[horseemergency]

Absolutely. If you're short on money and want to get the best bang for your buck then you'll want to learn how to cook. It's not that hard, I think it's pretty fun actually, and it will pay you back for your time spent learning/doing tenfold. You just have to be willing to do the legwork!

I'm a fan of http://allrecipes.com, playing around on that site for a while will give you a lot of good meal ideas. They even have categories for quick and easy meals, many of which are under $2 a serving. Or pick your recipe site of choice, they all should have similar tools to help cooking newbies or people on budgets :)

[chc]

I hope this doesn't come across like I'm attacking you, because that isn't my intent, but I find this "Oh, just cook and everything is affordable" idea that people keep throwing around to be kind of condescending and dismissive. Cooking isn't magic. I do cook, but I still don't feel like eating well on $5 a day is practical. A single avocado would blow a third of the budget for the whole day!

BTW, I'll have to take your word that that site has a $2 meals section, because I just spent five minutes clicking around and couldn't find one.

[horseemergency]

The meals section in question: http://allrecipes.com/menus/16262/quick-and-easy. That's in their menu planner though, you might have to be a member to access it. Kind of lame, in that regard...

I'm not saying that cooking everything somehow magically makes things affordable (as a matter of fact, now that I like cooking I spend more on food than I used to). But cooking the same meal as you'd buy somewhere is definitely more affordable. And it's a LOT easier to eat well when you're cooking your own food instead of eating frozen meals or going out.

If you're trying to keep it to $2 a meal, then it's not that hard to eat well either. When I was a poor college student my routine was something like:

Breakfast: eggs and bacon

Lunch: Sandwich and some veggies (I like broccoli or carrots)

Dinner: Whole chicken and potatoes

Overall it costs more than $2 to get the ingredients for each of those meals, but once you average it across the number of servings you're well under $2.

[VLM]

"A single avocado would blow a third of the budget for the whole day!"

Depends on location, season... I bought 4 last thursday for 79 cents a piece. Two make about "one meals worth" guacamole for four hungry people as a condiment so that's about 40 cents per person not $1.66 or whatever. Possibly in the depths of winter avocados are $2 each.

Take that guacamole, smear some on a tortilla, shove something into the tortilla like shredded carrot and heavily seasoned fried green beans, and its pretty tasty. Of course the stuff that goes into guacamole isn't free. Still a decent meal for maybe $1.50 or so, maybe $2.

Lately I've been using spicy guacamole as a condiment on meats. Strangely tasty on a burger.

[chc]

Probably true. I bought four yesterday for $1.50 apiece, which is the number I was thinking of. Pricy, but they can really make a meal, so I feel like they're worth it. Incidentally, either your avocados are a lot heftier than mine or your friends get a lot less hungry than my wife and I do, because two make barely enough guacamole to go with our quesadillas.

[drz]

Nothing that takes skill-building and effort is practical.

Programming isn't practical, either. And yet, here we are.

The skills and effort pay off.

[chc]

I don't understand what you're talking about in the context of my comment. What skill are we talking about?

[drz]

Cooking and meal-planning, obviously.