Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages
efficiencyiseverything.com
efficiencyiseverything.com
My hope is that if nothing else, the current situation opens people's eyes to past indulgences with no thought toward the future. I wish I had saved as much as you had, I would be better off now. (I simply never learned good financial sense until later in life)
More than anything though, I am not afraid of going back to nothing. (I am sure you may have a similar "mental safety net?)
It's not the end of the world and we can recover from this current state. Not sure it's comforting to those that face this imminently, but many people have survived far worse.
Get a depression-style food shortage and suddenly what you find in the dumpster won’t be as appetizing as the donuts that Dunkin just didn’t sell that day.
> I've never purchased shampoo or paid for a hair cut - I am female [me: this choice of quote has nothing to say about gender, please read on]
In the Soviet Union, there was a growing demand for consumer goods. Government fought to reach a balance on whether it was time to undertake those goals, and how much of it should be handled by the secondary market.
After WWII, the United States switched to a highly commercial culture of consumer debt financing, a general consumerist focus. This put the communist nations, themselves developing rapidly, under even more strain to give citizens what they saw the West was enjoying. This may have been premature, and some might argue lead to an untimely end for the USSR.
What's interesting about your story is you we're living in a world of few consumer goods, like in the era before and during Khrushchev.
So where capitalism used the newly developing marketing gimmicks to both sell consumer goods at home, and undermine the priorities of People's government abroad--you, at least, are in a place where those superfluous goods are not a sign of victory over People's governments, but actually wasteful and unattainable. At least if one wants to move out of their car one day.
I'm sure none of this is lost on you as a writer of... what was it... Biden speeches? [Fake edit: the apocalypse!]
If we are rejecting the consumerism that served some role in bringing down the USSR, perhaps it's not a wishful thought that class consciousness growing. Maybe we're fatigued, ready to accept a world without the gimmicks parading themselves as innovation and surviving for years a household names off investor money and debt like a Potemkin village.
This is a good practice, living off less, but it's a blow to Western economic theories that have bought their way into textbooks. But what's to come down the pipeline isn't just the growth of China, but also Africa and partnering nations that we're used to exploiting (look at the grooming of India as a place of new manufacture). We'll soon see less opportunities to exploit, higher prices and, well, Socialism or barbarism.
Side note - i am Australian, have traveled the world and I find it funny in many countries (particularly Asia), everyone thinks Milo is from their own country. They are suprised when I tell them it's Australian and hilarity ensues when they looked it up online.
Oh and don't feel bad cause Aussies have loads of brands too that we thought were local but are actually from overseas. For the longest time, i thought Maggi noodles was from Asia but its actually Swiss!
worth posting, a crash course on making sourdough bread:
https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-code/blob/master/bas...
I also maintain a git repo for frugal living.
It's extremely unlikely your landlord is going to be able to rent it to someone new in the foreseeable future. Most landlords are highly leveraged and need income.
Make an offer to cut it in half and see if they bite.
They have had 0% success and the only response is really that rent is due on the first.
There will be a massive commercial real estate crisis soon.
I suspect that the managers of REITs and partnerships that own most commercial property worry that accepting lower rent would make it harder for them to delude their investors into thinking their property values haven’t tanked. “We appraise this property based on a rental income of $5k/mo, it’s just between tenants right now”
I've seen it for years: Empty shop buildings, a glut of local businesses wanting to rent them, but they are kept empty until some chain willing to pay double turns up a year later. For the landlord, it's worth waiting if that will be the outcome.
This is where a legitimate government worth the trust of the people would say, "Do not worry America, we will feed you," and do whatever it took, including mobilizing the National Guard, to distribute that food surplus to those who need it most.
This is where a competent government would do this in the safest possible manner, including having personal protection equipment, training on how to use it properly and how to practice social distancing while getting the job done.
This is where true leaders would inspire the people to help keep each other safe, healthy, and well fed.
Recall the inspiration, organization and funding that kicked off the Space Race, the Manhattan Project, and the New Deal.
Where is the leader who can say with a straight face that "we do this not because it is easy, but because it is hard"? One that can say and be believed that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"?
Instead of being inspired to work together on what could be the greatest challenge of this generation we're left to fend for ourselves, left to cower home alone, to hope the scraps we've managed to scrounge will be enough to last us however long it takes for life to return to some semblance of normalcy, for the most destitute of us to face starvation, with a lack of trust in each other, in our leaders, and in society.
I agree with your overall sentiment that we would benefit right now from inspirational leadership with strong messages of solidarity.
But at the same time, it's not all doom and gloom. There's a lot of good happening as well.
