fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6694 ]

[ SECRET POST #6694 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6694 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

__________________________________________________

10.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 54 secrets from Secret Submission Post #957..
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Like a lot of people in the U.S., I've been struggling as grocery prices climb higher and higher. For a household of two plus a dog, it's rare that I can get the weekly shop below $100. Usually it's well over. :( I think we eat well (I'm a decent cook) but not extravagantly. We mostly eat chicken and pork, which is relatively cheap in our region. Beef is too expensive, ditto fish and most seafood. I'm pre-diabetic and have to watch my carb intake, so we eat lean proteins and vegetables, limited amounts of rice and potatoes, wholegrain bread.

Most ideas for cheap meals or budget meals tend to be pretty carb dependent. I wouldn't mind eating pasta a lot, but... I really shouldn't, given my health issues and family history. Fresh vegetables aren't cheap, so we eat a significant amount of frozen broccoli and sometimes spinach. I'm not a big fan of beans and lentils are okay, but my favorite preparation is meant to be eaten with rice. I do eat chickpeas pretty frequently. I make soups regularly in winter, but it's not so tempting when the temperatures heat up.

This is just a general vent, I guess. Goddammit life is expensive.

I only shop every two weeks with a meal plan, and for 2 it's still hovering around 150-170, if I'm not stocking up on cat litter or TP. Produce is pretty cheap here, the only thing that hasn't come down are special apple types and asparagus. I used to be able to stay under 100 for 2 weeks even going to the Italian deli for good sausage.

Everyone except the wealthy is going to starve and die.

#EatTheRich

I doubt they taste good. All those fillers and botox probably massively spoil the meat.

Re: Vent about grocery prices.

(Anonymous) - 2025-05-04 21:05 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Vent about grocery prices.

(Anonymous) - 2025-05-04 23:51 (UTC) - Expand

That does seem to be the overall plan.

Check out that person that makes dollar tree meals? You could probably upgrade it to walmart meals for a bit higher budget.

2 people and 2 cats. Our budget before all this shit was $120 a week. We're regularly getting into $140-$180. They wanted $11.00/lb for 90% lean beef today. The fake stuff was cheaper. We are worryingly getting into the habit of not eating dinner two days a week.

I'm sorry, nonny. :( I'm not as bad off as some and I appreciate that, but so many people are struggling. I don't regularly purchase ground beef or beef at all anymore, just because the prices are so high. Beef stew is a luxury meal when chuck roast is upwards of $7/lb.

I hope you find a solution that doesn't involve skipping meals. Our local food pantry has been going overtime because the need is so great.

beef prices were my tipping point. I can live without eating eggs a lot (and those prices have come down enough to bake...not enough to make tamagoyaki) but I cook good beefy meals. $11/lb for off-cut stew meat is too damn high. Formerly cheap cuts like flank are over 20/lb. I can buy a mediocre steak from Applebees for less!

I just want nachos goddammit, they were supposed to be cheap food.

Yeah, chips in general are stupid expensive. Nah, I'm not paying 6 bucks for a snack bag of Doritos, I won't even pay that much for the family size.

....and I admit to freezing tortilla chips from Moe's on the rare occasions I have it.

I feel you. I am single and budget pretty tightly and just a couple of years ago I could eat pretty comfortably with even a splurge now and then for about $50/week. Now it's almost double that, and I haven't changed what I buy. If anything I am trying to buy less.

It sucks because I also have some health issues and have to follow a pretty strict diet - which includes eggs and a lot of fresh veg and fruit, the most expensive items. If I owned land I would definitely try my hand at growing veggies, but as it is I rent and don't have a place to grow anything.

I've had space for a garden before and sorry to say, growing your own veggies isn't necessarily cheaper. After you lay out money for garden supplies (and in my case, tons of organic matter to remedy the crappy clay soil we have) and then the labor involved, those vegetables are not cheap. I love a homegrown tomato as much as anyone, but it's not practical for me to grown the amount of vegetables we consume in a week. I don't have the square footage, and I don't have the time and energy, either. :-/

the meme joke is "I spent $200 and 5 months to grow a single 25 cent tomato, my family will feast" for a reason.

I can afford a new pot and some soil to try one container-grown vegetable, but which one will survive the squirrels, the weather, and will the bees even come to pollinate the flowers or will I have to delicately fondle the plant with a feather to get it to make a vegetable? Everything except zucchini seems to be a diva and while I love zucchini, I can't live on it.

Re: +1

(Anonymous) - 2025-05-04 22:21 (UTC) - Expand

AYRT
Yeah, I get that. It's helped me in the past, but I also do a lot of canning, dehydrating, etc so I feel like the veggies I grow go a long way. Plus I only planted seeds I saved, so I never actually bought seeds. And my community has a really thriving "free" groups so you can find all sorts of stuff via them. But I get that for a lot of people there would be a big "start up" cost and then the "time/energy cost" of keeping up with it.

NA but there's a book out there called The $64 Tomato about growing your own food, and it's not a new book! All the fertilizer and amendments and tools and even soil and water are even pricier now.

