The SNAP budget

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

I'd like to hear more about the pressure cookers. What other types of meals can you make with them?

I make steel cut oats for my wife and I for breakfast which take about 15 minutes from start to finish instead of the 45-60 mins on the regular stove top pot (and I don't have to worry about scorching the bottom or having boil-overs).

I can make ribs in about 25-30 minutes, start to finish.

We make really excellent pulled pork and just last week tried our hand at a small beef roast in the pressure cooker which also turned out great.

The pressure cooker is also great for soft, medium and hard boiled eggs.

Pork is probably my favourite meat to cook in a pressure cooker:

http://www.hippressurecooking.com/20...s-and-cabbage/

I'm also super lazy, so throwing in a bunch of stuff into one pot, putting a lid on it and walking away (I use an electric pressure cooker) is the ultimate for me.

[Fuzz]

I like to make burrito filling in the pressure cooker. Just throw in your dry beans, onion, garlic, some spices and water. Cook it for an hour, open it up and simmer down the remaining water and mash it up. Deeeeelicous, and cheap meal.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

I'd like to hear more about the pressure cookers. What other types of meals can you make with them?

Mainly soups and stews I believe. Almost anything that you usually use a pot normally for. I've also seen a lot of experimentation with pressure cookers for things like rice.

I haven't done much cooking via pressure cooking, but things I noticed:
- Foods cook anywhere between 2/3 to half the regular cooking time. I've seen even higher savings for foods that need simmering. I just turn off the power sooner and let it sit inside. My dad has a few recipes that generally take something like 3:00 to do can do the soup/stew in something like 40 mins to an hour.
- Meats cooked in stews etc. isn't ever dry/hard and often ends up "softer". "Over cooking" often obliterates meat and turns it into something like shredded pork. In certain recipes, you want this to happen and can't emulate it on a stove.
- Less water is required to cook the food. Tweaking water ratios is necessary at times. Flavour is retained well. Using boiled water in the pressure cooker can also save a bit of time. Just turn on the kettle while prepping the other food to go in.
- Although there is a bit of steam that comes out after cooking (de-pressurizing) that may spray a little bit of water here and there (I sometimes toss a wet rag close to the release valve) cleanup is relatively easy. Furthermore, with less simmering soups and stews on the stove, less clean up there too).
- You can't really over cook anything. You can split a meal like pressure cook chicken breasts or pork tenderloin in less than 30 minutes while cooking greens on the stove on the side. No need to monitor the meat other than a timer too.
- Allows me to experiment with more complex recipes for meals as the time savings means I won't starve as long or snack as much while cooking if I decide to try cooking something more intricate.

There are also new electric pressure cookers now that can be acquired on Amazon. My parents have one and I am contemplating getting one soon as well. They easily are much more convenient than the stove top pressure cookers.
http://www.amazon.ca/Instant-Pot-IP-...essure+cookers
I think my dad has mentioned it has a slow cooker function, but I really don't know. I have only used it a few times mainly for soups and stews.

EDIT: After taking a look, I think my dad has the model lower to this.

I think it's either this one or the model just lower than this. My dad even brought this thing camping and made rich soups in less time than it took for us to split wood and start a fire.

http://allrecipes.com/recipes/11978/...essure-cooker/

[squiggs96]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

I make steel cut oats for my wife and I for breakfast which take about 15 minutes from start to finish instead of the 45-60 mins on the regular stove top pot (and I don't have to worry about scorching the bottom or having boil-overs).

I get up in the morning, I make myself a bowl of instant oatmeal, and then I don't do anything for an hour, which makes me wonder why I need the instant oatmeal. I could get the regular oatmeal and feel productive

[Coach]

Originally Posted by Incinerator

This. I probably spend close to $1000 a month eating out as a single guy, it's just so hard to cook for yourself at home. My grocery shopping is exclusively junk food.



Posted from Calgarypuck.com App for Android

You guys should spend some of that dough on some cooking lessons or something.

In 20-30 minutes you can make something just as tasty, much more healthy and 1/2 the cost as something you would get at most restaurants.

In the amount of time you go sit down order and get your food, or even drive to a fast food place, wait in line and get home, you can have that stuff cooked. Get a rice cooker. Chicken/veggies in the oven, flick on the rice, watch a show on Netflix and your done.

