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.
Jeremy Clarkson gestures toward homemade bowl “this is great…”
Gestures toward radioactive yellow noodles " …but I like this"
Edit: sidenote, mushrooms are cheap and I feel like they would fit well in your homemade one
I do have some dried shitaki but I’m saving those for something else.
My wife agrees with the choice of radioactive yellow noodles.
Too fancy, a couple bulk white mushrooms for like a buck will do
I’m in a food desert. No bulk mushrooms for 30 miles. Probably not even then unless Sprouts has them. Might be closer to 45 miles.
I grew up poor so this was a staple. Dad would add bacon and frozen veg and it never ended up costing all that much (and if you must have meat, bacon really is great calories per pack and the fat can sub in for butter). This, grilled cheese, and instant ramen with egg and spinach was 80% of my childhood (the rest being frozen foods when Dad was too drunk to cook!)
Now that I’m older, I’ve refined it to just make carbonara with added mushrooms and spinach, but the idea is the same. Family of four plus leftovers for less than ten bucks. And if you’re even poorer, consider learning to cook with lentils or chickpeas, you can buy a lot for a solid price and go well with rice which you can also bulk up on. I had a roommate survive on like $20 a month.
I bet soy is about to get really cheap soon, too…
I loved off donated bacon grease, potatoes and grilled ham and cheese for half a year once. Ramen and PB&J another period. That was in the 90s. Not quite $20 but too close to it.
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.
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
- I have a soft spot for boxed mac
- I have spent a long time perfecting my roux/sauce/cheese blend
- When I decided I had perfected all those things to my liking, I realized I was lactose intolerant
- I made some baller mac and cheese for thanks giving last year. The dish im specifically requested to make because I kill it every year. My 7 yr old cousin tried it and said “eww this is disgusting”
Dump in the cheese, splash of milk if it’s available, bunch of pepper and ketchup then stir. Perfect sauce.
Were you able to work out the macros of the two, did the homemade have more fibrea and less sugar or were they both basically identical
Here is a ballpark without the sausage, they both had the same amount of that.
This is for the boxed stuff. That’s 1200 calories, 51 g fat, 27 protein, 159 g carbs.
Here is just the cheese and macaroni, no milk, flour (1tbsp), butter, peppers etc. so not even close with dramatically higher protein but close to half the carbs.
40 g fat, 42 g protein, 82 g carbs.I looked at the milk to make sure it would throw it too much. 4g fat, 4g protein, 6 g carbs.
I just cannot imagine eating any pasta dish made from a box, and I’m a culinarily lazy fuck myself. There’s just so much effortless stuff to do with pasta before you stoop so damn low.
You can pry my KD from my cold, dry hands!
Other than from a box, what do you make your pasta from scratch?
Add some canned chicken and call it Chicken Alfredo.
Not only is that over a $400 a year difference on just mac and cheese. Youre lying about the time difference or you have a really hard time opening boxes. There is no way it only took you 4 minutes difference to cut up all that and prep your sauce than it was to boil a pot and open a box and a pack of dust. Even if you tried to notch it up with milk and butter its still nothing compared to the prep of the homemade. You have to boil and stir in both but only cut up and wash itensils for one.
You dramatically overestimate the frequency of our Mac and cheese consumption.
You also overestimate how long it takes to chop. If I had my wife do it then it would have taken 30 minutes. I don’t think you realize how fast one can make a cheese sauce. The total difference was 4 minutes cooking time, I think you didn’t count the amount of time it takes for the water to get up to boil. That’s dead time used to prep the cheese sauce.
I invite you to try the comparison yourself and get practical data instead of incorrect guessing.
