I recently lost my job and now I have roughly $250-300 a month to budget for food for a family of 4...

Lol my meth riddled mother managed to feed a family of 5 on 150-200 dollaridoos per fortnight. That's around your budget. You guys will be fine. Remember you don't necessarily have to cook a meal every night. Give the youngins something they like and is cheap, macncheese for example.

OP here. Thank you for all of the suggestions thus far, it's been very helpful to compiling my grocery list. I've been looking for work, but I live in a rural area and my specialty is in computers, so even part time work is hard when they'll hire kids for cheaper instead.

Rice broccoli potato hotdog

That's about what we pay for food monthly, and we're not poorfags. Except of course that we top up the freezers every hunting season. My best tip for getting free food is to visit several grocery stores once a week (day before the garbage truck comes around, they'll tell you which day it is. This obviously doesn't work if they just throw it in a dumpster, but most places will put stuff aside for you if you ask nicely) and ask if you can get expired stuff for your chickens. Chickens eat anything, bonus points if you actually build a coop and invest in 5-10 chickens. A bit hard to do in an apartment, I know. When you get home you should have at least 4-5 bags of stuff. Wash off the packaging if it's been in a garbage room, open it and smell if it's OK to eat, if not put it in a trash bag (or feed your newly acquired chickens). Stare severely at your heap of sandwich meats, greens, fruit and dairy until you figure out what to cook from it. Meatball lasagna, banana cake, cheesy asparagus pizza, beans and hot dogs, fennel& potato&ham gratin. Get creative. Prepare it all before it really does goes bad. All the food you don't eat that day goes in the freezer. All this takes a lot of time, but you should have that time being out of a job and everything. People throw away such enormous amounts of food there's nothing wrong with, it's ridiculous.
My second best tip for cheap food is: go fishing.

Easy mode. Go vegetarian. Cheap as fuck. Taters, cabbages, carrots, onions. Basically any and all vegetables that are in season, don’t boil them for god sakes unless you plan on baking them afterwards, do splurge on the fat you’re going to use it will make a huge difference in taste, olive oil is good get the cheapest bottle at dollar general, butter is more expensive than oil, lard is good also, avoid trans fats like margerines. Use dairy and reduce
them to make gravies, its a cheap sauce to make. Don’t pile the cheap carbs like spaghetti, rice and bread, specially bread don’t buy it at fucking all, use one of two options for bread, make your own using a no knead recipe which you just got to mix the day before and bake on the day you eat it, or go to your local grocery store (Walmart could work depends on the manager) ask for the manager of the store or the receiving person, tell them you just lost your job and you are hard up and got a family of four to feed, ask them for their “stale”/out of date bread, they usually are more than glad to give it to you because otherwise it goes in a dumpster.

If you just gotta have a little meat every now and then, sausages and pork are the cheapest of meats, use them sparingly because you can basically more than double your money for food if you don’t buy meat. And for god sakes don’t tell anyone you’re going vegetarian, no one fucking notices it until someone says it outloud, best of luck user.

When I really had to save money is that I made ground meat and mashed potatoes. What the hell is that called anyway?

You fry the meat on a pan and then mix it up with the mash. Some salt and condiments and it's perfectly edible.

Far from fine dining but it got me through some rough patches

Milk
Eggs
Potato
Flour (learn to bake)

Go to grocery stores at 8-9 pm.
This is when they mark down all their fresh food and any produce/meat that is going to hit the sell by date.
My Walmart had .97¢ rotisserie chickens tonight. Most meat can be bought for $1-2 a pound at this time.

>.97¢ rotisserie chickens
Oh the soup/stock I could make from that. I'm jealous.

Right now I have made soup out of hamburger and canned corn. And to add some extra flavor I poured a can of malt liquor in to the soup.

Great

I broke out my bread machine for the first time in years because of this, and I had to get vital wheat gluten cause all I had was all purpose flour. Fresh bread is nice, but the crust sucks.

reddit.com/r/budgetfood/
reddit.com/r/EatCheapAndHealthy/
reddit.com/r/Cheap_Meals/

reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/5xl7hy/ok_rcooking_like_a_thousand_people_told_me_to/

Rice and beans.

