One of our local Facebook groups is now filled with "feed a family of four for $10 by spending $7 on ground beef or dumpling cans of stuff into a pot" type posts because of the looming hungergeddon with SNAP being withheld.
I posted this to show the difference between what is probably the cheapest cook it yourself full meal in a box and the homemade version.
Since we are posting cheap meals here is a comparison of buying for the meal and buying for the pantry.
Mac and cheese two ways. I went to cook dinner but only found one box of mac and cheese. Well my wife only wanted basic mac and cheese with a single smoked sausage cut in half. Easy. She gets the boxed stuff. Cost of hers was $1.63
But what was my dinner going to be? The same but different. The last of an onion, a small bell pepper from the garden†, 4 oz of Colby Jack left over from yesterday, one smoked sausage like hers, 4 oz of elbow mac, milk, butter, flour. Cost for mine: $2.81.
These two bowls are almost identical in calories.
More than double the cost?
Calories in her bowl: ~1580
Calories on mine: ~1800 calories
So the homemade version is almost 42% more than hers but on a nutrition and flavor level they can't compare at a the 78¢ difference.
I didn't intentionally buy anything to make my specific meal. It was made from pantry staples that I always have on hand and can be bought in bulk. Flexible ingredients that can be combined in infinite combinations on the fly. It's not just cheap it lets you solve cravings without going out.
What's the time difference between these two meals? About 4 minutes. And that was entirely because the elbow mac is better quality than boxed and takes longer to cook. The bechamel cheese sauce and the pepper, sausage and onion mix all cooked while the pasta was cooking.
† literally free because I got the seeds from the library and planted in the ground, seed starter tray, no mulch, no fertilizer.
Nobody else grow up on tuna casserole?
I don't know the exact recipe, but it was basically canned tuna, frozen mixed vegetables (diced carrots, corn, peas, and Lima beans was the favorite in my house), and macaroni and chees. This all goes into a casserole dish and is cooked somehow (probably overn, I don't know, child me didn't worry about such trivialities). The crumbles at the end of a bag of ruffles would be sprinkled over the top of this before baking to add a bit of crunch.
I couldn't count how many times we ate this growing up. It's been a few decades, and the nostalgia is real, but I still have no inclination to make it for myself. If lower middle class had a flavor it's that mélange of canned tuna, fake cheese, and lima beans.
This is part of why I hate casseroles. I will never recover from the months I was stuck in Ohio.
I had this, but it was a can of cream of mushroom soup (no water) mixed with tuna and elbow mac, then put in a casserole dish and baked until brown on top.
My mom made that once, and was forbidden from ever doing so again! It was usually Mac and cheese with hotdogs or meatloaf in my house. And, no vegetables which is weird because my mom was a vegetarian
I have sometimes (often, who's kidding?) made vegan Mac N cheese with those fabulous lightlife hotdogs as an adult, totally followed in my mom's footsteps xD. But I generally like to have bell pepper, onion, and swisschard/mustard greens mixed in because I'm not actually my mom