[kiba]

Some tricks and tips off the top of my head:

* Sous vide: It's very easy to learn and make for juicy and delicious food easy.

* Meal prep. Rather than cooking everyday of the week, spend two hours or so prepping meals for the rest of the week so that you don't have to cook.

That said, the problem is that such knowledge isn't that widespread, although it's widely available on youtube university.

[toomanybeersies]

Are you suggesting poor people go out and invest in sous vide equipment? That's not to mention the running cost of vacuum sealer bags.

More sensibly, time and money poor people should invest in a slow cooker. You can cook a huge variety of different cheap and easy meals with one. It also allows you to prep in the evening, then put it on to cook in the morning, so you have dinner ready to go the instant you get home.

[hirundo]

Here's a sous vide cooker you can use with any pot for $45.

https://www.amazon.com/My-Sous-Vide-My-101-Immersion/dp/B071...

An ordinary ziploc type bag works fine for sous vide as long as you don't submerge the opening. I've used them for that many times. It's a bit awkward and takes a little more time, but no big deal.

[Shog9]

$45 is a pricey slowcooker; the last two I bought were $10 and $30 respectively - the latter has a removable ceramic container. A quick check for what's in stock at the local WalMart shows only 2 out of the 13 available running more than $45. Even the fancy "wifi-enabled app-controlled" Black & Decker is only $38

[justtopost]

A suis vide is much different than a slow cooker. I use both quite a lot, and they seldom overlap. The temp control is crucial.

[kiba]

I paid mine for like 70 bucks with the ongoing cost of ziplock bags.

[munk-a]

Doing a big cook on the weekend is a good idea, but two hours or so is insufficient for a week if there are picky eaters involved. Processing the volume of veggies into food for a big meal like that will usually end up around two hours, but making multiple dishes in parallel adds a lot of time onto that, especially if you've got limited resources in terms of burners/cookware.

[sevensor]

I always make sure to provide two meal options for the picky eaters in my house. (1) take it. (2) leave it. The extra prep is minimal, I assure you.

[munk-a]

Great, I'll try selling those options to my spouse who is having issues with low iron right now and for which cooking an additional meal option for the week is not an option.

The "my way or the highway" approach is only really valid when children are involved so that advice is quite limited in terms of value.

[astura]

May I suggest these to your spouse?

https://www.luckyvitamin.com/p-555407-luckyvitamin-easy-iron...

I have to take iron but I struggled for many years, most iron pills cause me lots of digestive distress. These ones don't, at all. I even can take them on an empty stomach. Pretty much a godsend.

[astura]

That works for kids, not spouses. It also doesn't work for medically indicated diets. (If one of your kids has allergies, etc.)

[blacksmith_tb]

My impression was that sous vide was generally for meats, not veggies?

I would think a pressure cooker might be a practical solution to the "no time to cook veggies" - I use mine to do things like steam a bag of prewashed and cut kale in under 5min.

[zhte415]

Or just buy kale, chop and wash it yourself, add some garlic too, and stir fry the lot, under 2 minutes end-to-end.