SNAP out of it moron. this shitty program is made by the government for plebs.

If you have any sense of dignity don't get food stamps

>unironically linking Reddit on Veeky Forums

this
plus if you got your family to feed, give your food to them. do fasting and you will only not save money, but have eough to feed your family.

I had to do that one time and it was magic.

Well. Shifting gears is difficult, so I thought I'd point him to those quasi-boards.

Rice, beans, eggs and pasta are always cheap and always go for store brands since most cases its cheaper, especially stuff like cereal (hot or cold)
Frozen vegetables are better than fresh (cheaper in some cases) bc of the bulk and also last longer
If you need to save money, searching for coupons of items your setting to buy is also good before you shop.
Cooking stuff like soups and stews are easy and you can just freeze the extra stuff for later.
And if things get too rough make sure where the location of a food bank that are in or near your area, there's so no shame in trying to feed your family

Hope this helps

Learn to eat oats (not oatmeal) a big bag/box of oats will be cheap and all you need to do to eat them in drown them in milk (also cheap) and wait 5 minutes. Grating an apple into the bowl before you add the oats and milk, then stirring will make a very tasty and fill breakfast or lunch. No cooking required.

150g oats with 500ml of whole milk will give you about 1100 calories and 28g of protein. Enough to keep you going for most of the day. I eat that myself regularly.

Learn to debone chicken thighs then you can chop that meat up and use it for soups, stews or fry with whatever veg you have lying around and rice

There's a difference between oats and oatmeal?

Oats for breakfast with frozen fruit. Use long life milk as its cheaper.

Pasta and pasta sauce are also cheap as fuck.

Buy frozen veg and meat, and with some rice and seasonings you can made hundreds of meals with whats stated above.

youtube.com/watch?v=qiSg6lwIItU
I dont like them but it's a good tutorial I did for a week. you can do it in new york for $3 a day for one person If you know where to shop. if you have old gardening pots and can get loose banana peels and bio fuel to break down into fertaliser, you can grow potatoes and tomatoes from that. otherwise look at farmers markets and see if your kids can learn to draw furry porn and have them make a living off that.

>1100 calories and 28g of protein
No. This is abysmal.

That table lacks protein efficiency as a part of protein calories / total calories. I also think it might suck in the standardized amount (100g) department. Though it is standardized on calories per dollar.
efficiencyiseverything.com/applying-protein-per-dollar/

If he had Protein calories / dollar divided by Total calories / dollar, efficiency might be easier to judge.

The only thing I can image you could mean by "oats (not oatmeal)" is whole oat groats, which take like an hour of simmering, the same as any other whole, hulled grain.

I downloaded his Excel-Sheet and added a protein percentage onto the calories/protein calories per dollar columns.

Lentils, Beans, Whole Chicken, Pork, Eggs, Canned Fish, Peanut Butter.

