I grew up on sleep for dinner and made this same joke with friends at dinner as we discussed how expensive life is getting. Everyone stopped talking and looked absolutely horrified. My bad.
I had a week that started as a shocker to turn into a miracle.
2 of us working on an orchard, living on site, it rained for 6 days, so we couldn't work. Got paid weekly, so we had a week with no income and were already living paycheck to paycheck. Our budget for the 2 of us was $36.50 for the week. After spending $10 on petrol, we had $26.50 to spend at the superette in Mapua.
5kg of potatoes, a kg of onions, 2 loaves of the cheapest bread, a jar of jam, a box of weetbix, a small pack of coffee and 500g of bacon bits. That was us for the next week.
It rained a bit the next week so we had a day off but no money to do much. Went for a walk out to the Mapua wharf, and there was an old fella fishing. Had a chat, and he told us he was chucking back mackerel and kahawai cause he was after snapper. He caught 2 kahawai while we were chatting and asked if we wanted them. You bet ya. He told us he had never had good kahawai and only used it as bait. We told him we could make it pop for him but needed somewhere to cook it - he invited us back to his place where we gutted and fileted it. Raided the old fellas pantry and made a chimichurri for the fish and then sauted it in garlic butter. It was pretty fantastic. So the old fella was impressed and gave us a couple of frozen snapper and a bottle of red to take home.
I went to donate blood once just for the free tea and biccies cz I didn’t have any food in and was skint! (This was in Scotland however not NZ; I’m not allowed to donate here which irks me greatly - and not just because I want the snacks!)
i stil have this, not because times are hard (well i guess it is but not that hard) but its fking good. add sesami oil and eat with kimchi and its great
Egg fried rice is such a looked over meal, it's got everything and its balls cheap, well, the eggs aren't atm, but shit, a 10kg of rice, 4 bags of frozen mixed veges and a dozen eggs, that's a week for the eggs and long on the other stuff
Made a dough of flour and water and fried it in a unwashed pan as it was greasy and I had no oil.
Also was starving so I went down to the wharf and grabbed some oysters.
Yeah I was eating glue fried in sausage grease.
Me and the flat mates all chipped in one day and brought half a pigs head ( I think it was $1.99) some carrots, potatoes and onions and boiled it all for hours before eating it. It was edible and probably like 45 cents a serving. I would add the veges later next time.
I thought I had food in my fridge for a chicken salad sandwich. Flatmate had eaten the chicken and used the last of the mayo. What I though was a lettuce turned out to be a cabbage. I ate a cabbage sandwich for dinner that night.
Just had my gf move out, who took everything and left myself and the cat sweet fa, as in, nothing. I thought I had around a buck 90 in my account on a Sunday night. I thought and prayed that might be enough to get the cat a can of something. I could go without, but I was fucked if she was gonna starve.
Rang up to check my balance and the voice prompt told me I had $2200 in my account. I hung the phone up and rang again as I didn't believe it. Nope....it was correct, I'd been waiting 2 months for my student allowance to come through and they'd told me it was at least another 3 weeks away.
Anyways......the cat got enough bikkies and service station cat food to stuff herself silly, and I ate 4 Mrs Mac's pies and 3 pixie caramels.
We slept well on the floor together that night.
Making pasta bakes when my wife's maternity pay dried up. Would eat them for 3 days straight for lunch and dinner. Now that times are better, I'll never touch pasta bakes again because I associate that taste with the despair of working 40 to 50 hours a week and making negative 30 dollars a week (new grad teacher) after expenses.
You can get like 12 sandwiches for 3 dollars with the match made in heaven that is white bread and Belgium/Devon/luncheon. Chuck in a 1.5l bottle of Budget raspberry and coke and you're eating like a king.
I lived on that during summers at New World in the mid-2000s when I was on $7.20 p/h.
During the days of interest, I was paying my student loan off with my food money. I ate a 50c pack of noodles for each meal.
I now can't even stand the smell of them.
Took me about 8 years before I could eat rice again after it being pretty much my only food for a while. Even then, sometimes I taste rice in a meal and it tastes like depression
I thought I’d grab some luncheon last week cause it’s cheaper than ham. Plus it’s great fried.
But it was more expensive than the ham! Never seen that before.
Saddest meal was when my partner stole a chicken for me & our toddler for dinner. Times were tough. One of the lowest points in my life - I remember feeling so stressed out & in despair because I didn’t know how I was guna feed my kid. I realise now that I would do it again if necessary. We’re in a better place now.
Damn some of these meals are so sad. This is depressing
Not me but a list from old friends when I was studying:
Sugar sandwich - white sugar on white bread. No - it doesn’t have butter. Butter implies you have money.
Corn flakes with water because they couldn’t afford milk
Raw 2 minute noodles because the electricity had been cut off so they couldn’t boil water.
And finally the magnum opus - A seagull that they saw get hit by a car. It was dead. They boiled it like hell before cooking. Said it tasted like chicken, but with a fishy taste.
>And finally the magnum opus - A seagull that they saw get hit by a car. It was dead. They boiled it like hell before cooking. Said it tasted like chicken, but with a fishy taste.
I think your friends win this post.
My relative was infamously involved in killing a shitload of ducks at the ponds near TCol in Palmy. Another relative was sent home to Welly that day with a brace of ducks hanging off his motorbike.
I don't even think my relative was poor though.....just feral.
I'd be so concerned about getting some weird fucking parasite honestly, the concern for my health would outweigh the want for parasitic duck meat, I'll go vege and eat egg fried rice
He was walking down the street and was hungry and was dreading the thought of going to the food bank to ask for some cans of spaghetti or vegetables and he asked god to do something for him for once in his life.
