Eating well on nearly nothing

Sustainable Food Trust ^ | 08 April 2016 | Anna Rohleder

[Lorianne]

The benefit provided by the US Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) works out to about $4 per day per person (about £2.80 at current exchange rates). If that weren’t dismaying enough, the government pamphlets that offer advice for grocery shopping on such a restricted budget tend to be flyers illustrated with clip art and little in the way of real tips – “include meatless meals to extend your protein dollars” is about as creative as it gets – and zero inspiration for nutritious meals with colour and flavour.

Leanne Brown decided to change that. As the thesis project for her masters’ degree in Food Studies at New York University a few years ago, she wrote a cookbook based on a SNAP budget called Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4/Day. When she made it available as a free PDF, it suddenly went viral: it was downloaded more than 100,000 times in a few weeks. Brown decided to launch a Kickstarter campaign to make printed copies available to people without computers. That initiative was also more successful than she envisioned: instead of the $10,000 she asked for, she received more than $144,000, allowing her to get about 40,000 copies of the cookbook printed. These have since been distributed to more than 980 food banks and other community organisations in the US and Canada to pass on to their clients. The free PDF, meanwhile, has been downloaded nearly 1 million times now.

And no wonder: Good and Cheap challenges every assumption one might have about eating on a budget. The pages are filled with photographs of luscious-looking food, while the recipes themselves are built around the creative possibilities of cooking rather than the limitations of funds. Often the recipes incorporate the idea of multi-purpose ingredients, or variations on a theme, such as Oatmeal Six Ways (including a savoury version with cheddar and scallions). “I called it a cookbook but I think of it as a strategy guide,” Brown says. Here’s how those strategies translate into shopping for food as well as cooking it.

What’s the key to eating well on less money?

Leanne: It’s really about developing different sorts of habits. What are your go-to meals? How do you frame your visit to the store? If you are looking to spend X amount, and make X number of meals out of that, then adding in considerations like raw ingredients versus prepared is important. There is a bit of an investment in time at the beginning of the process, but over the long term, this kind of planning can actually save time because then you will have the food in your pantry that you want, the groceries you won’t regret.

Then there are things like never buying drinks, either in the grocery store or when you’re out. The way our economy is structured, restaurants and stores make their money on drinks rather than food because they’re very cheap to make but can be sold at a high margin. You can save a lot of money by having coffee at home, or making “health drinks” yourself with water and a little fruit juice.

... snip

[wintertime]

The 3 “E's”

Economy
Elegance
Efficiency

It's not often you can get all three. It is almost always only 2 out of the three.

[PreciousLiberty]

Bfl

[Cvengr]

Water,

Oatmeal,

and Chateaubriand

[octex]

Try baking spam.
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Thanks for the tip. I like it fried with eggs and also fresh from the can for snacks or sandwiches. .....Like others here, I always keep several cans in the pantry, as well as Chunky Soup, tuna, sardines and pork&beans. All can be eaten straight from the can if power is out.

[T-Bone Texan]

I have a grill but I love cooking on my chimineya (sp?).

Love to wrap up stuff in foil and toss it on the coals. Garlic/butter, potatoes/butter, bacon/anything, sweet potatoes, etc.

Your post reminded me of cooking things directly on the fire in the can. Baked beans mostly, but really anything not in a tuna can. Corn, green beans et al.

It reminded me of my love of camping and simplicity. I really want to go camping, but wife is prego so it must wait!