askchapo

$4 gallon milk

$1 bread. wal mart has a bakery usually and the french bread is a buck.

$8 2 1/2 dozen eggs

$3 big ol bottle of vegetable oil

$4 4lbs dry beans (dealers choice, buy in groups of 2)

$2 a bunch of greens. it doesn't matter if it's turnip, mustard, collard or whatever.

$5 bacon ends. resist the urge to get strips of bacon, the ends and pieces bag is 1/4 the price and has much more flavor.

$2 a bag of sugar

$5 coffee. get the cheap stuff till you figure out what you like and how to make the best cup with your drip machine.

$3 a bag of onions. it doesn't really matter what kind

$1-2 a squash if you can get a cheap one,

$8-10 that frozen 10 lb bag of chicken leg quarters they have at the wal mart

$5 a 10 lb bag of rice. get jasmine if you're feeling fancy.

$1 at least one can of chipotles in adobo. start with one.

$3 a bag of carrots

$5 two 24 oz tubs of cottage cheese

$3 two 8oz packets of cream cheese

$2 some other cheese in a brick

$2 twenty or so tortillas

$3 peanut butter

$2 garlic get a bunch of it, you're gonna use it.

$6 3 cans coconut milk. there are different kinds. you'll eventually figure it out.

$1 a buck or so worth of jalapenios. they're cheap.

$1 some celery

Cornbread

basically follow the instructions on your bag of self rising corn meal mix. it's all some variation of 2 cups mix, 1 egg, 1 1/2 cup milk and 1/4 cup vegetable oil. before you start in on it go ahead and preheat the oven to 350 or 400 or whatever your bag says and put your oiled up pan in there to get hot. whisk all your ingredients together in your bowl until its smooth (if you wanna be fancy about it, start with the egg, get it completely scrambled up then mix together the wet ingredients with it and add the mix last) then pull out the hot pan and pour your batter in. return it to the hot oven and it's done when a toothpick comes out from the center clean of goop, about 20-30 minutes.

make up some eggs and toast to have with a wedge of cornbread when it comes out. that's a quick breakfast for the week and you only had to do a few minutes of prep for your cornbread. put stuff on the eggs and toast or cook them different ways to keep from getting bored, although it's hard to get bored of eggs. just try em with salt and pepper or cheese and whatever else you have on hand.

A Coffee Drink

make some coffee, when it's done take a cup or two and combine it with the same amount of sugar and mix it until you got a coffee simple syrup. mix coffee, coffee simple syrup and milk to make the drink you like to stop and get on the way to work. just play with it until you got what you want.

Next is an easy lunch that takes a little prep to get ready but will work for the whole week:

Hoppin' John

it's just beans and rice with stuff in it. make the beans first, soak 2lbs of em overnight, dump out the soak water, boil em until tender then containerize them. save a quart or so of the bean water to make rice with. If you get an instant pot you can avoid the soak and just toss 2lbs of dried beans in with water to the fill line, set it for an hour or so and press start. once the beans are done, look up a video on how to dice an onion and throw a couple diced onions in there while the beans are still hot. go ahead and salt to taste too. it'll take a decent amount. save the onion skins and butts in a old bread bag in your freezer.

make your rice in a pot. just rinse off two cups of rice, add it to the pot with a little oil or something and stir it with a fork to get some on all the grains. add 4 1/2 -5 cups of water, a couple of teaspoons of salt, bring it to a boil then stir it up good, cover and drop it down to low heat and wait for it to be done.

fry up your bacon ends and while it's going, separate the stems of your greens until you have what feels like too much greens. put the stems in your freezer bag and chop the leaves into ~1" squares by just bunching them up and going wild. watch your fingers. when the bacon ends are almost done, toss the chopped greens in and cover the pan. it'll only take a minute or two but you'll know when they're good and done because they'll turn "greener".

make a serving of rice, beans, bacon and greens with whatever else you might have, leftover salsa, just whatever's in the fridge.

you'll have plenty of meals from this one.

Whenever you run out of rice just make more.

For a snack you're gonna have carrot sticks and peanut sauce

Celery and Carrot Sticks with Peanut Sauce

take the ends off some carrots and celery, peel the carrots, wash the celery and put the ends and peels in your freezer bag. slice the carrots and celery so they're around twice the length of your pinky finger and about as big around. store em covered with water in some container. make peanut sauce with a fried diced onion, finely diced jalapenio, minced garlic clove or two (add garlic last in the pan), a half cup or so of peanut butter and equal parts coconut milk. use your littlest pot and brown the onions, jalapenio and when everything else looks almost done, garlic. add peanut butter, mix it up on the lowest of low heat and add as much coconut milk as you did peanut butter. add more to get the texture right. it'll be real runny when hot but much thicker when cool. i usually have to add another 1/4 cup of coconut oil to get the texture right.

Dinner/portable lunch is very not vegan but it makes a ton of food and is versatile.

Creamy Chicken Burritos

This is a lot of work but it makes a ton of portable high protien food.

start by defrosting your chicken the night before and cooking it off after it's completely defrosted. baking is fine. just hit 165f or until the juices run clear to avoid salmonella. while all that's happening go ahead and chop up a bunch of carrots, celery, onions and garlic and pan fry em until they're tender. use vegetable oil or butter and remember to salt. If you have some greens left do like before with the hoppin john and cut em up into pieces and add at the end of the fry. put all the skins , stems and ends in your freezer bag. pull your chicken and let it come down to handling temperature and debone all those leg quarters. this may end up being what radicalizes you to veganism. put your skin, ligaments, werid crap and bones in the freezer bag. chop up the chicken into little pieces and set it aside. if you have a stick blender, hit the choipotles in adobo with it, otherwise just mince em up real small and put them in your biggest bowl with the cream cheese, cottage cheese and about two fists wirth of the other cheese grated. mix this by hand to get a good consistency. a food processor or blender could be nice here if you have one.

add the cooked vegetables and chicken to the bowl and mix it up. contain a few quarts of this mix to add to stuff later, then dump a bunch of beans and rice into it and mix it up more. add plenty of salt and pepper to taste and if it's not spicy enough consider adding another can of chipotles in adobo. look up a video on how to roll a burrito and then brown the burrito on all four sides so it sticks together. repeat until you run out of mix or wrappers. cover the burritos with aluminum foil and freeze/refrigerate them.

the cheeses and chipotles are what makes this the way it is, aside from onions, garlic, beans and rice, you can just wing it and add whatever you like.

sunday dinner is gonna be soup but you're gonna make stock first

Make stock by taking all the crap in your freezer bag, dumping it into a pot, adding water to cover then bringing it to a boil and letting it simmer for two or three hours. strain out all the crap and skim any foam that forms on top and contain your delicious homemade stock.

i'm tired of typing out recipes. go download the Good and Cheap pdf and make the curried squash soup in that cookbook. use your newly made stock in place of however many cups of water it calls for.

serve it with a big ol chunk of toasted bread.

a stick blender - $20 or so: again, don't overthink it, just get whatever and use it. cheaper ones have attachments that fill up with water in the dishwasher so it may end up being hand wash only.

a thermometer - $5 or so: get instant read, it's great.

a 10-12" cast iron pan - $10 or so: go to the goodwill and get one that doesn't have any cracks. you'll know it doesn't have any cracks because there won't be any cracks on it. it's okay if the surface is crap, you can fix that. now you have a good pan to use on an electric stove and bake things in.

a coffee maker - $5 or so: pick this up at the goodwill too. get the simplest one possible. remember to get filters, they're like a buck.

Maybe later:

instant pot - $80 or so: it makes stock and beans set it and forget it. save your pennies and get the max version with More Power