
$35/Week – Eating well on $35 a week - ErikAugust
http://erikaugust.com/thoughts/thirty-five-dollars-a-week-preface/
======
buro9
Anyone serious about living on little should read
[http://www.theskintfoodie.com/recipes.html](http://www.theskintfoodie.com/recipes.html)

And if you're really serious about living on less than that then I can only
recommend Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" for the wonderful tip of
smearing garlic on a knife before you put butter on bread to convince your
body you've eaten a hearty meal.

I personally lived a couple of years on
[http://www.complan.com](http://www.complan.com) which is about as close to
Soylent as you get when you're homeless and broke in 1994 and holding on to
the hope that it might stave off whatever the next illness is going to be.

My personal tip: Stale bread, old tomatoes, old cheese = pizza for less than
20p.

~~~
josephschmoe
I usually just dice up garlic and throw it inside a partially filled bottle of
olive oil. IIRC olive oil is actually cheaper than butter.

~~~
HNJohnC
Better throw some acid in there or you run quite a significant risk of death
from botulism.

~~~
josephschmoe
Holy shit TIL. You may have just saved my life. Thank you!

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nisa
35$ are about 26€ - it's definitely possible in Germany. You can buy 1kg
oatmeal for 1€, 1kg yoghurt for 1.50€. 2kg whole-grain bread for 3€, 2kg
potatoes or pasta or rice for 2€, 10 eggs for 1€, Then you have plenty of
possibilities and still 17€ to add vegetables/oil/spices and other ingredients
and create tasty meals.

The difficult part is planning meals for 1 or 2 weeks in advance and keeping
variations alive.

Also avoid soda of all kinds and only drink tap-water and coffee/tee to safe
the money. Also preparing sandwiches in advance while travelling saves a lot
of money...

It's surely possible to live healthy on the cheap but it takes a lot of effort
and time and structure to do so..

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glibgil
Have you tried cooking dry beans? It is really easy and cheaper than canned. I
bring them to a boil, can the water and then put them in the oven. They last
for days in the fridge.

~~~
dgrant
I just bought an Indian pressure cooker which is great for cooking them even
faster (can even skip the pre-soak if you want) and uses less energy. So far
I've tried "split red lentis", "whole black urad dal", and dried kidney beans.
They are super cheap and come in huge bags for $5 or so. 1 cup of these makes
many servings. I started making some Indian dals using them. It's a great way
to eat them, with tons of Indian spices.

The pressure cooker I bought: Hawkins 5L classic:
[http://www.hawkinscookers.com/1.1.1.hawkinsclassic.asp](http://www.hawkinscookers.com/1.1.1.hawkinsclassic.asp)

~~~
greenyoda
I'm guessing you already know this, since you're referring to "urad dal" by
its native name and buying it in large quantities, but others might not:

Here in NYC at least, foods like beans, lentils, rice, spices, etc. are much
cheaper when bought in Indian food stores (where they're everyday staples sold
in large packages) rather than in regular supermarkets (where they're sold in
much smaller packages).

There are similarly good deals to be found in Chinese and other ethnic grocery
stores.

------
applekor
Pretty great cookbook I've taken a few meals from:
[http://www.leannebrown.ca/cookbooks/](http://www.leannebrown.ca/cookbooks/)
Rather than cheap food that happens to be edible, she tried to focus on
actually good food that happens to be cheap. Really well done. Free electronic
copies are always a plus too...

~~~
bch
A book that has been fascinating me lately is How to Cook a Wolf[0] by MFK
Fisher[1], which is absolutely lovely, inspiring and amazing. A sort of home
ec., slice of life bunch of anecdotes, ideas and story-telling.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Wolf-M-
Fisher/dp/0865473366](http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Wolf-M-
Fisher/dp/0865473366)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._F._K._Fisher#Books](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._F._K._Fisher#Books)

------
funkyy
I am happy to see this. Coincidence is that I am on €49 budget right now
(training self discipline). Thats €7 a day. BUT - I do not eat anything from
cans or anything pre-made. All fresh meat, veggies and self made food - for 2
people. No bread and avoiding packaged food.

