Meals that can be made for 33 cents or less!

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Rules: 0. 33 cents was picked to aim towards that mythical $1 a day target!

Posts should be about a dish/meal you personally made that cost less than 33 cents USD, OR a video of someone making it/reviewing it. Just want to avoid recipes being posted that no one has actually ever tasted.
A meal should have at least 400 calories
Meals should be replicable and not rely on crazy discounted items
Feel free to post failures!
No over reliance on bulk purchases. Requiring a single egg from a cartoon of 18 is fine, requiring a single egg from a cartoon of 64 bought from costco, less so.
This is mostly a challenge on creativity and thinking outside normal cooking rules. Sometimes the result will be learning why a rule exists.
Feel free to ignore calculating costs of oil to grease a pan, dash of salt, teaspoon of sugar, etc.

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ericbomb

Banana Pancakes (30 cents) (self.33_cent_meals)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by ericbomb to c/33_cent_meals

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1 Cup Self rising flour (15 cents) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Z7C6FVK?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

1 Banana (15 cents)

Mush a ripe or slightly over ripe banana into 1 cup self rising flour. Add water and mix until batter texture.

Cook like pancakes

3/10 plain.

Not super inspiring eaten plain, edible, but far more mild than I expected, and texture is, expectedly, not perfect.

Just fine as a vessel to carry jelly/butter/syrup to you though. Maybe a teaspoon of sugar would have helped.

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[–] chemical_cutthroat 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

You can get instant pancake mix for fairly cheap. A box of Ms. Butterworths runs $.18 per serving, which makes the cut just at $.33 per serving with the banana. Truthfully, you are going to have a hard time keeping below $.33 if you don't include staples like salt, sugar, and a leavening agent, however, all of those things are cheap to buy or free at any food pantry. Sure, you can eat a mouth full of unseasoned flour, but you'll get zero nutrition and zero flavor.

[–] ericbomb 1 points 6 months ago

Yeah it didn't work great!

The problem with box of Ms. Butterworths, if we're looking at the same box, is that it's only 170 calories per serving. Not a passable meal at all if the goal is a minimum of 1500 calories per day!

Also part of this is challenging creativity! There are going to be failures and mess ups, but it's rather fun to try and think of how to do things cheaper.

[–] PlantJam 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You might also try adding a dash of salt or a tablespoon of salted butter. A little salt goes a long way in recipes like this.

[–] ericbomb 1 points 6 months ago

Yeah I think a dash of salt probably is free!

also thinking muffins might be better for texture to give the self rising flour time to rise properly.

So might try again just as muffins.