Population is ~40M, which is more than Canada (~38M) or Australia (~28M). If California was an independent country it would be something like the 9th largest economy in the world. It's a massively productive farming region on top of having the high-end of US technology, and has other national or international-tier industries like Hollywood.
If I want a barometer for the US, tell me how Ohio is doing.
On the contrary, food stamps (SNAP) is pretty much the only federal welfare program that covers everyone based only on need (i.e. low enough assets and income).
There is a 3-month limit for many people (e.g. able-bodied males who don't have kids) but states have the power to extend it in times/locations of high unemployment.
The federal government under Trump took some of this ability away in December, with changes targeted to take effect April 1st. The plan was that roughly 700,000 people would lose the ability to receive food stamps in order to, according to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, "restore the dignity of work to a sizable segment of our population." I wish I was making that up.
Today, the unemployment rate is likely to spike so high just about everywhere that the new rules will probably not make a difference, but it's important to keep in mind that there's a portion of the US body politic that is happy to see some people go hungry, as long as it's the right people.
I doubt it is gender specific.
that being said a better safety net is needed. A savings account started in high school would be nice as well.
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 standard load.
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.)
(Great Value is the Walmart store brand)
(it's gonna vary between models and temperatures and so on, I think 2KW is good enough for the sake of discussion)
So from there, 5KW or so is probably a good upper limit for a bread cooking cycle (it's probably less than that). Here that's ~$0.50, and then small retail packages of flour are ~$0.50 a pound. $0.25 for yeast, and trivial amounts of salt/sugar.
So (here) 2 large loaves of bread is less than $2 of ingredients and energy.
Flour is out of stock on the online store I just checked here also.
My mom loves making baked goods. At some point, she switched to buying 5+ lbs. bags of flour. It turns out that flour bags from 1-25 lbs. are priced way closer than you'd expect.
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 letting predatory vagabonds know where they can get a free handout.
I have read in the past that America would look a lot better on paper if we counted emergency food stores as part of our assets in the same way European countries typically do.
Decades ago, I read about a study that indicated that only one half one percent of Americans qualified as "poor" by the standards of people in India when based on metrics like food access.
I have read that most housed Americans get three meals a day and most homeless Americans only get two meals a day. There are places in the world where two meals a day would be pretty good food security.
I'm sure we are facing some very real challenges. I'm not convinced that America is as precariously positioned as some people seem to think.
I see comments in this discussion indicating that people who have known serious privation are fairly unperturbed. I think the people freaking out are mostly comfortably well off who think giving up a few comforts is a nightmare scenario.
I'm all for actively promoting information for how to feed yourself cheaply while we actively forbid a lot of people from going to work. Cooking from scratch is a terrific way to both save money and give yourself something constructive to do so you aren't going stir crazy and heading for going postal.
But there are many Preppers in this country who already had a year or more of stored food and the things I'm hearing suggest hoarding is being done in a bizarre pattern that suggests a lot of upper class emotional BS is going on.
According to the research in Diet for a Small Planet, at the time the book was written, every country had the means to feed their people. Famine was due to political and social forces, not due to absolute lack of food supplies.
More recently, I have read of cases where food aid sat on the docks rotting because the whole reason people were starving was due to civil war. The food aid was de facto intended to feed people who were more or less being intentionally starved out and the people in power absolutely weren't going to give them free food from other countries.
Venezuela was in a real world of hurt before covid19. They were hunting wild donkeys and breaking into zoos to steal the animals from zoos. They are going to see terrible problems.
The US doesn't have to. We need to figure out what works so we can avoid unnecessary hardship.
A lot of people are working on it. We aren't just sitting here idly waiting for the four horsemen of the apocalypse to show up.
==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?
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...
Keep in mind that every person's body and metabolic system is unique so you'll want to put in a generous error buffer. I'd cut the calorie deficit by half, at least to start with. Also notice that each day your total stored body fat will be less, so the number of calories your body can extract from that stored fat will also be less.
Vitamins and minerals are not something you can reduce without effect/impact. So do factor that into any calorie reduction.
This and body fat only goes so far and as a metric is often flawed in measurement as any rugby or certain sports physics can attest. This is large muscle mass often mess's up those scale calculations and with that, many a fit muscular person will fall into the obese box as muscle weighs more than fat.
Also it's not just fat that gets broken down into energy, muscle is affected as well.
As everything it is a fine balance.
Given all that, eating normal alternate days is a safer approach for many.
On average, the density of fat is 0.9 g/mL, while the density of muscle is 1.1 g/mL.
It’s just not that much
Gets down to knowing yourself and how much that differentiates from the average and adjusting accordingly. Alas many look at average and work with that, so somebody small who needs may think the average alcohol limit is X, so I can drink X and still be legal to drive and yet as they are smaller, find their blood volume less and the alcohol to blood level is higher than that average and tada, drunk drives without realising as they thought they had stayed under the average limit.
