Update:
I cooked a batch of lentils, just to show myself I could, and experimented with adding spices etc. I ended up spraying them with mayonnaise and eating them semi-cold. Not great, not terrible.
So today I was a little bit more ambitious: I made rice (a little slooshy but it’s the best rice I’ve ever cooked!), cooked some lentils and used them as a meat substitute for spaghetti bolognaise (with rice being the substitute for pasta). To the lentils I added frozen vegetables with fried onion, garlic and a can of tomatoes. I need to fine-tune the recipe a bit, but it tastes pretty good! This bowl I’m eating now is filling me up very quickly, and I still have a lot for tomorrow.
Here’s a photo of what I’m eating now. It doesn’t look great, but I’m just happy it turned out edible!
Thanks for all the suggestions and well-wishes! 🙏
I just found a great cheap meal that’s tasty, healthy, easy to cook, and ridiculously cheap. I thought I’d share it as so many people have shared theirs.
I bought a bag of dried peas, added to cups of cold water, bring to boil, then simmer for 10 minutes. You now have a pan full of peas to use any way you wish. I decided to make a pea soup. So I added a bunch of stuff I had in my kitchen already: garlic, sugar, ginger powder, a dollop of margarine to make it taste not so watery, and cornflour to thicken it a tiny bit. It cost almost nothing to make, and I’ll get 3 small meals out of it (all accompanied with bread). I might try a similar thing with lentils, to build my confidence cooking with them.
Here is my list of cheap foods I tend to keep on hand for making inexpensive meals.
Non perishable: Rice, Beans (black, chick pea, and lentils), dry mixed beans, bulk flour, bulk sugar, cans of tomato paste, cans of diced tomato, dried red chills, dry noodles, (like soba noodles or ramen noodles,) cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, vegetable oil, white vinegar. (I don’t really eat traditional pasta, but that is also a cheap, non perishable.)
perishables: Onions, garlic, cilantro, carrots, Asian cabbage like nappa cabbage, green onions, green bell peppers, corn, potatoes, ginger root, soy sauce, ketchup, mayo, mustard, worcestershire sauce, oyster sauce, yeast, bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers, seasonal squashes, seasonable fruit.
More expensive optional perishables: Block of store brand cheddar and mozzarella cheese, eggs, butter, condensed milk, sweetened condensed milk, plain yogurt
spices: Salt, pepper, paprika, chill powder, oregano, basil, cumin, coriander, garam masala, tumeric
With that list of ingredients I can make these things: Fresh breads including naan, sandwhich bread, flour totillas, banana bread. Cheese pizza, vegetarian Chinese dumplings with dumpling sauce, felafel, channa masala (a chick pea curry I eat with rice and naan), black bean burgers, black bean chilli, spiced lentils, Dahl (a type of lentil soup), Raita which is a condiment made with yogurt, spices, and veggies, Vegetable yakisoba, cheap ramen enhanced with egg, corn, carrot and green onion, home made brownies, tomato soup, cheesy baked potato, mashed potato, home made caramel to serve with brownies, or fruit, or mixed into yogurt with fruit. With the seasonal squashes I can make a squash bisque using butternut squash, or veggie soup using the mixed dried beans with the squash and other veggies.
When it comes to spices, I find that they are cheaper in my local asian grocery than the standard grocery store. When it comes to ketchup, mustard, and mayo, I get that for free just by asking at fast food joints, or grabbing them when they are freely offered in fast food joints.
The other thing that keeps the cost of the foods I eat low, is the fact that I am making it all from scratch. You can see that I am primarily cooking vegetarian, because meat is really fucking expensive. PM me if you would like the recipe for anything I mentioned.
i think that it helps to always have some rice cooked and waiting to bump up the calorie count to almost any meal.
Rice, potatoes, beans, and lentils are all solid low cost choices.
A friend had a recipie for a dinner he ate almost every night in college. One can of beans. One can of diced tomatoes. Put in microwave. Spice to taste. He called it “beans and tomatos”.
Yup. Buy dry beans and dry rice – none of that precooked stuff. Buy fresh potatoes tho. If you can afford it, I’d also get a bag of onions, maybe carrots, and some spices that do NOT contain salt. You can also buy salt, but it is way cheaper per-gram to get salt and other spices on their own. Note that brown rice has more vitamin content than white rice (thiamine deficiency), but most white rice is enriched to compensate.
