/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>19256955
Food budget should be 15-25% of your income, depending on your lifestyle/dependents. I know retards that spend their whole check on going out, ordering food, drinking, smoking DUDElamo, and leaving themselves nothing for utilities, car payments, or rent/mortgage. Don't be like them

>>19256966
Part of the reason I ask I guess is because I don't really know what a decently fulfilling dinner should cost. It's hard to cook for yourself and find portions of meat and pasta or w/e that is just for one person for a single meal.

A half decent microwaveable meal at the grocery costs between $4-5, which can typically include meat and and some kind of carb like pasta or bread. Should a half decent cheap dinner that serves 3-4 people match that price? How much should a lunch or breakfast cost?

>>19256978
It's not hard to find food and portions for one. You have a freezer don't you? Food storage containers? Save whatever you don't use. Any butcher section at any grocery will change the size of a cut for you. Pasta, rice, and all the sort are easy to get single uses/portions out of.
You can't put a price on all the things you're asking. It's different everywhere you go and quite situational

I look at my inventory then check my bank account and decide how much food i need and how much to spend
Probably average $100/week

>>19257085
Whoa, look at Rockefeller over here!
$200/month
If you spend more than $5 on a meal, you are either splurging (not a bad thing) or spending too much (bad thing)

>>19257102
$5/meal, 3 meals a day, 30 days in a month. That's 90 meals, anon. Comes to $450/mo

>>19257139
Reading comprehension.
I said IF you spend MORE than $5/meal.
Most of my meals come out to near $1/meal.

>>19257143
Math comprehension
$100/week is LESS than $5 /meal

>>19257143
I read it perfectly. I don't understand what you don't understand. You're also not spending $1 a meal. Shut up.

>>19257146
I'll take that L, the "if" portion of my post was meant for OP to answer their question. My bad.

>>19257154
Lol I am though.
It's not that hard to buy bulk meat, bulk grains, bulk veggies.
My meals are simple but they are healthy and affordable.
They also taste much better than OP's microwaveable meals

>>19257143
If you wanted to get your $200/mo point across, you would had stated no more than $2.22/meal.

>>19257165
But that's not my point. I'm saying $5 as the max to spend per meal.

>>19257139
3 meals a day is a jewish meme but regardless, if you're going to do that you shouldn't be spending that kind of money on every meal.

Breakfast should be small and extremely cheap, it's a meal that's just supposed to activate the brain and give you some energy.
Lunch should be something moderate but very easily prepared. Meant to stop you from feeling hungry.
Dinner is the big meal that you put the time and care into and spend the most money on ingredients for.

If you're legitimately spending $5 per meal, 3 meals a day you're probably either a fat fuck or paying for overpriced breakfasts and lunches.

>>19257167
Then your acclaimed max budget for food is like $50 a month more than OPs $400+/mo budget that you overreacted to. Just shut up

>>19257174
I don't eat breakfast. Sometimes I skip lunch. Also, no one asked.

>>19257274
>Rockefeller
It's a joke, relax. Thought I clarified myself in the following posts.
>>19257282
Try to spend more than 5 seconds thinking of a reply so we can respond to your stupidity in one post instead of 5
>no one asked
Except OP (which, again cause you seem to be slow, means Original Poster, not another anon in the thread), and it's an image board. You seem angry, anon, maybe you're eating too much with your extravagant $400/mo meal plan?
If you ate less you'd probably have a lower blood pressure and would understand sarcasm better

>>19257282
>I don't eat breakfast. Sometimes I skip lunch.
The post specifically pointed out 3 meals a day, 30 days a month.

>>19256955
I try not to go over $150 (including eating out/ordering). I can budget down to $50 a week probably and on average usually spend about $60-90 if I don't eat out and $100-150 if I do.

Rarely I will go someplace nice and or treat peolple which will jack it up a lot more.

>>19256955
Roughly 40-60 baht a meal. No more than 200 baht a day.

