How cheap can you feed someone?

[Badjak]

I do freeze a lot and eventually eat from the freezer as well
Shops are far away.
I check prices, buy things on special, but the choice isn't great.

One fairly big saver here is making your own lasagne sheets and fettucinni as they are crazy expensive here.
Spaghetti and elbow maccaroni is not expensive but they go from undercooked to overcooked in about 10 seconds.

I buy whole chickens and portion them. 1 small one (3 dollar) feeds me and my dogs for 3 days (obviously with extra's).

I spend money on rice as I think it is worth it
Veges on road side or from garden etc etc

 

[Aunt Bea]

Recently I made a pasta dish with mushrooms. I shopped at Aldi. The fettucine was 1 dollar for a dry 16 ounce package. They had baby bell mushrooms on sale, so I bought two packs for 4 dollars. I had everything else I needed: A few tablespoons of butter, salt, pepper, heavy cream (needed a splash), and some veggie BTB. A bit of parmesan cheese and it was really tasty. So four people for roughly 5 dollars and had enough for lunch the following day.

That one basic method is great for making an endless number of inexpensive pasta meals by changing up the pasta and highlighting different fresh, frozen, or leftover vegetables.

 

[BAPyessir6]

I do freeze a lot and eventually eat from the freezer as well
Shops are far away.
I check prices, buy things on special, but the choice isn't great.

One fairly big saver here is making your own lasagne sheets and fettucinni as they are crazy expensive here.
Spaghetti and elbow maccaroni is not expensive but they go from undercooked to overcooked in about 10 seconds.

I buy whole chickens and portion them. 1 small one (3 dollar) feeds me and my dogs for 3 days (obviously with extra's).

I spend money on rice as I think it is worth it
Veges on road side or from garden etc etc

Can I just add that I think it's the stupidest thing ever that Dog Food is (most of the time recently) more expensive than chicken you could feed your dog with? Like what the heck.

 

[Andy M.]

On my freezer door. I cross things off and add things as I use them and buy new stuff. BTW, this is an old photo.

View attachment 68881

CD

HAHA. If I lived alone, this would work. Tried it once. It didn't last a week. "Did you mark the freezer list?" "Oh, I forgot. I'll go down and mark it later."

 

[larry_stewart]

HAHA. If I lived alone, this would work. Tried it once. It didn't last a week. "Did you mark the freezer list?" "Oh, I forgot. I'll go down and mark it later."

I tried doing it a few times, but ultimately got lazy. It was kind of necessary when we had a chest freezer, cause everything got buried. We recently had to get a new freezer, and just about everything is visible when the door is open. Also has a lot of shelves, so we are able to be more organized.

 

[dragnlaw]

HAHA. If I lived alone, this would work. Tried it once. It didn't last a week. "Did you mark the freezer list?" "Oh, I forgot. I'll go down and mark it later."

Even living alone... I would look at that list and say "hmmmm - yeah that was 6 months ago, wonder if it is still there - or did it multiply because I forgot and bought more to keep it company?"

 

[Andy M.]

I tried doing it a few times, but ultimately got lazy. It was kind of necessary when we had a chest freezer, cause everything got buried. We recently had to get a new freezer, and just about everything is visible when the door is open. Also has a lot of shelves, so we are able to be more organized.

We use a series of plastic bins on the shelves to group like items, (chicken breasts/thigh/wings; pork chops/tenderloins, breads/muffins/cookies etc). Frozen containers (pizza and pasta sauces, soups etc.) fit in between the bins.

 

[dragnlaw]

Yup, that's exactly what I did and still do. Just push the new chicken breasts to the back in behind the old ones.

 

[taxlady]

Someone should write an app to handle this. If you had a dedicated bar code scanner right next to your freezer, then, if you could just scan the bar code and tell it whether stuff was going in or out. The app would update your data base for the inventory of the freezer automatically. It could even ask you to verify the stuff going in an out. That could be a preference.

 

[Aunt Bea]

I understand the value of a home freezer for gardeners, hunters, and homesteaders that live out back of beyond but for most of us it’s just another form of waste.

Growing up we had an enormous chest freezer that was filled to the brim with garden vegetables, venison, day old bread, etc…. We only seemed to use the things scattered over the top 6” inches and every couple of years most of the contents was thrown out when it was time to defrost the beast.

That old freezer was the source of many arguments and family fights.

 

[taxlady]

Are you personally attacking me with that cartoon?

 

[dragnlaw]

taxy, unless the app. said to me, out loud, in a no-nonsense voice, upon opening the door of the freezer

Please describe items - in detail.

My part of the bargain would be to describe - in or out; weight; servings; contents cooked, partial or raw; (and I'm sure there are other details could be added, just can't think of them at the moment).
The app would automatically categorize them into all those departments and send me a text message when prime due date is coming up soon.

Again, if I had to text/enter info into an app it would get done about as often as I updated the paper stuck on the door.

I would pay for such an app or when purchasing a new freezer get the one preinstalled in the freezer. But not a lot.

the possibilities are endless! and I want royalties!

and you could program the voice to sound like your mother, wife, annoying cousin....