Averages used as a literal are dangerous, they need to be treated as a guideline by people when applying them to themselves, can't stipulate that enough.
[EDIT a grammar I spotted]
https://itis.swiss/virtual-population/tissue-properties/data...
In this case the average alone is representative of the population without any additional qualifications.
Please don’t drink and drive.
Though handy site and will only become more handy with more data sets, but being able to click-thru to and see those studies would go a long way as not all studies are equal in quality and credibility in much the same way that people would believe data comming from `John Hopkins University` about viral data over say data comming out of `Really Greatest University in the entire World`.
I'd add, don't drink and operate any form of transport, lost cousin decades ago to a drunk cyclist. Me, I don't drive, walk and public transport, so these days, walk if needs demand. Though probably handful of times I've even drunk even close to any limit. But very mindful that not everybody is as thoughtful of others, though easier to identify them as they are the ones with 4x4's full of toilet roll :).
If people are frugal/miserly with their meals and careful starting now, and have long lasting food, we can live a long time.
Side note: After this experience, I've been eating one meal a day for about 2 years now. (I am a desk jockey so I don't need much) I can control my weight, and I eat more if I need it, and less if I don't.
I once lost 65lbs over 8 months by eating two small meals a day. I went "cold turkey" in to that diet, and the first week sucked, but I got through it. I transitioned to a normal diet after that and maintained my weight for a year and half until I got a job that stressed me out and I stress-ate.
I got sick a month ago (symptoms unlrelated to COVID) and couldn't keep food down. I used that opportunity to transition again to a very-low-calorie diet once I got better. Being sick made the transition much easier (no hunger pains).
I already feel better after one month. I think I can pull this off again for another 8 months and get to the top-end of the recommended weight range for my height.
Here's to looking forward to the months ahead (I suppliment with multivitamin and magnesium/zinc suppliments).
I find being hungry every day (for at least an hour or two) before my single meal makes my food taste so much better.
I experiment with very light mid day meals at times. Nothing more than 2 fried eggs and maybe some saute'd onions with it. (I am hunger an hour or after eating this, so it doesn't disrupt my eating patterns)
I hope you do well with your weight control. It sounds like you have a great start on things.
Prior to this (a few months ago), I noticed that I was overeating just to maintain the feeling of being full/stuffed. I knew that was unhealthy, but I just wanted to feel good because I was going through probably the highest-stress time of my life.
Luckily things are much better now. Even with this virus going around, I should be pretty well off.
On this new attempt, the only time the hunger seems to become annoying is in the late evening. My solution: go to bed. I can't be hungry if I'm asleep, and when I wake up, I can eat my first meal.
It's going to take some mental adjustments, but I think I'll be able to adjust to not noticing minor hunger and not desiring the feeling of being full.
Having body fat helps you if you get very sick. Having low body fat means you are at a higher risk of death when your body has to fight off disease. Being very underweight increases your risk of catching diseases.
Of course, being excessively obese has other risks.
I am not a doctor (although anyone blindly following internet advice needs to be careful!)
First, start estimating how many calories you need per day on credible sites like [1]. Then, buy a scale, measure it twice everyday--first, in morning when you wake up (and peed) and second, right before you sleep. The subtract these two and get an approximate drop in weight (for me, it's usually 1-1.2 lbs over night for average type of food that I eat). Use that to approximate how much food you should eat in the evening and what type of food you should eat so that you can reach your weight goal.
Keep adjusting your portion of food (start from the portion size that will fill you up until your next meal) over the next 10 days to see which one keeps your weight under check or make it go lower.
I have lost 20 lbs between Dec '19 and end of Feb '20 just by doing this. In summary, measuring your weight diligently (just twice a day or even once a day in the morning if you want) is a good enough start to lose weight.
[1] https://health.gov/our-work/food-nutrition/2015-2020-dietary...
What a world ahead of us all.
Bread is limited supply
Many of them will probably stick it 20 pounds of flour in their cabinet and never use it for anything.
I do use it, I make biscuits, and gravy every sunday... I have enough flour to last awhile and was not in the market for any but I did notice that section that normally had a pallet of each was empty in my store.
My 'peacetime' rationale is to have fresh bread with no additives in it. There are spin off benefits such as the baking smell.
Over the last decade I have worked in different companies and never met another person with a home baking of bread routine. Sure some people have a bread making machine in the loft or have a mum that does it on occasion but making bread from flour is a rare thing in the UK.
So what is going on with the supply?
Truth is that bread flour is not a fast moving item. If I buy a 1kg bag on a Monday and another on a Friday then there won't have been a lot of restocking in between. I will be buying from the same batch.
