Two Americas?Follow

You know, if you were more thrifty, you could just mine the iron yourself.

Thank goodness for half-priced running shoes...

Is it musky?

Waxy doesn't sound like a tasty description of meat.

Which would be why I will likely never have it again.

Waxy and greasy. Just imagine how much of a bear is fat.

You can render fat out though, usually. It all tastes waxy to me regardless of how lean it is, and there is some lean meat on a bear.

It's actually easier to multiply to make a 4 person budget because cost effective portions tend to come in 4-5 serving sizes. There's a whole lot of things that you really can't buy for just one person because it'll spoil before you'll get through using half of it. How much of a factor this is obviously varies based on your specific menu selection, but I'd argue that it's actually easier to spend $400/month for food for 4, than $100/month for food for one. Variation of meals if nothing else.

Most of your points are valid (but IMO still don't really change the math that much), but a couple kinda jumped out at me:



Says who? Is this really "should", or is this "it would be nice to". Poultry should substitute for fish, and as you mentioned, if it's really an issue, make a tuna noddle casserole (which is pretty darn cheap).



How the hell much are you eating for breakfast? You're not one of those "load up on carbs in the morning!" people, are you? One egg, one piece of toast and a piece of fruit is a more than sufficient breakfast (and by "piece of fruit, I'm literally talking about like a quarter of an orange or apple).



Portion in terms of size, or cost? I get the whole "OMG! It's so hard to walk food back to the house" bit, but maybe we should bring that up the next time someone gets in an argument with me about the virtues of urban living, where everything is within walking/biking distance versus us evil suburbanites who drive everywhere in our cars.



A cup of uncooked rice is a massive serving. I struggle to make a small enough portion of rice for just one person because it's tricky to cook rice with less than 1/2 a cup of rice in the pan and avoid burning it. 1/2 cup of rice makes really more than a single person should ever eat at a sitting. 1 full cup of rice is enough for 4 people to eat as side or base under a main. I think you're grossly underestimating how much rice that is.

Also, that's like massive amounts of food. I get that you have kids, so half of what you put in front of them gets tossed anyway, but holy hell!



I acknowledge that things are more difficult with kids, but the point is that if you really have to budget, you can. Try using powdered milk if the cost is too high. And there really is very near to zero reason for adults to drink milk at all.



Sure. But these things are so inexpensive and used in such small portions that you can almost just handwave them away when calculating a monthly food budget. I literally buy a container of salt and/or pepper like maybe once a year. A small container of vegetable oil lasts me like 4 months. Small bags of flour usually get thrown out half used because it's gets old before it runs out. If age wasn't an issue, one of those small bags would last like 3 years. Unless you're baking bread or making pie crusts, you just don't use that much of it. Same deal with baking powder and soda.

Something that costs like $3 and lasts for 3-6 months is pretty negligible in this context.



That's an insane daily menu. You're eating like 5 times more food for breakfast than you need. Two snacks? And an entire potato is a snack! You're kidding, right? An entire potato is half of a dinner. You're going to weigh like 300 lbs eating this way.




If that's all you did, and never varied it, sure. But there's tons of variations that you can do that can still fit inside the budget.

Edited, Dec 12th 2013 2:49pm by gbaji

Are you?

Are you?

A world class pole vaulter, no. Unless that's some euphemism about ***** size and sexual performance, in which case: probably.

Edited, Dec 12th 2013 6:42pm by Smasharoo

What I've learned from this thread is that you all grocery shop like Laura Ingalls at the dry goods store. "I'll take 10 lbs of flour, 5 lbs of sugar, 2 lbs of salt, 2 lbs of butter, a bolt of calico linen and Paw wanted me to ask if you can bring a horse-wagon of apples to the farm this Friday..."

As I said, I suspect you're conveniently leaving dining out and entertainment out of your supposed $100/mth food budget. Or maybe you just never go out. Or maybe you're one of those weirdos who watches everyone else eat before taking out your home made hardtack biscuit (cost: 4¢ if you buy the wheat in 100 lbs sacks and mill it yourself) and eat it at the restaurant while everyone else wonders what's wrong with you.

Seriously though, I don't give a fuck what you spend on food each month.

Edited, Dec 12th 2013 6:28pm by Jophiel

First off, it's a food budget, not entertainment. So we're talking about how much money it costs for someone to not go hungry. This is why I don't include costs for alcohol, for example. Nor do I include the costs to go out to the movies. The question is how much money someone must have to not go hungry. Asking any other question is basically about preferences, not requirements.

And yes, you're correct. I am not taking into account costs to eat out. But that's because eating out isn't "necessary". Remember, for me this isn't about how much I (or someone else) may choose to spend in a month, but how much you must spend in order to feed yourself. Those are completely different questions. So yeah, if I happen to go out to eat say 3 or 4 times in a month, it's not rocket science to calculate how much my food budget would be if I had eaten at home instead.

Some (one person in particular), might call this "cheating", but when I go out to eat, it's more or less never because I just out of the blue decided to go out to eat. It's always because someone else wanted to, invited me, and I joined them. It's called being social. I'm not going to count that in my calculation because it's not about how much I spend, but how little I could spend if I wanted to. A couple weeks ago, my family went on a vacation. I ended out basically buying lunch and dinner for myself and my mother for 5 days in a row (because no way in hell am I allowing a fixed income person to pay for a meal I'm sitting at the same table for). Do I count that massive increase in cost in the calculation as well? No. Same reason.


For me, the question is "what can you feed yourself for"? From that point, you can go up with regard to splurging on things. But there's still a value in knowing that baseline.

So you're not eating for $100/mth.

That was simple.