20 Easy, Cheap Struggle Meals To Rely On In A Recession

Everybody knows groceries are getting more expensive — sometimes prohibitively so. So, when I saw a post from Reddit user Asleep-Raspberry-819 on the Frugal subreddit entitled "What was a staple [recession meal] for you during the last one?" I had to see what they had to say.
"Trying to save as much money possible as an adult in America on a fixed income," Asleep-Raspberry-819 began. "I try to spend as little as I can right now on groceries, but know I should prepare for the worst before it comes."
They continued: "Whether it's just beans and rice or oatmeal, I want to know to either stock up now, figure out recipes now, or start eating it now to save money. Any input is greatly appreciated. Thanks so much in advance."
Well, here are some of people's best, most helpful responses:
"My best advice is just to learn to cook the things you like, then buy what's inexpensive right now."
"Buying meat on sale and freezing it is a game changer."
"Adding some sausage and/or ham hock to your red beans and rice is a game changer. It goes from being a struggle meal to you being transported to the French Quarter in New Orleans."
"I used spaghetti noodles to make peanut butter noodles with soy sauce and Sriracha, added frozen veggies like spinach or peas, and enjoyed it hot or cold."
"It was spaghetti carbonara for me until eggs went wild…"
"Apples with peanut butter."
"I don't mean this in a pejorative way, but eat like a peasant. Flatbreads, seasonal produce, rice, beans, and modest amounts of meat or vegetable protein. Make it interesting with spices and herbs."
"Tuna melt quesadillas."
"Cans of tomatoes can be used for a large variety of things, like spaghetti, chili, tacos, etc."
"Dishes don't have to be 'super cheap' to still be frugal. You can get Thai curry pastes and make excellent curries at home. They are quite easy. Same with spice mixes for Indian dishes."
"Rice and its 70,000 variations. Rice with soup bases of different flavors. Rice with veggies. Rice with meat and veggies. Rice with sugar, milk, and raisins as dessert. If you've got rice and flavorings, you've got meals."
"Last year I survived in DC on an average $200 a month food budget."
"[In 2007] I was a freshman in college and didn't know it was a recession but ate canned new potatoes microwaved with shredded cheddar and topped with sour cream and Hillshire Farms' take on A1 steak sauce… sometimes daily."
"When I lived with my boyfriend, we'd get a family-sized Stouffer's lasagne and a 30-pack of Red Dog, Keystone, Busch, or whatever was cheapest. And that would keep us fed for a Monday to Friday work week. Sad, lol."
"I used to make something called an Unemployment Burger when I was younger. It was basically a potato shredded with a cheese grater, a tsp of flour, an egg (I think?) and whatever seasoning you have on hand: salt, pepper, garlic etc."
"I also made something called Depression Surprise (where the surprise is extra depression)."
"Think about the staple foods that kept cultures fed for thousands of years through ups and downs: pasta, rice, potatoes, beans, corn/tortillas, cabbage. Pork shoulder is crazy cheap. Whole chickens or leg quarters are cheap. Broccoli, zucchini, bell peppers, and peas are all pretty cheap."
"During the last recession I was vegetarian (which saved some money) and stretched out meals with lots of rice and pasta. Eggs were more affordable then too, so those were a primary source of protein along with different types of beans and tofu at ethnic grocers (cheaper)."
"Potatoes. Cheap, filling, great nutritional value (if you don't deep fry), and you can do a ton with them. I've had plenty of stints where that was my major food source."
And finally: "My kids' favorite cheap meal is a bag of egg noodles and cabbage. I chop the cabbage and sautée it with a couple pats of butter. Get the pan hot beforehand so it chars a little on the bottom. Add the cooked noodles and it's good to go. Maybe four dollars."
So, what do you think? I want to hear all your thoughts down in the comments.