Sure - you wont get any Whiskey or Cola for it. You wont be able to go to
restaurant. Or buy crisps. But thats the point - living healthy.

I dont like how author lives off cans - its not that healthy. You can make
most of food much cheaper at home. Cans are mostly unnecessary. I propose to
all to try this. Leaving for udner $10/€10 a day out of all healthy and self
made foods.

~~~
drz
As long as you avoid dented cans (risk of botulism) and strain off the liquid
before using the contents (too much salt, risk of high blood pressure and
kidney failure), canned foods are perfectly healthy.

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incision
Looks familiar.

I grew up eating lots and lots of rice, beans and frozen vegatables and I'm
still pretty fond of them - cheap and tasty, cheaper if you do your own
seasoning and cheaper still if you buy dry beans and aren't particular about
your rice.

Personally, my big issue in weekly food cost is eating out at work - paying
$10+ per day for worse versions of stuff that could be made for 1/5 that price
with the right discipline.

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mmcclellan
Dang, not bad. I also buy my food weekly at Trader Joe's and have been
spending twice that much ($70 a week):

7 * 1lb Grass Fed Angus Beef $6 = $42, 2 * 8oz Kerrygold Unsalted Butter $3.25
= $6.50, 2 * 12oz Kerrygold Dubliner Cheese $4.50 = $9, 2 * 12 Cage Free Eggs
$3.25 = $6.50, 2 * Charles Shaw Cabernet $3 = $6

~~~
drz
Are you on a paleo-and-wino diet?

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aceperry
Shopping at Trader Joes is a good start for keeping within budget, but you
can't really make the case for eating well on $35/week if you go out
occasionally and DON'T count that in your budget.

~~~
drz
Under this system, I'd just eat out for every meal and net a budget of
$0/week.

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chc
I imagine it is easy to eat well on $35 a week if you consider a PB&J sandwich
to be a "euphoric" experience. This does not match my idea of eating well, nor
that of most people I know. This seems a bit like an article on how to become
rich working at McDonalds defining "rich" to mean "earns at least $5000 a
year."

~~~
delluminatus
What are you expecting, duck confit and beef wellington?

Eating well in this case means being satisfied and healthy. A peanut butter
sandwich on whole wheat bread is surprisingly healthy (although I personally
loathe whole wheat). It's not classy but it's a highly cost-efficient source
of calories.

Also, it turns out that even if you are willing to lower yourself to peanut
butter sandwiches, getting 2500 calories of nutritionally well-rounded and
healthy food for $5 a day takes quite a bit of planning (if not cooking). If
you "imagine it is easy", it's only because you have not given a fig's worth
of actual thought to the process.

~~~
chc
> _What are you expecting, duck confit and beef wellington?_

I'm expecting an article about "eating well" to be about eating _well_ , not
just merely subsisting.

> _Eating well in this case means being satisfied and healthy. A peanut butter
> sandwich on whole wheat bread is surprisingly healthy (although I personally
> loathe whole wheat). It 's not classy but it's a highly cost-efficient
> source of calories._

I don't know about you, but I would absolutely not be satisfied with a diet
made up mainly of things like peanut butter sandwich. Like I said, I've eaten
on that level, and I didn't feel very satisfied with it.

~~~
wernercd
Eating well is going to differ, but you have to have a little bit of common
sense. How 'well' do you expect to eat for $35 a week?

How much further beyond PB&J do you expect to go? How much further CAN you go?

It's also going to be relative... What's the best you can do for $35? It sure
as ___ won't be steak (unless you go hungry the rest of the week)...

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lightblade
Are there any subscription services that let me eat healthy and don't have to
cook?