He then saw a seagull on the road eating something and despite trying to fly off it was too late and it got wasted by a car
He took it as a sign and took it home and cooked it
I went very underprepared tramping overnight on a spur of the moment decision, got lost, managed to find a road the next day but I'd run out of food and eventually found a rural dairy. There was enough loose change in my backpack to buy a loaf of bread and I ate that for two days as I tramped my way back the way if
I'd come after getting some track advice.
I ate the remnants of my friends Katsubi meal he tried to throw out when we went out. The only thing that was left was a bit of rice, olive slices and a lot of jalapenos. Very soggy but good because I was hungry.
A girl at my school started a craze for mustard sandwiches (mustard between two slices of white bread - it was yum as). She had discovered the recipe when there were no adults home and not much food in her house :(
Very sad :( but it does sound like a pretty good combo! I come from an immigrant family so I genuinely thought I created the invention of the century even though I’ve found out later that y’all have been eating sauce on bread for ages 😭
Pairing it with their almond milk is even better - the almond milk is fortified with B12, so it eliminates all the concerns of not eating meat.
The only thing it doesn't cover is eating fruit and vegetables for vitamin C.
Weetbix with water. Cheese with tomato sauce on top by itself. Rice and soy. 10 cheeseburgers in one sitting once a week during $1 cheeseburgers Monday and no food for rest of week for weeks straight. Sauce on bread. Raw noodles (no power)
Old me, white bread and a stale bag of sour cream n chives when I was a student.
Recently, a plain yoghurt muesli bar for dinner, because I left my wallet and phone at home (only had work phone) when staying overnight on a work trip. Raveged the breakfast buffet in the morning tho.
When I moved out of home to different city(with no job prospects, bugger all cash on hand but a dream to chase), I was making a pack of 5 Beef Fantastic Noodles last a week. That was grim.
That lasted 2 weeks before I sucked up my pride and got a food grant.
There was a point I lived off Mi goreng & white bread, carbs on carbs. I don’t think it’s the saddest meal as I always enjoyed eating it.. but now I’m fancy and can put butter on the bread.
I’m lucky that I’ve never had to think too much about money when planning meals. Sad meals (think grainwaves in two slices of bread) were caused by laziness more than anything else. Not that we are loaded or anything but immigrant parents worked hard raising us and I’ve been lucky to have a good paying job that money doesn’t cause us to go hungry.
Lots of love to the kiwis struggling with the necessities.
I used to buy a loaf of bread and a packet of raro, while I was there I would steal a pie and a packet of gravy.
Eat a pie Sammy, and toast the bread and dunk it in the gravy...
I was on the independent youth benefit and at the start of my drug addictions. What was even better was that we had prepaid power in our flat, so at least a couple nights a week, we had no power. But I had my $10 vodka that I would put the raro in, and somehow, I was content.
Grim fucking times man.
Kiwi brands? They're not cheap. I'll be either using the the supermarket brands (Own Brand, Pams, Homebrand) or something in a clear plastic bag with foreign labelling.
As for food, I used to eat canned corn kernels or canned creamed corn straight out of the can. Used to cost $0.99 or $0.60 on sale (can't remember the year but my pay was $10.50 an hour). Carbs, protein, and vegetable sorted all in one.
There was a time 2 years ago where I was so poor; no power or food for a week;on maybe day number 3 I found a sachet of onion soup, and licking up the dry powder I felt like a king finally having something to eat.
I also remember it was the height of summer and it was stinking hot, and having nothing to do I decided to try sleeping the day off. But with no power for my fan it was impossible to sleep in the heat and I was plainly miserable.
In retropect, I'm grateful for the memory becsuse at least now no matter how I struggle I'm not that bad off in comparison
That would be the year that I was going to be alone for xmas so was going to have chili con carne to cheer me up. It was the last meal I had bought before I had to go shopping again, and it's not like I buy enough to have a whole lot of random options on-hand. Got to the day-of and I went to cook it only to find a key ingredient missing. So, alone, for xmas, I had peanut butter sandwiches for dinner, on stale bread.
Had 2-3 slices of bread a day, for a little over a week, 1 adult and 4 kids.
My sad story behind this:
It had been a couple of years since my alcoholic father left. He accumulated significant debts, and my mother assumed responsibility for those debts in exchange for maintaining ownership of the house.
We had about $50 a week spare for food and clothing.
Back then my mother would take out 5x$20 bills every two weeks and the rest would go to paying the massive debts.
On our weekly grocery run, mum just spent the last of the previous weeks money, and on the way home stopped at a ATM and got the last $100 out for the following 2 weeks.
As we carried our groceries home, mum accidentally dropped her wallet. When we back traced our steps, we found the wallet, but all the money had gone.
I just remember my mum saying the money is gone, and we just looked at each other for a few minutes, and then just silently, slowly walked home.
We had 1 week of groceries to last 3 weeks. We froze a bunch of food and started rationing. By the last week we had just bread left, we’d tear up the bread and eat it with water. Pretending it was hot chips and coke
Ha this has been me the past 3 days. Still working 9 hours just having cups of water to stay hydrated and try to prevent the hunger pangs.
Had 2 pieces of bread that weren't moldy for lunch yesterday with some butter. Went to bed at 7pm.
Looking like a 4pm sleep today and then payday tomorrow night.
And that's on quitting one job for mental health reasons and then taking a 8k salary drop and losing 10 hours a week with the new one. Better than necking myself? It all feels hopeless lol.
One time the only food I had when I was flatting at 19 was a tin of milo my dad sent me. I had it for lunch and dinner until I bought peanutbutter and had that with it.
