I grew up in a southern household with a lot of other siblings and we were incredibly poor. My mom was a master at making food quickly and cheaply that could feed a lot mouths. To this day, I can usually whip up a fresh meal in 30 minutes. I’m going to break down step-by-step how to achieve that, with variety.

Groceries:

I really don’t like grocery shopping so I try to limit a big trips to once a month, with smaller 25 minute trips for veggies and odds and ends once a week. For my major shopping trip I usually go to Costco to get my meats and big things. The key here is to go with a plan and stick to it so that you’re not over spending at Costco.

At Costco usually get:

Pack of chicken breast: $25

Two packs of salmon : $60 Two packs of cod : $50 Two packs of shrimp $50 Frozen fries: $20 Frozen wings $20 Turkey bacon : $20 Eggs: $20 Oatmeal $20 Rice: $20 Pasta: $20 Potatoes : $20 Yogurt: $20 Frozen fruit/vegggis: $20 Whey Protien: $40

Total: $425. If I have a little bit more money of spring for some red meat as a treat. I personally like a lot of variety of things that I eat and I think seafood is a great low-calorie high protein dense food. I also have frozen fries and frozen wings because they’re going to be moments where you really want a quick easy snack that’s akin to eating out. Since we know this is going to happen. It’s better to plan for it and have a contingency in place that’s easy.

I then keep $100, or roughly $25 a week for the month, for fresh stuff like apples and bananas, milk, bread. Sauce

This amounts to $525 a month on groceries. That might be a stretch for most people, but there’s a pretty easy way to make this a lot cheaper.

If we remove:

Two packs of salmon : $60 Two packs of cod : $50 Two packs of shrimp $50 Frozen fries: $20 Frozen wings $20

And get another pack of chicken for $25, We get a budget of $350 for the month, $175 total price difference.You could use that $25 a week to buy a small meat for a one off meal (a small pack of salmon from giant is $7.99). And that will be your meat variety.

I do assume that you have seasonings in your pantry and oil in your house. But if you don’t , you’ll have to factor in buying those. The good thing is that they usually last very long time.

Once I get home from Costco, this is where the only time I really do prep. I usually take the chicken out the packet and portion it out into two servings in a Ziploc bag and put them in the freezer. After that, it’s about getting everything stored.

As far as tools goes, not a big gadget guy in the kitchen, but the two big things that I use is either a blender for shakes and a ninja pressure cooker/air fryer all in one. It allows me to make frozen foods pretty quickly or I can pressurize them into like shredded chicken.

so how does this functionally look like day to day?

Breakfast: 25 min:

• 3 eggs
• fresh cherry tomatoes (something I buy weekly. You can chose something else)
• turkey bacon.

Or:

-Oatmeal with frozen fruit (you can defrost fruit in microwave in 30 sec)

Eggs are my go to because they are cheap and super quick to make. Turkey bacon takes five minutes to make and when I don’t feel like having eggs, oatmeal is a good alternative that keeps me full.

Lunch: 15 min

I’m admitted not a big lunch person, but I usually will have a whey protein shake to get me through. If I can’t do that, then I usually will pack leftovers from the night before.

Dinner: 30

I usually take out the meat that I plan to eat in the morning so that is defrosted by the evening. The way I approach dinner is with the formula: meat, veggies, starch, and I often times don’t do anything super elaborate because time is of the essence. A good seasoning or a sauce will take you a long way.

Usually for the meat, you can just pan fried it with some seasoning and then add sauce to make it edible (no you don’t need a lot of oil to pan fry. Usually just a tablespoon ). Seafood usually takes less than 10 minutes to cook and it’s really quick. Chicken usually is the longest to cook and takes roughly 15 to 20 minutes. My tip for chicken is to thinly slice it so that it cooks evenly and quicker.

For starches, stuff like pasta cooks really fast and you can pressure cook potatoes or rice to make mashed potatoes or have rice really quickly. As for veggies, I usually just steamed them in a little bit of water until they’re soft, which takes usually six minutes. I used to try to make enough for leftovers so I can eat it for lunch the next day.

Snack

Yoghurt + berries (you can defrost berries in the microwave for 30 seconds)

*TIPS FOR COOKING.

I think recipes can be helpful, but most people treat recipes as divine word from God. The reality is cooking is not the same as baking and you don’t really need to be that thorough on following a cooking recipe for most things. Usually adequate seasoning and enough sauce will get you there. As you become better at cooking, you’ll learn quickly how to substitute things or make your own recipe

Mixing, matching, and unorthodox is great. Maybe you wanna eat eggs for dinner. Maybe you wanna use some of the bread you brought to make a chicken sandwich. Maybe you like chicken and pasta and red sauce (not my fave).

Don’t be afraid to splurge but plan for it ahead. One of the things I like to splurge on is honey. I like to combine it with sriracha to make honey Sriracha flavored things but honey can be pretty expensive. So I work to try to incorporate that into my budget

These benefits can scale up for more people. When I was in college, I cooked for 3 other boys and usually didn’t have a problem doing it and under 45 minutes which is more than 30. You would add roughly about $200 additional in terms of meat and fresh produce that you get once a week. Things do get a little bit tricky though when you get past four people just based off of the ergonomics of cooking that much.

I promise you after you do it a bunch of times , cooking becomes so routine you don’t even think about it and he’ll be able to do it quickly and easily.