I Fed Myself for a Week on $20 (Here’s the Receipt)

📖 These meals written down with the measures: https://vernasbook.com so you're not guessing at the stove. My printed cookbook ships to your door! Seven days of food for one person, nineteen dollars and eleven cents with tax, and every line of the bill is in here. It is not a register tape. It is every price from the shelf this week, in the order I would walk the store. And there is a five-word rule from my mother for the day a lean week usually breaks. Stay for Thursday. 🥄 THE LIST (shelf prices checked this week, so take it as a map and not a promise) • Pinto beans, 2 lb: $2.45 • Long grain rice, 2 lb: $2.42 • Eggs, a dozen: $1.67 • Russet potatoes, 5 lb: $3.09 • Yellow onions, 3 lb: $2.84 • Green cabbage, one head: $2.18 • Yellow cornmeal, 24 oz: $2.29 • Diced tomatoes, one can: $0.96 Subtotal $17.90. Tax about $1.21 (my county's grocery rate). Total about $19.11, or 91 cents a meal. Not counted: salt, pepper, about a cup of bacon grease or lard for the week, and cider vinegar. 🍲 THE WEEK Breakfast: hoe cakes with an egg, fried potatoes and onions, or rice fried to a crust. Lunch: beans over rice, or bean cakes with a raw onion. Supper: fried cabbage and potatoes, the second pot of beans, or whatever you did not have at breakfast. 🔥 THE SIX MOVES 1. A pot of beans (1 lb pintos, salted soak, 8 cups water, an onion, bare simmer 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours, mash a cup, salt at the end) 2. Rice (2 cups rice to 4 cups water, covered 18 minutes). Cool it within an hour, refrigerate, eat within 3 to 4 days, heat until steaming. 3. Hoe cakes (cornmeal, salt, boiling water, rest 10 minutes, fry in grease) 4. Fried potatoes and onions (don't stir the first 6 to 7 minutes) 5. Fried cabbage with onion (let it brown, vinegar at the finish) 6. The second pot of beans, with the tomatoes stirred in only after the beans are soft 🍳 THURSDAY: press 2 cups of cold rice into 2 spoons of hot grease, leave it alone 6 to 8 minutes until a golden crust forms, then top it with browned cabbage and a fried egg. A FEW HONEST WORDS: by my arithmetic this comes to about 1,800 calories a day (closer to 2,000 with the cooking grease) and around 65 grams of protein. There is no fruit, milk, or meat in it. It is a stretch week, not a way to live. If you take medicine for blood pressure or sugar, or you have kidney trouble, ask your doctor first, because beans carry a lot of potassium. I am a cook, not a doctor. If this saved you a dollar or two this week, I would take a subscribe as a personal kindness. It costs you nothing and it helps me keep making these for you. Have a blessed day. -Verna CHAPTERS 0:00 $19.11 for seven days 0:26 The list, line by line 1:39 How the week runs 2:08 Move 1: the pot of beans 3:54 Move 2: rice (and the one rule) 4:35 Move 3: hoe cakes 5:29 Move 4: fried potatoes and onions 6:41 Move 5: fried cabbage 7:24 Move 6: the second pot of beans 8:02 Bean cakes for lunch 9:09 Thursday: put a brown on it 10:19 A few honest words 11:15 Your turn #budgetmeals #frugalliving #cheapmeals #seniormeals