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It's normal for kids to lie sometimes. It's how they learn important life lessons and test boundaries, but sometimes a little lie can have consequences that kid-brains never saw coming. Recently, on Reddit, people shared that "small" lie they told as a kid that had unexpected results, and it was too relatable not to share. Here are some of the best stories from the thread: 1."My younger brother was a really dumb kid. I managed to convince him that badgers were mythical creatures like dragons or unicorns. He then freaked out after seeing a dead badger on the road on his way to school. They had to call our parents. But that's not where it ends. During the subsequent talk about badgers actually being real and seeing one wasn't noteworthy, he confessed that the reason he was dumb was because he had a carrot in his brain." "A couple of years before, I'd done a really shitty attempt at a slight of hand trick. I pushed a carrot 'into his head,' but actually pushed it up my sleeve. It never even occurred to me that he thought it was real. He'd spent the last couple of years literally thinking he had a carrot in his brain, and that was the reason he sucked at spelling..." —uncle_monty 2."My older sister got glasses when she was in 4th grade, and I was in 2nd, and I wanted a pair too, so I told my parents that I had vision problems. They took me to an eye doctor who accused me of lying (I was), but my parents believed me, and I ended up getting glasses. Flash forward over 10 years and I now have a heavy prescription and cannot see for shit and it's probably because I messed up my eyes early on for no reason and didn't want to admit I was lying." —whatstherlworld 3."I used to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night as a teenager. We had a rickety back screen door that my parents both loved the sound of because it reminded them of an old country screen door. I required this door to commence my nighttime shenanigans. I WD40ed the hinges to make it quieter. What I did not intend was for it to silence the country creakiness entirely. I felt terrible because I also liked the creaky door, but my selfish ass carried on. Never heard a word from my parents." "Around ten years later, my dad was telling some stories about his own father and the narcissistic antics he used to get up to. One of these stories was about the time my parents confronted my grandfather for lubricating the door hinges on this screen door. He talked about how a huge argument ensued about how my grandfather thinks he knows better than everyone else, and that he couldn't just mind his own business and let my parents enjoy THEIR OWN stupid creaky door IN THEIR OWN STUPID HOUSE. As this was absolutely characteristic of my grandfather, my plan turned out to be accidentally genius because they were in town from California at the time. No one suspected dummy teenage-me, because OF COURSE GRANDPA DID IT. 'Dad, I feel safe confessing this now because of how long it's been. That was me. I lubed up the door hinges.' Shocked silence for about ten seconds, and then one of the hardest belly laughs I've ever heard out of my dad." —amandemic 4."I so adamantly pretended I thought my doll was real and could hear her telling me to do things that I had to be evaluated by a therapist." —LeftStatistician7989 "'Pretended.' Just like the doll told you to say." —darkpigeon1 5."This was around 1991 in Chicago, so my sister and I were 7 and 9 years old, respectively. There was this hysteria at the time about Homie the Clown, which was a character on TV, but supposedly there was a man in the area dressed as him and trying to lure kids with candy into his van. There were 'sightings' reported all over the city by children, and the cops and local news were all over it. One day during class, my sister claimed she saw Homie hiding in a bush by the school, so they put the school on lockdown until the police could investigate. She did not, in fact, see Homie, or any other clown, lol." —Iwantitallthensum 6."For the record, I really was a twin. HOWEVER, I was a fraternal twin. Boy-girl pair. We had a substitute teacher one day, and one of my bullies was picking on me for something or other again. I decided that I had had enough, and I poured clear glue on her chair. She sat down on it, and her skirt got all sticky and stiff. Her tights stuck to the chair; it was a mess. The substitute asked who did it, and obviously, someone ratted me out. When I was asked about the incident, I said, 'I'm not Phantom, I'm Maria. I'm her twin. We switched places today. I'm supposed to be in the other 4th grade class.'" "The substitute left a note that said, 'Phantom's twin switched places and glued a girl's skirt, no complaints about Phantom except that she was not in class like she was supposed to be, but another teacher said there was no issue for one day.' My teacher was back the next day, and she pulled me aside, telling me it wasn't funny to switch places with my twin because there are a lot of safety issues and school rules we are breaking by switching. She went next door to the other 4th-grade class and told the other teacher about the