Better yet, feed me like a hamster :P

~~~
Igglyboo
[http://www.soylent.me/](http://www.soylent.me/)

~~~
recycleme
There is a giant modal in the way of everything when I load this site.
Regardless, I've heard of this before and it seems interesting.

Has anyone tried soylent?

~~~
sneak
I rather like it. I wouldn't live on it (one tires of it quickly) but it's
really nice to have healthy, cheap, easy meals available when there's no time
to cook (pre-work breakfast) or when I've forgotten to shop (late night
dinner).

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oniTony
Is "bought from a store" a requirement here? I've built a small garden on my
balcony, and it seems that such could meaningfully supplement a $35/week
budget; especially given an objective of "organic".

> I will likely spend up to 20% more to buy organic.

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applecore
That's five dollars a day, or less than $2 per meal (assuming three meals a
day).

There's this product called Soylent[1] that's supposed to be pretty healthy
and costs less than $4 per meal.

[1]: [http://www.soylent.me/](http://www.soylent.me/)

~~~
jmccree
The subject is eating well, not avoiding eating entirely. You don't eat
Soylent, you drink it. A lot of people still would like to eat.

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dubcanada
Just the cupboard section would cost me more then $35 a week.

~~~
VLM
Thats his total contents, which is like 20 or so meals. Maybe not good meals,
but 20 or so things.

I probably have $300-$400 bucks of "stuff" in my cupboard but I don't eat all
of it every week. I do "too much" amazon subscribe and save and I like spices
so maybe a "normal" cupboard only has $200 or so of stuff.

I think the idea is to promote creative thinking. So I'd fry up about a 1/10
of a bag of frozen broccoli and cook the mac n cheese and then add a can of
tuna and mix all that stuff up into a tuna casserole and bake it, maybe broil
it to brown the top which is WAY more than one meal for one single dude even
accounting for the long term effects of food inflation (like mac n chee used
to be a pound in the 90s, now its only like one cup in the 2010s). Maybe the
day after tomorrow when the casserole is finally eaten up, a dash of oil in
the wok with a bag of mixed veg and those meatballs and then some kind of
homemade sauce, I bet you get two meals outta that at least.

Dude needs to buy more fruits and veg and more spicy stuff. I see vegetarian
burritos and tacos and spring rolls in his future.

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schrodingersCat
I look forward to your next post on recipes. Thanks for this!

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findjashua
tldr: grains and legumes are cheap and healthy

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dzhiurgis
If you are taking supplements clearly you are not eating well.

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jug5
What a bad joke this is, only in the third world would this qualify as "eating
well."

~~~
maxerickson
"well" is used in a different sense than you are using it. They mean enough
calories with a reasonable amount of nutrition. From a feed-your-body
perspective, peanut butter on whole wheat bread is pretty decent food (it's
even protein complete).

To me the silliest part of the article was _Food is one of the few true
necessities in life, yet overlooked in mainstream thought._ I would say that
mainstream culture is obsessed with food.

~~~
ErikAugust
Good call - that was a vague statement - I've refined it a bit: "Food is one
of the few true necessities in life, yet alternatives to junk food and eating
out are often overlooked in mainstream thought." At least closer to what I
mean, anyway. Thanks for checking out.

~~~
maxerickson
I think there is a good chance you are taking an observation from your life,
something about lots of people being uncertain about cooking, and (falsely)
translating that into a lack of consideration for cooking. Even something
crassly commercial like "The Food Network" spends an awful lot of its time on
real actual _cooking_ (and there are dozens of cooking shows on other
channels).

And it just goes on from there. What could be more mainstream than Rachel Ray
and her talk show? And she is big on ingredients and cooking them.

Or do a survey of "food section"s in print. The HuffPo, of all things, focuses
on recipes:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/food/](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/food/)

Lots of real papers have lots of recipes and content that is not restaurant
reviews.

Sorry for focusing on one small point and being cranky about it.

~~~
ErikAugust
Fair points. But I wonder why I see it this way? Maybe for my age/demographic?
30 year old urban professional?