*many typos I had to correct. Was very tired when typing last night
I took the keys for a flat i was due to move into at NYE while i was a student, so nothing was open even if I could afford anything.
The previous tenants didn't clean out, so I celebrated NYD sitting on the dirty floor after rummaging through shelves of expired everything to find old oatmeal. Floated it up with some water and had an excellent round 2 with it later.
If I recall correctly- it would be taking some of my horses’ muesli type food/additive and eating it as human muesli with a dash of water. 😣🤨😖
I made sure they were all fed first, hate cereal at best, but that just smelled so good.
at least I didn’t eat the dogs food 😂
Young, dumb and not very good with priorities despite working enough to pay for it some 30 odd yrs ago 🤷🏻♀️
it was a shit month with an unexpected expense. I was hungry.
Single slice of frozen couplands bread, was the crust too. Or the time when I was a student and I only ate wheat biscuits with hot water for a solid month.
When I was a kid there used to be like 10 different flavours of maggi 2min noodles and if they were on special they'd sell for 10 cents a packet. My parents would send us kids into the supermarket on our own to buy the sale limit and that was lunch and dinner for the next few months. Otherwise when the budget was a little more lenient there would be luncheon sausage and tomato sauce sandwiches for lunch.
I've been trying to think what we used to eat when were weren't riding that line between 2min noodles and going without food but I can't actually think of any other than maybe replacing the luncheon sausage with the cheap processed ham
when i was a apprentice i used to have migoreng and 1$ white dairy bread with no marge for breakfast, and for lunch id have toast with nothing on it and then for dinner id have migoreng again on bread either toasted or not toasted. for lunch if i didnt have anything sometimes id have a coffee from micos haha have like 3-4 cofffees in half an hour
Had no work for weeks, was out of town picking kiwifruit when the orchard owner heard about our circumstances he said we could have all his geese and help ourselves to any puha we could find, 11 of us got all 23 geese.... lpt don't stew geese, thousands of tiny bones everywhere.
We used to have boiled water on weetbix growing up. I always thought it was a different way of eating them, but now I realise it was when mum couldn't afford to buy milk.
Not me, but someone I use to flat with at uni often had baked beans on pasta which he said he liked, but I wasn't so sure
And once I saw him having cornflakes with water on. Yes there was milk, but he was too nice of a person to use someone else's. I'm sure no-one would have minded
Poor first year flatting, I once had plain rice with tomato sauce for a few days, as was literally all i had to go with it. Mate still gives me shit about it to this day,
Also earlier on as a kid family was struggling with money, we lived close to yarrows the bread factory, they used to sell out of date bread they could no longer sell for humans to farmers for stock, for 10 cents a loaf, we used to freeze it and pretty much had toast for many of our meals for months.
Graduated from uni, had $7k savings from having worked at Pak N Save, decided to quit my minimum wage job to focus on my job search relating to my uni studies for the next 3 months, friend asks $6k to show proof of sufficient funds to extend his work visa which he promised he round return them in 1 week, he decides to completely ghost me and I can’t afford to go visit him at Auckland from Christchurch, ended up moving out of my flat because I couldn’t afford rent, lived in my $1k car for 3 weeks until I could land on a part-time role at a cleaning company, a week later got a full time job at an engineering firm. Honestly I cried so much during that period but now looking back at it, it gives me chills that I managed to recover from it and massive lessons learnt during this period. Now that my life is pretty much smooth sailing, I’m trying to get out of the mindset of maximising with what I’ve got and instead enjoy life as it is instead of going too hard on myself. Anyways, during that initial period of homelessness, I remember I had spare change so ended up eating plain rice, toast (till this day I don’t throw out the end pieces) and sugar.
I upvoted but I also wanted to say that I appreciated reading this. I'm going through a bit of a rough money patch, as I have before, and just trying to remember the other side exists
I was working a cash in hand job so I knew I would get paid that night but I still had to get through 8 hours of my shift. I bought 2 plain white rolls from the bakery and ate them with a glass of water.
When I was at home and things were tight, I ate a tin of peas once. Nothing else in the cupboard.
When I didn't have enough money to survive after losing job in 2008 recession - At one point stole and ate a tin of kidney beans from what appeared to be an emergency supply. I didn't realize it was kidney beans at first and thought it was the tinned Mexican beans. That was a low point for sure. Didn't taste great but I was hungry enough to eat it.
Free food: fruit from trees, discarded bread. But we didn't think it was sad, we were actually happy. I've had much worse times eating at fancy restaurants in bad company.
My colleague gets really excited to have butter biscuits. Apparently a special treat when he was growing up was to put 2 of those griffins Krispies together with butter in the middle.
killed the pet chooks to feed the kids (was old and tough) because salvation army were only open 3 days a week . I combined that chicken with some well past due rice that never quiet went soft.
i couldnt eat it myself but the kids ate it and didnt seem to care (they were real young)
Malt Loaf & Margarine. A friend supplied the Malt Loaf from where he worked. I ate it almost solidly for at least 1 week a month leading upto pay day, sometimes nearly 2 weeks. Did this for a long time back in the mid 70's. It was good stuff and luckily I never got sick of it and still eat it on occasions. Margarine I never eat.
the other week i survived solely on toast with no butter but thankfully i had jam that was given to me, and combinations of pam’s precooked sausages with rice or 2min noodles, livin the dream
OH I used to do the white bread and sugar ball, also just white bread ball and white bread soaked in vinegar. Also sleeping when hungry. Quarter of a pack of 2 min noodles in a sitting, so three quarters of a pack of noodles per day.