I have to admit that I do not do beans nearly as much as I should. I think it is because canned beans are not nearly the deal money-wise as dried beans are … and I am not good at letting beans soak without forgetting them and ruining them.
I’m not sure they’re quite ruined if over soaked. Cooking time will be greatly diminished. I’ve left beans soaking for 24 hours because I forgot, they turned out fine.
You don’t actually need to soak them before you cook them.
I’ve made plenty of bean dishes, starting with completely dry beans. It takes a little longer to cook because they are rehydrating while they cook, but they still come out great.
Adding to this. A pressure cooker brings the cook time down dramatically and I think it produces a superior result.
I second this.
Also works for things like cheap pieces of beef which normally require long cooking times before you can comfortably eat them.
dry lentils can be cooked with rice in a rice cooker right with them because they are so small.
Fun fact FTW! Check out epazote for not only doing away with the pre-soak, but most of the renowned GI effects, too. 🖖🏼 A little goes a long way, (IIRC, ~ ½T for a 4-5gal pot) and it’s essentially dried grass. Get it from your local mercado/bodega for dirt cheap, change your life. 🥳
TIL, thanks
In general, when looking for ingenuous “hacks” in food, start with the originating culture. Thousands of years of poor people making the process more efficient, reliable, and just plain better? Sign me up.
Do a quick soak (bring to a boil, turn off heat, cover, let sit for an hour) and use a timer.
Magic words: pressure cooker. Electric ones are simplest, press one button and wait for beepng.
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If you then add fried onions to that you get a lebonese comfort food
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When I was literal piss-broke, there was a college campus near me with an open food court. Couldn’t afford the actual shops selling food there, but in that food court was a condiments station that randomly had one of those electric hot water dispensers for making tea, and styrofoam cups. It also had ketchup packets, saltine crackers, and pepper.
Turns out you can make a pretty passable tomato soup with ketchup and hot water. Bit of pepper and a handful of saltine cracker packets, and I had myself a hot meal for exactly $0.00
With some money to spend, rice is where it’s at. Hitch a ride to Costco or Sam’s with someone who has a membership, and they have iirc 50 lb bags of that short grain fortified rice for like… $15? That’s well over 100 meals worth of rice.
Cook that up with literally almost anything that has some flavor or nutrients - whatever’s cheap. Or just eat it straight… bland, but it’ll fill you up. Eggs go great with rice.
Fair warning, you’ll get fat. Cheap food is NOT usually healthy.
Beans shouldn’t be much more pricey, give you less worry about arsenic and contain a fair amount more protein than rice.
If affordable, I’d pick beans over rice any day.
Big bags of dried beans it is!Also, for variety, there are a lot of kind of beans, plus there’s chickpeas and lentils which can be made in the same way.
For even more variety, one can eat beans with rice 😁
Agreed! Pulses in general allow for a healthy and affordable diet.
I’m not a proponent of rice mainly for the way it gets produced (lots of water needed and methane emitted in the process) and the fact it’s a hyperaccumulator of arsenic. About all these things I don’t need to worry when picking pulses.
But each to their own and some variety rarely is a bad idea.How much of a concern is arsenic? A lot of Asian cultures have rice with every meal and they have some of the healthiest people on the planet.
Dunno. What I can say is that it’s not no concern.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/15/health/arsenic-cadmium-rice-wellness
Add the methane production and use of water to the equation and beans or pulses in general look quite a bit better in terms of environmental or individual health.
And last but not least rice contains very little protein whereas pulses are rich in protein.
But because pulses typically are low on some protein like methionine and cysteine, grain is a indeed a good addition to a diet based on pulses.
Yet I’d pick oats over rice for that part.
Beans are also fantastic. More expensive and more work than rice though, so my cheap and lazy ass usually went for the white stuff. Didn’t even know arsenic was a concern… nor would I probably have cared when I was that broke - all I really cared about was price.
But 100% beans will keep you full without breaking the bank!
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I hope you’re better off now ❤️ !