Yeah the dishes suck, but if it's going to save you 50-75% on groceries, well I don't think I have to go much further than that.

[peter12]

I do think you get pretty marginal returns on grocery budgets over a certain amount. As many people have said in this thread, if you are eating healthy, cooking, reusing leftovers, and not eating processed food, you are probably not going over $250 a person per month. It is the going out that boggles my mind. $1000 bucks a month!? Are you kidding me? And people give me hassle for posting sales on menswear.

[DoubleF]

I think my wife and I spend about $250-350 a month on groceries and another $150 a month or so on random eating out (either with friends or date nights). This still includes a bit of junk food.

Things that probably help a lot would probably be our high consumption of rice and potatoes. Cheap and filling. We also don't consume a lot of pricey vegetables like Kale, swiss chard, bell peppers and mushrooms. We love these foods and purchase them on occasion for variety in our meals, but it's not a main staple. We rely a lot on frozen vegetables and use them only in certain recipes or when we run out of fresh vegetables. Due to this, our spoilage of foods is often extremely low. (less than 1% maybe?).I think the lack of spoilage alone saves a huge amount of money. 5-10% spoilage might not sound like a lot, but it adds up fast. 10% on $400 is $40. That's a lot of junk food or even frozen food that doesn't spoil. That's like 8 pizzas or 60 frozen burritos a month. Even $20 a month is 4 pizzas, 30 burritos or even 7 bags of chips.

We also like to buy a large flat of ground beef, cook it on the stove with a little bit of onion and freeze it in ziploc bags once it cools off. Excellent and easy portion controlled additions to things like stir fry, fried rice, chili etc. and saves cooking time.

We also cook with very little spices and oil which probably reduces costs in replacing that stuff. Our flavor staples are really just soy sauce, garlic salt, black pepper, sugar and a little bit of chili pepper. We also rarely use condiments other than hot sauce, so replacement costs of that and having multiples is rare.

For meats we like doing ground beef, pork (ribs or loin depending on what's on sale) and frozen chicken legs (about $12 a bag at Superstore). Depending on price, we will grab seafood for variation (left over fish goes great into fried rice FWIW).

For junk food, we often force ourselves to share a fruit or two (peach, apple, orange, whatever) just prior to a bag of chips or whatever. This means the chips lasts two sittings on average. We rarely buy pop or juice. This might be another factor.

Misc: A magic bullet, flavored yogurt and frozen fruits makes for some good smoothies. A shot of vodka while blending makes it even better snack. Canned fruits and ice can make easy slushies.

Premade food: We try to reduce this, but we will consume a frozen pizza perhaps one or twice every 2 months when we are lazy. We also on occasion buy frozen burritos from Superstore (18 for $12) to bring to work (2-3) if we don't have food for the next day. This helps to reduce eating out which is often 10x more expensive.

As a consumption reference, when confronted with a 10" pizza, I will consume 4/5 and my wife 1/5 in one sitting for dinner. That being said, I don't have a habit of eating breakfast but my wife does eat cereal in the mornings.

[Coach]

Originally Posted by peter12

I do think you get pretty marginal returns on grocery budgets over a certain amount. As many people have said in this thread, if you are eating healthy, cooking, reusing leftovers, and not eating processed food, you are probably not going over $250 a person per month. It is the going out that boggles my mind. $1000 bucks a month!? Are you kidding me? And people give me hassle for posting sales on menswear.

Yeah agreed. I thought $600/month on food for a single person was pretty ludicrous, but $1000 is out of control!

[peter12]

And it is so easy to eat frugally as a single person. As a grad student, I would eat cold oatmeal with apples for days on end until my next pay cheque. I found it somehow edifying.With another person, the act of self-deprivation, through some strange psychological phenomenon, becomes miserable and depressing.

[bigtmac19]

I don't understand the disgust for leftovers? If you make a big pot of soup or chili, does that mean if you don't finish it in one meal you throw out the rest? Chili - often better the second day.

[wooohooo]

I'm horrible at this but my sister is amazing.

She'll make a giant pot of spaghetti, left over sauce? Make some chili. Left over veggies? makes a soup.

But when I last calculated our food expenses, we spend a lot going out or buying things we don't need and end up going into the trash. We used to buy a giant package of whatever and freeze it. But coming home from work we need to cook then because... hunger, so we end up just buying fresh beef. Few months later, the frozen meat is now freezer burnt and now we just end up throwing it away.

