Here is my situation:

Churches give out free food, try those if you have too much pride to dumpster dive.

They usually give you canned vegetables, 2-3 cans of soup, a box of serial, and pbj here in MD

>Maybe I have medical bills to pay
you don't, faggot. There are no debters prison in the U.S. and they can only garnish your wages with a judges approval. You obviously have no wages to garnish. fuck off.

>$50 for 3 months
>I live in the southern US

Does 'US' in this case stand for 'Ugandan slums or something?

>I made this thread for advice on spicing things up

That's exactly what we're giving you, since you can't afford anything else.

Considering his roommate situation I have to assume illegal immigrant.

This, check out some churches for food donations, it's the best solution for your shitty situation for the time being.

either get a job or another job, take out a credit card or something. Go to homeless feeding events if you are too much of a sperg for that.
a penny saved a penny earned, but this is a retarded system you've got going, born out of stupidity not necessity

>came hoping for cooking and maybe some food shopping advice
>get life advice and fuckpoorpeople judgement instead

It's definitely Veeky Forums here, but I assumed a niche board would be more, I dunno, on-topic.

>how can I make half a day's salary at minimum wage feed me for three months?? (~_^)

figure your shit out, my man

Did you not even read the original post all the way through?

In no way was I asking that. I said I'm already making it work, and wondering if anyone knew or had any ideas on how to cook better meals with what i'm already getting, or if better ingredients are possible within that budget.

Have you tried getting a job?

rice, liquid aminos, powdered eggs (should be cheaper), beans. scrounge for rice toppings in trash

unless you're 5'3'' 130 pounds and a cup of rice a day isn't really working

honestly it sounds like you're doing as well as you could be, I don't think there's much more you could do without going over budget

>maybe some food shopping advice

You literally can't afford anything more than what you're already buying.
Even Veeky Forums's resident poorfags assume ~50/mo for food shopping

What you need is either more income or free food.

Are you all retarded? This isn't what OP is asking at all.

Powdered eggs should be cheaper? I hadn't even considered that.

The cheapest I've been able to find for eggs was a dozen for 80 cents with a particular brand that is only sometimes in stock. Also it's not great quality, so after I tried it a few different times and it didn't sit well, I gave up on the idea.

I'll look into this.

Huh? It's been working fine for over a year. I did say I add veggies and beans to the rice too, not just eating rice by itself of course. The amount of food I eat is plenty, no problems there whatsoever. I am just concerned about variety and blandness.

Right?

No one cares about your stupid made-up budget. There's no reason anyone would only have that much money for food. If you are truly poor, you can qualify for food stamps. If you are in this country illegally and can't qualify for food stamps, I hope you starve. Even if you were undocumented, you could get handouts from churches and no matter what your situation is, you could definitely budget better.

If you're too stupid to figure it out on your own, you deserve to have to eat plain white rice for the next however long you decide you're gonna keep being stupid. This is a food and cooking board, not a board for starving Ethiopians subsisting off shit pies and dead flies. How do you even have internet or a computer/phone?

Neck yourself you retarded cunt.

Potatos.

you have to account for the loss of volume from dehydration

I would suggest springing for some seasoning. That and dumpster diving are about all I can recommend.

Unlike these other anons, I am sorry to hear about your situation user. You seem to be doing the best you can with it. Bless you, stay strong.

You win. Everything you said and everything you assume is totally true and accurate. You caught me.

No need to linger in this thread anymore, you are victorious and may now move on to conquer other threads.

I wanted to be helpful, but $50 for 3 months of food equates to about $16.66 a month, or roughly $3.76 a week. Subtracting tax, and you're down to $3.55 a week. I honestly don't think you CAN eat better for that little in this country; even your Africa-tier diet should be putting you in debt, since the 3 or 4 pounds of rice and beans you claim to eat a week should be running you at least $5.

how do you afford to add vegetalbes to it?
at 16 dollars a month would a can of veggies not eat up about a dollar of that, and I assume you'd have them more than once a week

unless you have a freezer and are doing frozen, in which case it's more plausible

>Subtracting tax,
What fucking state taxes food?

>What is sales tax?

...When you buy things in this country, there's a sales tax. Usually somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 to 8%.
Do you live in 1920's Russia or something?

