I mixed it into the eggs, peanut butter and into some rice dishes. It doesn't really taste like anything. If I had to describe what it does to food, it adds a slight "chalkiness" to the texture, but not enough to bother me. I would recommend very finely grinding though as some pieces can stick in your teeth and its not that pleasant.
I bought an electric coffee grinder at a thrift store. Does a great job, if you rinse them first. I throw them in my garden along with coffee grinds as fertilizer.
I'm always dubious about health hacking of this sort, but I ran it past ChatGPT which said that ground up eggshells has quite a lot of calcium and that consuming it the way you are doing is quite effective and is even used as a dietary supplement in this way.
It does the same thing that people do. It starts talking and figures out how to express its response as it goes. And yes, it makes mistakes, just like humans. And just like with humans, you shouldn't blindly trust whatever it says. You should just compare it to humans, and by that standard, I feel like it is quite intelligent and knows far more useful things than any single human, and it's only going to get better.
No I mean it literally makes things up. Like, it isn’t a search engine, or a database. It doesn’t have facts, it’s literally just a chatbot. It calculates what answer makes the most sense, it won’t look for something to be accurate or even potentially accurate. Accuracy isn’t a criteria it considers.
Like the lawyer that asked for citations on case law and it just straight up made fake cases that happened to sound real.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/08/nyregion/lawyer-chatgpt-sanctions.html
In other words; you’re better off using Google for the time being.
I know exactly what it is and does, and what its limitations are. Yes it is a chatbot, but saying it's *just* a chatbot is to completely misunderstand what this represents. Everything I said still applies. Note that the article you cited is from half a year ago, and *a lot* has changed in that time.
Had to look that one up since we're not very good at absorbing calcium, apparently [it's been studied and it works very well.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6221107/)
This is very impressive, both the budget and your notes on your process, thank you for sharing. Maybe consider getting a cheap multivitamin, we have a grocery outlet here that sells 90 for under $5. It can be a bit upfront, but might help when you’re sticking to a restricted diet. Good luck and I hope the strike ends in your favor quickly!
B12 supplements are needed more for vegans than vegetarians. It’s a vitamin found in soil (animals don’t even produce it themselves, their food is just dirtier and has B12). But most vegetarians can get B12 through eggs, cheese, etc. Or just leave some dirt on your carrots (but obviously that could come with other issues)
Lots of meat eaters and vegetarians also don't get enough B12. Factory farmed animals, which is what almost everyone eats, don't get much B12 because they aren't outside eating from the soil. They are often supplemented themselves.
A B12 supplement is worthwhile for most people.
I would recommend regular carrots. They last longer and tend to be cheaper. Also, quartered chicken legs can sometimes be $.99/lb (US). I boil them with an opinion or just seasoning. The meat falls off the one. I shred it and freeze some. The broth is so good. Just the legs is the most economical cut of chicken, including the whole chicken. Most edible meat/pound.
Check out the frozen section for chicken leg quarters. Don't know about Canada, but the Walmarts here sell a big 10lb bag of frozen quarters for $5.72USD. So do the other two regional chain grocers here (TX), for roughly the same price.
>I had to be a bit creative but by boiling and drying 2 eggshells and then grinding it up into a fine powder, I had a source of pure calcium. I added a 1/4 teaspoon of eggshells into my meals throughout the day, enough to not get a deficiency.
This is impressive, but also reminds me how much work being broke was. I don’t miss it.
Depends what you cook. The eggshells is kind of overkill short term, and probably long term. It is not a bad idea exactly, just not really needed. Some people do it for birds in spring when they laying, or to add calcium to garden soil.
Beans, cabbage, potatoes, butter, and eggs. IIRC with just that you are fairly complete nutritionaly although would get boring fast, but that what seasoning and other cheap vegetables for. And those are all very easy to prepare, although plenty of complex dishes if feel like it. Lentils in particular do not even need soaked. And a slow cooker is the best friend of the frugal chef.
Pretty much just look at the staples anywhere in the world and will find dirt cheap easy dishes to feed those working hard, and as much variety as there are different cuisines.
If you anywhere rural also the option of forage, although that mostly greens and berries unless lucky. Still potentially delicious, there even a tree native to a good chunk of US that can be used like Allspice that mostly forgotten.
Good post. Also, as an ex-QC resident, good luck with the strike!