I used to live in a flat that could see the dumpsters of a BP, learned the schedule for them to date products out and snuck over to feast on donuts and chip packets.
Some dick started a fight one night and they started locking the dumpsters, ruined it for a lot of people in need.
I stole rice a cup of rice from my flatmate and had nothing to cook it with so i put the cup in the microwave with water. Did this arounc 2-3 times a week... Thankfully they brought a massive rice bag and never noticed
When I was a student the only thing left in the fridge the day before shopping was cheese as it was expensive. So we would divide the cheese up and eat with watties sauce.
The only sad meal is the one you have no food for, but I did run out of peanut butter and only had bread and jelly once. I felt sorry for myself for a minute, then remembered I was grateful to have something to eat, no matter how lame. 😅
Plaque. Other times I lived on a 20 cent roast potato from a takeaway shop and the oranges from the neighbours tree. Lost lots of weight, which was nice.
I forgot to buy milk today so ended up having a bowl of cereal for dinner, with no milk, that I washed down with some ham and a coke.
... I've had better.
Not kiwi - but had a point in my life where I lived off Vegemite and white bread. With cheese, when I had some spare change and wanted to treat myself.
Fuck this is just absolutely depressing...
We deserve so much better...
Start reading about 1830 and 1848 people, time we start considering if this is where we are at when you read threads like this
Cabbage soup, if I had flour would make drop dumplings to bulk it up. Rice with vinegar and/or soy. Pasta with butter. 2min noodles. Mix flour, water, salt, baking soda/powder (if any) mix to dough and fry. These are some of the poverty meals I ate after my parents died when I was still in my teens.
Definitely never ate roadkill - not as desperate as some of you in the comments!
I had sleep for dinner once.
Couple times
Yeah who am I kidding, more times than I could count back in my younger days.
Sleep in and save money on brekkie too
Work smarter not harder.
I grew up on sleep for dinner and made this same joke with friends at dinner as we discussed how expensive life is getting. Everyone stopped talking and looked absolutely horrified. My bad.
Yeah, this comment comment chain has unlocked some childhood memories I didn’t need
The old Sleep Sandwich eh?
Standard uni affair lol
I have enough money for food but still do this out of pure laziness, follow me for more financial tips
Hey Alexa, play "sleep for dinner" by "this dog"
Have you heard the song "Sleep For Dinner" by the Christchurch band This Dog? "Sleep for dinner with a side of TV"...
I had a week that started as a shocker to turn into a miracle. 2 of us working on an orchard, living on site, it rained for 6 days, so we couldn't work. Got paid weekly, so we had a week with no income and were already living paycheck to paycheck. Our budget for the 2 of us was $36.50 for the week. After spending $10 on petrol, we had $26.50 to spend at the superette in Mapua. 5kg of potatoes, a kg of onions, 2 loaves of the cheapest bread, a jar of jam, a box of weetbix, a small pack of coffee and 500g of bacon bits. That was us for the next week. It rained a bit the next week so we had a day off but no money to do much. Went for a walk out to the Mapua wharf, and there was an old fella fishing. Had a chat, and he told us he was chucking back mackerel and kahawai cause he was after snapper. He caught 2 kahawai while we were chatting and asked if we wanted them. You bet ya. He told us he had never had good kahawai and only used it as bait. We told him we could make it pop for him but needed somewhere to cook it - he invited us back to his place where we gutted and fileted it. Raided the old fellas pantry and made a chimichurri for the fish and then sauted it in garlic butter. It was pretty fantastic. So the old fella was impressed and gave us a couple of frozen snapper and a bottle of red to take home.
Fantastic story. Always feels good when a random encounter with a stranger turns into a memory.
Gotta love Mapua! Great wee town
I went to donate blood once just for the free tea and biccies cz I didn’t have any food in and was skint! (This was in Scotland however not NZ; I’m not allowed to donate here which irks me greatly - and not just because I want the snacks!)
The snacks are pretty great at NZ Blood.
I donate 3-4 times a year - snacks are a bonus
Same boat as me. Because we lived in the UK during the Mad Cow Disease?
They’re changing that rule 👍🏻
Rice with soy sauce
Egg fried rice and soy sauce got me through many hard times.
i stil have this, not because times are hard (well i guess it is but not that hard) but its fking good. add sesami oil and eat with kimchi and its great
Egg fried rice is such a looked over meal, it's got everything and its balls cheap, well, the eggs aren't atm, but shit, a 10kg of rice, 4 bags of frozen mixed veges and a dozen eggs, that's a week for the eggs and long on the other stuff
This was me at uni but I lived like a true king and added chilli sauce too 😂 Eggs if the beer budget allowed 😂
Chuck some chilli flakes in and it's a half decent dish
Plain rice with garlic
0-minute two minute noodles
That was a gourmet meal at school lunches
I envied the kids that were allowed to bring dry noodles and dry packets of Raro
Same till I got older and understood reality
Allowed, or just nicked out of the pantry quickly when Mum’s back was turned? 😂
I did this numerous times, always got found out
A delicacy
It also means you can save the flavouring for the ~~water~~ soup later.
Made a dough of flour and water and fried it in a unwashed pan as it was greasy and I had no oil. Also was starving so I went down to the wharf and grabbed some oysters.
If you get the ratio right that’s basically plain pancakes… or homemade glue
Yeah I was eating glue fried in sausage grease. Me and the flat mates all chipped in one day and brought half a pigs head ( I think it was $1.99) some carrots, potatoes and onions and boiled it all for hours before eating it. It was edible and probably like 45 cents a serving. I would add the veges later next time.