States that tax groceries (rate if not fully taxed): Alabama, Arkansas (3%), Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois (1%), Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri (1.225%), Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee (5.5%), Utah (1.75%), Virginia (1.5% + 1% local option tax), and West Virginia (5%).

You said you lived in the south and the only feasible store is wal-mart, would a garden be feasible where you live?

non processed food isn't taxed in a lot of places

about 19 of them.

Arkansas, Illinois, South Dakota, Mississippi, Alabama, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Utah, Tennessee, Virginia, Hawaii, Idaho, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Colorado, and North and South Carolina.

there's no sales tax on groceries you mongs.

Shite red states tax food. Ok now I understand.

I actually have a bigass container of garlic salt that has somehow lasted me for all this time so far. It's bent over pitifully from being near a stove for so long, and nearly empty now, but it's a trooper.

Kind of you to be concerned, but I really can't complain. I'm healthy and happy, just a bit frustrated with food. There are people much worse off.

>even your Africa-tier diet should be putting you in debt, since the 3 or 4 pounds of rice and beans you claim to eat a week should be running you at least $5.

I buy 20lbs bags of rice at a time, and it's like 6 bucks I think? The beans I get, mainly lintels, mung beans, and occasionally pintos, are close to as cheap, but of course not quite. I definitely don't exceed $50 per shopping trip, and i'm definitely staying within the 3month limit.

>how do you afford to add vegetalbes to it?

I found a particular brand of mixed vegetables that come in bulk sized cans, I don't remember the exact price offhand but I think it comes out to something like 4-5 cents an ounce? Either way, once I crack a can open, I have to commit to using it up, but it's well worth the price.

10% tax where I live.

Where?

>there's no sales tax on groceries you mongs.
My years of receipts from grocery stores in states that aren't these
say otherwise.

So you pay sales tax in states that don't have sales tax on groceries?

I don't think you meant what you typed.

Yeah you're probably right.

The majority of places.

are you hitting 800 calories a day?
Bean amount is still unannounced but assuming it is the same as rice you're at like 500 a day, which is not a whole hell of a lot.
Maybe switch in some canned fruit? probably calorie dense, although may cost more

you're well beyond poverty, at a point it really does seem almost suspect how little money you have. you should consider selling drugs, it would be an easy buck if you play your cards right amigo.

Rice and beans are your staple...

I lived out of my car for several months, slept in parks and such.

Forage: Find out what local plants are edible, but more important than that, find out the ones that will make you sick or kill you. Google is great, but seriously, just go to a state or national park and ask a ranger, they love talking about that kinda shit.

Fish: obviously you don't work, so you have plenty of time, and that's mostly all fishing requires. A spool of line and some hooks will take a few bucks of rice money but more than pay for themselves in protein. Stick fish or hand fish till you can get a pole. Collect empty milk jugs and bottles and set yourself up some hugging rigs. Use roadkill for bait, catfish is a good oily meat to fill in where your starches fail you.

Trap: instructions online. city squirrels and birds are desensitized and easy to snare, if you are more rural than you have access to rabbits possums coins and such, harder to trap but better eating.

I have no earthly idea, and can't imagine why I would even keep track of such a thing. I eat when I feel hungry and stop when I stop feeling hungry. I don't count calories.

I feel healthy enough, and I'm certainly not starving, so I must be doing alright.

Fruits are a luxury I can ill afford, however.

I was vague on the finer details of my circumstances because I didn't really want to discuss them, but the fact is that I have the food budget as I outlined it for the time frames, I have the one reliable shopping option, and I don't have the free time to go full hobo.

I appreciate the sentiment, though.

are you immobile?
how can you not know why somebody living off of a meal a day wouldn't want to count calories...

have you considered sucking dick for extra cash?

Nigger you fucking said you eat a cup of rice, that isn't start when you're hungry and stop when you're full

bullshit claim and bullshit thread.

This. I just spent three times that today on groceries.

The cheapest I've ever been able to get our family of three by on was $25 dollars a week. That was our food budget for nearly a year, about 9 years ago during the heavy recession (due to a big company closing, about half our town was jobless).

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, here. I eat several times a day. I only cook once a day, but it lasts for more than one meal.

I eat when hungry.