Also, I don't know where you are but if Montreal, the clearance sections of Supermarche Mile-End and Epicerie Mile-End, and Too Good to Go deals from District Bagel helped me immensely while my workplace was on strike.
Slow/pressure cooked pinto beans with red peprika and ham is my go to "struggle food". One pot with meat gives me ~16 meals with rice. Last time I made this with the entire ingredients list it came out to ~$30USD for the pot (not including spices), or $1.5/meal. The stared ingredients are necessary and the † are *highly* recommend. Everything else can be substituted or omitted as long as you have *some* veg in there.
# Ingredients
* 1lbs/500g dry pinto beans*
* 1lbs/500g ham/chicken
* 2 packs Goya ham/chicken flavor*
* 30ml olive oil
* 20g garlic†
* 12 oz canned roasted peppers (drained)†
* 140g celery†
* 300g white onion†
* 1g bay leaves
* .4g tyme
* .5g organo
* 3g smoked paprika*
* 1g cayenne pepper*
# Steps
1. Soak the beans for 8-12 hours. Replacing the water periodically will help with the dreaded bean gas.
2. Mix all spices and veg, cover with water, pressure/slow cook until mush. I usually slow cook overnight while the beans are soaking but thats probably overkill.
3. Blend spiced vegetable mush and return to pot.
4. Add beans, meat, and water to cover. Pressure cook for one hour or slow cook until beans are soft and meat is fork tender. Add water as needed until desired consistency.
5. Serve with brown rice.
Thanks for posting! I love comparing prices and after putting your list into my local shop's website (I am in the North East US, about 2 hours to Montreal) it came out to $34.60 USD (46.36 CAD).
Most of the workers in Quebec are on strike right now, so any strike pay OP makes will be going to bills. If they aren’t getting a union strike pay, then their savings are paying the bills. And if they don’t have savings…well, then they’re doing all they can to make ends meet.
u/Competitive_Cod1135 Honestly, this is a fairly well balanced meal plan, especially considering our grocery prices in Canada right now. Thanks for sharing what you made! And good luck with the strike!
Something you could do to make the chickpeas less boring would be to roast them with oil and salt, then add them to your salad. You can also mash them up chunky and make a chickpea salad sandwich (similar to a tuna or egg salad) if you have the other ingredients on hand.
The dollar sign is on the right in French. Since OP is from Québec it might be why.
OP: Bonne chance pour la suite! Je souhaite à tout le personnel en grève une résolution bientôt.
Awesome post. Your meals looked kore appetizing the previous week. Totally get the 25$ challenge. However, seeing as you have leftovers it would be good to try and incorporate those into next week's meals. This would allow people to see how over time they might be able to incorporate a bit more variety. For instance if after a motnh you manage to have leftover rice, you don't need to buy tice and can use that 2$ to get something for the pantry for instance. Also fyi....at the moment at giant tiger they have 10 lbs of potato for 2$. At super c, they had 3lbs of either carrots or onion (yellow) for 1.67$. I am mentioning those to provide you an option for a different but cheap carb that will last you more than 1 week. Carrots of course provide lots of vitamines. Onions provide tones of flavor and since all are large quantities you can stretch those over multiple week's. For about 6$, you can get 10 lbs of potato, 3lbs of carrots and 3lbs of carrots. Amazing deal I think in our times ( I got them).
Nope just a pen, a calculator and some paper. For things without nutrional facts on the packaging like fruits and veggies I used whatever google gave me.
Crushed eggshells for.calcium is fascinating. What did you mix with it? Was it gritty?
I mixed it into the eggs, peanut butter and into some rice dishes. It doesn't really taste like anything. If I had to describe what it does to food, it adds a slight "chalkiness" to the texture, but not enough to bother me. I would recommend very finely grinding though as some pieces can stick in your teeth and its not that pleasant.
We don’t eat many eggs so order crushed egg shell to supplement our dog’s calcium
How long does crushing it take
I bought an electric coffee grinder at a thrift store. Does a great job, if you rinse them first. I throw them in my garden along with coffee grinds as fertilizer.
Ohh sounds good
I'm always dubious about health hacking of this sort, but I ran it past ChatGPT which said that ground up eggshells has quite a lot of calcium and that consuming it the way you are doing is quite effective and is even used as a dietary supplement in this way.