Plus, I did back of the envelope math a few years ago and it worked out to each person needing the equivalent of ~3 square blocks under continuous cultivation to get all their calories for a year. Assuming you've got the supplies and know-how for canning and drying. I can't remember if I included pasturage for livestock; I don't think so. So even more space.

I keep hens and I ordered baby chicks for the first time in years since my remaining four hens are 8 years old and lay maybe an egg a year.

I have 6 4x8' raised beds, but I need to get more potting soil for them; I can't fill them with chicken manure without killing everything.

And I have fruit trees, but I also have big shade trees I can't afford to cut down or safely remove myself, so the yield for everything isn't as high as it could be. Plus water is insanely expensive here.

I figure as long as I can buy chicken food and staples like rice, beans, and cooking oil, I'll live, but I'll be bored and depressed. Gardening gives me something to do and veggies and fruit and herbs to make the rice and beans (and eggs, but it'll be a bit and also I need to learn how to vaccinate the new chicks) less boring.

And then there's the moonshot ridiculous things, like I have a 4 foot chocolate sapling in my house. It took 10 years to get that big, but I started a few more from seed last year and gave most of them away, and one I kept survived the winter. And I just bought more pods to try again. The botanic garden got theirs to fruit, what do they have that I don't? Aside from expert care and a greenhouse bigger than my house. Coffee does fine in the shade here, and it's related to gardenias and smells like it in bloom. Although it needs lots of supplemental water, and will die if, say, your neighbor drops a tree limb on a 5 foot high and wide bush.

And I may try to buy an allspice seedling since unlike cinnamon they seem to do okay outside here. And try sugar cane again; I know it can actually take over a plot, I just have to find a spot in my yard where it's happy.

No, I won't save any money unless food gets so expensive to buy that I'll starve anyway. The only food calorie dense enough to live on that I could grow enough of to... okay, still starve, but slower, is potatoes, by turning those 4x8x1' beds into 4x8x4' potato planters and then hoping to avoid a fungal apocalypse like the one that did in the lumper. And even then, I'd need goats for milk. Which means food for them, and medical care, and breeding them every year and selling on the kids when they're weaned and...

Man, I hope I can afford groceries instead.

This is what I'm doing. My partner and I are both well-versed in gardening and have the land, so I'm working hard on growing our food. For cool weather crops, there are about six snap pea plants that are growing, a potato patch with 22 potatoes planted, and 24 strawberry plants growing.

From seed to their own pots I currently have 12 bush beans plants, 11 pumpkin plants, and 11 zucchini plants. They should be ready to transplant to the outdoor gardens in a week or so (I'm in the process of hardening them off right now). I have countless tomatoes, red peppers, and chocolate peppers starts (from seed) that are on their way to be potted up, but they're still in the very bitty early stages so I'm not counting those chickens before they hatch!

(we also have several fruit trees, but aside from pruning, those don't take up a ton of time)

It's definitely time-consuming and hard work, but gardening is so good for my mental health, I don't even mind be tired, lol.

Re: Vent about grocery prices.

(Anonymous) - 2025-05-04 22:58 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Vent about grocery prices.

nanslice - 2025-05-05 00:11 (UTC) - Expand

The best thing to grow for value is herbs (and micro-greens). You can usually get seeds or cuttings free or cheap, they jazz up your meals, the taste is better than bought, and you don't have to buy a whole bunch of whatever when you only need a little bit.

Do you know about Cookie and Kate? https://cookieandkate.com/

Lots of good vegetarian casseroles that keep us going for multiple days if you don’t mind the prep time. Both of us are also pre-diabetic and have many of the same restrictions you do. We’ve found some really good stuff on that website.

I don't, thanks for the rec!

God, yeah. I don't even get an employee discount on food anymore. Good thing I started dieting last month, lol...

We wouldn't eat 3 meals a day without Aldi. Their meat is sketchy but cheap if you buy in large quantities. Cook, portion, freeze. Of course, the less you spend on food, the more you labor. I spend a good deal of time cooking in batches.

The poor have always used grains as filler (bread, rice, beans, pasta), so I don't know what to tell you there, other than going for more filling options like brown rice, potatoes, carrots. I do believe the plan in the US is to kill off the poor and unhealthy to cut social welfare costs.

It will be interesting to see how/if restaurants survive, especially the chains. My local Mexican costs less than Taco Bell now. The magazines on display are all about budget eating and copycat recipes. I don't remember living like this since the 80s. We ate beef maybe once a month. Ate lots of bologna and canned vegetables.

I expect layoffs to accelerate, especially in the white collar sector. Not sure how that's supposed to benefit a consumer/service economy, but we're in for a real rough ride.

My grocery bills would be a lot higher if it weren't for Aldi. And IME, the meat is fine. Individual stores might have issues with mishandling it, but overall I don't find the quality to be any less than Walmart or another big chain store. And they're likely sourcing it from the same place.

Re: Vent about grocery prices.

(Anonymous) - 2025-05-04 23:24 (UTC) - Expand

I so wish there was an ALDI in town. There's three about a hundred miles away and when I visit my sibs, I definitely stop in one of them. Their prices are really reasonable for some good and some great foods that they have. They have apparently bought some land down here, but with everything that's going on, who knows what's going to happen.

I spent $86AUD on groceries this weekend and it wasn't even everything we needed.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only