The rice comment is 100% spot on BTW, you know you’re in dire straits when you can’t afford rice…
Things are way better now! I was getting pretty depressed, and struggled with suicidal ideation. Had a plan, and a redundant backup plan in case the first one didn’t turn out to be fatal, but then randomly decided to try an extreme change in lifestyle so I enlisted into the Air Force on kind of a whim. Was always opposed to military cuz of the whole killing innocent people thing… figured if they put me that kind of position I’d just refuse (gave absolutely zero fucks back then) or worse case I’d just go back to plan A and kill myself instead.
Didn’t have to find out though: got lucky and they made me a medic (surgical tech specifically). And hugely: access to actual healthcare, to include mental!
Got the fuck out as soon as my enlistment was up, and I’ve been working as a civilian surgical tech ever since, which has me up to $24/hr. Actually not broke anymore, which still feels kinda weird. Using my GI Bill to go to nursing school right now, so soonish I’ll looking at another income bump, but I’m already making enough to at least eat healthy… you don’t realize how shitty you just always feel at baseline when your diet consists of carbs and whatever you can find on the clearance rack.
I see a lot of my classmates with that with that same kind of “aw fuck” expression on their face when they see the price tag on the hospital cafeteria food at our clinical rotations, so I’ve been pretty quick to buy their meal and tell em to pay it forward when they’re a ‘rich’ nurse lol. 😝
But yeah, it sucks absolute balls to be poor. I will never let myself forget what that’s like.
Thanks for the history and glad you’re on a good track! Good luck you seems to be a sincerely good person!
Rice and beans. Together they make a complete protein so can make up a larger bulk of your diet.
Pork loin, those gigantic big ones, are cheap per pound. Cut it into three for three roasts, freeze the other 2.
Try to get Multivitamins and magnesium. Long term you want those vitamins and minerals. Fish oil too. It seems expensive but it’s cheaper than fish itself.
Beans and rice is the real answer here, +1 to this
Lots of meals are cheap but few will also fill you up.
Yeah agreed. Beans/lentils, rice, potatoes and flour make up most of my meals. I rarely eat meat but I do consume dairy and eggs occasionally. If you mix in some cheap vegetables like carrots, celery, onion, ect you can get really far with tasty meals.
+1 For rice and beans. Add some drops of ketjap manis or soy sauce/salt for flavour. If you just eat rice and beans all day everyday, you’re not even that far off a complete nutritional package. If you love in a potato country, switch out the rice for taters, even better nutrition but might still be a hit more expensive.
+1 for the beans (or lentils, or just any pulses fwiw), but why the rice?
Pulses contain carbohydrates, but much more protein than rice and as rice is a hyperaccumulator of arsenic and pulses aren’t, wouldn’t that make a diet centred around pulses healthy while still affordable?
Put some canned tomatoes, vegetables, onions, garlic, spices or whatever else is available and affordable to the beans and you have a nice enough and quite healthy meal.Because even the poor like a bit of change?
Makes sense. Maybe I’m just trying to be too efficient.
Because rice and beans together make a complete protein. Link: https://www.livestrong.com/article/351077-the-protein-in-rice-beans/
To reduce the arsenic in your rice, first give it a good rinse. Place the grains in a fine mesh strainer and pour water over them until it runs clear. Cook the rice in excess water, at a ratio of one cup of rice to six cups of water, and drain any extra leftover once the grains are tender.
Rice and beans is the staple pretty much everywhere else.
Don’t buy ultra processed Mac and cheese or frozen pizza. It’s nutritionally bad for you, and won’t keep you full for long.
Start with rice and beans and canned sauce. Cheap, easy, and good for you.
You can obviously add chicken/tofu/protein, or try to start making sauces yourself. But always keep the rice and beans as a base. Every meal you eat, rice and beans. They’re cheap as hell and close to what we evolved to eat.
the answer is always either rice and beans or potato.
I’m a fan of Cuban rice and beans. I can’t make it all that well but it’s good enough and my version is palatable. Dirt in the hole!
Seems like I need to educate myself on lentils and dry beans. Any EASY recipes welcome!
Fry onions in coconut oil, add lentils and water, season with garam masala and/or other herbs and spices, optionally add dried fruit and nuts, eat with rice. The best thing about this is that all ingredients keep well in the cupboard so you can stock up a little when you can afford to.
