Officially broke! :)
 

I have one dollar to my name. I'm going to be living off bananas which are about a broke vegans life source. So, lots of smoothies and nana ice cream :P

That sucks! I know the feeling well.

It's totally fine! :) I'll make it work.

Bananas are bad economy for a low budget vegan.
Nutritionally, bananas are basically potatoes with only half the protein. Calorie for calorie russet potatoes are much cheaper.
Flour or rice are cheaper still, but dont have the loads of potassium potatoes have.
Greens are needed too, as soon as the snow melts a few will be free- like dandelion, wild lettuce, and henbit.
Libraries should have books on edible weeds.

Hm, don't get me wrong. I have potatoes here at the house still. I plan on eating them, but bananas here I can get them 5lbs for $2! or .49 lb! So if I have about $6 dollars to spend you can bet the majority is gonna be on bananas or potatoes. I also plan on eating beans and rice. I'm not just eating bananas.

I would have gotten a big bag of rice. When I was unemployed, years back, I used to "hoard" food. I had a wooden locker and a large igloo cooler and would buy more than I needed so that when I was totally broke, I would go into the box or cooler to get food for the rest of the month.

Another thing that I did was to go to church or faith based organization food give outs. If you live in any kind of semi-large town, there is always going to be a church that has a food bank give out and you can often get staples there.

Finding these is kind of hard, as they often happen in church basements. I feel that all people who live in precarious situations locate these food give out places before they need them so that they know where they are when they need them. The ones that I went to did not ask for "proof" that you were broke, or were on any kind of public aid. If you showed up, you got food.

I also make sure to have a good stock of non pershiables. Before I lost my long time job and had to start another with lower pay I had everything but produce. By the time I needed to restock I was shocked by how much prices went up! Mostly because I started with the lowest prices around
Last week the people across from me moved out and i scored a good kitchen chair, a tall cabinent with doors, and best- a two railed laundry hanging thing on wheels. I've looked at those before, to hang stuff as they come out the dryer- expensive.
I admit to tracking sold houses for tree line finds.

Having a basement is a very good thing for bulk foods

I admit to eating weeds in the backyard, as well as forraging to find green vegetables and fruit. Plantain (weed), and several types of goosefoot, amaranth, purselane, and dandilion are perfectly edible. They are considered invasive weeds. Farmers do not plant them because they cannot keep them in check. I have learned about "weeds" and really, there are more edible "non-farmed" vegetables out there than there are species under cultivation.

I learned to make fruit jellies, preserves, and also wine.

Food assistance is available! Do not allow yourself to become hungry or malnourished due to lack of income! In the United States you can apply for food assistance through this website: http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/apply

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I was shocked the first time I saw dandelion leaves being sold in the produce section of my local Whole Foods Coop. I quickly learned that they are an excellent source of calcium. Who knew? We have an abundance of them in our yard lol.

The scientific evidence regarding cultivated plants having less nutrients because they are planted in depleted soils does not include plants grown on non-farms.

Also, some of those weeds were actually traditional crops of older generations. Many "weeds," and even "border plants" like comfrey, and goldenrod were traditional for uses either as medicine or food. Goosefoot was brought to America and Naturalized specifically as a pot-herb. It now grows all over as a backyard weed. It is an early "parent" of cultivated spinach and tastes exactly like spinach when cooked.

There is a great You Tube channel about eating weeds (eat the weeds) if you want to know more about available local edible weeds. You do have to practice a bit of care in harvesting weeds, for example to not take them from places poisoned with herbicides or insecticides. Forreging for edible weeds is a really good reason to take long walks (health reasons). Plants like fiddlehead ferns and such are also good to harvest in small amounts for your natural greens.

This might help. http://www.staples-3p.com/s7/is/imag..._sc7?$splssku$ This might help, too.https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SxF6IMTRgEA/maxresdefault.jpg
Good luck.

^Well that took me a minute :laugh:

Wait a minute. I've been on these boards since 2009, and you're finding out NOW I'm a smart @, uh, alec?:eek::shifty:

I hear you AndyI live off of a fixed income myself and truth be told I am broke as soon as I get paid. All of the money goes to food and bills and rent and if I am super lucky I may have a few dollars at the end of the month to do a little something with. Another wise I am paying for things with lint and IOUS. And that usually doesn't work very well.

Been there! But it's just temporary problems that you can solve. Take care!

Completely understand! Just lost about half of my income way too early (was expecting it at the end of this year, just not now) so I'm struggling to get used to the more frugal food choices and getting used to eating more fruits than not for breakfast.

There are many places where you can get foods if you need to. Food pantry, religion based give away as mentioned above, food stamp as mentioned above. etc...

(also testing to see if my comment shows up, did a long intro post and it's not there so I have no idea if it's in a mod queue or something)