The 50 Cent Meal Part 2

Ok, you ready to do this?

I have a disclaimer first though...

What I'm about to show you is graphic...

It depicts real life food preparation in a way that may inspire you to change how you cook.

I am not responsible in any way for any benefits that may unfold.

Upon reading the following, if you become compelled to cook nutritional food cheap as fuck then fucking do it.

Lastly, this is not vegetarian or vegan, fruitarian or paleo...

This is food.

Good food.

That fills a belly.

Made in good ways, with whatever is available to you.

Step 1

Chicken.
I'll show you one way to achieve chicken using money (in USA) that will equate to 50 cents a meal all said and done. Later we'll explore ways to get to my parents level and beyond.

Walmart Chicken

Yup, walmart chicken. They sell those birds for like 6 bucks. Dressed and ready to cook.

Now, right here at this spot you could have sourced your chicken any way you can. ^{This is one of the key spots in the process. How you source your chicken directly determines not only cost but also nutritive value. Walmart chicken is cheap but is also bottom of the barrel in quality.}

We start by roasting the chicken.

We roast in the oven, you could also slow cook on the stovetop.

It's just me and my son at home (2 adult sized meals), when we cook a chicken he'll eat a drumstick plus and I'll eat a breast.

That is two meals.

Directly after we fill our bellies with just the meat from the bird I'll take all the drippings from the roasting pan and make a gravy totaling about 4 cups by just adding water to 4 cups, some salt and flour to thicken. ^{Not doing recipes here. If you aren't familiar with how to do any of the things I mention here I can show you in another post.}

With a few pennies of flour and such (That i need to have already to make them only pennies) I can make biscuits.

Depending on what I cook with the chicken when I originally roasted it, I can potentially turn this into a white, pepper/milk gravy. ingredients to make this stretch are flour, milk, water to fill 4 cups. If I don't have those ingredients and can get flour and salt I can turn these drippings into a basic chicken gravy.

Now I have biscuits and gravy that will make 4 meals for the boy and I. ^{(we eat same proportions)}

That is 8 more meals I just got from one chicken and we have barely started.

Now, if you have refrigeration this next part is easy...

Put the rest of the chicken and the biscuits and gravy you just made in the fridge and eat the biscuits and gravy first ish. You've got a few days to a week and the bird is still good for further steps.

If you don't have refrigeration

You could tear the chicken apart now and separate the meat from everything else and can the meat into jars. Or you can just leave it all at room temp and heat up daily to keep it good.

Without refrigeration only make biscuits as you need them (daily maybe) instead of a lot ahead. Use more of the meat in the gravy and leave less on the carcass but definitely leave some.

Keep the bird in the oven, covered and the gravy on the stove, covered. ^{This is like if you really need to.} Each day you haven't used the bird or the gravy, re heat it good.

Leaving your food like this requires re heating it daily. It's best if you've canned the meat or refridgerated it at this point but I've personally done this all ways and as long as you're paying attention they all work.

We are already at 10 meals total with 6 bucks for a chicken, a little bit of flour and such, milk and salt (if you made milk gravy otherwise just salt and flour). If you had a fridge it was easy and if not you got creative.

4 meals each of biscuits and gravy (my son and I), plus the original meat when we first roasted it makes the 10 meals we've now eaten and our bird has still only had one breast eaten and a drumstick ish.

We are no where near finished folks so buckle up.

To be continued...

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