High quality diet on a budget

[aurum]

@ivankiss

No one has mentioned animal organs like liver, heart etc so far. Organs are super cheap compared to muscle meat and way more nutrient dense.

Ground beef is also cheap, good for getting in a lot of calories.

[Username]

Snaking is not healthy. Don't do it.

[Village]

On 5/8/2021 at 10:43 PM, aurum said:

@ivankiss

No one has mentioned animal organs like liver, heart etc so far. Organs are super cheap compared to muscle meat and way more nutrient dense.

+1, just make sure they're very high quality since toxins from medicine, vaccines, poor diet and so on are stored in the organs and in the fat of the animal.

Other than that, really you get what you pay for. Most peasant foods like grains, legumes and greens are marketed nowadays as health bombs, and it is a bomb but good luck being healthy eating it. I spend almost all of my income on food because I recognize its importance. Life in nature revolves around food, nowadays people treat it as a nonfactor or as a side thing at most, and then wonder why their life is shit, lol.

You said you have a decent income, so eat like a king. This is not the domain to cheap out in.

[Opo]

On 08/05/2021 at 3:21 PM, Michael569 said:

did you eat your legumes raw?  nom nom 

Nah I avoid legumes because of my autoimmune condition. 

But I experimented a little with flaxseeds and soaking them ground up was best on my tummy. 

[Roy]

On 5/8/2021 at 1:42 AM, Preety_India said:

Awesome. I'll try that 

Something like this. Tomato soup with a can of lentils/chick peas + some spinach and leftover korma paste for flavor. Takes 10-15 minutes just have to stir and that's it!

 

 

[Preety_India]

3 minutes ago, Roy said:

Something like this. Tomato soup with a can of lentils/chick peas + some spinach and leftover korma paste for flavor. Takes 10-15 minutes just have to stir and that's it!

 

 

Yumm

.you made that ?

 

[Preety_India]

@Roy you got great ? curry-nary skills.

 

[Roy]

1 minute ago, Preety_India said:

Yumm

.you made that ?

If by making it you mean opening cans and emptying them yes haha.

I just moved in so my grocery shopping hasn't been a deep dive, I'll eventually learn to make the soup from separate ingredients.

[Preety_India]

@Roy good for you. You have great taste.

 

[Michael569]

On 11/05/2021 at 5:24 PM, Opo said:

Nah I avoid legumes because of my autoimmune condition. 

Don't know anything about your particular AI condition but legumes have never been correlated with worsened progress of any autoimmune condition. In fact their strong anti-inflammatory benefits as well as immunomodulating prebiotic fibre makes them beneficial for autoimmunity if anything. Unless ofcourse your condition is one of the IBDs and eating high fibre food gives you cramping, in which case you need to be more careful ofcourse 

[Opo]

11 hours ago, Michael569 said:

Don't know anything about your particular AI condition but legumes have never been correlated with worsened progress of any autoimmune condition. In fact their strong anti-inflammatory benefits as well as immunomodulating prebiotic fibre makes them beneficial for autoimmunity if anything. Unless ofcourse your condition is one of the IBDs and eating high fibre food gives you cramping, in which case you need to be more careful ofcourse 

Haven't tried regular legumes because of habits but I have problems with peanuts. Maybe they are different. 

I'll try the normal ones and see how I feel. 

[Leo Gura]

On 5/8/2021 at 0:43 PM, aurum said:

No one has mentioned animal organs like liver, heart etc

Those organs are sacks full of toxins. You'd be nuts to eat that on the regular.

[StarStruck]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Those organs are sacks full of toxins. You'd be nuts to eat that on the regular.

Toxins aren't stored in organs. The organ liver only filters the toxins and deposes it.

https://www.nourishingdays.com/2010/06/liver-qa-why-liver-is-not-full-of-toxins-and-where-to-find-good-liver/

 

[dlof]

I recommend bulk making meals and then freezing them to save money. These are my go to bulk meals:

Spaghetti Bolognaise... makes 10 meals, total cost ~£12 ... or about £1.50 per meal when you add in the spaghetti

500g beef mince + 500g pork mince (~£5)
Plenty of carrots, onions, celery and some garlic (~£2)
Whole pepper-corns (~£0.05)
4 big jars of tomatoe pasta sauce (~£4)
Olive oil (~£0.20)
2 beef oxo cubes (£~0.20)

Finely chop the veg and fry in olive oil until soft and aromatic. I use this opportunity to add loads of veg to this dish to both bulk it out so you get more meals out of it and so it's more healthy, A lot more  veg than you would usually use in a bolognaise, but the result is nice in both taste and texture. 

Add the mince and fry until browned. Add tomato sauce and peppercorns. You can sprinkle in some italian herbs as well. Scoop out some sauce and dissolve the oxocubes in a cup then add that back into the sauce. Add peppercorns. Add salt. Simmer for ~3 hours. Adjust salt to taste.

This yields me 5 tupper-ware tubs of bolognaise sauce for me and each tub yields 2 large plate-full meals when combined with spaghetti, for a total of 10 large meals. I freeze the tubs and rotate them into my fridge when I want.

