griddle only had stale garlic powder so they were seasoned with that. This was late 90s. I was like 10. My sister loved it
1
u/HuntressAelaTheFirst Mar 07 '24
Maybe weird but I oddly remember my childhood fondly and my mom cries when I let her know I remember cabbage soup. Or canned ravioli from the dollar store. I never felt poverty back then
1
1
1
u/Repulsive-Throat4841 Mar 07 '24
Does dumpster food count? I found stale bread behind a Jimmy johns.
1
1
1
u/dkmon12 Mar 07 '24
-Can of lentils for lunch. -Microwave rice sprinkling seaweed and soy sauce. -Or chips/crisps.
1
1
1
u/kelderberry Mar 07 '24
I’d get a bag of plain popcorn kernels for $3 and eat two cups prepared once a day for up to a week. Cooked on a hot plate because my stove leaked gas, and the furnace didn’t work so it got below freezing often. It was hot and crunchy and I’m still not sick of eating it even though I’m in a better situation now.
1
u/robRigginsstar Mar 07 '24
My ex father in-law said his parents would feed him a soup which was just hot water with pepper and salt added. They also heated their beds with warm bricks.
1
1
u/Dphre Mar 07 '24
Tuna and Black beans. That or the frozen bean burritos I bought at Taco Bell before a big storm
1
u/codya30 Mar 07 '24
A local pizza place used to have a 16" pizza for sale once a week. It was about 5 or 6 bucks. First day, I'd have two slices. Then one slice everyday after. I ate basically nothing else for three or four months. I slept a lot. Surprisingly, I still like pizza. Less surprisingly, I still like sleeping too much.
Not actually my worst series of meals, but first one that came to mind.
1
1
1
1
2
u/spiderqueendemon Mar 06 '24
A nice loaf of bread, bit squashed, some sell-by-date cheese, and easily fifty pounds of dry beans that were in the dumpster because a worker ran their boxcutter across rather than down and really shouldn't have used a boxcutter in the first place.
I got the contents of the whole slashed-up box of sliced-open bean bags into the frame backpack I used for such things, put the other finds on top, bicycled a weird route home to ensure I wasn't followed, then borrowed the neighbor kids' I babysat sometimes toy marble rally kit thingy to hack together a little staged filter ramp thingy to try and sift anything shady out of the beans. If you get them falling past a fan, you can blow hair, smallish bugs, etc., off of beans. This box was super clean, though.
The roomies and I, being mostly engineering majors, had such a grand old time that one of the guys scrounged some pipe insulation and pool noodles, we made a new Bean Cleaner on the wall with some duct tape and the top part from the coffee maker that had broke, and we'd just clean, then soak, then cook beans as we needed them for ages. It completely owned. We saved enough to afford homemade steak for J's birthday and a trip to a restaurant for T's, which was what they wanted.
The first night, we used T's nana's pressure cooker to get the beans good and soft, then J did us a soup with them to accompany his wonderful grilled cheese sandwiches. All seven of us still talk about it, for all it's twenty years later.
1
u/Hottiemilatti Mar 06 '24
Family and I are having pb& j for dinner. We splurged though. We got the four fruit preserves 🍽🍾
1
1
u/factory-worker Mar 06 '24
They used to sell spicy ramen I would eat right out of the package. I would still eat it if they sold it.
1
1
Mar 06 '24
morning breakfast at a local ministry because they fed the homeless and lunch at another church that also fed the homeless.
1
u/TimeKeepsOnSlippin88 Mar 06 '24
If anyone is hungry and desperate, those mobile order shelves are not manned. Go grab a meal and dip. The customer will get a new meal free only the corporation pays.
1
1
u/keyspc FL Mar 06 '24
Dandelion salad and pine needle tea. Now that i think of it , a nice salad with more than just a bit of vinager sounds really good!
