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$0/h Food Budget- Tips & Tricks?

badandwicked said:
Also if you locate the main fresh fruit & veg market for your city and head over there at about midday they give/throw a lot away.
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Yeah you don't have to literally crawl in the dumpster, just ask if they are tossing anything.

My "dumpster diving" achievements from this past week:

* another huge bag of organic tomatoes. Enough to make a big batch of tomato sauce and have raw tomatoes for salads for a week.

* Giant bag of organic oranges which came in handy for juicing since I am currently down and out with a bad cold.

* Organic zuchinni and a bell pepper which I added to the tomato sauce

* An entire case (which is I think about 12 single serving cups) of "Greek Gods" fig yogurt which my boyfriend enjoyed all week.

* a bunch of apples. They were sorta soft and got used for fruit smoothies.

And I could have taken a lot more yogurt home but there wouldn't have been room in our fridge.

Maybe we should start a dumpster diving thread? Are enough people interested? It's very inspiring.
 
Careful doing that. You can actually get arrested for "stealing" trash. It happened to a friend of mine.
 
I bumped the other thread.

In my case, the business I work at, and others in the area actually want people to make use of the food we throw out. I give customers food for free all the time and alert them when there is food out back for free by the dumpsters. We enjoy helping the community in any way we can, and no one likes to see waste when people are hungry out there.

I don't think I could work for a business that would frown upon people taking the food we were throwing out.. that is just disgusting.
 
MynameisnotDeja said:
I don't think I could work for a business that would frown upon people taking the food we were throwing out.. that is just disgusting.
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I think the reason most places frown upon it is because if word got out they'll gladly give away the stuff for free at the end of the day, no one would buy their products all day. They'd all just wait for closing time, you know?

It is a shame though--I remember once I was with some friends who were waiting for their friend to close up at Dunkin' Doughnuts. Friend's kid brother asked for a box of doughnuts they were throwing out... Said they couldn't. Kid brother waited 'til they put the bag in the dumpster then went home with a bag of doughnuts. His parents weren't very happy, lol.
 
I suppose thats true but there will always be a number of people who will want new products, not half rotted bags of apples they have to pick through/cut out the rotted parts. Some people are so picky they complain when yogurt is a week away from it's expiration date. I bring home yogurt that is a week PAST and it's fine, lol. But the food snobs will always be there to bring in the profit. :)

My mom used to work at Wal Mart and told me that if an employee tried to bring home food that was being thrown out, they'd be fired. Crazy.
 
^ I used to work at a grocery store that would fire you if you ate the "damaged" food. You know, the box of Twinkies where two got stepped on, or the bag of chips that was half filled... Perfectly good food (well... With those two examples, it depends upon your definition of "food" lol).
 
So sad. I feel lucky to have found this store I work at. Small, privately owned chain, less than 10 stores. Lots of involvement in community. They even donate stuff to homeless people to eat sometimes (they do homeless feed days at the church across the street). It's good, man, it's good. If more businesses operated this way perhaps the world would be a better place.

Less waste is always what I go for. Less waste and helping each other out.
 
I don't know if they have them around your area.. but "Mi Goreng" noodles are at every supermarket in Australia, they are like 80c a packet ($2 for 5 i think).. they are quite filling, probably not too good for you.. but full of fat, carbs, protein, etc to keep you alive and they are quite tasty
 
I like the idea of less waste from a place and not actually putting it in the bins and saying to people or giving it to those who need it.
I do know a few people though who have made a lot of money by dumpster diving and being frugal, even writing books on the subject. So although I can see how wonderful this is to those who genuinely need it there are apeople out there who would happily take from those who need for the sake of their bank balance.
The only cheap foods you find in the UK seem to be junk food or high carbs, which is not great long term. Shame really as the cost of health care to the tax payer could actually be put to better use by reducing costs on foods that are good for you.
Best thing if you can is have a selection of things you can grow yourself and get neighbours or family involved and each grow different things so you can have a swap, bulk between friends so you can share it out for a lot less outgoings.
 