Just add the sauce to pasta, I tend to half-cook the pasta so it's very undercooked and then strain and finish it off in the sauce uncovered on high heat. This allows the pasta to absorb the flavour and also steams off more water from the sauce which intensifies the flavour. 

-----

My easy version of "Avgolemeno" ... a greek rice soup, makes again around 10 meals
It contains bone broth so it's very nutritious ... around ~£7 or £0.70 per meal

500g dry jasmin rice (~£1)
Lemon juice (~0.3)
A couple of chicken carcasses + 8 chicken drum-stick / thigh bones (~1)
Chicken meat (~£2)
Plenty of carrots, onions, celery and some garlic  (~£2)
2 chicken oxo-cubes  (£~0.20)
Olive oil (~£0.20)
Vinegar (~£0.10)

I buy frozen chicken carcasses from my local butcher for cheap and then buy a bunch of chicken drum-sticks/thighs. Whack them in the oven, then take them out and cut off the meat from the drumsticks/thighs. Use a meat cleaver to chop the bones up to expose the bone marrow in both the drum-stick/thigh-bones and the chicken-carcasses. Add the bones, skin and anything you're not using into a large pan and whack in a few aromatics like onion, celery, carrot. Cover in water, add a dash of vinegar (important to extract nutrients from bones) bring to the boil and simmer on very low heat for ~12 hours. I let it simmer overnight. Just make sure it's bubbling before you go to bed and there's enough water so it doesn't completely evaporate while you're sleeping and set off the fire alarm or something.

Next day, strain everything so you're left with the bone broth. Add chopped veg, chicken meat and dried rice. Throw in the peppercorns and lots of lemon juice, I use half a bottle myself. Dissolve oxo-cubes in. Simmer for about an hour stirring every now and again. Season to taste.

This is quite high calorie for a soup because of the rice and it's very thick and hardy. You can add more olive oil for extra calories if you want as well, or butter or something.

----

Thai Green Curry

~10 meals, ~£11 or about £1.30 per meal when combined with rice

Chicken meat (~£3)
4 cans of full fat coconut milk (~£2)
Seaseme seed oil (~£0.30)
A bunch of whatever vegetables you have, anything goes really (~£1)
Spring onion, garlic, ginger (~£2)
Thai green curry paste (I'd only use the "Mae Ploy" brand which is what real Thai people use here, or whatever equivalent where you are.. I would never use generic supermarket stuff, I've tried it and it's nothing like the authentic paste) ... (~£1)
Thai Fish sauce (~£0.30)
Couple of chicken oxo cubes (£0.20)
Sugar (£0.05)
 
Fry the spring-onion, garlic, ginger in some seaseme seed oil.  This combo tends to give a real oriental flavour to whatever you decide to make btw.

Add a few table-spoons of the green curry paste and fry for a couple of minutes to let the flavours out. Add all the coconut milk then whack the vegetables and chicken in there. Dissolve oxocubes and add a couple of tablespoons of fish sauce (<--- important, can't skip the fish sauce).
Add some salt and a couple of tablespoons of sugar. Simmer for like half an hour.

Serve with cooked jasmin rice. Each meal you should get a big plate-full of the stuff.

 

--------

So yeah if you cooked all of this you'd have 30 delicious meals for about £35.

Edited May 16, 2021 by dlof

[aurum]

16 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Those organs are sacks full of toxins. You'd be nuts to eat that on the regular.

Not any more than the rest of animal. You might as well not eat meat at all.

Considering the organs are the most nutrient dense part of the animal and I eat meat from sources that are relatively clean, I’ll take my chances.

Edited May 16, 2021 by aurum

[Windappreciator]

3 hours ago, aurum said:

Not any more than the rest of animal. You might as well not eat meat then at all.

Considering the organs are the most nutrient dense part of the animal and I eat meat from sources that are relatively clean, I’ll take my chances.

You fall into many holes along your way and when occasionally a ray of light shines in, you false confidently curse it and shy away, having convinced yourself that this is where you wanted to be in the first place.

Edited May 16, 2021 by Windappreciator

[ivankiss]

Wow.. This escalated real nice.

So much awesomeness. So much goodness.

You guys are golden! Thanks!

[StarStruck]

Sometimes I don't know what to eat and in those times I don't think in terms of dishes but in terms of countries. Every region in the world has a certain signature. I let my taste buds or intuition choose a region and I narrow it down to a dish. It is not only what is healhty but also what your body needs. Learn intuitive eating.

[Opo]

7 hours ago, aurum said:

Not any more than the rest of animal. You might as well not eat meat then at all.

Most of the shit is stored in fat so eating lean meat is safe. 

If you want to eat fat buy grass fed or go hunt. 

Btw hunting is a cheap way getting food. 

[Vision]

On 5/8/2021 at 9:20 PM, Hap E-Boi said:

eating this clean causes my semen to taste very neutral as well.

How do you know what your semen tastes like? Do you literally like....taste it?