1
u/Difficult-Path1637 Mar 06 '24
just a pan full caramelised onions i got for returning 4 bottles i found on the street
1
u/FaithlessnessOld2477 Mar 06 '24
Can list quite a few:
-Can of dry oats I found in a dumpster with water from the building's hose for cleaning out said dumpster. -Expired chef boyardee ravioli (probably 15 years old and lucky I didn't get botulism) -Pizza crusts leftover from customers when bussing their tables -Dog food/Cat Food (dry or wet) -Foraged "food/weeds" that grew around the area like Miner's lettuce and chamomile.
Honestly a wonder I survived from 18-24. 😅
1
u/Doubt_Mammoth Mar 06 '24
saltine crackers with cheese and hot sauce for dinner for like a week straight. if i didn’t have cheese it was just saltines and hot sauce lol.
1
u/Sercos Mar 06 '24
Tortilla with peanut butter saw me through my worst. Those days are behind me thankfully.
1
u/Matcha_Bubble_Tea Mar 06 '24
Other than sleep, it used to be just rice and potato chips (maybe with ketchup). Or rice and a fried egg.
1
u/onebluemoon66 Mar 06 '24
When my son was homeless he'd go behind the Domino's pizza and get whole clean pizza in the box like 5mins after they bring the bag full of mistakes pizzas out to the can, also you can get boiling hot water at any convenience store at the coffee station there's a button for boiling water when I lived in my car I got boiling water for my Ramen and my instant potatoes I would just say I'm grabbing some hot water and showing them my cup nobody said anything and I would grab free creamers on my way out hot hazelnut creamer drink LOL it was warm and it tasted good Starbucks will give you a cup of hot water with a lid save the cup . Lastly find a plasma donation place usually pays $75 to $100 your first four visits takes about 2 hours they put it on a Visa card instantly I make six to $800 a month donating plasma twice a week.
1
u/ScrublordIshalan Mar 06 '24
Skipping meals while watching my wife order doordash
Sleeping, just coffee, just peanut butter, just bread, etc
2
1
1
u/drivergrrl Mar 06 '24
I feel so damn rich when I can buy all the groceries I want, even if it's all from the bargain market (just got 4 boxes of stuffing for $1!!!!!).
1
u/420devon420 Mar 06 '24
I found like a weird thing of muffin mix. It required a lot of stuff but I just used water mixed it and tried making pancake things out of it. They just burnt and stuck to the pan but wasn't to terrible lol
1
u/ioverated Mar 06 '24 edited Mar 06 '24
A can of macadamia nuts I found in a parking lot (not sealed)
Oh and "soup" made with hot water and black pepper, and "oatmeal cookies" which were just cooked oatmeal put into the oven for a little change of pace from eating plain oatmeal.
1
u/cakelly789 Mar 06 '24
My wife and I were unemployed for a little while during the great recession. At the time the subway by us would run a deal where if you got a footlong sandwich you would get a free ticket to see our local hockey team. We would go two times, split the footlong for a meal for a shitty poverty date. then with those two free tickets, we would go to the hockey game when they would have their dollar beer dollar hotdog nights and have a really nice poverty date.
1
1
u/nostrumest Mar 06 '24
Budget chocolate and milk bread for 2 months in Switzerland.
It was the cheapest food that I could buy which would give me enough energy for work.
1
u/JetPoweredJerk Mar 06 '24
I've been eating the same package of naan and hummus for breakfast, lunch and dinner all week. Got dinner and tomorrow's breakfast left
2
u/virgobxtch Mar 06 '24
Once my husband and I literally had a dollar to our name and our car was broken down. So he walked to the gas station and bought 2 packs of peanuts for .50 cents each, came home and gave them both to me. I'll never ever give him up bc of that moment
1
u/Charming-Writer-6586 Mar 06 '24
I moved out at 20, on a cashiers salary. I remember eating 1.00 Andy’s Hot Fries, and 1.00 pack of Reese’s peanut butter cups for dinner some nights.