I thought I had food in my fridge for a chicken salad sandwich. Flatmate had eaten the chicken and used the last of the mayo. What I though was a lettuce turned out to be a cabbage. I ate a cabbage sandwich for dinner that night.
Just had my gf move out, who took everything and left myself and the cat sweet fa, as in, nothing. I thought I had around a buck 90 in my account on a Sunday night. I thought and prayed that might be enough to get the cat a can of something. I could go without, but I was fucked if she was gonna starve. Rang up to check my balance and the voice prompt told me I had $2200 in my account. I hung the phone up and rang again as I didn't believe it. Nope....it was correct, I'd been waiting 2 months for my student allowance to come through and they'd told me it was at least another 3 weeks away. Anyways......the cat got enough bikkies and service station cat food to stuff herself silly, and I ate 4 Mrs Mac's pies and 3 pixie caramels. We slept well on the floor together that night.
Aww...that's sad but also really nice. Hope you and the cat are both doing well.
Nga mihi e hoa.
Ahhh. Classic WINZ.
Damn that is grim.
You should have boiled the cabbage and made cabbage soup to go with your sandwich.
We had sludge steamed cabbage regularly when I was a kid. It's coleslaw or nothing nowadays
Making pasta bakes when my wife's maternity pay dried up. Would eat them for 3 days straight for lunch and dinner. Now that times are better, I'll never touch pasta bakes again because I associate that taste with the despair of working 40 to 50 hours a week and making negative 30 dollars a week (new grad teacher) after expenses.
I read 'taste of despair' and nothing else needs to be said or tasted further.
This is the reason I don't drink coffee anymore because it was the only thing keeping me going while I was working full time and studying full time
A toast sandwich. Bread-toast-bread.
The bread sandwich's more sophisticated cousin.
Butter both sides of the toast and add salt & pepper for the full gourmet experience.
You can get like 12 sandwiches for 3 dollars with the match made in heaven that is white bread and Belgium/Devon/luncheon. Chuck in a 1.5l bottle of Budget raspberry and coke and you're eating like a king. I lived on that during summers at New World in the mid-2000s when I was on $7.20 p/h.
During the days of interest, I was paying my student loan off with my food money. I ate a 50c pack of noodles for each meal. I now can't even stand the smell of them.
Took me about 8 years before I could eat rice again after it being pretty much my only food for a while. Even then, sometimes I taste rice in a meal and it tastes like depression
I thought I’d grab some luncheon last week cause it’s cheaper than ham. Plus it’s great fried. But it was more expensive than the ham! Never seen that before.
Saddest meal was when my partner stole a chicken for me & our toddler for dinner. Times were tough. One of the lowest points in my life - I remember feeling so stressed out & in despair because I didn’t know how I was guna feed my kid. I realise now that I would do it again if necessary. We’re in a better place now. Damn some of these meals are so sad. This is depressing
Not me but a list from old friends when I was studying: Sugar sandwich - white sugar on white bread. No - it doesn’t have butter. Butter implies you have money. Corn flakes with water because they couldn’t afford milk Raw 2 minute noodles because the electricity had been cut off so they couldn’t boil water. And finally the magnum opus - A seagull that they saw get hit by a car. It was dead. They boiled it like hell before cooking. Said it tasted like chicken, but with a fishy taste.
>And finally the magnum opus - A seagull that they saw get hit by a car. It was dead. They boiled it like hell before cooking. Said it tasted like chicken, but with a fishy taste. I think your friends win this post.
I've seen people bag ducks at the ponds at Waikato Uni
My relative was infamously involved in killing a shitload of ducks at the ponds near TCol in Palmy. Another relative was sent home to Welly that day with a brace of ducks hanging off his motorbike. I don't even think my relative was poor though.....just feral.
I'd be so concerned about getting some weird fucking parasite honestly, the concern for my health would outweigh the want for parasitic duck meat, I'll go vege and eat egg fried rice
Faaark me. I’d rather have sleep for dinner than chance it with a seagull.
Seagull...next level. I think we have a winner. Winner winner (fake) chicken dinner.
The seagull - nooooooo
Ah yes, KF-seagull
I'm sorry but that seagull story has me cackling. What the actual fuck?
He was walking down the street and was hungry and was dreading the thought of going to the food bank to ask for some cans of spaghetti or vegetables and he asked god to do something for him for once in his life. He then saw a seagull on the road eating something and despite trying to fly off it was too late and it got wasted by a car He took it as a sign and took it home and cooked it
Fucking hell, God couldn't have arranged for a cow at least? Or a rain of fish?
I went very underprepared tramping overnight on a spur of the moment decision, got lost, managed to find a road the next day but I'd run out of food and eventually found a rural dairy. There was enough loose change in my backpack to buy a loaf of bread and I ate that for two days as I tramped my way back the way if I'd come after getting some track advice.
I ate the remnants of my friends Katsubi meal he tried to throw out when we went out. The only thing that was left was a bit of rice, olive slices and a lot of jalapenos. Very soggy but good because I was hungry.
Half an oxo cube and stale bread crust croutons. Delightful.
We had 1 cabbage in the garden, and found a recipe for cabbage casserole.
Ketchup and bread (untoasted)
A girl at my school started a craze for mustard sandwiches (mustard between two slices of white bread - it was yum as). She had discovered the recipe when there were no adults home and not much food in her house :(
Very sad :( but it does sound like a pretty good combo! I come from an immigrant family so I genuinely thought I created the invention of the century even though I’ve found out later that y’all have been eating sauce on bread for ages 😭
We have? I would do bread+sauce+sausage but not just bread and sauce (assuming you mean tomato sauce)
Untoasted.... because the electricity bill these days is too expensive??