1bag dried black beans
1half onion
Vegetable oil
Bay leaf
Red pepper flakes
Garlic
Salt
Water
Pick out any bad looking beans, then place them in water to soak over night. Next day, drain the water, put beans in a pot with 1tbsp oil, salt, bay leaf, half an onion, and enough water to cover. Cook for about an hour or until beans are soft. This can be divided into 4-5 quart bags and frozen to store. Do not throw out the water, store it with the beans.
Add about a cup of veggie oil, 1 tsp garlic, 2 tsp red pepper flakes to a pan. Cook over medium hear until aromatic. Add about 4 cups of beans and juice or 1 bag thawed. Stir carefully until it thickens, then mash with a slotted spoon/spatula/potato masher.
The first half makes beans that goes great with basically anything, the second is true, authentic refried beans. As a honky boy who only ever had then from a can, the refried beans were life changing and I married the woman that taught me how to make them.
1 cup dry beans, 1.5 cups water in instant pot. Press the “beans” button and go back to Lemmy til pot beeps at you (about 45 minutes). Can’t get much simpler.
budgetbytes.com great cheap recipes their older stuff was a bit more budget conscious. But you can sort by ingredient and find good bean and lentil recipes.
Soak the dried beans over night and the lentils at least for 2 or 3 hours.
Fry an onion and some cloves of garlic in oil. I prefer olive oil, but take whatever is available.
Add a good amount of canned tomatoes to it - canned tomatoes are typically more affordable than fresh ones while tasting better at the same time due to typically being harvested and processed when being ripe. Also they can be bought in bulk due to the long shelf-life.
Put some spices in: pepper, cumin, oregano, thyme, cardamom go well with it, or whatever you like. If the fancier spices are too expensive, just pepper does quite well.
Finally add whatever vegetables are available and affordable: bell peppers, carrots, mushrooms, green squash, whatever you can get and like.
If you can get some minced meat, put it in the pot/pan before you add the canned tomatoes. The same goes for sausages: slice the sausages and roast them gently; it improves the taste.
More affordable than minced meat (potentially healthier than sausages) and a good source of protein (next to the pulses, which contain a nice amount of protein already) would be eggs.
Crack one, two, three eggs into the pan, put a lid on and let it cook for around 10 minutes. The result is close to eggs Benedict ;)
Have fun and hang in there!I had a similar (but much more primitive) dish:
I’d pour a can of tomatoes onto sausages as they cooked. It sort of braised them. Then I’d add basil for a European touch, or curry for something more exotic. Not sure how dried beans and lentils will go, but I’ll have to try it. Cheers.
I started eating a lot of chickpeas recently. Buy them dried, boil them for a couple minutes them let them soak in the water for a few hours. Then either roast them in the oven or if I’m lazy, toss them in the microwave for like 5 minutes, then add some seasoning. I snack on them between meals, or also toss them into things like soup or curry.
Also if you want a different take on ramen, boil them until they are al dente, drain the water and then stir fry with some cheap veggies or whatever.
There is this curry spice blend that comes in a small green carboard box (fits in your hand) that I find at a local indian groacery store. Its specifically made for chickpea curry. Anyway dump a bunch of this shit and a little salt on your chickpeas before roasting. Its genuinely so goddamn good I eat it every other day atleast. I’ll see if I can’t find the name
Found it
Really depends on the situation.
If I’m just feeding myself, I have no issue with going outside and foraging for food. I don’t hunt, but I’m not the type that needs an animal based protein main entree in my meals, so it works/worked for me to collect wild vegetables, fruits, and fungi.
And from there, I eat whatever is cheapest. Grocery store mark-downs and deep-discount sales would guide my decisions. If an acquaintance was giving away food, I’d take it. When the food bank is doing a giveaway and it was close enough for me to visit, I’d go there and take what they had to offer.
At my poorest, when I had no access to a kitchen, peanut butter sandwiches were a mainstay. Tuna sandwiches were next best, but more expensive. At the time, powdered milk was a bit of a luxury, but it definitely helped wash down the peanut butter and was way cheaper by volume than fresh milk.
A lot of stores and restaurants, at least where I live, will have condiment packages out in the open. Don’t go hog wild, but my experience is nobody cares/notices if you grab a few packs of whatever items are out: ketchup, mustard, mayo, honey, hot sauce, soy sauce, salt, and pepper – in moderation – so those can be free to you to use for meal prep.