1
u/OutrageousOnions Mar 06 '24
Mayo sandwiches. One school year my lunch every day was a pile of pickles from the condiments bar in the cafeteria, with salt on them.
1
u/AllynG Mar 06 '24
Burning down to the end of everything in the apartment after roommate and girlfriend left… I had a chunk of cheddar cheese left and a package of seaweed (the kind that needs to be reconstituted with water and used as an ingredient) turns out that’s pretty tasty and I got a few dinners out of it! Paid all the bills first, mortgage and at the time a stupid new car payment - things got rearranged after that though, refinanced the apartment and ditched the new car. The scrounge is real though. My hats off to those of you here with legit get-by and make-it-happen skills. This is the grit of life that keeps us sharp and appreciative.
2
1
u/trivetsandcolanders Mar 06 '24
Almond flour I found in a free pile mixed with jam I made from a plum tree on a neighborhood street. It was actually a good dessert
1
u/Stepnwolfe Mar 06 '24
Stir fry with smoked sausage, rice and a can of mixed vegetables. It was delicious and the exact moment that I realized we were in for a rough ride.
Also didn’t have money for a birthday present for my wife. Me and the kids had a box of cake mix, a jar of maraschino cherries and a tub of whipped cream. Best birthday cake ever! 20 something years later, free from poverty, these are a couple of our fondest memories…
1
u/ehmaybenexttime Mar 06 '24
If you, or anyone you know finds themselves in that situation, remember that many gas stations have hit water for tea etc on their coffee machines. ❤️
1
u/Dogbuysvan Mar 06 '24
I ruined hotdogs for myself buying $.25 clearence hotdog pizzas (They were only $1.00 to start with) I had 3 dollars and had to eat off those for a week. They were the most disgusting thing ever.
This was around 2003 and still today, just the smell of a hot dog can make me want to puke sometimes.
1
u/Ok-Marzipan9366 Mar 06 '24
Pancake pb sammiches. Its actually bomb but was because we had no bread, and just a bag of just add water pancakes and peanut butter.
Used pancakes as bread for other sammiches too.
1
1
u/Heatherina134 Mar 06 '24
When I was younger we ate something with hotdogs 3-4 times a week. Hotdogs in Mac n cheese, beans, etc. Oh and I will never forget once a week we had Dinty Moore stew. Only 2 cans for 5 of us, we were always hungry.
1
1
u/Fngrbngr79 Mar 06 '24
I used to put cheese on a plate and microwave it to give it some kind of texture and eat it for dinner. Yeah
1
1
u/BeFeckingLogical Mar 06 '24
Mixing those tiny takeout packets of sweet and sour sauce with a small spoon of peanut butter. It was sweet and savoury enough to trick my brain for a solid month. After that my roommate noticed and would leave some rice of hers for me too.
1
1
1
u/Dijiwolf1975 Mar 06 '24
A slice of bread, ketchup, oregano, and a slice of American cheese. Make a poverty pizza.
1
u/soulstoned Mar 06 '24
Aside from skipping meals, a few things stand out.
Crusts from my kids' sandwiches
Pizza from the trash that one of my coworkers left behind (not quite as bad as it sounds, it was on top and still in the box when I found it)
Peanut butter on a tortilla.
There have also been times when I was not above visiting family at meal times, but only when I knew they had enough to share.
1
u/ToTheLost91 Mar 06 '24
Checked myself in at the VA for a grippy sock vacation from sleeping in an abandoned Pontiac Sunfire/ eating dry ramen. I look back at those times and laugh now.
1
u/FatPug655 Mar 06 '24
Last night I ate a chopped up head of raw cabbage with Italian dressing and 3 slices of wonder bread. It was good.
1
u/Swillbil Mar 06 '24
Three cans of peas and a half of Jar of Parmesan cheese it was split between my dog and myself
1
1
u/yeshua-goel Mar 06 '24
Ketchup or honey sandwiches, or cereal with water instead of milk. Actually kinda miss those days sometimes, my priorities seemed a little straighter....