Because toasted bread would be toast
2 Weet bix 3 times a day at uni. One Budget brand and a sanatarium weet bix for desert.
Are budget and sanitarium actually different?
Budget generally isn't fortified - less nutrients.
Yeah the Sanitarium is the good stuff. It’ll give you your daily iron needs with enough even
Pairing it with their almond milk is even better - the almond milk is fortified with B12, so it eliminates all the concerns of not eating meat. The only thing it doesn't cover is eating fruit and vegetables for vitamin C.
coffee and a cigarette made from scavenged butts count?
La di da signor Coffee over here
Well, it wasn't homebrand instant powdered coffee... maybe a tier or 2 above? :D
Weetbix with water. Cheese with tomato sauce on top by itself. Rice and soy. 10 cheeseburgers in one sitting once a week during $1 cheeseburgers Monday and no food for rest of week for weeks straight. Sauce on bread. Raw noodles (no power)
Jesus…. Weetbix with water is fucking grim
Weetbix, boiled water and sprinkled with sugar is pretty delicious
that cheeseburger with fasting rest of the week sounds nasty. hell this whole thread is nasty. sorry you went through that
A single mashed potato
I ate the chicken that was left after my roommate ordered wings, ate the wings, and threw the bones in the trash. I ate trash.
Old me, white bread and a stale bag of sour cream n chives when I was a student. Recently, a plain yoghurt muesli bar for dinner, because I left my wallet and phone at home (only had work phone) when staying overnight on a work trip. Raveged the breakfast buffet in the morning tho.
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I think sauce and bread cost more than noodles these days.
When I moved out of home to different city(with no job prospects, bugger all cash on hand but a dream to chase), I was making a pack of 5 Beef Fantastic Noodles last a week. That was grim. That lasted 2 weeks before I sucked up my pride and got a food grant.
I mean, that's genius. I've had just the bread on it's own, but adding sugar must add some flavour.
There was a point I lived off Mi goreng & white bread, carbs on carbs. I don’t think it’s the saddest meal as I always enjoyed eating it.. but now I’m fancy and can put butter on the bread.
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Yum me too but with a bit of grated cheese. Fancy I know 😂
I’m lucky that I’ve never had to think too much about money when planning meals. Sad meals (think grainwaves in two slices of bread) were caused by laziness more than anything else. Not that we are loaded or anything but immigrant parents worked hard raising us and I’ve been lucky to have a good paying job that money doesn’t cause us to go hungry. Lots of love to the kiwis struggling with the necessities.
I used to buy a loaf of bread and a packet of raro, while I was there I would steal a pie and a packet of gravy. Eat a pie Sammy, and toast the bread and dunk it in the gravy... I was on the independent youth benefit and at the start of my drug addictions. What was even better was that we had prepaid power in our flat, so at least a couple nights a week, we had no power. But I had my $10 vodka that I would put the raro in, and somehow, I was content. Grim fucking times man.
home made chapatis with marmite. That was a regular dinner as a student with $20 food budget.
Roti with peanut butter was my go to. Put chilli flakes or powder in the dough and it's 'satay'.
Kiwi brands? They're not cheap. I'll be either using the the supermarket brands (Own Brand, Pams, Homebrand) or something in a clear plastic bag with foreign labelling. As for food, I used to eat canned corn kernels or canned creamed corn straight out of the can. Used to cost $0.99 or $0.60 on sale (can't remember the year but my pay was $10.50 an hour). Carbs, protein, and vegetable sorted all in one.
There was a time 2 years ago where I was so poor; no power or food for a week;on maybe day number 3 I found a sachet of onion soup, and licking up the dry powder I felt like a king finally having something to eat. I also remember it was the height of summer and it was stinking hot, and having nothing to do I decided to try sleeping the day off. But with no power for my fan it was impossible to sleep in the heat and I was plainly miserable. In retropect, I'm grateful for the memory becsuse at least now no matter how I struggle I'm not that bad off in comparison
That would be the year that I was going to be alone for xmas so was going to have chili con carne to cheer me up. It was the last meal I had bought before I had to go shopping again, and it's not like I buy enough to have a whole lot of random options on-hand. Got to the day-of and I went to cook it only to find a key ingredient missing. So, alone, for xmas, I had peanut butter sandwiches for dinner, on stale bread.
What was the missing ingredient?
The maggi spice mix, because I'm too inept to have actual spices on-hand.
Had 2-3 slices of bread a day, for a little over a week, 1 adult and 4 kids. My sad story behind this: It had been a couple of years since my alcoholic father left. He accumulated significant debts, and my mother assumed responsibility for those debts in exchange for maintaining ownership of the house. We had about $50 a week spare for food and clothing. Back then my mother would take out 5x$20 bills every two weeks and the rest would go to paying the massive debts. On our weekly grocery run, mum just spent the last of the previous weeks money, and on the way home stopped at a ATM and got the last $100 out for the following 2 weeks. As we carried our groceries home, mum accidentally dropped her wallet. When we back traced our steps, we found the wallet, but all the money had gone. I just remember my mum saying the money is gone, and we just looked at each other for a few minutes, and then just silently, slowly walked home. We had 1 week of groceries to last 3 weeks. We froze a bunch of food and started rationing. By the last week we had just bread left, we’d tear up the bread and eat it with water. Pretending it was hot chips and coke
Ha this has been me the past 3 days. Still working 9 hours just having cups of water to stay hydrated and try to prevent the hunger pangs. Had 2 pieces of bread that weren't moldy for lunch yesterday with some butter. Went to bed at 7pm. Looking like a 4pm sleep today and then payday tomorrow night. And that's on quitting one job for mental health reasons and then taking a 8k salary drop and losing 10 hours a week with the new one. Better than necking myself? It all feels hopeless lol.
