Poverty Food

[wykvlvr]

a whole chicken cut up = 2 breast, 2 legs, 2 thighs and if you know how to do it a wishbone for serving pieces. Remove breasts from bone. Toss them, the backbone, wings and any other boney pieces in a pot to be simmered until the meat falls off. I know in east Texas this was done AFTER dark when it cooled a bit. Next day warm up broth, remove bones add dumplings. Take bones put back in a crock pot if you have it cover with water and simmer for hours and hours until the bones fall apart. That gives you bone broth for use in a pot of soup with no meat.
Rice and beans will become your best friends. Each type of dried bean has a different flavor and texture, add corn bread and you have the makings of a complete protein. Rice with a bit of hamburger makes a good meal, Pancakes can be made from a dough of water and flour not the best tasting but it works. Papa made syrup by heating water and sugar then added flavorings if he had them. It worked for us kids. Tortillas are flour and less water then pancakes. Dumplings are like a biscuit you can drop on top of the water the chicken walked through. Biscuits and gravy work. remember gravy is flour and water cooked.
Hot dogs were a luxury for us as was sandwich meat of any kind mostly we had PBJ or grilled cheese made from the big blocks of Velveeta
5 kids 2 adults daddy was enlisted in the military in the 50s and 60s they didn't get much. Papa was a friends dad, there were 6 kids of their own plus any extras who needed a place to sleep. Both he and mom worked minimum wage jobs when work was available but they never turned away a kid in need. I spent a fair amount of time at their place as a teen.

[Tormato]

With the heat, August for me is mayo month. I probably use twice as much mayo in that one month, than in the rest of the entire year. BLTs, tuna salad, chicken salad, potato/egg salad, macaroni salad, etc... Except for the BLTs, everything else is room temp or refrigerated. It's been too hot, and not enough 'maters, to make tomato pie in the oven.

[greenthumbomaha]

With the heat, August for me is mayo month. I probably use twice as much mayo in that one month, than in the rest of the entire year. BLTs, tuna salad, chicken salad, potato/egg salad, macaroni salad, etc... Except for the BLTs, everything else is room temp or refrigerated. It's been too hot, and not enough 'maters, to make tomato pie in the oven.

Huh, what ????? Not enough 'maters to make tomato pie. In the peak season of August no less ??? What is happening to life as we know it !!!

- Lisa

[AlittleSalt]

Being disabled, I don't leave the property very often. I do lose track of what's going on. It had been 6 weeks since I last went anywhere. At the local HEB grocery store, everything had gone up in price with the exception of BarS hotdogs - still 99 cents. That's 8 days of eating a cold hotdog on white bread and mustard lunches, and that works for me.

I did splurge though. I found a 94 cent 16 oz. package of "Wagon Wheel" pasta (I haven't seen that in decades) so I bought some cheap whole frozen okra, a can of tomatoes, a can 46 oz. can of tomato juice that was $1.49, and some polish smoked sausage that was on sale = total cost $8 or less. It will be my lunch for 4 days, and it's a recipe that my grandfather taught me back in the early 1970s when I was a young child. I loved my grandparents, so cooking what they taught me means a lot more to me than eating at restaurants.

Otherwise, my average lunch cost is less that 25 cents. Oh and I did find JIF peanut butter again.

[Sue_CT]

Salt, you have internet access obviously, and other family members that do leave the property. I hope you have looked into Food banks and similar. It doesn't have to be you. There are 4 adults there.

[worth1]

I remember a family that I was friends with years ago.
The woman would make a giant pot of mixed beans and even unpoped popcorn in the mix.
They had little money on a fixed income from his Indian check and he was disabled from WWII.
The little ones loved the stuff and gobbled it up like no tomorrow.
A simple baloney sandwich was a special treat.

[worth1]

A big sack of flour tortilla mix makes great pancakes.
Just toss in a pinch of baking powder.
It also makes good biscuits too.
All you need is water and the baking powder.
Even if you pay a dollar for a loaf of bread it's cheaper to get your nutrients from the tortilla mix.

Or you can get 5 pounds of flour for under 2 dollars.
That's even less money.
Then all you really need is the baking powder and some shortening or lard or even just oil.
I can't count how many times growing up I sat down to a plate of fried bread and ketchup.
I would make believe it was hash browns.

[worth1]

Federal poverty level for a family of 6 in 2022 is 37,000 a year.
I find this ridiculous.
One person can't make ends meet on that income in many places much less Austin.
But in reality that's more than many people make.
But a family of 6 no way.

[karstopography]

I was thinking of Fry Bread @worth1 . Dinner and/or dessert, your choice.