Therefore it does not take a lot of panic buyers to take all the stock off the shelves for the few people who regularly buy to find themselves with 'flour anxiety'. If you do use a kilo or two of flour a week then you don't have more than two to three kilos on hand. This will be for variety, e.g. strong white and wholemeal, which can be combined with something else, e.g. spelt or granary, for variety.
In truth flour does not keep indefinitely, it will develop a horrible taste over time or even get weevils. Flour is also heavy, so if you have to carry your shopping by bicycle or on foot then you are not buying sacks of the stuff.
Car drivers with large boots/trunks can behave like a horde of locusts, snapping up vast quantities of items like flour that don't cost them a lot to pay for, store or carry. Meanwhile, people who are buying flour partly due to reasons of making their bread more affordable are less likely to have a car or even large cupboards.
Either all the bread machines were dug out of the closets or those bread recipes from Pinterest are getting put to work.
it is not uncommon to find 10 and 15 lb bags in most stores as well
And then there are lots of people where a $100 hedge is a pretty simple choice.
(I bought 5 pounds of flour, about on the normal schedule)
No offense but you sound incredibly sheltered. No one did any cooking in your house growing up? Most of the uses of raw flour are incredibly basic, straightforward recipes.
Literally add water, some kind of fat or oil, and maybe a leavener to flour and you're in business. Cakes, pastry, bread, roti, whatever. Use it as coating for fried chicken, or to thicken a stew. Make flour tortillas, or yorkshire puddings, or muffins, or all verities of noodles. Hard tack will last forever, if you hate yourself but want to store something for years.
The learning curve is trivial -- my mom made me roll out biscuits when I was 11 -- and flour will last forever as long as it stays dry and bug-free. Old flour isn't as tasty as the freshly ground, but you can still make a fine loaf of bread at home with 8+ month old flour; source: made a high hydration loaf last night.
Retail pricing logic suggests that brands would rather price relative to the baseline pricing anyway. It's more likely to be generally inflationary unless of course suppliers manage to meet the current demand and even if they do there's a big risk that demand will crash suddenly at some point which could cost the suppliers or retailers greatly as well as they overproduce items that never get bought and cost money to store. It's a big mess, really.
Either way there is a present glut of expensive things without enough demand, so existing oversupply is liquidated. So expensive things get less expensive.
This is the crucial part, there is no reason to believe this is happening. There is not a 'glut' of expensive things as many are forced to buy the expensive alternative when their preferred choice is gone, and regular consumers of the premium brands still buy them. They just sell out less fast.
Those are what produce the empty shelves.
Every economic textbook will have a demand and supply graph, it's not hard to see what happens when you fix a price arbitrarily and shift the demand curve in that graph to simulate a higher demand. Demand and supply no longer meet -> shortage.
If you don't allow referring to the vast empirical literature on price controls, you've already decided what you want to believe.
I am like a patient asking the doctor is they have evidence this fever is caused by flu, not for example COVID-19. I wouldn't want to be referred to medical textbooks telling flu causes fever as your only evidence.
Price fixing incentivizes hoarding and empty shelves.
Which is what the gp said.
> they'll be on the shelves so rich people can still have them
Complaining about word choice is a tradition around here, I know.
They didn't say that at all, they said something completely different, thereby proving that they don't understand the point.
Not raising prices at all evidently leads to empty shelves. Nobody can buy any eggs, except for the first lucky person that can get all the eggs at a bargain and then waste them without significant financial loss. In the case of toilet paper, there isn't even a loss - you were going to buy it anyway.
As prices rise, demand goes down. The hoarders buy less, or at least pay handsomely for the privilege, which is more fair. Nobody will raise prices until there is no demand whatsoever ($100 eggs), just for the sake of stocked shelves.
This system works strictly better, it's just that people don't understand it. That's why supermarkets don't raise prices. They can blame empty shelves on "a few idiots" (who aren't really idiots) and avoid complaints for price gouging, which could cause severe regulatory fallout.
However, let's just say eggs are five times as expensive: You're going to think twice about buying a whole shelf of them "just in case".
Rich people are going to get their eggs either way.
This bootlicking fatalism is the real problem, imho.
At least people are panic buying a range of items, usually it’s just milk, eggs, and bread. What is the grand plan there? French toast three meals a day for a month? Custard? Really runny scrambled eggs on toast? You might want some raisins if your going all-in on bread pudding. I bet a lot of it ends up getting thrown away.
Also, keep your eyes open for unobvious cheap food - people panic buy the food they know e.g. in NZ: wheat flour, pasta, tinned tomatoes. But while there was no flour, there were still dried beans and other products that have more food value on shelves that were still great value per $.
