Pot of beans with chicken meat in it. A rotisserie chicken is pretty cheap. You can also do a lot with meat, rice, and gravy or sauce. Asian recipes do a lot of delicious things with a little, too.

Depends where you’re at. If you’re not too far from forests and meadows, mushrooms, grasshoppers and herbs.

Other than that, rice, noodles. You can add the above things to your rice and noodles.

You can cook your noodles in tomato sauce like spaghetti al‘assassina to get some variety.

Remove wings and legs from grasshoppers before eating, they’re scratchy.

Only eat mushrooms and herbs you’re certain they’re not poisonous.

Beans/legumes can be cheap

My favorite food when I was poor was something I called bachelor chow.

Cubed and fried spam, a can of baked beans, and some rice. I’d get two or three meals out of it.

Rice and beans is the staple pretty much everywhere else.

Don’t buy ultra processed Mac and cheese or frozen pizza. It’s nutritionally bad for you, and won’t keep you full for long.

Start with rice and beans and canned sauce. Cheap, easy, and good for you.

You can obviously add chicken/tofu/protein, or try to start making sauces yourself. But always keep the rice and beans as a base. Every meal you eat, rice and beans. They’re cheap as hell and close to what we evolved to eat.

Try to get sardine, kale, and beets.

I can get many varieties of squash and brassica cultivars locally for a ridiculously low price as most of the entire county I live in used to be all farmland and we have a ton of actual farmers markets that aren’t fully commercialized

So I eat a lot of acorn and spaghetti squash, broccoli and cabbage in many forms, peppers are usually cheap as well as carrots. Onions are cheap as well as bananas

Beef and chicken bouillon for cheap flavor, whatever fruit is on sale for desert

Tofu for protein as I can’t stand the texture of beans

Basmati rice, margarine, salt, pepper

While chicken from Walmart (or Costco) about $5 and it becomes 4-8 meals.

Air pop popcorn. Buy popcorn by the huge bags, so I only buy every few years.

Rice is cheap. Bread is cheap. Pancakes. Bananas (it’s like $1 for the week)

Also check out your local food bank, lots of free stuff to fill the kitchen, then you just have to buy a few staples that are missing from the food bank items. (The one near me doesn’t have milk, eggs, meat, etc. but they have plenty of vegetables and fruit and some snacks) also a monthly box filled with canned foods.

Cuban beans and rice are very delicious and very affordable.

I started eating a lot of chickpeas recently. Buy them dried, boil them for a couple minutes them let them soak in the water for a few hours. Then either roast them in the oven or if I’m lazy, toss them in the microwave for like 5 minutes, then add some seasoning. I snack on them between meals, or also toss them into things like soup or curry.

Also if you want a different take on ramen, boil them until they are al dente, drain the water and then stir fry with some cheap veggies or whatever.

Burritos. Beans, rice and whatever else you can get that’s on sale it cheap. Make a batch Sunday night. The poorer was the more I would cook.

Falafel: dried chickpeas with garlic & parsley fried in oil. Very high calorie/cost, because the chickpeas are basically oil sponges, and it’s hard to beat vegetable oil on calories/cost. $1.50 for 1000 calories.

Kimchi fried rice: Kimchi, rice, couple of fried eggs for protein. $2.10 for 1000 calories. Make your own kimchi even cheaper.

Chili noodles: cheap, store-brand spaghetti with chili oil-soy sauce dressing. Don’t sub ramen for pasta - that stuff’s expensive. $2.50/1000 cal. Make your own chili oil for extra savings.

try to opt for dried beans over canned if u have time canned beans are expensive these days. lentils especially red lentils cook pretty fast from dry, whereas white beans or black beans take longer but if u can cook a whole bag it should last u ab a week. u can season w season salt or bouillon or some cheap spice mix so u dont have to buy a bunch of individual spices.

Dry pinto beans are cheap (and flavorless). You just need to soak them in water before cooking.

Rice is a carb and nutritionally void, but it will fill you up and keep the cravings away.

A better path is to shift your entire diet away from carbs and toward nutritionally dense, unprocessed foods. But, this takes time, and you probably don’t want to start that when you’re low on money.

I’ve been eating a mostly plant-based keto diet for 15 years now. I can easily go two days on just water and be fine, no cravings. The best way to save money on food is to not eat at all. So, rather than eat crappy food just to feel full and stave off carb cravings, eat less food, but more nutritionally dense food. You’ll save money and still be healthy.

Chili, chili, chili! No ground beef? No problem! Make a bean chili!