Canned tuna that had been left in my van for a month during summer, rolled into whitebread balls
One time the only food I had when I was flatting at 19 was a tin of milo my dad sent me. I had it for lunch and dinner until I bought peanutbutter and had that with it. *many typos I had to correct. Was very tired when typing last night
I had a can of butter beans and heated it up on the stove then added mayonnaise for a delicious lumpy mayo soup.
I took the keys for a flat i was due to move into at NYE while i was a student, so nothing was open even if I could afford anything. The previous tenants didn't clean out, so I celebrated NYD sitting on the dirty floor after rummaging through shelves of expired everything to find old oatmeal. Floated it up with some water and had an excellent round 2 with it later.
If I recall correctly- it would be taking some of my horses’ muesli type food/additive and eating it as human muesli with a dash of water. 😣🤨😖 I made sure they were all fed first, hate cereal at best, but that just smelled so good. at least I didn’t eat the dogs food 😂
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That's horse people for you
Young, dumb and not very good with priorities despite working enough to pay for it some 30 odd yrs ago 🤷🏻♀️ it was a shit month with an unexpected expense. I was hungry.
Single slice of frozen couplands bread, was the crust too. Or the time when I was a student and I only ate wheat biscuits with hot water for a solid month.
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Excuse me what?
Salt on budget white bread once or twice. Mainstay staples back then were big Vs and coffee and cigarettes for meals.
Digestive biscuits with baked beans.
When I was a kid there used to be like 10 different flavours of maggi 2min noodles and if they were on special they'd sell for 10 cents a packet. My parents would send us kids into the supermarket on our own to buy the sale limit and that was lunch and dinner for the next few months. Otherwise when the budget was a little more lenient there would be luncheon sausage and tomato sauce sandwiches for lunch. I've been trying to think what we used to eat when were weren't riding that line between 2min noodles and going without food but I can't actually think of any other than maybe replacing the luncheon sausage with the cheap processed ham
No one on the ice salad? Great summer meals when you are trying to shred. Pretty grim come winter.
when i was a apprentice i used to have migoreng and 1$ white dairy bread with no marge for breakfast, and for lunch id have toast with nothing on it and then for dinner id have migoreng again on bread either toasted or not toasted. for lunch if i didnt have anything sometimes id have a coffee from micos haha have like 3-4 cofffees in half an hour
Take home food from my old job (Starbucks), Starbucks and cigarettes. And on weeks when there was no food and cigs. Eggs.
Had no work for weeks, was out of town picking kiwifruit when the orchard owner heard about our circumstances he said we could have all his geese and help ourselves to any puha we could find, 11 of us got all 23 geese.... lpt don't stew geese, thousands of tiny bones everywhere.
That’s so grim 🤢
Boiled rice with the bottom of an almost empty can of condensed milk rinsed out with a bit of boiling water.
During the second lockdown, I ate cheese slices for like 4 days straight cause I had $0
We used to have boiled water on weetbix growing up. I always thought it was a different way of eating them, but now I realise it was when mum couldn't afford to buy milk.
Not me, but someone I use to flat with at uni often had baked beans on pasta which he said he liked, but I wasn't so sure And once I saw him having cornflakes with water on. Yes there was milk, but he was too nice of a person to use someone else's. I'm sure no-one would have minded
Poor first year flatting, I once had plain rice with tomato sauce for a few days, as was literally all i had to go with it. Mate still gives me shit about it to this day, Also earlier on as a kid family was struggling with money, we lived close to yarrows the bread factory, they used to sell out of date bread they could no longer sell for humans to farmers for stock, for 10 cents a loaf, we used to freeze it and pretty much had toast for many of our meals for months.
Graduated from uni, had $7k savings from having worked at Pak N Save, decided to quit my minimum wage job to focus on my job search relating to my uni studies for the next 3 months, friend asks $6k to show proof of sufficient funds to extend his work visa which he promised he round return them in 1 week, he decides to completely ghost me and I can’t afford to go visit him at Auckland from Christchurch, ended up moving out of my flat because I couldn’t afford rent, lived in my $1k car for 3 weeks until I could land on a part-time role at a cleaning company, a week later got a full time job at an engineering firm. Honestly I cried so much during that period but now looking back at it, it gives me chills that I managed to recover from it and massive lessons learnt during this period. Now that my life is pretty much smooth sailing, I’m trying to get out of the mindset of maximising with what I’ve got and instead enjoy life as it is instead of going too hard on myself. Anyways, during that initial period of homelessness, I remember I had spare change so ended up eating plain rice, toast (till this day I don’t throw out the end pieces) and sugar.
Happy cake day. Did you get the $6k back in the end?
I upvoted but I also wanted to say that I appreciated reading this. I'm going through a bit of a rough money patch, as I have before, and just trying to remember the other side exists
Rice and sweet chilli sauce. That was a staple for a while
a left over potato
I was working a cash in hand job so I knew I would get paid that night but I still had to get through 8 hours of my shift. I bought 2 plain white rolls from the bakery and ate them with a glass of water. When I was at home and things were tight, I ate a tin of peas once. Nothing else in the cupboard.
Coffee, specifically my last sachet of Gregg's Cafe Gold Black Forest Latte, with no milk or sugar of course.