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 hoarding up upon, pasta, meal in a tin and all those other cheap meal options are now everybody's emergency cupboard of hardness.
Coz, 6 months or so - food banks are going to be flooded with everybodies reality hoardings, just to appease their own karma when in reality the damage is already done and the impact of fear has been born and played out.
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?
Also planted out some sunflowers in the area I'd grown indoors, brighten up the neighbourhood and birds love them. Also some wildflowers I'll be starting soon, ninja out and about in a months time or so as well as some vegetables I don't have space to grow in my flat, but hey, planning ahead and may work out well for the greater good and good spirits are just as important than your 5 a day.
In the Bay Area, I saw it Thursday. For the most part, produce has been pretty available, probably because hoarding it makes little sense.
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.
//
430g Flour (3.5 cups) .5 gram of yeast (1/4t) 9g salt (1.5t) 320g ~70° water (~ 1.33 cup)
Mix the dry stuff then stir in water. Cover the bowl with a big piece of parchment paper and let it sit on the counter for 12-36 hours.
Uncover, dust some flour on the parchment and use it as a work surface. Use a wet spatula to fold it in on itself a few times, and dust flour to keep it from sticking to itself or the paper.
Leave it for 2-4 hours, then lower the whole piece of paper into a dutch oven you’ve pre-heated as hot as your oven will go. Bake for 30 min with the cover on, then without for 15-30+ min to crisp the outside. Go darker than you expect.
//
You’ll find a million variations but same principles: 1) use fermentation to develop both flavor (ala sour dough) and the gluten strands, obviating need to maintain a sourdough starter or to manually knead it 2) bake it in effectively a very small and super hot oven, using the excess moisture in the dough to steam it then, when finished uncovered, cooks the already near-finished bread in a really hot oven to create an ideal crust. This cleverly mimics two features of commercial ovens unavailable to home cooks: steam baking and ultra high heat.
The cheapest all purpose white is ideal too, putting a loaf at what, 50 cents? I’ve gleefully lived off these loaves multiple days with some butter, cheese, anchovies etc.
Fun side benefit: having a glut of delicious bread got me to start making a lot of crostini (aka tartine, toasts, etc), which are great vehicle to quickly experiment with flavor combinations and techniques. It helped me develop as a cook immensely.
Worked in a bakery in college. As my old boss would say, "we don't want blonde, we want em brunette". Big improvement to taste once it cools down, similar in concept to the fond at the bottom of a pan.
We also have Jack Monroe doing a thing on Twitter. #JackMonroesLockdownLarder https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1241045501090332679
On top of that, powdered wheat gluten has never been cheaper, probably because it’s now an unwanted by-product of so much gluten-free baked goods and pasta. You can find it online for about $4/pound.
http://vegweb.com/recipes/baked-seitan-best-meaty-texture-ev...
I'd recommend preparing TVP in the following manner:
1. boil some water and add to TVP (add chia seeds, if possible, for fiber and extra fat-soluble vitamins)
2. in a separate bowl, partially microwave diced cheap vegetables (alternating carrots and whatever was on sale was my go-to)
3. add steamed veg to TVP, add spices/condiments, and microwave for a bit longer
4. stir in peanut butter
should take about five minutes total
For breakfast-y TVP, I replaced the vegetables with cocoa powder. Peanut butter can also be subbed with any free food that you might find (e.g., from lab meetings).
[0] https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/339371/n...
Despite what they say, McDonald's patties are a 100% beef and they're relatively good quality.
More info McD keto hacks here http://www.zerocarbhealth.com/zero-carb-ordering-from-mcdona...
2. Here in SF and every other city I lived ground beef is $9-10/lb
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.
Cacio e Pepe is another easy enough recipe that one can make without needing an excess of ingredients, it’s in the name :)
The advice I got from my doctor is to start with 24 hour fasts. And then try 48 hours. And then probably stop there.
(I am not a medical expert)
These days I just bake my own bread, mostly because it's 100x more delicious. I'm probably not saving any money due to experimenting with all these expensive-ass flours
Personally, a handful of salted peanuts, pistachios, walnuts, or almonds. According to the package, 1 oz (28 g) of walnuts are 180 calories, and 18 g of fat.
Very filling.
I'm no nutritionist, but I guess it's something about carbs causing us to want more carbs, so keeping everything fatty helps reduce that bodily crave.
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 entire meal tastes the same. The second mistake is that every ingredient we use really is an experience to eat in it self. Every 2 ingredients offer 3 different experiences. A, B and A+B
With 3 ingredients you get A, B, C, AB, AC, BC! Thats 6!