jamshyd said:
Mushrooms I'd leave alone unless you're 100% sure.
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This is especially true in the Pacific Northwest. Recently, a thoroughly experienced Japanese mushroom-hunter died in Oregon, from liver-poisoning by a Matsutake look-alike (and yes, we export a lot of Matsutake mushrooms to Japan).

ebola
 
I used to go through trash barrels at fast food joints and grab a receipt and tell them that the food was terrible and demand my money back, or at least another meal to compensate for it. If they ask what happened to the food, tell them you threw it out. It's worked for me many many times. It's never not worked.

Another thing I used to do was call up pizza places and tell them I picked up two pizzas and said there was something wrong with them (under cooked, not the right pizza, made me sick, something witty), and I usually got two free pizzas of my choosing.

Hope that helps.
 
the food thing.... complaining to a local chain that delivered to you... They are gonna want the old food back, so you don't get to eat it 90% of the time.
 
Roast a chicken, seperate the meat from the carcass, boil up your carcass for your basic stock. using potatoes and leek and some milk/cream make soup, it should be enough for a couple of days lunches.
fry some onions, throw in the meat from one chicken breast add in some plain yogurt and coconut milk tumeric, paprika, garam masala and some garlic make a basic korma, by using one chicken breast and a good helping of rice it should give enough for 2 nights.
Use the other chicken breast chopped up with a tin of ham, make a basic white sauce add in grated cheese, some onion, some mushrooms some corn put in a dish top it with either a puff pastry of mashed potato, either way it should give another 2-3 nights dinner.
using one drumstick and one thigh, take the meat from the bone, mix it with corn, peppers, tomatoes, peas, some smoked sausage or bacon and put it in with rice and let it reduce down if it is just one person you will get 2 nights from this.
using the other thigh and drumstick, remove the meat from the bone chop it up mix with a cheese sauce some onion some bacon and what ever else you have and like mix it all through, make the large crepe pancakes and pop a couple of spoonfuls of this in the middle and fold it over sealing the edges and they are ready to pop in the oven for your own crispy pancakes. the mix should give enough for about 8-12 pancakes depending on size covering a few nights dinners.
the remainder from the carcass and wings can be thrown in with a tin of corn, a squeeze of lemon juice, spring onions some chinese five spices and a packet of noodles for a quick and easy chicken noodle soup.
so for 1 person there are 2 soups, covering 2-4 lunches (depending on portion size)
4 main meals covering upto 12 nights dinner.
did it myself so I can say it was cheaper to buy a whole chicken than portions, and making at least 2 meals each time I cooked meant I could freeze and save cooking another night. I did have different things so it was not chicken all the time. If you can go fishing near you it might be another way to get cheaper or free food.
 
ChemicalSmiles said:
the food thing.... complaining to a local chain that delivered to you... They are gonna want the old food back, so you don't get to eat it 90% of the time.
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Yeah, I worked at a pizza place for 3 years and we absolutely under no circumstances would give anyone free food or a refund unless they could return the "bad" pizza to us with no more than one or two slices taken out. We had people try and tell us the pizza was "bad", but then I'd show up with a delivery of a new one and when I'd see the ENTIRE "bad" pizza had been eaten, I'd head right back to the car. No deal.

It's not like most of these people were starving. They were just assholes.

As far as cheap foods:

brown rice is pretty much the best thing ever. Also, ground turkey is a really affordable meat. But seriously, brown rice. We have probably 5 bucks worth of brown rice here at our house that we've been eating for the last few months. Still plenty left.
 
^ Wow, I had no idea you could get 17 meals out of one bird, let alone do 17 meals for $26. Though I knew you could get a lot out of a bird: Two weeks before I went Vegetarian, my grandma bought two chickens (they were on sale), and we ate from the two for two weeks. Two birds fed three people (with two of the three eating leftovers for lunch) for two weeks.
 
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