I've recently fallen on hard times and have been taken in by my friend and his family. I want to make them a stellar meal to show my appreciation but I am broke. Veeky Forums seems to have its wits about it when it comes to eating cheap, so I wanted to know if there's any suggestions as to what could feed a family of five with ~$15.
Thanks in advance
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in all seriousness, i have some questions:
How expensive are sweet potatoes where you live?
Do you/they like curry?
there is a curry recipe on the booru that cost me like 10 or 15 bucks (cant remember exactly), it made a lot (i had a date over and it was more than enough for us; ate it for lunch three times after that), and it was super good and she was super impressed by my ability to """""cook""""". only difference was i added lamb but that was the only thing i changed about it
I'm not going to be of any help here, but how exactly does this kind of situation work? I really can't fathom being a burden to someone like this, or accepting their charity... or being a parent willing to take in my kid's homeless friend (especially assuming you're 18).
I was homeless for a while, so I'm not trying to dig at you, I just don't understand how it happens.
What is your level of cooking experience so far, eg what dishes are you good at cooking? It would be good to know so you don;t try something that is overly ambitious for such an important meal.
>uses paws to bury own piss and shit
>touches family's food with paws
>isn't he sooo cute?
what a bastard cat
It's difficult to go wrong with spaghetti sauce and meatballs. Buy a loaf of decent bread. Roast a couple heads of olive-oil-drenched garlic in foil for an hour at 400F, cool and squeeze like toothpaste onto the halved, toasted bread. Best garlic bread ever. Make a simple salad. Use sweet Italian sausage in the sauce and make some meatballs out of grass-fed low-fat ground beef.
Or make the sauce and meatballs and serve large, messy meatball sandwiches.
Or buy a few chickens, ideally halved or quartered, and roast those. Serve with vegetables and mashed potatoes. Or roast potatoes.
Or soup. And bread made from scratch like No-Knead Bread.
Or rice and stir-fried vegetables with a little protein diced up in there.
Or just vegetables, steam some carrots, roast some potatoes, saute some broccoli with onions and mushrooms, make some onion-pepper-feta-oregano-tomato side salad. Serve with cheap but decent or better yet homemade bread. Or rice.
Or broiled chicken thighs, or fried chicken, those are both usually cheap and always have a lot of flavor.
Or pizza, crust is surprisingly easy to make, sauce is opening some diced tomatoes and reducing them, use whatever toppings you want... make crust and let it rise overnight in the refrigerator. Trying grilling pizza for extra credit.
>Get a bag of potatoes for $3
>Use some for leek & potato soup and make the rest into mashed potatoes for shepherds pie.
>Probably would be about $5-6 in beef, $5 for leek, onions, carrots.
>Use the last $2 and grab whatever fresh loaf of Italian bread they have at your grocery, cut it up to serve with the soup
this thread has potential, good post op, i like what you did.
i agree with spaghetti and meatsauce
I don't really know about the price of sweet potatoes, though I know they occasionally go out to Indian restaurants and eat curry. I'll ask them if they enjoy any particular type of cuisine.
Let me explain the situation. I was living with my """"father"""" for a few years, but he was physically abusive to a point that I was knocked unconscious on more than one occasion. I moved in with my aunt (mother's side) when I was twelve and ended up being sexually abused by her and her friends, so I lived in a spare room at the local YMCA until recently when they regretfully informed me that they could not house me any longer. I'm in the process of joining the Navy but being homeless has been a huge hindrance to getting everything else in order. My friend, who I've known since high school, asked his family to let me live there until I leave for boot camp, so here I am now.
I can make tacos and spaghetti. That's about it. I can also make a mean bowl of cereal, but that doesn't make much of a meal.
Cats are cool. So are dogs. One day I want to open an animal rescue since animals are the only creatures that have never treated me like shit.
Pizza is a good idea. No one balks at pizza.
I've never had shepard's pie, is it good?
Spaghetti just seems so boring, tbqh
Are you done with your autistic tantrum now, sweetie
what about the milk, butter, sour cream you need to make mashed potatos?
What kind of meat goes well with mashed potatoes? I'm sorry for these exceptionally noobish questions but I don't know much about cooking and want to make sure my hosts know how much I appreciate them
happened to me when i was a kid. had shitty parent, was homeless in single digits, a few times in teens, and just kind of bounced in and out until i reached the limit of their kindness or tolerance. i was always clean, polite, helpful with cleaning and cooking but in the end when you're a 13 year old kid trying to go to school, figure out how your body works, how life works, and build some kind of social group you just don't understand how taxing it is for people to help you by letting you disrupt their house for a few months.
some people are just very generous and kindhearted. i never got over being taken in and then kicked out over and over--i wonder if my life would have been better totally absent help. it fucked me up very badly but life turned out pretty great otherwise.
anyway, OP should make spaghetti with a meat sauce.
marinade some pork chops in a cheap bottle of greek dressing or bbq sauce, and either bbq them or just bake them in the oven, make a bunch of rice and boil some frozen veggies or make mashed potatos if you have some milk and butter
you should be able to get a 6 pack of porkchops for under $10
Cream and butter is all of 2-3 dollars, you don't need anything else
it's more expensive where i live, but fair enough, i don't disagree
How does marinading things work? Again, I have very little knowledge of cooking or ingredients so any information I can get is very helpful.
