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- Jun 7, 2005
cooking is somewhat impractical if you are living by yourself. whenever i decide to cook and "save money" - it seems like i end up with a solid $30-$50 receipt, of which i get maybe one or two meals out of it.
a lot of it is because i'm lazy and it turns out vegetables and fruit go bad really fast. if i had like 3 other people to cook for i'd do it a lot more often.
i spend around ~200 a week on food but often i'm paying for both me and my girlfriend. i figure it more than makes up for the time spent otherwise cooking, cleaning, buying veggies/produce/meats, cooking equipment, etc
The secret is to buy ingredients that can be used for more than one recipe and cook larger portions. You can make tacos/enchiladas for $20 ($5 lb of beef/turkey, $1 mexican seasoning packet, $4 tortillas, $3 lettuce and a tomato, $3 for cheese, $3 goya rice) and that should last at least 4 meals. Frozen veggies generally retain their nutritious value, and often are inexpensive. Fruit is a B though; I had to bring snack for my daughters soccer game and decided to go with bags of grapes. Spent $11 on grapes, $2 on bags, and that was enough for 10 girls, with a little left over.