Food Calories Per Dollar Protein Per Dollar
Flour 4.464 576 13%
Lentils 929 499 54%
White Bread 3.333 441 13%
Pinto Beans (10lbs) 1.026 343 33%
Plain Oats 2.148 308 14%
Eggs (Costco) 802 302 38%
White Pasta 1.600 241 15%
0.5% Milk 699 240 34%
Peanut Butter 1.487 236 16%
Bread Crumbs 1.556 223 14%
Chicken 239 215 90%
Whole Milk 902 213 24%
Whole Wheat Pasta 1.470 211 14%
Mackerel (canned) 348 206 59%
Rice 2.320 200 9%
Pork Sirloin Tip Roast 203 192 95%
Eggs (Walmart) 566 187 33%
Ramen 1.949 176 9%
Pearled Barley 1.429 176 12%
Whole Wheat Bread 946 174 18%
Kidney Beans Canned 515 155 30%
Tilapia 167 148 88%
Bagels 851 139 16%
Pollock 140 128 92%
Instant Rice 1.148 123 11%
88/12 Ground Beef 264 119 45%
Frozen Pizza 576 117 20%
Velveeta Slices 302 111 37%
Albacore Canned Tuna 113 111 98%
Frozen Peas 354 109 31%
Quinoa 673 108 16%
Cottage Cheese(4% fat) 250 108 43%
Cheez-its 1.230 106 9%
Great Value Italian Sausage 407 100 25%
Canned Chicken 115 99 86%
Frozen Breakfast Sausages 588 98 17%
72/27 Ground Beef 439 92 21%
Egg Whites (carton) 106 91 86%
Hamburger Buns 610 87 14%
Instant Oatmeal 762 82 11%
Greek Yogurt 161 69 43%
Evaporated Milk 313 67 22%
Beef Jerky 96 67 70%
Salmon 85 61 72%
Sliced Turkey Breast(Jeanie O) 78 59 76%
Quinoa 287 51 18%
Sour Cream 387 48 12%
Large Tomato Sauce Canned 210 45 22%
Bacon 179 44 25%
Cream Cheese 404 35 9%
White Onion 206 28 13%
Banana 299 13 4%
Frozen Mixed Fruit 107 7 6%
Frozen Raspberries 57 6 11%
Frozen Blueberries 70 4 5%
Raspberries 13 1 10%
Sugar 2.854 0 0%
Olive Oil (Costco) 923 0 0%
Large Heavy Whipping Cream 847 0 0%
Butter 748 0 0%

murder your family and eat like a kangs n shieet nigga

Found the libertarian.

What about the roads nigga?

Buy in bulk for long lasting staple.

Forget Costco, that's for rich people trying to "save". Hit up your near by Chinese grocery or Hispanic stores.

Give up on meat except for special occasions. As others said, rice beans onions eggs root vegetables are your friends

Split peas/beans are very cheap and have A LOT of protein. They're also very versatile, you can cook them middle eastern/indian/chinese/german styles, you can boil them, then throw them on a pan with some bacon, fry them and they really absorb the aroma.

Oats are what you use to make oatmeal(porridge)? So I'm referring to eating the oats themselves rather than wasting time making oatmeal

Wow what website is that

Rice and eggs
RICE AND EGGS
These are your filler foods now.
Breakfast is going to be eggs
Lunch and dinner will almost always have a side of rice
Why?
12 eggs are 2 dollars in most places
a 10 pound bag of rice is like 7
Both are also very easy to prepare.

Good luck, user.

>No
YES! You're a fucking moron, you can't eat a handful of flour, lentils, pinto beans as you have to do shit with them before you can eat them and you'll probably have to flavour/combine them with other things that you have to buy! So your chart is fucking stupid as it's not an accurate reflection of the true cost of eating those things.

>12 eggs for 2 dollars

My MAN, you can get 3 dozen for 3 bucks here and that's at Wegman's at all places. Just go looking for bulk eggs OP, eat that shit all the time. Excellent calorie to dollar ratio.

I meant the Protein percentage of that is out of whack.

How do you reach 1g/kg Bodyweight without overeating with that dish alone? I mean it'll feed you perfectly well, but it is heavily slanted towards carb calories.

I'm not going to type up my own chart.

>Lentils, Beans, Whole Chicken, Pork, Eggs, Canned Fish, Peanut Butter.
seems to be the name of the game protein-wise.

t. 14 year old

You can get 20lb bags of rice and beans for about 30 bucks total at walmart (cheaper at ethnic markets), which equals more than enough calories to sustain any non-intensive-althele human for a month (~31k) in addition to relatively complete nutrition. Start with that, and anything additional you can afford is up to you.

>(~31k)
Oops, meant ~63k

If by "out of whack" you mean the protein my protein calculation is wrong then you're the one who is wrong. I agree that the nutritional profile is slanted toward calories but it's a solution for one meal, others in the thread have mentioned solutions for other meals. My other point still stands regardless of you copying the same items into another response.

i've seen chicken quarters as cheap as .48/lb in a 10 lb bag, granted it was a few years ago at this point but you always gotta be watching for those deals

The processed (rolled, steel-cut, chopped, etc) oats themselves are called oatmeal. The finished dish is just cooked oatmeal, or in your case cold oatmeal with milk.