Corn tortillas are also dirt cheap. 36 ct. for a bit over a buck, maybe they can be had even cheaper. About anything can be turned into a taco. If I had a choice between bread and tortillas for the rest of my life, I’d pick the tortillas.

I get the federal poverty level angst. Housing costs here are outrageous and now with the food cost inflation it is about impossible for many. I blame our onerous property tax system here in Texas. Even if you rent, those tax costs get passed onto the tenants, one way or another. Property taxes only have been soaring year after year here because people from high income tax states have been coming here and driving up housing costs.

I hate property taxes as they are so out of the control of the individual. So you get someone that buys a little place in a modest neighborhood thinking or knowing they can afford it, but then it gets trendy or something, out of area people come in a drive up valuations and the tax costs skyrocket and suddenly the original modest income folks can’t afford the taxes on their home. They lived within their means, but the then somebody change the rules.

Income taxes are bad enough, but at least if you don’t make much, you don’t pay much. With the high property tax deal, the house you picked up for $150,000 fifteen years ago now might be at $500,000 in some of these places. Your tax bill, already ridiculous, has now more than tripled in those fifteen years. Do you think the income went up that much during those 15 years? Not hardly.

I wish we’d have a property tax revolt in Texas. I get the State government needs revenue, but find a tax structure that doesn’t hit the middle to lower income, modest fixed income people quite so hard.

[bower]

I really appreciate all the great hot weather cooking suggestions in this thread - many I hadn't thought of.

Just wanted to also mention that peanut butter makes fantastic sauces with a bit of soy sauce fresh garlic and lemon or lime juice. It adds protein to a meal whether hot or cold and goes great with many things. This is one thing my Mom has ended up using a lot, since she stopped eating meat.

[ddsack]

I hate property taxes as they are so out of the control of the individual. So you get someone that buys a little place in a modest neighborhood thinking or knowing they can afford it, but then it gets trendy or something, out of area people come in a drive up valuations and the tax costs skyrocket and suddenly the original modest income folks can’t afford the taxes on their home. They lived within their means, but the then somebody change the rules.

This happens everywhere. Local government really needs to freeze or limit property tax increases on old retired folks that have no means of additional income. If they need to raise taxes on property where surrounding rich folks have bought in, they should reassess the value at at the time that the old folks sell to the next buyer, or their heirs decide to sell, not while the old folks are still living. The property may have gone up in value, but it generates no income until it is sold. People who have lived there all their lives should not be forced to sell because they can't afford the taxes anymore.

[Sue_CT]

I don't know about other states but here it is state law that dictates how often properties need to be reassessed, not local town governments. Also, at least in my town, I know the elderly can apply for a reduction of their property taxes based on income. My mother gets that so I know it happens. But that is up to each town to decided what its property taxes are, and if they want to provide any tax relief for low income, elderly, etc. There are many who are retired and have tons of money so not sure age is a good thing to base it on, but I think we might use both. I am not sure you get any tax relief based on income alone in my town, you might but you might also have to be over 65 AND meet income requirements. No reason you couldn't bring it up at town meetings or whatever local government communications you have and see if they would consider it. But the rest of the people in town would have to make up the slack and support it too or it would never pass. Anyway, this devolves into politics, so not really on topic. Just wanted to put out there that it IS done in some places.

[pepperhead212]

Peanut butter makes a delicious Thai satay sauce. Also, India is another place they use a lot of peanuts, as well as countless other legumes, due to the high % of vegetarians. And not just in the peanut butter, but also cooking the peanuts, usually raw, like is often done here, down south a.k.a. boiled peanuts. But they usually put a lot more spices with them! The Chinese also have some versions of boiled peanuts, my favorite being one from Szechwan (of course!).

The Indian markets are still the cheapest places I can shop for legumes, as well as spices. Prices have gone up some, in the last year, due to shipping costs, but not as much as you would expect. Used to be just under $1 a lb for most of those lentils and other legumes, when I'd get 8 lb bags of them, now it's under $1.20, for most, though I haven't been very recently. The price gouging on some of those things in supermarkets is pathetic! But then, I've always been one of those that refuses to buy things when prices go up (eggs, lately), and many things I only buy on sale.

I make just about everything from scratch - cheaper, better for me, and tastes a lot better, in most cases. And bread is one of those things that you can save huge amounts on, making it yourself! The cost of bread made me learn how to bake it, then I found out how much better it tasted, and haven't looked back!

[Sue_CT]

I don't know if everyone already knows this or not, but spices can be had much cheaper just by getting them in a different isle of the grocery store. If you leave the spice and baking isle and go to the isle of interntaional foods, you can find Badia spices at a fraction of what the same spices cost in the spice isle, and in much larger quantities. Not all towns have indian markets but they are generally less expensive here also.