glue incident. He got in trouble for it. My twin was already a troublemaker while I was the nerdy, goody-goody twin. When we got home and argued about me getting him in trouble, our mom marched right up and asked us to explain. She, of course, did not believe that a teacher would fall for the twin switching story because we were a fraternal boy-girl pair. He got grounded at home, too. From that moment on, whenever I did something I wasn't supposed to, he would sarcastically say, 'Oh, was it MARIA?!' which just ended up backfiring because our classmates ended up thinking I had a twin named Maria and that my twin brother was a really year older but got held back. It wasn't until high school that one of our classmates, who was also part of a Boy-Girl twin pair, was complaining that she never got to pull the twin switch thing, and he got snarky and said, 'Ask Phantom how to do it, I bet she'd looooooove to share.' I had to confess because he sounded so upset, and he had my back about something earlier that day." —PhantomIridescence 7."When I was 11, I had a book report due. I didn't do it, and pretended to be sick that day with a handful of vague symptoms, intending to cram through the book report while I was absent. Instead, my mom took me to the doctor, and it turned out I had mono for real. I was out of school for 6 weeks and still never got around to doing that book report. It was assumed that the tutor the school sent to my house had misplaced it." —NymphaeAvernales 8."After we completed a module on red brown color blindness in middle school biology, I told my classmates that I was red/brown color blind in one eye. They would have me close my 'good' eye and have me guess the color... it was incredibly dumb but seemed harmless. Unfortunately, they were so fascinated that it became disruptive, and the teachers overheard." "The teachers told my parents that I was apparently losing color vision in one eye, and it spiraled to me continuing to fake the situation until I had to come clean to a neurologist who was about to send me for a (not covered by our insurance) MRI." —jantessa 9."I said I liked vegetables, so I wouldn't disappoint my grandma. Next family dinner: full plate of boiled Brussels sprouts. I cried. She cried. The Brussels sprouts won." —Personal-Pitch25 10."When I was probably four or five years old, my grandparents bought my sibling and me one of those electric keyboard pianos. It had a mode that would light up the keys red to teach you how to play the song. Little me discovered there was also a setting that plays the correct key regardless of what you press when it was on, and it also stopped the red lights from showing. I did my best dramatic pianist performance in front of my mother, she was FLOORED, thinking I was some sort of reborn Mozart, a piano prodigy out of nowhere." "She called all of our family members over to watch me perform and exclaimed to them, 'My baby is going to Juilliard!' I got nervous with all the people around and ended up confessing in front of 6+ family members that the piano was basically playing itself." —Kasanala 11."When I was 7, I told my neighbor that my family had a pet monkey. No idea why. Just blurted it out one day like it was totally normal. She got super excited. She wanted to come over and meet it immediately. I panicked and I made excuses. It turned into this whole soap opera of a story. She told her whole class about it. Eventually, my mom found out because someone asked her how the monkey was doing. She made me go back and tell the truth. It was so embarrassing, and my neighbor looked so betrayed." —Cherry_zsa 12."Some kid wanted to borrow $2 from me. The $2 was all I had. I didn't even like this kid and suspected I'd never see that $2 again. So after PE, I went back to my backpack and shoved the $2 into my sock, and then said it's gone, someone must have stolen it. He told the PE teacher, despite my saying, 'Nah, it's ok. It was just $2.' The teacher sent us to the principal's office. The principal was asking who we thought took it. I said I don't know." "The other kid listed off half a dozen bullies from class. Now there are eight of us in the principal's office. They made the kids empty their pockets and take off their shoes and socks. I was panicking because the $2 was in my sock. Luckily, as the victim, I didn't get searched. 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Not because I loved it that much, but because now I couldn't have it or the jig would be up. Time went on, and I felt more and more pressure that I couldn't come forward." "The anxiety was real. Really real. I would sometimes leave my girlfriend's house and immediately stop and get a chocolate bar on my way back to my parents' house. After 3 damn years of that, finally, I was exhausted of the lie and nearly broke down in tears in front of my girlfriend. I came clean. We're expecting our third baby in a few months. 18 years of marriage so far, and many more to come. 😘 Love ya, honey." —ohnomynono I think we all probably have a story like these, so if you're up for it, share yours in the comments below or via this anonymous form:

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