Favorite Poverty Meal?

[TKehl]

Pea porridge is pretty good.  Hard peas, onions, and sausage.  Boil then simmer down to a paste.  Actually pretty good.  ;)

Frequent fare is Hamburger helper with double the noodles plus onions, beans, and anything out of the garden to stretch it to feed 6.  Plain for the kids and extra spices for the wifey and me.  ;D

Figured out a dozen+ ways to flavor a baked potato in college.


Growing up, we always had beef and pork in the freezer.  Bologna from the store was a treat!  :D

[pineywoods]

I can't believe nobody has mentioned baked sweet taters. Fresh out of the oven, topped with fresh home-made butter..

[mike_belben]

My wife just fried some bacon with onions and a plop of butter, then shovelled some shredded cabbage in to simmer in the juice with a little oil and salt/pepper.  This is crazy but i think it was one of the best things i ever ate in my life.  I dont even really like cabbage, boiled atleast.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Try cutting a pack of good beef hot dogs cross ways into cubes and fry in the bacon grease before adding the cabbage and you will like it even better.  digin1

[Raider Bill]

Throw a chopped up apple in with the cabbage

[mike_belben]

Oh ...my mouth is watering now boy

[curved-wood]

Yesterday we had chanterelle (wild mushroom) pasta. The wild mushrooms are fried in butter with garlic and parsley from the garden. That's cheap but tasty . When I was a student we were eating spagetti with just melted butter. With age I added  a quite a bit of taste for about the same price...took me some 40 years to make the change...I am a slow guy ;)

[Stihlman]

Surprised that nobody mentioned Kluub ( Potatoe dumplings). Garden potatoes ground up mixed with flour into a ball and boiled in seasoned water. Next meal sliced and fried in a cast iron pan with grease or butter served with butter or if lucky bacon grease.

[bigred1951]

I've never eat it but I've heard older folks talk about picking a bunch of dandelions from the yard then batter them up and fry them. Heard they was good just never tried it.

[Roxie]

Dandelion greens are close in taste to collards.  My grandfather would eat a big bowl of collard greens when they were boiled in ham water left over from processing ham.  If there was no ham 'broth' they were just fried with lard on the cook stove. 

My grandchildren have helped me pick dandelion greens and cut them up into our salad. 

[mike_belben]

I just planted collards yesterday actually.  

[thecfarm]

dandelion greens, something that I did not have to eat growing up. Spring time fare was on the table,most time salt pork was added to them.

[Raider Bill]

Another one we had was pasta and egg.

[No_Dude]

So do you take the flowers from the Dandelions or ???

[thecfarm]

No flowers. But the wife makes a tasty dandelions jelly from the flowers.
The dandelions are picked long before the flowers come. You want to pick the greens early. Kinda like alot of that stuff,harvest them when they are just starting to grow. Tender and taste good. Or so I was told. 

[Engineer]

This time of the year, poverty meals are easy.  Anything we can scrounge from the garden, cut up into a big bowl, mixed with cubed chicken.  Can feed 4 for less than $3.  Sometimes all it takes is two slices of bread, some Miracle Whip and a beefsteak tomato and you got a nearly free meal.

Some things are always cheap and are staples in my house.  Rice, potatoes, onions and cabbage for veggies, chicken and pork for meats, and you can bake your own bread for pennies.  We buy bulk pasta too, usually less than 75 cents a pound.  Local restaurant supply carries boneless chicken for $1.49 a lb all the time, same with whole pork loin.  We can or freeze some things like applesauce and tomato sauce but not consistently.  The "poverty" foods that some folks mention like hamburger, hot dogs, canned soup, saltines, etc. - those are not really cheap when you consider price per lb. 

[Just Right]

  Sometimes all it takes is two slices of bread, some Miracle Whip and a beefsteak tomato and you got a nearly free meal.

I am with you on a good ole 'Mater samich.  Don't forget the salt and pepper.  But if you need me to send you some Duke's mayo I will.  The thought of Miracle Whip ruining it,  NOBODY should have to live like that! :D  We had a wind storm last week and it got our tomato plants.  Plant to big and sticks too thin.  So our tomato season got shortened.

[Al_Smith]

Red tailed hawk, Spotted Owl being a white meat just gets old after a while.   :D

Speaking which and which I'd never eat ,red tail or owl  .Yesterday morning I had one,red tail  snatch and dine on a squirrel about 100 feet from the house .It was so large I almost mistook it for an eagle of which believe it or we also have ,corn fields or not .Huge hawk 

[olcowhand]

Engineer,
I agree a lot regarding most of your post, but most of the Dogs and burger in my freezer are either home grown beef, pork or venison.
As for garden "Poverty" meals, I'm 100% in agreement. I still will go to the garden and pick a "Mess" (remind our southern brothers of a song about Poke Salad?) of Swiss Chard and just have that, with a little garlic or onion simmered down with it- and some butter on top. And Swiss Chard will simmer down! you can stack a 12" Skillet as high as it will stay, and not get enough to fill a plate (or an empty belly, sometimes), but every bite is good!
Thanks for reminding us that many of our best poverty meals are in our own back yards.

[mike_belben]

Ive never had swiss chard but almost planted it last week.  Seeds were from 2014 so i tossed em.  Put in collards, beets and buttercrunch lettuce instead.  

The pokeweed all got harvested for a new lasagna bed.

[thecfarm]

swiss chard is a good poverty plant too. Cut it and it grows back. I had a couple plants that came back this spring too.

[No_Dude]

Must be a northern green? never heard of chards at all

[Ianab]

This is something we used to eat all the time growing up on the farm. 
Watercress. 
I found the "mother lode" of it today  :D


Back home for lunch. Cheese, marmite and watercress sammies  8)

[Texas Ranger]

We would collect watercress when trout fishing in cold running streams, I was always concerned about the white wiggles that were in it, Dad said just protein.

[LittleJohn]

Cream of Mushroom soup over toast, was always a staple when younger.

...now that the wife can't stand the texture/taste of mushroom :(