A thing we're doing now is labeling everything and not buying things in huge excess. We (my wife and I) don't need 10 pounds of ground beef, a pack of chicken breasts, and a whole chicken. While we might pay more /kg, we save hugely with less waste.

[DownhillGoat]

Originally Posted by wooohooo

(my wife and I) don't need 10 pounds of ground beef, a pack of chicken breasts, and a whole chicken. While we might pay more /kg, we save hugely with less waste.

Wouldn't it make more sense to go back to freezing stuff, paying less per kg, and just making sure you use it?

Also, vacuum sealers are awesome for that. Stuff lasts way longer in the freezer with those.

[CubicleGeek]

You can save a lot of money if you buy chickens whole and break them down yourself. You can get an average sized fryer chicken for under $10 regular price and get 4 portions of meat + the carcass, which you can use to make a couple of litres of chicken stock. The chicken keeps a few months frozen and the stock keeps for up to a year.

It's only a non-starter if you can't stand dark meat (or vice-versa).

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by CubicleGeek

You can save a lot of money if you buy chickens whole and break them down yourself. You can get an average sized fryer chicken for under $10 regular price and get 4 portions of meat + the carcass, which you can use to make a couple of litres of chicken stock. The chicken keeps a few months frozen and the stock keeps for up to a year.

It's only a non-starter if you can't stand dark meat (or vice-versa).

This is actually a huge point, as a good stock can be the basis for another good meal.

I will just point out here that chicken t highs are delicious. Counter to popular opinion, I think chicken thighs are some of the best meat/cuts to braise, I just love how the meat comes right off the thigh bones.

Chicken thighs are always cheap at the grocery store.

This recipe is outrageously tasty and when served on couscous or rice is dirt cheap for a protein heavy meal.

[wooohooo]

Originally Posted by kunkstyle

Wouldn't it make more sense to go back to freezing stuff, paying less per kg, and just making sure you use it?

Also, vacuum sealers are awesome for that. Stuff lasts way longer in the freezer with those.

We like variety but when we buy lots we tend to forget it or leave it in the back of the freezer. I think last year I threw out two giant sized garbage bags of frozen food.

[enthused]

There's a blog I like called Budget Bytes (www.budgetbytes.com) that I find to be quite good in terms of quality recipes made with reasonably priced ingredients. The writer lives in southern US so her prices used aren't exactly on par with here, and she seems to have small appetite so she likely gets more portions out of a meal than most would, but overall I think she manages to create a large variety of meals out of very little, and a lot of stuff people would likely already have around the house.

Last year she also did the SNAP Challenge and documented the meals she made and her experience trying to follow the challenge which is a pretty interesting read:
http://www.budgetbytes.com/?s=snap+challenge

[gladaki]

As a guy who lives alone, I spend 450$ every month on food, most of it is a trip to costco.

Also, eat out atleast twice a week : 200$
And, starbucks coffee twice a week:40$

Which makes it close to 700$

[LChoy]

Originally Posted by CubicleGeek

You can save a lot of money if you buy chickens whole and break them down yourself. You can get an average sized fryer chicken for under $10 regular price and get 4 portions of meat + the carcass, which you can use to make a couple of litres of chicken stock. The chicken keeps a few months frozen and the stock keeps for up to a year.

It's only a non-starter if you can't stand dark meat (or vice-versa).

Just to further supplement your post about poultry, but I have found that it is sometimes cheaper to buy turkey than chicken. A pack of chicken breasts could be anywhere from $6-10, but an equal portion of a turkey breast could be $3-6. You'll just need to take the the time to break up the turkey into personal portion sizes.

As someone else mentioned, you can often substitute beef for pork, and save a lot on price.

Lastly, some of the most flavourful cuts of beef comes from less premium cuts. If you invest in a slow cooker, or cook by marinating and braising, you can have excellent beefy meals without paying the price for premium cuts

[Bill Bumface]

^Turkey should be cheaper. It tastes significantly crappier than chicken.

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by Machiavelli

....I hate cooking for one; I detest leftovers, and the thought of reheating already-cooked frozen food makes me shudder.

We love leftovers. When we had kids at home on Friday evenings we'd put all the leftovers on the counter and it'd be a free-for-all. Now they come to the office for lunches.