Mine isn’t really a “Meal”, I used to put margarine spread on white bread and sprinkle a tiny bit of cinnamon and sugar on it as a sweet treat growing up.
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Until more recent times, a handful of hard boiled eggs was cheap, highly nutritious, and damned good with a sprinkle of salt/pepper/tajin/paprika/furikake or a dollop of mayo/sour creme/sriracha/nacho cheez/butter/etc. Potatoes are still pretty good in the same ways; just bake and let cool and you can add any of those same toppings and chow down at any time. Or get the smaller ones and airfry with a spritz of oil and salt. As long as you eat the skins, it’s good nutritionally too.
Cube, oil, salt, pepper, garlic, oregano and squeeze a shot ton of lemon on them after rising to a nice golden brown
Surprisingly quick
Carrots salted oiled and waay more dill than it looks like you need also delicious. Grow your own, finding the right variety of carrots and you will be wondering where they have been all your life
Still cant find the ones my grandparents used to yell at us for eating straight from their garden
I once made “Povery rolls”
I took every last scrap of leftover food, all the half bags of frozen veggies and so on from the freezer. Defrosted it all, put it in a stock pot and cooked it till it was a thick stew moved it to a giant bowl and went buck wild with the electric mixer then threw in about 4kg of self raising flour and water. The dough tasted ok, but then I did the same thing with the spice rack… stock cubes, french soup mix… the works. They tasted odd. But I rested the dough, divided them up and baked them anyways.
Fuuuuuuuck they were amazing. They tasted like a family sunday roast dinner flavored heavy doughy roll. It made about 50 of them. I scoured the house for change and found enough to go grab a decent sized packet of powdered gravy mix.
I was genuinely sad when I used the last ones.
Tortillas. Just tortillas. Warmed over a gas burner. It’s a comfort food to me now, but there was a time when all I had was tortillas, and it tastes better than my other struggle meal, which was a single cup of rice with whatever spices I had on hand and hadn’t put on the previous day. I lost a lot of weight around then. Still haven’t fully gained it back ten plus years later, and still struggle eating regularly more than once or twice a day.
Toast bread with a bit of ketchup and a slice of cheese on top, sprinkle a bit of salt if necessary, then bake until the cheese bubbles. I call it the poor man’s pizza.
Cup of steamed rice. Small tin of tuna - I like the lemon and cracked pepper ones. Splash of soy sauce. 30 seconds in the microwave.
I dry nori sheets out, crush them up and put them in an old pepper mill. Few grinds into a bowl of tuna and rice with a splash of soy and its a ghetto sushi bowl.
“stuggle” ?
damn its been like that all day and you’re the first person to point it out.
One might say it was quite a stuggle.
Cook 2 bags of ramen and strain it. Add a can of tomato soup and some cheddar. I like to call them regrettios.
2nd up is ghetto pizzas. Make some toast put on tomato sauce and cheese also pepperoni if you can afford it
Elbow macaroni and pasta sauce
Scramble some eggs plain and mix into rice and some canned corn. Butter + Sriracha + soy/tamari . We call it “bachelor stir-fry” and it’s especially good if you can get your paws on some sesame oil!
A former partner taught me that a drop or two of sesame oil in most things give a nice umami kick.
If you live near or attend a large university, the real struggle meal is just food from free events on campus.
When I was a grad student I’d show up to every event on campus where I knew there’d be food and fill up a Tupperware or two. Didn’t matter if it was connected to my department or not.
The rule was if you wanted the grad students to come to a talk you had to put out little cubes of cheese.
Seminar and BEvERages provided
Unrelated: I used to go to tech meetups in my city fairly often. There was one guy who always seemed to be there just for the food. I only knew him by his username (‘Lex R’ - a programming pun) and never talked to him. Tall skinny dude; if I had to guess, I’d say he was around 50ish.
Every meetup without fail, this guy ate so much pizza. One time I counted 11 slices. He also drank at least a 2L of soda - didn’t matter if it was diet or regular, he drank it. About 10 minutes before the meetup ended, he’d put a bunch of leftover slices in a pizza box to take with him. And he had a bottle of some kind in his bag that he’d pour the dregs of all the soda bottles into, and would take that with him too. It was weird because it was a tech meetup, presumably most people were making at least 6 figures.
Until today I had never considered that this might be his only source of food.
Store brand white bread.
Mayo or Miracle whip, whichever was cheapest.
Sliced American cheese, cheapest variety.
Maybe some pepper, if feeling enthusiastic.Long live poverty nachos
Bacon and white rice with pickles.
https://www.knorr.com/us/en/p/spanish-rice-side.html/00041000022685
Depending on your level of struggle, these rice packets cost about ~$1.25 USD and cook in 7 minutes, you just gotta stir 'em a bit.
To that I’ll add some protein, either some sausages I cooked on the George Foreman grill and sliced up or a packet of flavored tuna. This is mostly no effort or unattended.
For veggies, I’ll steam up something fresh or microwave some frozen mixed veggies. Either way this can be done in 3-5 minutes, unattended.
Some effort, but still very low. You can get everything started at once while you stand there and stir the rice packet on the stove, everything should wrap up in less than 10 minutes and you’ll have a relatively complete and filling mill for hopefully less than $5 USD but I don’t even fucking know anymore with inflation, tariffs, and out of control groceries. Should still be more cost effective than a lot of alternatives, though.
EDIT: The rice packet can honestly be quite a bit for a single person, depending. You may want to pad it out with a few more things like mushrooms and beans, then you can split the meal in two. Eat half now and save half to be microwaved later to stretch it out and for when you have no prep time at all.
Spaghetti with tomato and avocado. Add some olive oil, sunflower seeds and a bit of cheese if you are feeling rich. *Avocado is really cheap where I live, you can literally get them for free