With 4 ingredients you get A,B,C,D,AB,AC,AD,BC,BD,CD! Thats 10!
So I needed some kind of structured platform to carefully plan out this adventure. Pizza was my medium of choice but an oven dish should work too. (I make small 25 cm pizzas)
So I got the Gouda, the mozzarella, the camembert and the goat cheese. (there are many more of course) (4)
I got some varieties of mushrooms. (2)
I got some meat, chicken, bacon, salami, ham. (4)
I got some different kinds of fish. (3)
Some fruit is fine too. (2)
But the largest diversity of tastes are in the vegetables(!)(20?)
The "problem" the above presents is that you cant put a lot of anything on there. My pizza is only 25 cm or 490 cm2. Lets say there are 60 bites on it. The goal was to zone it into an adventure of identifiable tastes. More than 4 flavors per bite would ruin the experience.
With 35 different ingredients..., at least 1 slice of olive (or it isn't a pizza) oregano, thyme, basil, onion, garlic, slices of red pepper, black pepper, cayenne pepper.... you just have to many combinations to put everything on it.
Each pizza will have to be a sub set.
I know it instinctively feels weird and disgusting to put a slices of carrot on the pizza but in practice it really takes the journey of flavors some place else. You wouldn't want 3 bites of it but the single bite really creates an additional moment of "oh?" (hilarious note: guests feel the need to tell me the pizza is delicious roughly every 3rd bite)
I just buy different boxes of frozen vegetables but you could cook or bake and/or freeze your own.
We (there is a "we" now) (bake if needed then) sparsely spread the sub-selection of meat and/or fish over their own region. Take a hand full of vegetables mix and place each chunk strategically. Put a lot of thought into the adventure and improve it every time. Take the minimum amount of each cheese you've picked and spread it into similar regions as the meat so that they overlap.
Really put a lot of thought into it. It helps if you look at an ingredient and ask yourself what kind of meals are prepared with it. Then you take the [for example] chunk of cauliflower, put 2 cubes of potato next to it and some Gouda on top.
The end result should be a slab of flour with vegetables on it, good spices and as little meat, fish and cheese as possible. Not because meat, fish or cheese are not wonderful but because they get in the way of the vegetable flavors.
Being cheep as fuck is just a side effect.
The only down side is that you have to keep making pizza 2 or 3 times per day week after week after week. It never gets boring tho.
Final note: Keep as much stuff frozen as you can or your adventure ends up chasing expiration dates.
We don't have that many homeless people in the Netherlands but I've been pondering a business plan for a free or crazy cheap restaurant. There are lots of weird legal constructs if people are not buying food. It is the moment you start selling a product it becomes a business.
For what it's worth they're the following: bitter, cooling, earthy, floral, fruity, herbaceous, hot, nutty, piney, pungent, sour, spicy, sulfury, sweet and woody.
[1] https://www.spicesinc.com/p-3743-flavor-characteristics-of-s...
Now I just go by what a person likes and doesn't. Those often end up rather similar to others.
"will eat anything" is a fun category. These are people you can serve blue cheese, olives, liver, tongue, slugs, insects, brains, placenta (I'm joking)
Interesting article, thanks.
(1) Pizza.
This pizza is good on cost and preparation time, okay to good on nutrition (I'm thinking mostly of calories), and, IMHO, flavor.
Can make a pizza for one for about 9 cents of flour and the whole pizza for 40 cents.
For the dough for 8 such pizzas, I use 650 milliliters of water, 1 kilogram of flour, 1 tablespoon of active dry yeast, and 1 tablespoon of salt.
For one pizza, I form the dough into a flat circle about 8" in diameter, pre-cook in a microwave for 2 minutes, add tomato sauce, Mozzarella cheese, and sliced pepperoni, place on a cast iron frying pan, add a cover, and cook at 1/3 power on a common, large electric stove-top burner for 14 minutes, slice, add 2 tablespoons of grated Pecorino Romano cheese.
More details at
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20666008
and the responses there maybe from some people who assumed I was claiming to do better than their favorite pizzeria.
Also more details at
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18851878
with a cost analysis indicating that one pizza costs 39.203 cents.
(2) Pork BBQ
At Sam's Club I got two fresh pork "Boston Butt" (shoulder) pieces.
One at a time, I put them on a wire roasting rack in a big 'granite' covered roasting pan, placed in an oven at 221 F. About 10 hours later a fast reading meat thermometer reported that the internal meat temperature was 195 F (I was shooting for only about 185 F), and I declared the meat done.
Meat was soft and juicy. There was a lot of liquid in the bottom of the roasting pan.
I used a slotted kitchen spoon to scoop the (soft) meat from the wire rack and roasting pan into a clean plastic dishpan. From there I moved batches one at a time to a cutting board.