 

[blissful]

Growing up we had an enormous chest freezer that was filled to the brim with garden vegetables, venison, day old bread, etc…. We only seemed to use the things scattered over the top 6” inches and every couple of years most of the contents was thrown out when it was time to defrost the beast.

That old freezer was the source of many arguments and family fights.

I'm sorry to hear that old freezer was a source of contention back then.
We had a freezer in the basement, 4 kids, and mostly us kids did the running between the freezer and root cellar to carry things upstairs. I left home first and we ate all our meals at home, or made from home. I never saw what happened as the size of the family went to 2.

Society has been changing over the years, from the 50's to present day. We, as a society, eat more meals outside the home. Farmers used to eat at at home, breakfast lunch and dinner. If a working family is eating all their lunches at work or near work, and half their dinners out, that freezer would get less and less use. A family going from 6 people to 2 people changes how often they need to use that freezer too.

If your present family isn't using that freezer nearly daily, it might not be worth having. The freezer acts as a holding place for us for all the precooked basics-beans, rice, vegetables, chili, as well as storage for nuts, coffee, seeds, bagged blueberries/dates/peas. Meat's not inexpensive and well wrapped it lasts a long time especially if you can find it on sale.

If your freezer gives you more pain than pleasure, it might be time to remove it.
It would be worth unplugging and going freezer free to save electric if you don't use it often.
(speaking of which, we had a second refrigerator in the basement we used for aging cheese. Once we stopped using it for that, we cleaned it out and it sat unplugged. We may outfit it with light bulbs and a fan as a heating unit (to 80 deg F) for warming crystalized honey in the future.)

 

[Badjak]

I'll never do without a freezer!
Couple of reasons
- I live alone and I have never mastered cooking for one so there are always left overd
- shops are far, I only really shop once every 3-4 weeks
,- I got a garden
- I live in a hot climate

I got a chest freezer and yes, stuff drops to the bottom.
But mine needs to be defrosted every couple of months and that's my time to take stock of what I got
-

 

[Andy M.]

I've gotten lazy. The freezer lets me freeze leftovers from a bigger meal I've cooked so we can have it twice. It also allows me to do a recipe like pizza or pasta sauce in a large quantity and save portions for later. The same for soups, casseroles and stews.

 

[blissful]

I've gotten lazy. The freezer lets me freeze leftovers from a bigger meal I've cooked so we can have it twice. It also allows me to do a recipe like pizza or pasta sauce in a large quantity and save portions for later. The same for soups, casseroles and stews.

It's hardly lazy. Making a double batch and freezing half is good planning. Work smarter not harder.

 

[pepperhead212]

That's smart cooking! Some things aren't as good frozen, but most freeze very well, and why make something 3 or 4 times, when it thaws well, and saves you a lot of time? And I'm not one of those that can't eat the same thing several times in a row - some things I like so much that I'll eat it for dinner, then breakfast, luch, and dinner the next day, if I have enough of it! Thai curry, and all those things in the summer made with all those good things from the garden come to mind.

I don't use things from the freezer, or put things in there daily, but close to it! And something I do, to make it easier to organize, and load and unload things from, is keep a lot of the food in boxes, that I've gotten that fit almost perfectly on the shelves, and label them NUTS, DAIRY, VEGETABLES, etc., and when I need something, I check the list first, and if it is in a box, pull it out, and shut the freezer, while digging out what I need, or adding something new to the bottom, to keep the oldest on top. Then put it back in. I didn't have a photo of that, but here's an example of just one of the inventory sheets from my old freezer, that was even larger (unfortunately, none that size available anymore!).
Inventory of dry goods from freezer, door and lower rack. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

And here's one of the current inventory sheets, for the tubs in the basement. All of these things are also in my kitchen, in some jar somewhere, and these are for refilling them. Most of the beans and grains are in quart jars, while ones I use more are in 2 or 3 qt containers. Some things I use less of, and don't keep as well, are in smaller containers, and those are some of the ones in the freezer.
One of the several inventory sheets, for all the food in storage. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

You can see what I mean about that OCD with the food! Someday I have to do this with all those seeds I have, for the garden.

 

[blissful]

Most of our basement dry goods are in 5 gallon buckets, while trapping stuff is in large totes. We've been going through our entire house including the basement and sorting/organizing/tossing/selling things we don't use anymore since January. Yesterday we found a tote that was sealed, with boxed pasta, 50 lbs, spaghetti and macaroni! It could have come from my husbands house when he sold it or it could have come from my son buying it on sale-we don't know. I called my son and he's coming tomorrow to pick it up. What a find! He's in the process of saving money and paying off debt, so any penny pinching he can do, he will do. I'm proud of him.

 

[taxlady]

I've gotten lazy. The freezer lets me freeze leftovers from a bigger meal I've cooked so we can have it twice. It also allows me to do a recipe like pizza or pasta sauce in a large quantity and save portions for later. The same for soups, casseroles and stews.

That's not lazy. That's efficient.

 

[rodentraiser]

I don't need a list on my freezer door. Every time I open it everything falls out, either on my bare feet or on my head.