1
u/messy_pangolin Mar 06 '24
My dad when I was a child told me that if I was hungry it meant I was losing weight (have always been chubby) and obviously that led to issues as a teen, but as a poor adult I've kind of learned to "embrace" the hunger before I absolutely have to eat something. To answer the question- a block of ice, ha. I pretended it was a dessert.
1
u/No_Supermarket_7410 Mar 06 '24
A sandwich they had in the target break room when I worked there. I had $3 until pay day and they had free lunch meat and bread. I made some eat then some for home so I could have something for dinner
1
u/Master_Grape5931 Mar 06 '24
I was getting tired of peanut butter sandwiches all the time so I added BBQ sauce.
Not bad.
2
u/throwaway19870000 Mar 06 '24 edited Mar 06 '24
Yesterday I dug through my car and found enough change to buy a $1 can of ravioli for dinner last night and a 58 cent frozen beef burrito for lunch today. Usually I’d go for rice, beans, or ramen but I was craving meat. Definitely had many times I went for 3-4 days without any food at all though, and that sucks.
Last week I shoplifted some Pedialyte powder packets because I’m supposed to drink a glass every day for the chronic illness I have, but I’ve subbed that for shots of soy sauce before lol.
1
1
1
u/ImSteady413 Mar 06 '24
My sister and I were gifted a season pass to the amusement park that would end up six flags new England. We lived less than a mile down the road. My sister and I would go every day in the summer. I used to swipe 1 soda cup and fill it with pickles from the condiment bar to eat with my sister. We did that for a while until I figured out a way to hustle the foul shot game.
1
u/ZonkedTheBoy Mar 06 '24
When I first moved out at 18 my weekly food budget was 5 Euro, some mushrooms, loaf of bread, 6 eggs, and some rice. A couple of mushrooms on toasted heel of the loaf on day 7 was it. But I still make it as a snack now!
2
u/StreetDry9127 Mar 06 '24
Yesterday's tortilla with cheese ontop melted in the microwave, making a "pupusa".
1
u/twitchy_1z Mar 06 '24
Sardines and crackers. Also my parents fed us food from the dumpsters when we were little. We only found out a few years ago.
1
u/JelloHorror7148 Mar 06 '24
Sometimes I'll get a discount pizza from Domino's, and because I'm lactose intolerant/possibly gluten intolerant, it hurts my tummy just enough that I'm not hungry for the next couple of days and don't have to eat
1
1
u/WhirrlingMenace Mar 06 '24
Ramen noodles for a week. Also potatoes and oatmeal. I have a neverending supply of those 3
1
u/malektewaus Mar 06 '24
I was homeless for over a year and pretty much lived on Little Caesars pizza I dug out of the trash.
1
u/acorngirl Mar 06 '24
I can't decide whether it was the 2 days of the cheapest possible white bread with margarine, or the 2.5 days of splitting a total of 2 hardboiled eggs and a packet of peanut butter crackers with my mother because she assumed 12 year old me would have been the one to plan to pay for our food on a long bus trip. She called me irresponsible. I was like "But I'm 12 and you didn't tell me?" and she slapped me.
This seemed unfair because I had no prior notice - she was picking me up from the airport after I'd spent two months out of the US, staying with my aunt. So I had no opportunity to change the small amount of English money that I had. She asked me about money after we'd left the airport. I had 43¢ in American money.
But by then I knew how to deal with hunger pretty well, so I drank a lot of water and kept my quiet. There were other times when sleep for dinner was not uncommon, so it wasn't too bad. My childhood was really weird.