I think you're confused. I said I have about a cup or so per day, and that's off the top of my head because I cook my food in batches that are big enough to last two days, sometimes longer, and I only know that the rice comes out to about a cup per day because I have to measure it to cook it properly, and I cook two cups of it at a time as the base to add the other stuff into.

Once the pile of stuff is in a sealable container, I eat at it until it's gone over a couple of days, as I'm hungry, as feels natural.

I have no idea what "claim" you think i'm trying to make, but you seem to be looking for a reason to get angry, and it's quite puzzling.

It wasn't even for a family, it was ME. A cup of coffee, lunch, espresso, a bottle of wine, and some sausages I had in the fridge the value of which I calculate at $5 plus some random ingredients I didn't even count.

I once made $60 last a month but I thought that was a pretty big deal, $50 for 3 months is not possible in a first world country

I fucking hate poor people, this thread really reaffirms my hatred. The malnutrition is getting to you, Paco.

>tfw you make $1000 a week and you eat like a giant baby with money

I'm gonna spend your quarterly grocery budget tomorrow on burritos and beer for Cinco de Mayo

I was in a similar situation as you. Oats and potatoes are a godsend. Buy some milk ocassionally if you can afford it. I think you can live indefinitely on those alone.

I think the claim you made about the cost of your food is bullshit

White rice is the absolute rock bottom of poverty eating. I always wondered how the homeless were able to afford computers/iPhones to shitpost on Veeky Forums but not food. Are you an illegal immigrant? Regardless, there isn't much lower you can go than rice for every meal. Go to a soup kitchen or food pantry. $50 for the three of months is insane. Homeless nigger beggars make that in a day panhandling. Get help, OP. Do you have a family?

>$50 for 3 months is not possible in a first world country
I guess you can think of the deep south in the US as its own contained third-world-within-a-first-world-country.

Rice and beans, man. Dunno what to tell you.

>I'm gonna spend your quarterly grocery budget tomorrow on burritos and beer for Cinco de Mayo
More power to ya buddy. Drink an extra one in my place, will you?

Oats are great, but my store stopped selling the really good cheap brand of oats I could afford. It was a sad day when that happened, and now all they have is like 1 dollar per pound, and that's highway robbery.

K.

He said he lives with roommates, so no family. I would love to know what this guy does with all his time because it's apparently spent on something other than panhandling as mentioned earlier in the thread. OP's being pretty stingy with personal details though

>he
Nice assumptions. Op is the first lady of Mexico, her husband was murdered by a secret paramilitary death squad in league with the CIA and the Mexican Army before he could give a speech announcing a major revision to the policies concerning the drug war and relations with the United States, and she was framed for the murder and went into hiding with the assistance of a Colombian human rights activist and her former maid's nephew. After an increasingly elaborate sequence of events culminating in the murder of the Mexican Secretary of Defense and the invasion and total destruction of the entire neighborhood of Tepito D.F., where she was hiding out, she fled to the Deep South of the USA in order to plot the liberation of her daughter who was kidnapped by the same CIA agents who set up the murder of her husband.

have you considered powdered milk, not sure how cheap it is where you live but it could be good for some easy calories

OP, wherever does the all your free time go? You're obviously unemployed and I'm wondering why you aren't spending that time panhandling or dumpster diving.

As we all know Veeky Forums is mostly women so this explanation adds up

>OP's being pretty stingy with personal details

The details are whatever your imagination wants them to be.

Maybe I have a crippling substance addiction and I only allot myself so little money for food so I can keep scratching that itch.

Maybe I spend the rest of my cash obsessively collecting vintage action figures and video game cartridges from failed gaming systems.

Perhaps my beloved little sister has amassed a metric fuckton of debt and I'm just barely keeping her afloat by sacrificing every penny I make except just enough to keep myself and my vehicle fueled to get me to my deadend job I hate 7 days a week for one more year so we can both finally breathe and move on with our lives.

Maybe my mom has ultracancer and I'm paying out the ass to have tribal medicine men sent in from kalamazoo to ward off her evil spirits because conventional medicine isn't helping.

Who knows?

Who cares?

>Veeky Forums is mostly women

I'm more than willing to pretend every user is a cute anime girl, but I never understood this particular meme.