[Tormato]

The local WalMart has the bulk Badia spices for $12 to $15 a container. The discount stores have them for about $3.99 to $5.99, or so.

Cooking almost exclusively with chicken, pork, rice, beans, lentils, potatoes - white and sweet, and pasta (not including veggies which may go into recipes or be side dishes), I go through a lot of different herbs and spices.

Beef chuck for stew, and ground beef for meatballs and meat sauce are bought only when on sale. I haven't had a steak in a couple of decades, and don't really miss it. A boneless lamb roast, yeah I miss that, so I have about one a year.

[Tormato]

A big sack of flour tortilla mix makes great pancakes.
Just toss in a pinch of baking powder.
It also makes good biscuits too.
All you need is water and the baking powder.
Even if you pay a dollar for a loaf of bread it's cheaper to get your nutrients from the tortilla mix.

Or you can get 5 pounds of flour for under 2 dollars.
That's even less money.
Then all you really need is the baking powder and some shortening or lard or even just oil.
I can't count how many times growing up I sat down to a plate of fried bread and ketchup.
I would make believe it was hash browns.

I like fried bread where the peanut butter spread on it, melts.

[Sue_CT]

Local grocery stores to me have them much cheaper than what you saw at Walmart. Holy Cow, I have never seen them that high. Just checked my app for one local grocery store, Big Y, ground ginger 2.59, bag dried cilantro 1.59, Chives 1.99, Chili powder 6.39, oregano 2.59. But those are "normal" sized spice jars. If you want 1/2lb containers, yes some are 10.00 or more. But if you want to make something and need a particular spice, you don't have to buy 10 or 15.00 worth.

[zeuspaul]

Peanut butter makes a delicious Thai satay sauce.

That is delicious I lived in the Netherlands back in the late sixties. They had something called Indonesian satay. It was chunks of meat on a spear served with peanut butter sauce.

I bought a little house when I moved to California in 1978. Soon after I received a property tax bill that was TRIPPLE, something I couldn't afford. Soon after that we passed a property tax limitation initiative that limited the property tax to 1% of the selling price with a limit of a 2% increase per year. I was back to something I could afford. If it had been left to the state government it would never have happened.

California has a lot of people leaving, likely many to Texas. The ones I know went to Arizona, Idaho and Oregon. The way it is affecting our housing costs is to make them go way up. There must be something else causing this?

[bower]

With the heat, August for me is mayo month. I probably use twice as much mayo in that one month, than in the rest of the entire year. BLTs, tuna salad, chicken salad, potato/egg salad, macaroni salad, etc... Except for the BLTs, everything else is room temp or refrigerated. It's been too hot, and not enough 'maters, to make tomato pie in the oven.

Can you believe it, my darn fridge does not work in hot humid weather. You can't keep veggies or anything moist like a salad unless double sealed in containers and even then, it somehow seems to manage to suck the moisture out and up into the space between the freezer and fridge, forming a block of ice that, when blocked completely, prevents the cool air from circulating to the fridge.
I'm currently on full day two of fridge defrost to get the glacier out of the back of it, a chore I had to do twice since July. And the worst of all, each time I had a partial jar of Hellman's that... I had to say goodbye to. Nope after the last defrost it did not last as long as one jar of Hellman's. This is bad. So bad.
The fridge is actually a dehumidifier.... I am left wondering if it also sucks moisture out of the air besides whatever moist thing is in the fridge or freezer. Last leg of this defrost, I had to rig up a siphon to empty the water completely filling the tray underneath. Just about to put it back together this evening, and tomorrow I can finally buy some milk again and open a new jar of Hellman's....

[bower]

I also wanted to comment about electrolytes, that is your sodium, potassium balance especially important in the hot weather because you're sweating and losing them.
Whatever changes happened to my diet because of the heat, I ended up with a big electrolyte crash. I was expecting a big boost of energy when the temperature finally dropped one day, and instead I was dragging myself around the grocery store ready to keel over. I thought 'buy yourself a treat, what is it in this whole store that you want to eat". None of the usual suspects even gave me a jangle. Then I got to the fruit and veggie aisle and felt a little pang of desire for... a banana. And this is something I rarely if ever buy or eat. Yeah, sure enough, my potassium must've bottomed out. Probably because not eating potatoes as regular as usual. I did buy a few bananas and it was healing to eat them.
Same issues can happen with sodium, you get dizzy and disoriented for lack of salt, and the thing to fix that is a good briny olive and a piece of cheese.
There are foods designed for hot weather in places that are hot, and we do need them sometimes.
A little patience with us northerners, we truly appreciate your advice.