>>19257304
>>19257309
Imagine perpetuating your life at these levels of faggotry

>>19257640
Imagine spending an entire hour, probably Googling average grocery spending, the history of the term OP, and other irrelevant searches just to come up with this reply.
Don't even pretend to not be the same fag

>>19257660
This has taken seconds and I haven't needed to Google anything

>>19257424
same, it's not hard unless you eat out

>>19256955
buy spam, green beans, potatoes

put that shit in a pot

pepper, paprika, cumin, tabasco sauce, and a lil cinnamon (no salt as the spam provides the salt)

shits cash money and cheap as fuck

just came to here to say Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist is my anti-drug

>>19257731
enjoy heart disease and modified food starch poisoning

>>19256955
I only spend about $50 on food each week. Sometimes more depending on the time of year or if I need to buy extra seasonings. It would be less if I didn’t have to buy fat free Greek yogurt which is about 7 dollars for the brand I like or if I didn’t buy seltzer waters. A lot of people suggest going to bulk places like Costco or Sam’s Club but I live alone and eat twice a day.

>>19256955
In Australia, I think you can get away with spending about $15 a day on food. Some days will be more and some will be less but that'd be what it averages to. If you want to cut costs you can easily get breakfast to ~$1 a serve, lunch can be something like a couple of sandwiches which probably weigh in at around $2 depending how you make them and the rest is spread out over things like little snacks (eg a muesli bar at smoko) and dinner.
Assuming you have all the little things eg. herbs/spices/stock cubes/oil etc etc just hanging around your pantry, you can make enough food to feed you dinner for a working week for around $30 buckos.
For example, a fair serve of bolognese takes about a kilo of protein (~$15), a few cans of tomato (~$4), vegetables (~$4), and a few little things like stock cubes, oil, herbs and spices that hopefully you already mostly have (maybe amounting to $1.50 worth of ingredients).
By the time you add in pasta to bulk it all out and maybe some salad side or garlic bread etc you can stretch the meal right out and it'll run you ~$5 a hit, maybe slightly more and maybe slightly less depending on what deals you can get.
Anyway I have the coof so my brain is barely working but the point is $15 a day averaged out and weighted appropriately over all your meals should feed you fairly well and you can certainly go less than that if you need to go pov mode for a month. It's much easier to blow out your food budget when you get food delivered, eat out or even just like to buy a coffee or two a day. If you like to go out drinking it's very easy to blow a reasonable weeks food budget in a single night.

>>19256955
If you spend more than 3k a year on food you are not even trying. Not really sure what you are asking. Here are some saving tips though.
>fasting 1 day a week or 5 days a month is healthy, and means you only have to budget for 300 days a year
>produce markets will often give away free unsaleable produce, generally with just a tiny bit of mold to be cut off or a large bruise or it looks fucked up and ugly
>food banks have more than enough food for everyone including you
>meat is cheapest first thing in the morning
And you know, make your own food obviously.

>>19256955
Is 2k a month too much for one person

>>19256955
Everyone has their own way of doing this, and people that go down the rabbit hole of proper budgeting probably have stronger advice, but I do it this way.
>40% of my paycheck immediately goes into untouchable savings
>another 30% is set aside for rent™
>the rest of it is disposable on bills and whatever I want (booze, smokarettes, food, buying dumb shit to make me happy, insurance and utilities)
I only watch the disposable balance every few days. I buy what I want, I eat what I want, after 3 or so days I check how I'm going and adjust. If I get down to like $100 and I'm still 4 days from payday I won't be buying pizzas and shit, I just adjust as I go but not in daily or strict increments. Idunno, I guess my life is simple enough that this works for me (no kids etc). Luckily I love cooking so that already helps but †bh sometimes I buy fucking lobster steak and scallops and then it's pasta and saurse for a few days to get back on track. The only thing that's strict is savings stay in savings and rent is paid early.

>>19260046
Oh, and not from personal experience but you can dumpster dive for food as well. My uncle has never held a job and lived his entire life on a modest amount of prize money he won professionally mountain biking in his early 20s by dumpster diving for food among other things. Apparently really good stuff gets thrown out.

>>19260086
>dumpster dive for food

>>19260103
Hey man if it is perfectly good and the big chain is just throwing it out as opposed to selling it or even giving it away for legal/company policy reasons I am not knocking it.