Here's what I'd do the first week.
Day 1:
Breakfast: cinnamon raisin oatmeal ~34¢ per portion ($1.36 total)
Lunch: bean 7 veg wrap ~56¢ per portion ($2.23 total)
Dinner: pork meatloaf, sauteed cabbage, garlic fried rice & mushroom gravy ~$1.12 per portion ($4.46 total)

Day 2:
Breakfast: blueberry pancakes w/lemon honey 97¢ per portion ($3.88 total)
Lunch: chicken salad sandwiches and green salad ~76¢ per portion ($3.03 total)
Dinner: cheesy rice & peas 70¢ per portion ($2.80 total)

Day 3:
Breakfast: banana/peanut butter mini burritos ~28¢ per portion ($1.11 total)
Lunch: leftover pork meatloaf as sandwiches with carrot slaw ~40¢ per portion ($1.57 total)
Dinner: mixed vegetable glass noodle stir-fry
with knife-cut omelette $1.61 per portion ($6.44 total)

Day 4:
Honey Graham Oh's with yogurt and strawberries ~$1.00 per portion ($3.98 total)
Lunches: turkey-ham and cheese sandwiches with tomato salad 94¢ per potion ($3.76 total)
Dinner: cheesy rice, beans and spinach ~$1.02 per portion ($4.05 total)

Fleischfrei Freitag
Day 5:
Breakfast: fruit and cream croissant sandwiches ~$1.10 per portion ($4.38 total)
Lunches: chickpea falafel wraps w/babaghanouz ~$1.00 per portion ($3.98 total)
Dinner: carrot bisque with sweetcorn 70¢ per portion ($2.80 total)

Day 6:
Breakfast: banana/walnut oatmeal with honey 57¢ per portion ($2.28 total)
Lunch: roast pork shoulder with butter braised carrots, sauteed cabbage and potato wedges $1.02 per portion ($4.08 total)
Dinner: bean chili over rice ~79¢ per portion ($3.14 total)

Day 7:
Breakfast: cereal and milk with bananas ~43¢ per portion ($1.70 total)
Lunch: homemade pizza with turkey ham, basil and onion ~$1.29 per portion ($5.14 total)
Dinner: grilled cheese and tomato soup ~63¢ per portion ($2.51 total)

Decent amounts of protein and calories and each day has 5+ servings of fruit and veg.

citations needed

>nutritional profile is slanted toward calories *from carbs*
That one.

Yes it's one meal. No cooking is a plus. Though cooking it consumes time and a negligible (?) amount of power.

Regarding the table:
I just adjusted that column to return protein calories per dollar and checked if it refers to the same base information and then divided it by total calories. The calorie percentage of total calories checks out.

So...
Plain Oats 2.148 308 14%
Whole Milk 902 213 24%

##
I just noticed you mentioned chicken in that post too. Oh well.

Brennwert 4147 KJ (990 kcal)
Fett 28,2 g Entspricht ca. 26% des Brennwertes.
Kohlenhydrate 140,4 g Entspricht ca. 59% des Brennwertes.
davon Zucker 45,2 g
Protein 37,9 g Entspricht ca. 16% des Brennwertes.

Product - kJ - kcal - Protein - Carbs - Fat
1 großer Apfel, frisch 451 KJ 108 kcal 0,2 g 28,8 g (2,4 BE) 0,6 g
150 g Haferflocken 2336 KJ 558 kcal 10,5 g 88,1 g (7,3 BE) 20,3 g
500 ml Vollmilch, 3,5% Fett 1360 KJ 325 kcal 17,5 g 23,5 g (2 BE) 17 g
Total 4147 KJ 990 kcal 28,2 g 140,4 g (11,7 BE) 37,9 g

I just feel 1000 kcal is too much, especially if the macro profile is slanted.

>My other point still stands
"True cost of eating those things"
Well. If one was going to cook anyway those cost aspects might get averaged out.