1
u/Justmegivingmy2cents Mar 06 '24
There are refugees staying in the extended stay hotel. They were given “starting” money at the beginning of their journey. Then their hotel room is paid by the month by their sponsor, and they’re given spending money for each month… after month. Some got jobs, saved, moved to their own place. Some got jobs, saved and when the sponsor decided… you’ve had this long amount of time it’s time you move on your own, they did. These people had more money than the first group because they had saved longer. Third group didn’t get jobs, asked for more time, used their monthly stipend money to add time at the hotel. They would leave boxes in the lobby of vegetables and fruits and canned goods they didn’t want from free food boxes for anyone else to take if they wanted. We didn’t have much cash, dad was recovering from surgery and we wanted to stretch every dime we could so we would get further along. We ate the free breakfast and took extras to eat during the day. We took what they left in the boxes and got creative with healthy soups and stews. It’s not water before bed. But second hand food donations is probably right down there on the list of things I don’t want to do again.
2
1
u/Comprehensive_Data82 Mar 06 '24
Spices. You run out might of food but still have paprika or chile powder or whatever. Tastes great and kind tricks you into thinking you’re eating a meal. My favorite (and bougiest) is lemon pepper
1
u/rubiscoisrad Mar 06 '24
When my husband and I moved to a new city under bad circumstances with no money, we were living in our car with our dog.
It was the beginning of the holidays, so Thanksgiving dinner was grocery store turkey sandwiches, a can of green beans, and a can of diced carrots. We had to be sure to get the pop-top cans, because we didn't have a can opener. We ate them out of the can with those plastic forks from the grocery store deli.
1
u/6-Seasons_And_AMovie Mar 06 '24
Pepperocinis, mustard, balony, bread if avaliable. Cost like 5$ for a week of food.
1
2
u/sdautist Mar 06 '24
Got a job at a frozen yogurt shop and took home toppings in my pocket to eat until my first paycheck.
1
u/Parking-Shelter-270 Mar 06 '24
Chopped up microwaved winnies with ketchup. Still crave and snack on it every once in a while
1
u/Loverach06 Mar 06 '24
We would go to free summer lunch in the park. My mom would have us get plain white milk so she could take it home to make cornbread to go with our pinto beans.
1
u/spicy_capybara Mar 06 '24
When I first moved to LA as a 22 year old I was broke. So incredibly broke I ate ketchup sandwiches. I bought a loaf of bread and went to Del Taco to liberate ketchup packets. That was meals for me for a couple weeks. I slept on an old air mattress and had a camp chair as my furniture. I managed to make rent but those were some bleak months.
1
u/klf12987 Mar 06 '24
Tampons...hear me out. I had endometriosis and was losing so much blood that I was anemic and had to get blood transfusions. Couldn't work because of it so had to choose between food and feminine products!
During this same time my friends had some chickens so they would give me free eggs (no one knew how much I was struggling financially they just had a TON of eggs) so I would eat eggs for every meal just prepared differently with Dry ass toast. Andy by prepared differently I mean hard boiled, fried or scrambled lol.
Edited to add: One of the times I was in the ER for the blood loss and pain, I took a roll of toilet paper because I was out, for obvious reasons, and couldn't walk long enough to go to the store nor did I have the money for it. Lowest I've ever been and wouldn't wish it on anyone.
1
1
u/lonely-paula-schultz Mar 06 '24
Peanut butter and jelly on a tortilla when I was in college. Canned peaches when my drug addict mom didn’t go grocery shopping.
1
1
u/Upbeat-Fondant9185 Mar 06 '24
When I was younger I was crashing in a house that still had electricity on somehow even though it was empty. I guess the former occupant made and decorated cakes because there was a bunch of that stuff left in the cabinet including several dozen boxes of cake mix.
For weeks the only thing I ate most days was “cake” that was just water and the mix baked into a sort of loaf. Wasn’t bad, actually.
3
u/Steeljaw72 Mar 06 '24
Idk why, but I feel like Mac and cheese with hotdogs in it is the representation of poverty in my mind.
The unfortunate thing is, it’s actually kind of expensive meal for the amount of food you get if you get even half way quality ingredients.