When I’ve just been broke and/or saving money, my main protein was usually chicken. I’d just buy whatever was cheapest on sale, and try to stock up a bit or get rain checks. Then I could cook that in a crock pot and literally have meals for days. Around Thanksgiving and Christmas, turkey usually goes on deep discount and there are almost always a myriad of programs that just give them away. If you have room in your freezer and a crock pot, then you can be set just from that.
Add in some rice and/or beans/legumes to soak up the flavor when cooking meats.
Eggs were also always a solid choice, pretty versatile because they could be hard boiled, scrambled, fried, mixed into other things like noodles, or used to cook/bake other dishes.
Potatoes were another cheap source of carbohydrates, something that goes on sale often enough that I could usually find a deal, and if properly stored (cool, dark, dry) they can last a long time. Plus, they can go into the slow cooker with some chicken thighs and both ingredients benefit flavor-wise.
So, meals would be whatever combination of those things you can physically obtain. Your meal items don’t have to have a name. If you have potatoes and mix those with scrambled eggs and mix in some wild dandelions, that’s still a meal even if that’s not going to show up in a recipe book. If you boil some noodles and add in some mayo and a pinch of rosemary from a bush you saw down the road, that’s still a meal. Basically, just get creative with what you’ve got.
Pasta and sauce. As long as you have a few basic herbs and spices on hand (garlic powder, Italian seasonings, salt pepper), you can buy a can of crushed tomatoes, and a box of pasta, and you can have several delicious, filling meals for less than 5 bucks total. Spend a little more and toss in ground beef, ground pork, or mushrooms, or a combination of all three.
Aldi has the ingredients for really cheap. You can even buy a pound of ground pork for only about $3. The spices are only about a buck each.
A bag of onions and a jar of minced garlic punch above their price tag for pasta enhancement as well.
I like to saute the onion (diced) until golden and translucent, then add a scoop of the minced garlic, then just as it starts to brown, dump in the sauce, Italian seasoning, and stir at a very low simmer while the noodles cook.
Add some pasta water to the sauce before you strain so it sticks to the noodles better.
Lentils, beans, onion, rice. Lentils and beans need to be soaked for a long time before cooking, but they’re DIRT CHEAP, and they are actually super tasty. Just get used to it and you’ll find it’s basically comfort food. You can eat it with anything, but lentils and onion and rice is amazing, especially with some condiments or whatever
Also super nutritious!!
As a side note, it’s a good investment to buy a pressure cooker at least for the beans since it cuts the cooking time to about 10 minutes (and this is assuming you’ve soaked the beans for at least 12H).
Pressure cookers will also cut down the cooking time of things that need longer cooking to not be too hard to chew, such as cheap pieces of beef.
Also consider chickpeas along with beans and lentils since you can cook them in the same way and they’re the same kind of thing (pulses).
If you didn’t soak your beans, you can still do them in a pressure cooker. It’ll just take about an hour. It lets you make a somewhat last minute decision to have beans whenever you want.
Chili, chili, chili! No ground beef? No problem! Make a bean chili!
Bulgur wheat makes a really good textural element in vegetarian chili.
Basically pasta.
I don’t know where you are, but a 500g pack can be had for significantly under 1€ and is sufficient for multiple meals. Add a similar priced can of tomatoes, onions (optional) and some spices (I assume you have those).
Obviously there are other options for the sauce, many are cheap enough to consider when money is tight.
Yeah I’ll have to get creative with pasta. I can’t just eat rice, dried beans and lentils forever haha. Cheers.
Even a little bit of butter is great! Also teaches you to cook pasta correctly.
If you’re doing anything with pasta that involves butter you’re doing it wrong, but you do you.
You have luckily never been that poor :-)
I actually have. A can of tomatoes is (or at least was back then) cheaper than a pack of pasta, and can also last for more than 1 or even 2 servings. If I add (just) butter to the pasta, I’m making it worse because I’m one of the seemingly 5 people on earth who don’t like butter.
But my comment was meant for pasta with (any) sauce, see my other reply.
Well you do you then. It was pasta + butter, not anything else.
While pasta might contain calories and some protein, there’s a lack of other nutrients.