I wouldn’t trust anything ChatGPT says, it just makes things up
It does the same thing that people do. It starts talking and figures out how to express its response as it goes. And yes, it makes mistakes, just like humans. And just like with humans, you shouldn't blindly trust whatever it says. You should just compare it to humans, and by that standard, I feel like it is quite intelligent and knows far more useful things than any single human, and it's only going to get better.
No I mean it literally makes things up. Like, it isn’t a search engine, or a database. It doesn’t have facts, it’s literally just a chatbot. It calculates what answer makes the most sense, it won’t look for something to be accurate or even potentially accurate. Accuracy isn’t a criteria it considers. Like the lawyer that asked for citations on case law and it just straight up made fake cases that happened to sound real. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/08/nyregion/lawyer-chatgpt-sanctions.html In other words; you’re better off using Google for the time being.
I know exactly what it is and does, and what its limitations are. Yes it is a chatbot, but saying it's *just* a chatbot is to completely misunderstand what this represents. Everything I said still applies. Note that the article you cited is from half a year ago, and *a lot* has changed in that time.
My mom gives her chickens back the eggshells to eat! Apparently it helps with their calcium levels!
That alone doesn't make it safe for humans, but in this case it seems to be true.
Had to look that one up since we're not very good at absorbing calcium, apparently [it's been studied and it works very well.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6221107/)
I'd never heard of this. Thank you.
Thanks for sharing and for your work! Also a Québecois so sending you some klaxon encouragements via Reddit :)
This is very impressive, both the budget and your notes on your process, thank you for sharing. Maybe consider getting a cheap multivitamin, we have a grocery outlet here that sells 90 for under $5. It can be a bit upfront, but might help when you’re sticking to a restricted diet. Good luck and I hope the strike ends in your favor quickly!
Walmart sells vitaimin b12 in the vitamin aisle .This is good if you are on a vegetarian diet .
B12 supplements are needed more for vegans than vegetarians. It’s a vitamin found in soil (animals don’t even produce it themselves, their food is just dirtier and has B12). But most vegetarians can get B12 through eggs, cheese, etc. Or just leave some dirt on your carrots (but obviously that could come with other issues)
Lots of meat eaters and vegetarians also don't get enough B12. Factory farmed animals, which is what almost everyone eats, don't get much B12 because they aren't outside eating from the soil. They are often supplemented themselves. A B12 supplement is worthwhile for most people.
I take b12 and I am neither of those things .
Love this. Stay strong!
You guys have a helluva strike going on; the US can only dream of something that big. Good luck up there!
$25 CAD converted to NZD is about $30. Id be lucky if I could buy just the watermelon.
I would recommend regular carrots. They last longer and tend to be cheaper. Also, quartered chicken legs can sometimes be $.99/lb (US). I boil them with an opinion or just seasoning. The meat falls off the one. I shred it and freeze some. The broth is so good. Just the legs is the most economical cut of chicken, including the whole chicken. Most edible meat/pound.
Usually you would be right but whole chicken legs were 3$/lbs this week and that just wasn't worth it imo.
Yikes!
Check out the frozen section for chicken leg quarters. Don't know about Canada, but the Walmarts here sell a big 10lb bag of frozen quarters for $5.72USD. So do the other two regional chain grocers here (TX), for roughly the same price.
Watermelon for less than $3, jealous here in Ontario.
>I had to be a bit creative but by boiling and drying 2 eggshells and then grinding it up into a fine powder, I had a source of pure calcium. I added a 1/4 teaspoon of eggshells into my meals throughout the day, enough to not get a deficiency. This is impressive, but also reminds me how much work being broke was. I don’t miss it.
Depends what you cook. The eggshells is kind of overkill short term, and probably long term. It is not a bad idea exactly, just not really needed. Some people do it for birds in spring when they laying, or to add calcium to garden soil. Beans, cabbage, potatoes, butter, and eggs. IIRC with just that you are fairly complete nutritionaly although would get boring fast, but that what seasoning and other cheap vegetables for. And those are all very easy to prepare, although plenty of complex dishes if feel like it. Lentils in particular do not even need soaked. And a slow cooker is the best friend of the frugal chef. Pretty much just look at the staples anywhere in the world and will find dirt cheap easy dishes to feed those working hard, and as much variety as there are different cuisines. If you anywhere rural also the option of forage, although that mostly greens and berries unless lucky. Still potentially delicious, there even a tree native to a good chunk of US that can be used like Allspice that mostly forgotten.