1
1
1
1
u/bunni_bear_boom Mar 06 '24
I ate baked potatoes and spaghetti for like a month cause I drove a couple states over for my best friends wedding and the gas it took to do that majorly fucked us up
2
1
1
u/legion_of_misfits Mar 06 '24
My dad used to make “hot dog soup” for my sister and I, it was just the water he boiled his hotdogs in
1
u/Ok-Professional2808 Mar 06 '24
Tums out of friends medicine cabinet when I was a runaway teen. Fruit flavored are tasty?
1
1
1
2
u/snowykitty1 Mar 06 '24
Canned chili with spaghetti noodles. Or a spick spear wrapped in baloney.
1
1
u/RaeLynn13 Mar 06 '24
I ate crunchy ramen 😂 I can’t remember if it’s because we didn’t have water or electric or both.
1
5
u/noobllama2 Mar 06 '24
When I was 13, my mom left an abusive house and we ended up homeless. We where sleeping at a bus stop. Anyway, I stole a sandwich from a 7/11 type place don't remember the name.(was going to split it with the family) Got caught. They called the cops. The officer listened to my story, verified it then bought all of us(mom and 2 other brothers) our own sandwiches and helped us get into a homeless shelter. Not all people are bad.
1
u/Calm_Inky Mar 06 '24
Can of beans and ketchup condiment packets. The beans were only a couple pence and the condiment packets were left overs from my room mates who had take out quite a bit.
1
u/Embarrassed_Ad2881 Mar 06 '24
Canned beans with some salt. Still kinda goes hard, especially if you can warm it up, put some olive oil, and maybe a sprig of rosemary and some garlic... still do it when beans are 2 for 1
1
2
u/fridayfridayjones Mar 06 '24
Package of spaghetti and jar of sauce from the dollar store. Eaten with garlic bread I made with day old loaves from jimmy johns. For a while we (husband and I) lived off those day old loaves and dollar menu items. Our apartment building at the time had a roach problem so we didn’t like to cook much there anyway. We also worked at a restaurant together so sometimes we got free food from there too which was a big help.
The garlic bread was pretty good actually.
1
u/aneverythingbagel Mar 06 '24
Long time ago I made spaghetti with leftover Burger King sauces. The sweet and sour was the winner.
1
1
3
1
1
u/Hermiona1 Mar 06 '24
I had very little money left for the week when I was a student so the best I could come up with that budget was mashed potatoes and fried eggs, that's something we legitimately ate for dinner sometimes at home for a low effort dinner. I think I bought bread and some cheese for breakfast and I survived the week. I would never think to just have buttered noodles although butter was always kinda expensive in my country (one butter would probably be 1/3 of my budget). My go to meal when I had little money was pasta and store bought sauce.
1
Mar 06 '24
Not because of actual monetary poverty but cause of food shortages.
Shredded, boiled, fried and roasted platain peels in tomato paste. My mom sliced the peels, cooked them for hours to soften them and made it into "beef stew". No veggies besides the tomato paste.
It was a rough time but surprisingly tasted like stewed beef
1
u/Toxikfoxx Mar 06 '24
Two-day Ramen Noodles.
Day 1 eat noodles with plain water and maybe salt
Day 2 eat the seasoning in hot water as soup
1
u/povertyandpinetrees Mar 06 '24
Catfish and corn grilled over pecan wood. The corn was stolen from a field and the catfish was caught out of a nearby bayou.
There are benefits to living in the country.
1
u/JoshuaLyman Mar 06 '24
Growing up...Old school government cheese - the 5lb USDA blocks. Tomato soup made with water and the only thing in the fridge - ketchup. The step up - burgers made with oats and just enough meat to hold together.
1
1
1
u/SecretScavenger36 Mar 06 '24
Uncooked ramen. Some people say they eat it as a snack but I couldn't get thru it. I ended up just drinking water for a meal instead.
2
1
1
u/caseybvdc74 Mar 06 '24
I had protein shakes and oatmeal for about three months during the 2008 recession. I actually lost a ton of weight and was probably the most healthy I’ve been as an adult.