There was a small, thin, clean, dry shoulder bone; discarded that.
On the cutting board, I included and mixed in the fat still with the meat.
With a chef's knife with a 12" blade, made parallel cuts about 1" apart and then at 90 degrees again. I grew up in Memphis and there the BBQ sandwiches were from picnic pork shoulder BBQ chopped essentially as I did it here.
From the two pieces, scooped into a total of 6 covered plastic containers, each with 2 quarts of volume. Put 5 of those in the freezer and the 6th in the main part of the refrigerator.
Data:
Raw Weights:
9.69 pounds
10.14 pounds
Costs:
$11.41
$11.97
Cooked weights:
2,466 grams
2,810 grams
Yields:
100 * ( 2,466 /
28.3495 ) / (
9.69 * 16 ) =
56.105%
100 * ( 2,810 /
28.3495 ) / (
10.14 * 16 ) =
61.095%
Total cost per pound
of cooked BBQ:
( 11.41 + 11.97 )
/ ( ( 2,466 +
2,810 ) / (
28.3495 * 16 ) )
= $2.010
Total cost per ounce
of cooked BBQ:
( 11.41 + 11.97 )
/ ( ( 2,466 +
2,810 ) / (
28.3495 ) ) =
$0.125,627
( 2 + 2/3 ) *
0.125,627 = $0.335
Add a bun, some BBQ sauce, some hot BBQ sauce, and some homemade coleslaw (shredded green cabbage and bottled Ranch dressing), and have a good soft, moist, chopped, BBQ pork sandwich.
So the effort put
( 2,466 + 2,810 ) / (
28.3495 * 16 ) =
11.632
Let's see: At 2 2/3 ounces per sandwich, what I put in the refrigerator in the six containers is good for
( ( 2,466 + 2,810 ) /
( 28.3495 ) ) / ( 2 +
2/3 ) = 69
The desperation and helplessness I hear from people after literally days of being affected by other people's panic and by public health orders is completely avoidable. It doesn't matter where you live, natural disasters, pandemics, job loss, closures of basic services and other not-THAT-impossible events are a thing. It doesn't even have to be real. If a handful of people THINK there will be a TP shortage, there will be. Things like hygiene supplies, rice, etc. won't go to waste if the world doesn't end. You'll use them eventually. Just buffer a little.
Be prepared.
I'm not surprised that people are scared right now, because they're used to the anxiety of being one paycheck away from homeless for their entire lives. And now they don't have a paycheck.
Again you may actually be in a bad spot financially and if you are I hope you get out of it soon, but I know many many many many people that simply can not budget properly, and even when they make more income their "needs" raise to consume that extra income about 2 seconds after they get the increase
"if you look at their daily life they eat out often, stop a Starbucks routinely, have the latest iPhone, have subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and a 100 Channel TV Line up, have massive credit card debit from buying things they did not need, etc etc etc"
Show me your bootstraps folks I know you all got em. Put down your iphones and pull up your pants. Listen up I'm here to condescend.
In addition to your point, I'd dare say that one has a duty to his fellows to build up a small reserve during times of plenty, not just of monies, but basic living supplies, like food, water, hygiene products. When one has just a bit more security of his own, he's better able to help others. One's less likely to panic buy and contribute to a shortage. It's easier to remain calm when others are freaking out. The reduced stress makes it easier to not get sick(er) and remain as able-bodied as one is normally. And that's the kind of person I'd want as a neighbor or part of my community in a crisis.
Looking at the person you are replying to, who for many months had to choose between utility bill or food, please show a little compassion for how difficult saving can be when you have an unstable income (i.e. you are a shift worker at any of the many US companies that uses shift workers and computer algos to only schedule people for when there is workplace demand).
I have compassion on all the people who felt absolutely fucked this week because they had never done that.
Also I did this on minimum wage for 4 years. I'm not judging I'm giving advice. If you disagree, I an my supply of toilet paper, rice and pinto beans will keep on truckin'.
That just says people don't save any money, not that they can't save any money.
That's not to say that saving money isn't difficult for some people, but by itself that number doesn't prove your point.
Two things could make this situation a lot worse.
1. A worker strike because of panic, or overwork, or opportunity, or inequality, or whatever. I hope everyone has realized the truck drivers and shelf stockers are way more important than Hollywood celebs. But I wouldn’t “rely” on shelves just being magically stocked as panic increases. There is unfortunately a smug level of “well of course they’re going to drive the trucks and stock the shelves! They need to because they’re poor, they wouldn’t do these jobs if they weren’t”, wether people have that as a conscious realization or not.