If youre poor but living in a home with wealthy roomates you can still easily get 200 a month food stamps.

maybe you have autism and refuse to work

Is your sister cute? Or at least, reasonably thin? I could probably help her with that debt, gnoamean?

go to various fast food places and get stuff to make some makeshift sauce
salt & pepper, ketchup, mustard vinegar, hot sauce packets

You want us to magically fix your food and yet you refuse to accept any and all solutions for """reasons"""

If the foodstamps application asks how much your household makes you dont include strangers you live with whose income has nothing to do with you.

I'm betting substance abuse + no job + illegal immigrant

Seriously just panhandle and suck dick or sell drugs.

This is exactly what I'm talking about OP, you obviously don't have to share your life story but just from this one thread you've created I'm simply fascinated by the little snippets you've given of your situation. Basically I'm saying I do care about your situation to the extent that any user here can, there are so many fascinating little things that I'm invested now.

Yeah, at this point any additions just for the sake of variety would need to be free, so churches and food banks are your friend. I'd also suggest craigslist, I have sometimes seen people give away free canned food they don't want and you might even beg there and get something. If possible maybe you can find or get fresh herbs?

I wouldn't discount actual stores either, if you know one that has sales ("ethnic" markets are especially good for this you can sometimes get large bags of fresh fruit/veg that is expiring for a dollar or less. Same with flavor packets, canned foods, etc.

Also a possibility, definitely. But you don't want to be a judgy jason, right? Surely you give people the benefit of the doubt and more quickly assume they're only just crack addicts rather than autistic and lazy? Surely?

Nope, she's fat, ugly, and mean. Nobody likes her.

>wherever does the all your free time go?
Obviously i'm unemployed, just like you said. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's late and I have to wake up early tomorrow and go be unemployed at people for no monetary gain. Gotta put food on the table with that $0 I don't earn every single day, after all. It's a grind, truly.

Totally. I'll get right on that dick sucking. That's a way to get a good meal and someone even pays ME for it, right?

Good night.

Those tribal medicine men are just using you as an excuse to run a train on your mom. Fire them and buy better food.

Most illegal immigrants have some sort of job connection and aren't too seriously addicted to anything, plus their English is never this good.

>Fire them and buy better food.

You mean, like, super mega ULTRA food?

No, shhh. He is legend.

What?

Fuck man.

Kick a cop in the balls and go to jail. The food is pretty good, better than you are getting now.

If you are lucky he will flip out and beat the shot out of you and you can live on settlement money from the city for the next decade.

I feel like you're distorting the original intent though. It's not "how do I fix my life" it's "here's my budget can anyone suggest a way to get more variety?" This question seems to have been mostly answered and now we're just yelling at OP about drugs and shit. The food stamps comments are legit though.

>a way to get more variety?
have you tried the pet food aisle?

>This question seems to have been mostly answered

And he refused all answers and is bitching about how no one can help him.
He blames everyone but himself.

Classic Veeky Forums poverty thread

OP you deserve what you get my man

Thats not a bad idea. Just keep loitering in areas you'll get arrested and fatten up at county jail.

Goodnight OP
Good luck with your situation I believe in you

find a place that does free refills on stuff and get a cup/container out of the trash
a homeless guy used to do this at a mcdonalds I worked at to get free coffee

Jeez i remember when trolls used to put at least a little effort into thier stories.

Most people on Veeky Forums are 18-25 spoiled NEET brats who can't into budgeting or responsible consumption and think "lol flyover!!!!" is the funniest meme in the world. After spending your three month budget in a single day. Sorry OP. The best advice I can give you is to hit up local farms, drive out to the countryside if need be. It's getting into season now, many plots run u-pick operations where you can pick your weight in fruit or veg for dollars a pound. Learn how to can your own food, and spend the next month or so canning your year's supply. Hell of a lot cheaper than buying fresh or frozen from the supermarket regularly.

he'll blow his food budget on gas you fucking retard

I've read through this thread, every answer is shit. Seriously? "Kick a cop in the balls" is the best you mouth breathers can come up with? Not OP, and this is still a cooking thread regardless of your tears at experiencing a poor person for the first time. Try to leave this place a little less like /b/ - Cooking & Random next time, okay?

>It's not "how do I fix my life"

Well you really should start asking yourself that question OP.

>I can't take the train or coach

wew, I knew you people had no comprehension of a world outside suburbia but this is sad

so what is your answer you dumb faggot. I can't wait to see OP poo it because "lol no monies"

>train
>america

U wot