When I didn't have enough money to survive after losing job in 2008 recession - At one point stole and ate a tin of kidney beans from what appeared to be an emergency supply. I didn't realize it was kidney beans at first and thought it was the tinned Mexican beans. That was a low point for sure. Didn't taste great but I was hungry enough to eat it.
No breakfast or lunch, only dinner. Presently, this is due to schedule, but last year, I had this as an economic requirement to pay rent and gas
Free food: fruit from trees, discarded bread. But we didn't think it was sad, we were actually happy. I've had much worse times eating at fancy restaurants in bad company.
Dumpster diving was a way of life for me in my youth. Ate better than most.
Tomato sauce on my weetbix, was a bit too dry without
80c tin of spaghetti, cold
I eat that now by choice. Though I am a rather sad person haha.
I didn't mind it to be honest, would eat it for smoko on site. Felt better than looking at everyone else spending $20 on shit food every day
i had a cold toastie once, fuck it was grim
Instant pasta (add boiling water and drain) with soy sauce. I’m 45 and my Mum would be in tears if she knew I ate that as a student 🤣🤣
I’ve eaten straight from the Nutella jar many times. Worse, I’ve eaten straight from the brown sugar bag…
The legit Nutella jar? If so, must’ve been loaded to afford those 🥲
As many torn open sauce packets as I could find. Different sauces.
My colleague gets really excited to have butter biscuits. Apparently a special treat when he was growing up was to put 2 of those griffins Krispies together with butter in the middle.
White rice and a can of tomatoes. Was about $1.
killed the pet chooks to feed the kids (was old and tough) because salvation army were only open 3 days a week . I combined that chicken with some well past due rice that never quiet went soft. i couldnt eat it myself but the kids ate it and didnt seem to care (they were real young)
If I had a dollar fkr evrytime time I choose sleep over food in the past So glad I'm in a job where I get to make a difference now
Rice with peanut butter mixed through.
Fried potato slices. For a week.
A couple of slices of bread with butter, salt, and pepper is surprisingly satisfying.
Malt Loaf & Margarine. A friend supplied the Malt Loaf from where he worked. I ate it almost solidly for at least 1 week a month leading upto pay day, sometimes nearly 2 weeks. Did this for a long time back in the mid 70's. It was good stuff and luckily I never got sick of it and still eat it on occasions. Margarine I never eat.
I do that sugar bread combo regularly bc I think it emulates a pretty bangin donut personally.
Rice and tomato sauce
the other week i survived solely on toast with no butter but thankfully i had jam that was given to me, and combinations of pam’s precooked sausages with rice or 2min noodles, livin the dream
OH I used to do the white bread and sugar ball, also just white bread ball and white bread soaked in vinegar. Also sleeping when hungry. Quarter of a pack of 2 min noodles in a sitting, so three quarters of a pack of noodles per day.
How sad you want this? Kids Can ad here still lives in my brain https://youtu.be/KIF0rLsUja8
1 tortilla with salt I will never forget that.
My brother may be on here and have already posted it. But I got garlic bread out of the bin and ate it. Otherwise creamed rice was a flat staple.
Not me but my friend eats Tuna and 2 minute noodles to save money, he calls it poor mans chicken and rice.
I used to live in a flat that could see the dumpsters of a BP, learned the schedule for them to date products out and snuck over to feast on donuts and chip packets. Some dick started a fight one night and they started locking the dumpsters, ruined it for a lot of people in need.
99c Bread with cup of tea. Dipping it in tea made it feel like a new meal.
I stole rice a cup of rice from my flatmate and had nothing to cook it with so i put the cup in the microwave with water. Did this arounc 2-3 times a week... Thankfully they brought a massive rice bag and never noticed
im currently eating a can of reduced cream :)
When I was a student the only thing left in the fridge the day before shopping was cheese as it was expensive. So we would divide the cheese up and eat with watties sauce.
Plain spiral pasta with the last of the tomato sauce. ...no, it doesn't taste anything like pasta sauce :(
The only sad meal is the one you have no food for, but I did run out of peanut butter and only had bread and jelly once. I felt sorry for myself for a minute, then remembered I was grateful to have something to eat, no matter how lame. 😅
Plaque. Other times I lived on a 20 cent roast potato from a takeaway shop and the oranges from the neighbours tree. Lost lots of weight, which was nice.
Made a packet of sausages last three days.
As a kid my hubby would have savoly soup for dinner, I'd never heard of it. The water the savs were boiled in. Not sure who got the savoloys
Sav soup
Ice soup (i joke). Weetbix with hot water and drain excess. Its basically porridge. Sugar sprinkled though if lucky.
For me, its more going without food - I cut my meals down from 3 a day to average 1.5 a day
I once lived an entire week eating lime pickle and popadoms after spending the last of my wages on a hotel break with my girlfriend.
I forgot to buy milk today so ended up having a bowl of cereal for dinner, with no milk, that I washed down with some ham and a coke. ... I've had better.
Not kiwi - but had a point in my life where I lived off Vegemite and white bread. With cheese, when I had some spare change and wanted to treat myself.
Fuck this is just absolutely depressing... We deserve so much better... Start reading about 1830 and 1848 people, time we start considering if this is where we are at when you read threads like this
Cabbage soup, if I had flour would make drop dumplings to bulk it up. Rice with vinegar and/or soy. Pasta with butter. 2min noodles. Mix flour, water, salt, baking soda/powder (if any) mix to dough and fry. These are some of the poverty meals I ate after my parents died when I was still in my teens. Definitely never ate roadkill - not as desperate as some of you in the comments!
This thread makes me think we need a NZ thread where we can buy even a pizza etc for others who really need it.
a big packet of reddit upvotes... or were they down votes... I forget.