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What's your favorite poverty meal that you still eat regardless of where you are financially?

I think a package of burrito size tortillas, a can of refried beans, and a bargain bag of store-brand pre-grated Mexican cheese blend (as long as you don't mind the anti-clumping added cellulose) makes endless cheap quesadillas. I usually carve up whatever leftover taco meat or linguiça or even pulled pork if I have any, but sometimes just the first three ingredients are fine for b-fast. Then homemade soup (somebody has to cook it) for lunch and saltines if you want to get fancy. Then splurge on dinner. I actually do this by choice. I am not Alice Waters and yes, I do own a microwave.
 
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College... frijoles refritos and tortillas. Spaghetti and meat sauce. PB&J sammiches. Like a mofo. Never had the moolah to eat the slop at the cafeteria.

Still like (and eat) bean burritos, spaghetti and PBJ sammiches. :D

Not often, but sometimes.

Basically don't eat out. You can make most meals for a small fraction of eating out.
 
wannabe said:
I still love turkey necks, and the best part is that the foodie crowd hasn’t discovered them yet, so they’re still dirt cheap. I’m still pissed off at how much oxtail costs these days. Oxtail used to be awesome poverty food.
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lefty said:
I feel you 100% on the Oxtails. I don't eat them myself, but I started making them for the Wife and She LOVES it!! I was shocked at the cost/lb!! When I was a kid they were "Poor Peoples Food".
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Necks are amazing. They add so much umami to anything. I make a spaghetti sauce that uses pork neck bones. Cheapest jarred sauce you can find, bunch of garlic, Italian sausage crumbles, pork neck bones. Good luck finding them though.

Tomato sandwiches. Bread, mayonnaise or butter, tomatoes (typically from the garden). American cheese if we were lucky.
 
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Triple R said:
Rice w/ fried spam or chinese sausage & eggs.
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Yep. The perks of being born asian, rice is always the main dish. For me, it is rice w/ over easy eggs or scrambled eggs w/ sliced jalapeno pepper.

My parents would take us fishing and pack a big container of sticky rice, some morton's salt, and maybe some home made "jao bong" chili sauce. I remember hearing, if we don't catch a fish then we don't get lunch besides the rice and chili sauce. Someone would catch a fish, and mom would clean it, salt it, shove a branch through the body and roast it over an open fire. After mom passed away and it was just me and my dad, since the rest of my siblings were considerably older, my dad would do the same thing. Rice, salt, chili sauce. However now I remember eating the dang bait (canned corn) cause we wouldn't catch anything a lot times and he'd be pissed at me because we would run out of bait early lol.
 
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CocoLoco said:
Old Fashioned Quaker Oats from Costco...breakfast + lunch...doubled the savings to $600/month.
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At my workstation right meow....
 

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KooLaid said:
Yep. The perks of being born asian, rice is always the main dish. For me, it is rice w/ over easy eggs or scrambled eggs w/ sliced jalapeno pepper.

My parents would take us to fishing and pack a big container of sticky rice, some morton's salt, and maybe some home made "jao bong" chili sauce. I remember hearing, if we don't catch a fish then we don't get lunch besides the rice and chili sauce. Someone would catch a fish, and mom would clean it, salt it, shave a branch through the body and roast it over an open fire. After mom passed away and it was just me and my dad, since the rest of my siblings were considerably older, my dad would do the same thing. Rice, salt, chili sauce. However now I remember eating the dang bait (canned corn) cause we wouldn't catch anything a lot times and he'd be pissed at me because we would run out of bait early lol.
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Cool story and damn, that chili sauce sounds super good. Don't think I've ever come across that one.
 
two wheel tramp said:
Lentil soup. Mercimek requires lentils, a touch of flour and some oil at its most basic.
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I have not heard of Mercimek. Onto the list of recipes to try, thank you!

Signed, Barf's resident POM.... Believe me, there are others here much more POM than myself.:wtf
 
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Poverty meal? Beans and rice for complete protein. If I am flush,put in a bit of chicken.