2. Terrorist attack (terries getting froggy). Obviously this is a bad time to try and blow up a car at Times Square, but, what do you think the reaction would be if 5 people across the country went and shot up three or four grocery stores each? It would be BAD with let’s say compared to 9/11 it would take extremely little effort.
All that’s needed to make this worse is more panic, and the media is trying their hardest on that.
The issue with pay isn't just how important a job is. It also depends on how replaceable people are in a job,and how much skilled and educated you need to be in order to do that job. Pretty much anyone that isn't too old or disabled can stock shelves, including kids. Not everyone can entertain millions of people to a high degree, or be a doctor or lawyer.
A strike in this situation will probably result in automation being pushed harder, because there will be a sense of "these people will abandon their duties just when they're most needed". There is also a sense of duty that nurses and doctors have towards their professions. Plus there are hundreds of thousands who got laid off or got their hours cut, and those would gladly take any jobs of strikers right now.
But for truck drivers? No, I don’t think you are right. If you think trucking is a no skill no experience needed job with instantly replaceable workers, there isn’t much we’ll agree on.
I think the side you aren’t considering is forget “striking”, what happens if there is enough panic to make people not do the things they’re supposed to do? Or whatever reason that keeps people from keeping the gears moving. How long do you think it takes to run out of the “replaceable” people?
Eggs are an issue.
Eggs can also be frozen if you remove the shells.
My stores have PLENTY of non-perishable items, but you know what’s missing for me?
Russet potatoes, bottled water (which will last you like a week without a means to make more), frozen pizzas, bananas, bread, milk, eggs.
I don’t get it.
Also, not wanting to make unnecessary trips to the supermarket where you can potentially come in contact with infected people.
My goto 'cheap' meal is bacon, eggs, sautéed tomatoes/mushrooms. It's more than $1.50/day, but has good nutrition and tastes good. Potatoes have also not been an issue here. So another feed the family, reasonable meal is pot roast.
I think sweet potatoes (more nutritious) are even on sale.
thing is where i am we do these things as a matter of course,
at any time we could have supply failure ,major earthquake major fires or a really bad winter.
they are more expensive. that's all. same thing is happening where i live, all other potatoes are disappearing but them russets are just staying there. but our store restocks potatoes in the morning.
pasta, noodles, tomato cans, and rice are not being restocked though.
Water takes space and needs maintenence to keep in large quantity
its better to be able to generate clean water than try to keep large quanta of water clean
Propane to boil takes up a lot less space than water itself. Sawyer filters cost less than a couple days of water. Etc
If I was in a city I might understand collection of a water is the issue, where I am and seeing bottled water disappear we have no shortage of non-potable water.
the water is probably panic buying, but the other missing items in your list could just be the result of an above average number of shoppers buying a typical distribution of items. also, you don't consider frozen pizza a non-perishable?
the store I go to seems to have recovered from the initial shock. everything seems to be stocked except sanitizer, which is short everywhere. the only other thing empty is the fresh meat display, which I assume is one of the harder things to restock.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/should-you-refrigerate-...
eggs can be OILed to inhibit contamination through the pourous shell [naval eggs]
On a side note I wonder how the pandemic will impact food service in the long run from the perspective that before the pandemic many people never prepared their own meals. Now in many areas people are for the first time limited to groceries and produce instead of restaurants and fast food. If people continue their own food preparation moving forward this will have interesting consequences for nutrition, poverty, food availability, and so forth.
As an interesting example my son attends a Title 1 school which means many students are utterly reliant on the school for meals while other meals are almost always fast food for many of these students. How parents are not able to afford to feed their children and yet drive new cars and give their children cell phones is a different conversation.
This will be "real" food scarcity, not the stuff manufactured by the left and the media, with food deserts and all. I haven't seen fresh beef or chicken and the grocery stores for two weeks now.
I doubt we'll get to the point of our grandparents and great grandparents, where they didn't waste anything when it came to food because they grew up during the depression.
But it will be a net positive for the country to go back to cooking their own meals, generally eating healthier, and eating less calories overall. The USA doesn't need to be in the top of the lists of obesity.
There may be casualties in the food and restaurant industry. But in a way we reached peak food with how ridiculous some places and prices were becoming.
But I only shop on Saturday mornings so maybe that’s why.
I don't know where you are located, but beef and fish was never an issue here. Chicken and pork sold out, but have been getting restocked every other day.
Can you explain what about COVID-19 is going to cause food scarcity in the US?
Cell phones have a regressive indicator. When you have less time (single parent, multiple jobs) coordinating with that caregiver or a backup caregiver (bus, grandparent, friend) is important (and in a world without pay phones). In addition, a phone serves as "cheap" entertainment (games, social networks).