3 or 4 nights a week, it’s this:
On a good night, we get this mixed in with the mac & cheese:
Geez, Brian, that’s puky.
Hey, I don’t make the stuff.
Eww. Try mixing in some peas and corn, or even Mexican corn for a different taste. If you want some unidentifiable meat, sliced hotdog or sausage would be way better than bologna!
You could also mix it with chili to make chili mac.
Meat? In bologna? 
In hotdogs?
Chili? Way out of my affordability range. For every can of chili, I can buy 7 or 8 macaroni boxes, especially when they go on sale. It’s good stuff.
Call Alice Waters. Stat!
Fried “baloney” sandwiches ain’t too bad with a bit of mustard. 
My “breakfast” on work days is either nothing or somekinda crap like a kitkat bar or a granola bar…
Lunch- I sometimes eat an apple turnover around 1 on my mail route
Supper- whatever my husband has fixed- unfortunately it’s often chicken and often in sandwich form- although he does make good sandwiches and they start with half a French loaf so those sandwiches are the size of a meal.
Since the bologna doesn’t add much of anything filling-wise or nutrition-wise, you could drop that, pick up a can of corn and a can of peas on sale (which would cover your 3-4 mac and cheese nights in a week since you’d only use 1/3-1/4 of the can each night), and add in a little bit of fresh fruit on the side (apples and bananas can be had for 10c a piece when they’re needing to be eaten that day–smaller retailers like farmer’s markets and local grocers have better deals than large chains). Snack on some inexpensive mixed nuts for protein and filling. See if you can get a dehydrator for free on freecycle to make dried fruit as well, so you can buy up the last-day produce and be able to keep it. It will probably cost you about the same, but make a huge difference in your energy level and overall health.
You might also qualify for food assistance if you are in the US. They’ll cover fresh fruit and vegetables, milk, eggs, canned beans and veggies, rice, and other basics. It might make a big difference to have the health, energy, and lack of depression/fatigue that poor nutrition brings. There are ways to eat a more healthy and flavorful diet on an extremely small budget.
Yes, it’s very, very true.
Kid’s back at school now, so breakfasts and lunches have been pretty much same ol’ same ol’ (whole wheat toast and yogurt for brekkie, something from Lean Cuisine for lunch), but dinners have been nice, as we’ve been trying to make our guts happy after our vacation (our parents are all pretty much white bread types). So:
Monday night: Whole wheat pasta with an uncooked lemon/olive oil sauce and sliced Kalamata olives, green salad, roasted asparagus.
Tuesday night: Broccoli, bell pepper, asparagus and scallions, stir fried with Morningstar Farms “Steak” strips and a Szechuan sauce, served over steamed brown rice.
Tonight (Wednesday): “Taco Soup” (pinto beans, brown rice, tomatoes, green chilies and sweet corn, simmered with taco seasonings in a vegetable stock, with some low-fat tortilla chips crumpled in instead of crackers).
Tomorrow will be a family favorite: Pinto bean sloppy joes on fresh whole wheat buns, with a green salad.
Friday’s payday, and I’m hoping to go to our favorite local Italian place for Aglio Olio with broccoli and sauteed red bell peppers (yum!)
Redwolf
Breakfast was pretty much traditional Japanese.
Rice with fermented soy beans and roasted seaweed.
Fried tofu with ginger, onions and soy.
Fried burdock roots and carrot flavoured with sweet cooking sake and soy.
Home made pickled plums.
Oolong tea to wash it down.
Lunch and Dinner are yet to come.
Mukade
Just had the last of the chili I made this weekend and homemade tamales.
I’m definitely going to the gym tomorrow.
Oolong tea to wash it down.
Ooooooo- yummy!!!
Nattō and ajitsuke nori, maybe? Man, I grew to love that stuff.
(What’s with all the soy drinkers here? It seems to be a much larger group than the general population!)
Bean burrito with mac and cheese for lunch.
Cold carrots and broccoli with French dressing for snack.
Waldorf salad, mashed potatoes, white gravy, and fried sunflower country style cutlets (think chicken fried steak).
Peach cobbler sounds really good as a dessert, but I don’t know if it is worth the heat of the oven.
That’s interesting. I hadn’t mentioned soy, but it is what I put on my cereal or oatmeal, or cook with. My excuse is casein-induced headaches.
A lot of soy milk drinkers tend to be white middle-class people, and there are an awful lot of them on C&F.
Count me as one of those mostly-white middle-classers who abhors soy stuff, except soy sauce and edamame beans. To me, a jiggling mass of tofu in water is stomach-churning, rather than appetizing.
In San Rafael, a certain coffee shop assumes you want soy milk in your latte unless you specifically ask for dairy milk. Worst latte I ever tried.
I don’t get the soy thing, at all. I like cows. I like milk. I like cheese. I like beef.
moo.
Have you tried rice milk? It comes in plain, vanilla, chocolate, and carob, enriched or not. All the local grocery stores, even the low-end ones, have it in their milk case and on the shelf now. We’ve found it in the sticks in places we never expected to. Store brands are awful; Rice Dream is delicious. They also now have icecream sandwiches that are great. It doesn’t have the bitter aftertaste soy does.
We also use oat milk for oatmeal and baking and almond milk when we need something lighter tasting. Ours is allergy-induced.
i drink soy vanilla. i grew up next to a dairy farm (where the milk was not de-creamed) after my heart problems, i tried 2%. i’ve drank colored water before. soy vanilla compared to 2% is way better. i keep meaning to try rice.