Poverty Food Tip of the Day - A fruit and a bread

[FrodoSwaggins]

"Canned biscuits?" "cooking meat?" OK ROCKEFELLER
But seriously my biggest poverty cooking tip is learn to look at unit price and convert units in your head:

• $1.60 a pound is $0.10 an ounce. Anything that costs more than $1.60 a pound costs more than $0.10 an ounce.
  
• Anything over $3.20 a pound is over $0.20 an ounce.
  
• 12 ounce box of pasta? 1 pound box of linguini? 16 oz box of farfalle? Who gives a shit, we're converting that out to per ounce!
  

Also though, use soda bread dough for everything, it'll work for bread, rolls, biscuits, pretzels, pizza, etc. 
You have to thin it out for pancakes with additional water and it won't fry right without an egg mixed in (still eats fine though).
For cakes, look up any microwave cake recipe, like this one:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
  
• 1 cup white sugar
  
• 8 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
  
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
  
• ½ teaspoon salt
  
• 2 cups water
  
• 8 tablespoons cooking oil
  

That's 20 minutes in the oven at 350 or 1 hour in a slow cooker on high. Doesn't come up well on the stovetop unless you have a dutch oven. You could use the same mix for cupcakes, or leave out the cocoa for a white cake. Half the cocoa and a splash of beet juice for red velvet.
I like to make that up as a chocolate cake in the oven with rehydrated craisins and crushed walnuts mixed in. I cut the cocoa too otherwise it can be a bit much.

Edited to note Budget Bytes is a fantastic resource by the way.

This post was last modified: 03-03-2025, 08:12 PM by FrodoSwaggins.