I advice going for pulses instead of pasta.
Dried pulses have a long shelf-life so they can be bought in bulk to reduce the price per meal.You can get nutrients from the sauce. IMO tomato sauce is very tasty and can be pretty cheap as well. Probably the cheapest would be tomato paste and water as a base. Or canned tomatoes. Depending on how cheap you want to go you can add vegetables to your liking. Onions are always great but also carrots or peas.
Back in my early 20s there were a few things.
- Making beanie weenies were pretty inexpensive
- Ramen is the old standby
- Totino’s party pizzas were also cheap calories
- Canned soups, stretched out with cheap crackers
- Peanut butter on celery or toast
No idea if those are still cost effective, but two or three of those could be stretched out over a week for under $10 at the time. I still eat all of those things at least every few years for some hits of nostalgia, even the cheap ass pizza.
This is all processed food that’s not only more expensive than just cooking something but also horribly unhealthy. Loaded with sodium.
When I was really low on money I had one small saucepan, one pan, a spatula, and a few dishes and silverware. No soup pot, no mixing bowels, or any other prep stuff. No spices or other ways to make flavorful food.
Cheap processed food is more affordable in the short term than spending money on stuff that will make cooking cheaper in the long run. I’m not saying it was the best choice, just answering the question of what I did make.
Crock pots are relatively cheap and often available second hand, so are larger pots. I have been poor and know exactly how hard it is to feed myself with little to no money left after bills. Buying junk is not cheaper, it doesn’t actually sustain you.
I’m really enjoying you second guessing all the decisions I made when I was poor! Not only was I struggling, but apparently did it completely wrong!
There are always people like that in these threads. Lemmy, Reddit, same thing. “Dirt broke and need to eat? Buy some kitchenware! It’s quite cheap if you have the money for it!” Don’t let them get to you!
Lol, in the long run it is totally worth having even the basics and being able to make food from scratch but when I was poor I was also working two jobs so didn’t have a lot of extra time for making food that took more than a few minutes.
Being poor is really expensive!
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” James Baldwin
Well considering I’m speaking from the experience of my own poverty, I might actually know what I’m talking about. I’m not saying go out and buy a $200 pot set. But you can get a $5 pot from a second hand store or garage sale, or these days something like Facebook marketplace that didn’t even exist when I was going through this, and you’ll make that up by not buying the garbage that the other person suggested. Your money will stretch a hell of a lot farther that way. Or you know, just dismiss me and other people because that person is insecure.
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Third party here!
That other guy needs to fuck right off. You’re contributing reasonable stuff, they are not. Fuck em.
No, I’m second guessing the advice you’re passing on now. Just because you were young and didn’t know better doesn’t mean you should teach other people to do the same things. Get over yourself.
I’m not giving advice.
Now you’re just being disingenuous, not only about the obvious nature of this thread but the obvious nature of your answer.
Assuming someone asking how to eat when poor has access to fresh ingredients and the time/means to prepare them
Rice and beans are available pretty much everywhere. Granted it might be farther than a corner store but it keeps so it is worth it even in a food desert.
I agree that how healthy something is should be put on the back burner (hah!), true, but when cost is the most important factor, produce is unbeatable. While not created equal, the means to prepare for most are 1 pot, 1 board and 1 knife, and there sure are recipes that don’t take up too much time.
Someone asking for recipes can be expected to have some time to cook them, while working 2 jobs is way too common nowadays, there are still more people struggling for money with some time on their hands. If you have no money, no time and no energy for cooking, you’re beyond asking for advice and should instead be asking for help.
produce is unbeatable
When available.
Every supermarket I ever went to had a vegetable aisle and potato sacks for a few €. Variety in produce may be low, but that’s what a Turkish supermarket is for.
Granted, I never lived in an American BestBuy town, so this might be a cultural thing. But produce being unavailable or even just being out of one’s way seems insane to me. You sure that normal where you live?
No, I just made it up because everyone actually has the exact same life experience as you do.
Well, same back to you. I never doubted you having that experience, but I asked if it’s normal.
Your own source says it’s only 12.8% of the US living in such areas. So it’s safe to assume that OP would also be interested in the cheaper recipes that involve mostly produce. Your life experience isn’t universal either.