Are porkchops hard to cook?
Interesting to hear. Best of luck in the Navy, OP. Nice of your friend to help out.
I can't imagine how rough that must be.
Thanks for sharing your stories!
just put the porkchops in a dish and dump the sauce over it, let it sit for anywhere from 30 minutes in the fridge to 24 hours, then bake in the oven 30 minutes at 350, give it another 5 minutes if you're worried
they are not only incredibly simple and cheap to prepare, they are delicious my friend
For the amount of potatoes here you'll only need about a cup of milk, not even a stick of butter. I don't know if you could just ask to borrow these from your host being small amounts of basic staples, but shouldn't set you back too much
You guys have been exceptionally helpful in this thread. Thank you!
Wow, sorry to hear about the hard times OP, hope things improve. It's nice that you want to show your appreciation to your friend. Best of luck in the future with everything.
Shepherd's pie is also basically just mince/ground lamb, with some veggies (typically any combination of carrots, corn, and peas), with mashed potatoes on top. This is a good answer, it's very easy to make and pretty cheap. You can make a cottage pie instead and substitute lamb for ground beef, that will be cheaper and still be delicious. Here's a (shitty) video on how to make it, but the important part is the ingredients: chefgordonramsayrecipe.com
Don't add the wine if you are making it cheap.
another good thing you can do with pork tenderloin (which is often very cheap, last week I bought a pound of it for 5 bucks) is marinade it overnight in whatever the hell you want. my go-to is a combination of soy sauce, dijon mustard, honey, garlic, and black pepper. i put the tenderloin in the marinade before i go to bed and then cook it when i come home from work the next day. almost impossible to screw up unless you cook the pork for too long
I'd say make some killer tacos or spaghetti and meatballs for them. Don't get too ambitious with a dish you've never cooked before, especially if it is a bit tricky or the recipe is some random online recipe, because it may not be great.
Best of luck with your home situation, you've got a good friend there.
your picture says it all OP learn to bake bread it's trash cheap: flour salt water yeast and the smell alone will give you and the friends extra day of life each batch.
Spaghetti with meatsauce is the correct answer, like some other anons said. It's cheap and within your budget, it's a comfy meal that everyone likes, and it's easy to prepare. Just try to spring for some cheese to top it with, that's the final touch.
spaghetti with corn tomatos zucchini onions and squash
4 loaves of bread with 6 pkg au jus, loads of green beans, 3 cans cream of mushroom soup, fried onions on top, shaved london broil
bread pudding and scrambled eggs with cheese
if they like indian food OP, i can give you recipes for both daal (lentil curry) and keema aloo (minced, spiced beef with potatoes. Serve it with boiled white rice. this entire meal would be well within 15 bucks. if you're interested, lemme know
t. pakifag
post those recipes anyway, i'll make them
Cute pussy. I suggest making a potato leek soup. I recently made it after a while and it came out really good. Don't blend it at the end, leave it chunky.
not OP, but i'd love the recipes.
OP, you could also try making a big pot of chili, it's tasty and cheap.
just a thought but what I'd do is get a fifteen buck hunk of meat or fifteen bucks worth of good steak
and use whatever veggies and stuff they have on hand, make mashed potatoes and home made gravy if that's in your skillset
On the booru?
>are prokchops hard to cook
not really but they're easy to overcook and have end up being dry, don't do pork for the meal if you're not used to cooking it the margin between undercooked/just right/overcooked is pretty thin
not the guy you're responding to, but:
ck.booru.org
kot
I'm about to do it because my friends parents are horrible abusive alcoholics and he doesn't have anywhere to go while taking a break from college due to mental illness caused by his horrible childhood so that's one way
make em something regional, but delicious like red beans and rice with sausage.
I want to pet that kot
Red beans and rice is a good call. Rice and beans are a buck and change each, a couple bucks each for some ham hocks and smoked sausage, a couple bucks for a bottle of Tony Chacherie's (or however you spell it). Cheap, easy, delicious. If Op has some money left over, get a loaf of bread, some butter, garlic, and parsley.
КOT just needs his ХЛEБ, ПEДИК
this is my thinking exactly.