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Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

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Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#181

Post by Zenst »

jwilber wrote: post #176
Zenst wrote: post #101

"These recipes will be based on Potatoes, Milk, Flour, Eggs, and Kale. (Honorable mention to Pinto Beans and Carrots)" Been a week since I saw any of those in shops, and can't recall the last time I saw kale. As always the cheap staple foods and tins are the first to go in panic buying and you just know that all the stuff we usual meh at and lob into the food bank box's are the exact stuff people are now stocking and…

Where are you living? I’m in Seattle, which, as far as covid-19 impact goes, is easily at-or-near the top of the list of impacted cities. I have not seen a shortage of anything aside from Clorox wipes in any of the groceries around me. It’s surprising to me reading about such shortages, especially in less impacted cities. Maybe the panic factor is higher for those who aren’t directly in the midst of it?

Outer-London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_upon_Thames

Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#182

Post by jamil7 »

Demiurge wrote: post #171
belltaco wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can take a shower instead, in many places the shower is right next to the toilet.

Some places. Not all bathrooms tough. I suppose a bucket/jar to fill with water is what I'd need, and pour it down. Then, a good amount of soap to wash hands.

Bucket of water and a cloth would probably work, then good hand sanitation as you said.

Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#183

Post by ghaff »

treerock wrote: post #147
nimbius wrote: post #28

Its worth clarifying that the article is specifically addressing the fallout from the pandemic: Unemployment and poverty due to failing economies and shuttered restaurants and bars. In the US, Despite our country having vast and endless supplies of food from megafarms and their accompanying subsidies, there is very little safety net in America to ensure anyone is fed at all once they are unemployed. worth posting, a…

I'm curious if anyone has numbers on how much a homemade sourdough loaf costs on average. My experience is that flour is quite expensive (and currently not available in UK shops). I've also noticed a spike in electricity costs since we've started baking regularly. (Difficult to calculate exactly) My guess is that baking your own is a bit cheaper than going to some artisanal baker, but a lot more expensive than a stan…

I'm pretty sure you would be correct.

The cost (assuming you have at least a minimal amount of equipment--including an oven obviously) is basically the flour (which, as you say, can be hard to find right now).

A 5 pound bag of flour is normally around $4-$5 in the US, and a large boule (5 cups of flour) takes about 600 grams (~1.5 pounds) of flour, so maybe $1.50. The other ingredients in a basic loaf are negligible and the electricity is about 30 cents at a typical US price (ballpark of 10 cents per KWh).

Call it about $2 all together. So, yes, less than an artisanal loaf but maybe a bit more than cheap supermarket bread (though that's a larger loaf as well.)

Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#184

Post by DoreenMichele »

take_a_breath wrote: post #168
DoreenMichele wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is very little safety net in America to ensure anyone is fed at all once they are unemployed. Everything I have read and experienced suggests this is not true. You may be unaware of it if you have never been desperately poor. A lot of the food aid available to the poor in the US is handled very quietly because it's done by local organizations trying to take care of the local people who actively want to avoid le…

You say this: ==Everything I have read and experienced suggests this is not true.== I only see examples of things you have read. What about the experiences you mentioned?

Oh sorry. I was homeless for nearly six years.

I've gone to soup kitchens, been on food stamps, gotten food from food pantries, eaten free meals at churches, gotten handouts of food from random strangers.

I've gotten by at times on very little food and I've been seriously underfed at times. But there was usually an element of choice because soup kitchens, etc, aren't very good in terms of cleanliness and food quality and I have a serious medical condition. Being picky about cleanliness and food quality is a large part of how I stay off the drugs I'm supposed to be on.

But in absolute terms, food is usually available. A lot of it is food that doesn't do a good job of meeting my special needs, so I often pass on the opportunity and prefer to buy my own, but actual literal starving to outright death seems rather unlikely to me.

I worry much more that I will be forced to resort to eating things that will aggravate my very serious medical condition.