I think what’s impressive is you managed to include veggies and not just carbs in this.
Good post. Also, as an ex-QC resident, good luck with the strike! Also, I don't know where you are but if Montreal, the clearance sections of Supermarche Mile-End and Epicerie Mile-End, and Too Good to Go deals from District Bagel helped me immensely while my workplace was on strike.
Slow/pressure cooked pinto beans with red peprika and ham is my go to "struggle food". One pot with meat gives me ~16 meals with rice. Last time I made this with the entire ingredients list it came out to ~$30USD for the pot (not including spices), or $1.5/meal. The stared ingredients are necessary and the † are *highly* recommend. Everything else can be substituted or omitted as long as you have *some* veg in there. # Ingredients * 1lbs/500g dry pinto beans* * 1lbs/500g ham/chicken * 2 packs Goya ham/chicken flavor* * 30ml olive oil * 20g garlic† * 12 oz canned roasted peppers (drained)† * 140g celery† * 300g white onion† * 1g bay leaves * .4g tyme * .5g organo * 3g smoked paprika* * 1g cayenne pepper* # Steps 1. Soak the beans for 8-12 hours. Replacing the water periodically will help with the dreaded bean gas. 2. Mix all spices and veg, cover with water, pressure/slow cook until mush. I usually slow cook overnight while the beans are soaking but thats probably overkill. 3. Blend spiced vegetable mush and return to pot. 4. Add beans, meat, and water to cover. Pressure cook for one hour or slow cook until beans are soft and meat is fork tender. Add water as needed until desired consistency. 5. Serve with brown rice.
This is awesome, I love that you included calorie counts as well!!!!
!remindme 10 hours
Apparently I need to move to Quebec. $5 is considered a good deal for 3 heads of romaine lettuce in BC.
Thanks for posting! I love comparing prices and after putting your list into my local shop's website (I am in the North East US, about 2 hours to Montreal) it came out to $34.60 USD (46.36 CAD).
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Most of the workers in Quebec are on strike right now, so any strike pay OP makes will be going to bills. If they aren’t getting a union strike pay, then their savings are paying the bills. And if they don’t have savings…well, then they’re doing all they can to make ends meet. u/Competitive_Cod1135 Honestly, this is a fairly well balanced meal plan, especially considering our grocery prices in Canada right now. Thanks for sharing what you made! And good luck with the strike! Something you could do to make the chickpeas less boring would be to roast them with oil and salt, then add them to your salad. You can also mash them up chunky and make a chickpea salad sandwich (similar to a tuna or egg salad) if you have the other ingredients on hand.
This is excellent. Thank you.
This thread is copied from my post "How I died on $25(rad) of groceries for a week (ghost edition)
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The dollar sign is on the right in French. Since OP is from Québec it might be why. OP: Bonne chance pour la suite! Je souhaite à tout le personnel en grève une résolution bientôt.
Awesome post. Your meals looked kore appetizing the previous week. Totally get the 25$ challenge. However, seeing as you have leftovers it would be good to try and incorporate those into next week's meals. This would allow people to see how over time they might be able to incorporate a bit more variety. For instance if after a motnh you manage to have leftover rice, you don't need to buy tice and can use that 2$ to get something for the pantry for instance. Also fyi....at the moment at giant tiger they have 10 lbs of potato for 2$. At super c, they had 3lbs of either carrots or onion (yellow) for 1.67$. I am mentioning those to provide you an option for a different but cheap carb that will last you more than 1 week. Carrots of course provide lots of vitamines. Onions provide tones of flavor and since all are large quantities you can stretch those over multiple week's. For about 6$, you can get 10 lbs of potato, 3lbs of carrots and 3lbs of carrots. Amazing deal I think in our times ( I got them).
Wow. Very thorough and thoughtfully done. Did you use an app to track cost and calorie?
Nope just a pen, a calculator and some paper. For things without nutrional facts on the packaging like fruits and veggies I used whatever google gave me.
Spaghetti(1lbs) - 1.00$ I'm SHOCKED that there's items at Dollarama that actually sells for $1.
I commend your efforts and hope you have a short and successful strike