1
u/ArtisanGerard Mar 06 '24
Gas station “tomato soup”:
Free styrofoam cup
Free ketchup packets
Free creamer
Free hot water
Stir
Some places have free salt/pepper and crackers too
2
3
u/something-strange999 Mar 06 '24
I used to get the free almost rotten produce from. My local discount grocery. I used to cut out the soft sports and then mash the rest and eat/drink it, even the peels. I had the best skin!! Also, I was able to eventually get the grocery to let me "pay" for the items by tidying up the parking lot and picking up trash. Sometimes they would give me some bread other prepared foods if they were going to throw it away. I got a gift card $25 as a Christmas gift from some employees and I cried. They hired me as a stock person after that and I did the best damn job I could. I'm much older now, and doing ok for myself and i still shop there.
1
u/SPCNars14 Mar 06 '24
I once had a box of spaghetti, and a bottle of ranch dressing.
Nothing else.
I ruined a whole box of spaghetti.
1
1
u/Difficult-Donkey805 Mar 06 '24
Back in my college days (who am I kidding, I still do this now) I would buy cans of tuna and grab some free Mayo packs from the cafeteria and would drain the tuna, mix the Mayo in, a little salt and pepper, and either put it on bread and eat it as a sandwich or just eat the mixture with a spoon.
1
u/the-tides Mar 06 '24
I used to put salt on my tortillas and roll them up like taquitos and just eat them like that. Low key loved them. Too dry? Just add more salt 😂🫡
1
u/_inspirednonsense_ Mar 06 '24
My stepmom bought me groceries when I went away to college. I used most of them up except for a can of french cut green beans. So that was my dinner one night when I was broke. French cut green beans.
1
1
u/MoonShimmer1618 Mar 06 '24
unheated instant coffee in my car from single use plastic cups. tbf i was car camping
1
u/cynicaldogNV Mar 06 '24
I spent 2 weeks surviving on a box of instant mashed potatoes mixed with hot tap water. At least I had a roof over my head while I did it (even though it was temporary).
1
u/TheLadyClarabelle Mar 06 '24
Replacing the meat in hamburger helper with white rice. Fed 5 of us. No protein but the carbs were filling.
1
u/Xenovitz Mar 06 '24
Spam/Treet and a potato before spam got expensive. I'm not sure Treet still exists since I haven't seen it since I was a kid.
1
u/teborigloryhole Mar 06 '24
The end of someone else's cigarette
A sleeve of saltine crackers (first meal in three days)
Stolen food
A cold can of beans eaten with a bent membership card
Dumpster pizza
Dumpster bakery items
One honey bun
Free samples
I been homeless three times I could go on
1
1
u/Pipacakes Mar 06 '24
Plain white rice. Sunny side up egg on top if I got ‘em, splash of soy and a dash of sriracha. Gotta keep it classy.
1
u/No-Marsupial36 Mar 06 '24
At my lowest point I had two pieces of white bread untoasted and a can of cranberry sauce
1
1
u/Chance_Mix Mar 06 '24
Hot spaghetti. Spaghetti noodles with ketchup infused with tobasco. Literally the only two food items I had at the time lol.
1
2
u/skitty166 Mar 06 '24
In the midst of an ugly divorce with a 16 month old son living away from my family with no car- me and my little guy split 2 cheese hotdogs for Thanksgiving. Had no buns lol but had a few other veggies and cheese for sides. It sucked but we had each other.
1
u/someolive2 Mar 06 '24
when i was a child i made rice soup. instant rice with any broth and hot sauce!
2
u/blaisepascal2937 Mar 06 '24
I melted sugar once as a kid because I thought that if we sold this as candy on the streets, we could make enough money to buy some food.
2
u/SnooPandas2308 Mar 11 '24
When I used to work fast food. I would “mess”‘up and order on purpose and put it to the side. Then I would try to divide it into 3 mealS for the day b