That isn't intended to dismiss the concerns of people saying "That's been sold out where I live." But if they go hungry, I think it will be more due to comfortably well-off people hoarding food irrationally rather than due to absolute lack of food stores in the country per se.

Maybe some of the Preppers can come out of the woodwork and give a portion of their hoards to food pantries and soup kitchens. Some of them have several years worth of food stuck away.

It would make more sense to try to reduce the degree to which society comes apart at the seams than to sit on it waiting for things to start looking like a zombie apocalypse movie.

Edit: see also: https://www.reddit.com/r/CitizenPlanners/comments/fn3jno/cou...

Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#185

Post by tiawaven »

A lot of penny dreadful here in the thread. https://i1.wp.com/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Int...

But kidding aside. Most of the recipes are bullshit. You have nothing to eat? Eat what is available. Nothing available? Start with tree bark soup.

If you are still able to buy groceries the best basic ingredients are rice, beans, possible some tomato sauce (for flavor). Add some Olive oil for the fatty acids if you can afford. You will be able to eat this for a pretty long time before showing any deficiencies compared to the other suggestions on the website.

Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#186

Post by 6510 »

yowlingcat wrote: post #138
6510 wrote: post #81

I ended up cooking for next to nothing by accident one time. I didn't notice it until I discover all my money was still in the bank end of the month. To make things more ironic my goal was to create superior food which absolutely worked. The main invention was this: For most meals we take a bunch of ingredients and mix them into a deliciously flavored mix and give it fancy names. The grand mistake we made is that the…

Very cool approach. Using combinatorics to create a recipe space is kinda inside out from how people conventionally approach cooking, but it makes sense that it is actually a far a more frugal way to prepare food assuming you can actually come up with a suitable space that yields tasty outcomes.

When cooking for others you have to learn which things to avoid and what they like. For people who like spicy food I zone the pizza in regions of sliced red pepper, cayenne pepper, black pepper, white pepper, wasabi and sambal. One said it was the most interesting meal he ever ate.

Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#187

Post by rebuilder »

treerock wrote: post #147
nimbius wrote: post #28

Its worth clarifying that the article is specifically addressing the fallout from the pandemic: Unemployment and poverty due to failing economies and shuttered restaurants and bars. In the US, Despite our country having vast and endless supplies of food from megafarms and their accompanying subsidies, there is very little safety net in America to ensure anyone is fed at all once they are unemployed. worth posting, a…

I'm curious if anyone has numbers on how much a homemade sourdough loaf costs on average. My experience is that flour is quite expensive (and currently not available in UK shops). I've also noticed a spike in electricity costs since we've started baking regularly. (Difficult to calculate exactly) My guess is that baking your own is a bit cheaper than going to some artisanal baker, but a lot more expensive than a stan…

Approximately 0.35 EUR per loaf containing 250g flour, assuming you bake 3 loaves at once in an electric oven, and aren't considering the effects of the heat produced on your heating/cooling costs.

Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#188

Post by ohiovr »

If you can still get it, frozen self rising pizza costs less than $3 for about a kilogram of food. As I live alone I would buy a pizza like this and chop it into pieces before cooking it so it is fresh every serving. I add a few chunks of butter to the bottom above foil. Similar taste to pizza hut for a fraction of the cost.

Speghetti is also good when cooked with butter. Instead of adding the usual tablespoon of olive oil to the boiling water try butter instead.

My immigrant ancestors lived on a diet of spaghetti, home made bread and pork preserved in lard. I haven't tried the lard trick but maybe might be useful.

Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#190

Post by IggleSniggle »

Zenst wrote: post #101

"These recipes will be based on Potatoes, Milk, Flour, Eggs, and Kale. (Honorable mention to Pinto Beans and Carrots)" Been a week since I saw any of those in shops, and can't recall the last time I saw kale. As always the cheap staple foods and tins are the first to go in panic buying and you just know that all the stuff we usual meh at and lob into the food bank box's are the exact stuff people are now stocking and…

If you are lucky enough to have any land at all, kale is extremely easy to grow
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