Oatmeal.
 
cheez said:
https://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/recipes/browse-all/jaew-bong-11099

Agreed, it does sound good.
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The stuff would be good for MONTHS too in a fridge if not longer. My brother somewhere found a version made with shredded sweetened pork (pork sung aka rousong) and is my absolute favorite. Best consumed with sticky rice. It's difficult to find genuine jao/jaow/jaew at asian stores and when you do it's pretty terrible. I would suggest hitting up a Thai buddhist temple during noncovid times. That's the secret place to finding the best southeast asian foods. Or if you're lucky a Thai/Lao store.

An alternative version could be "jaew mak len". Or as I realized as I gotten older, mexican salsa with fish sauce using roasted ingredients. This is great with plain white rice as it is juicier.
 
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totino's party pizza in the freezer aisle is still something i eat pretty regularly if i find it on sale. i also find it convenient because there's a pizza button on my toaster oven that works great for them.
 
KooLaid said:
The stuff would be good for MONTHS too in a fridge if not longer. My brother somewhere found a version made with shredded sweetened pork (pork sung aka rousong) and is my absolute favorite. Best consumed with sticky rice. It's difficult to find genuine jao/jaow/jaew at asian stores and when you do it's pretty terrible. I would suggest hitting up a Thai buddhist temple during noncovid times. That's the secret place to finding the best southeast asian foods. Or if you're lucky a Thai/Lao store.

An alternative version could be "jaew mak len". Or as I realized as I gotten older, mexican salsa with fish sauce using roasted ingredients. This is great with plain white rice as it is juicier.
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If you're ever in Dallas, stop by my absolute favorite vegetarian place ever. It's a cafeteria on the 2nd floor of the IBPS Dallas temple/community center. The monks who work in the kitchen are incredible at evoking flavors from basic ingredients.
 
cheez said:
If you're ever in Dallas, stop by my absolute favorite vegetarian place ever. It's a cafeteria on the 2nd floor of the IBPS Dallas temple/community center. The monks who work in the kitchen are incredible at evoking flavors from basic ingredients.
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I have heard that Dallas/Ft.Worth is an AMAZING hub for Laotian foods. It was one of the major drop off points for Southeast asian refugees in the 70's after the vietnam war.
 
900ss said:
I have not heard of Mercimek. Onto the list of recipes to try, thank you!

Signed, Barf's resident POM.... Believe me, there are others here much more POM than myself.:wtf
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It's delicious. And don't worry, POMs are alright in my book. Hehehe.
 
KooLaid said:
Yep. The perks of being born asian, rice is always the main dish. For me, it is rice w/ over easy eggs or scrambled eggs w/ sliced jalapeno pepper.
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Also one of the perks of being Cajun. Rice with everything. Gumbo, Jumbalaya, dirty rice and pretty much anything else.

Love me some white rice with just soy sauce on it nothing else. I had some chicken the other day and couldn't find a decent side dish so with the microwave on the fritz I put leftover white rice in a frying pan and warmed it up while drizzling some Kikkoman over it unitl it was a nice brownish black color. So good....
 
Sharxfan said:
Also one of the perks of being Cajun. Rice with everything. Gumbo, Jumbalaya, dirty rice and pretty much anything else.

Love me some white rice with just soy sauce on it nothing else. I had some chicken the other day and couldn't find a decent side dish so with the microwave on the fritz I put leftover white rice in a frying pan and warmed it up while drizzling some Kikkoman over it unitl it was a nice brownish black color. So good....
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Damn now I'm craving some Adobo - which, now that I think about it, totally hangs here. Even though I never made it when I was broke. Skin-on chicken thighs, soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, and black pepper over rice.

Though has anyone else noticed the cost of chicken thighs creeping up? Did folks finally realize they're the way more delicious cut of chicken?
 
TylerW said:
Damn now I'm craving some Adobo - which, now that I think about it, totally hangs here. Even though I never made it when I was broke. Skin-on chicken thighs, soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, and black pepper over rice.

Though has anyone else noticed the cost of chicken thighs creeping up? Did folks finally realize they're the way more delicious cut of chicken?
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I still see them for ~50 cents per lb for 10 lb bags in my area, bone in. leg quarters
 
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