Not for me! All my macros should be minimized and I typically eat too much fat and twice as much protein than my need this way… And more carbs than I should but that varies a lot, I have very cute carnivore-ish days.
Eating organs is a very common, popular and traditonal thing in my country and I like some of them but pork on sale isn’t much more expensive than chicken liver bought at the butcher (where everything is more expensive)… Chicken thighs on sale (and they are on sale all the time…) are way cheaper than chicken liver but they are tasteless while liver is tasty, I just can’t eat much of it. I imagine very few people can use it as an important staple but it still can help a lot and nothing stop us to mix liver or some other organ and muscle meat, I play with that lately when I am bored of both, they are more interesting together.
I don’t fully disagree but I wouldn’t say that though it’s complex and hard to say… No one can live on the cheapest carbs alone for very long… Chicken and some kinds of fat is cheaper than beans here - okay, beans are expensive, we almost never eat them (okay, we could afford it but why when it’s easier and cheaper to use some other food? we do like to spare money if we can as we are quite poor even in this not rich country), split peas are, that price is just impossible to beat. About $1/kg here for an easy, protein rich food! The cheapest chicken I can buy is $0.5/kg (on sale, at least) and it’s half bone though that’s useful to make soups… But the chicken has lots of water and way less calories and protein. The former can be helped with some coconut oil or lard though…
But people obviously buy way more expensive carbs and many other things even if they are poor and eat high-carb. And if those items are mostly carbs, I can’t just compare them with some good protein saying they are cheaper because it’s only calorie wise (that’s where split peas are shining, they are cheap and has lots of protein, not complete but that can be helped if someone wants to eat only plants. not needed as much if we simply add animal protein too but need excess protein for satiation). We need various nutrients, satiation, even variety unless we reach the state where we don’t care just need food. I only had that once in my life but I had no food anyway… If I add carbs, I must add a ton of extra protein, more fats and more protein as well to feel balanced, yeah, carbs don’t really worth it for me - but I probably would eat cheapest using legumes and gluten and my beloved animal protein sources. Keeping my woe okay-ish is basic so I don’t care how cheap a bad woe can be (zero cost, obviously, total starvation, nothing beats that price wise but we need more than that).
It’s individual anyway, it’s important how well we can function with carbs, whether they induce hunger or make us nicely satiated… My SO would spend way more time on a keto woe while for me keto is the cheapest by far - especially carnivore. If I eat bread, that makes my woe more expensive while it makes his cheaper…
I wonder if it got chaotic, I rewrote parts and it’s late. But I thought a lot about these things.
Not silly for the ones who need keto but yep, the others should do what they can.
My plan B is keto with plants.
My plan C is low-carb.
High-carb would be a shock to my system, carb poisoning and whatnot (I can handle carbs way better than many ketoers, it seems but I have my limits) so first I would try to fast as much as possible (I would even slim down and my new, smaller body wouldn’t even need as many food… though that’s not a nice thought for me now, even being poor. I already have a small energy need) and if I don’t have the fat to continue and my situation is still so bad, then I would go back to… moderate carb. I can’t imagine high carb could be cheaper for me than that, proibably the opposite but it’s me (and many others who overeat carbs. I do it with the cheapest simplest ones if I am hungry. legumes are okay but rice would be worthless to me. I would eat gluten but others would have problems with that, each to their own. I would get my cheap protein with some carbs in the mix and would use fat for calories).
I have a small garden and it produces an insane amount of wood to burn… It piled up as we use it very occasionally but it would last for a long while. But beans take forever, I wouldn’t use that, expensive too (or tasteless). I don’t have THAT much wood and patience if I need to cook that way, after all. Alas, I couldn’t even just cook a lot of legumes as my SO can’t eat more than a little a day and I surely would eat less… At least after the first day…
But it’s a moot point as I don’t survive lack of electricity. The lack of water would be annoying enough (we had that for weeks last year, it wasn’t fun - or cheap to make water again) but no internet? I would cease to exist. I was already extremely addicted to it 26 years ago and it got way worse since then.
And cooking outside every day…
Well I would freeze to death in the house anyway… As we only can heat with electricity… (Actually I would survive that. Less so the knowledge that we heat the garden but not the house but what could we do? And no internet and water… Ouch. It’s too much together.)
Erm sorry I got carried away but now I so appreciate what I have.
I really wish the best for everyone here, keep electricity and have money for food and food availability too… Life is hard enough without these extreme hardships.
I never canned meat… But plants are super easy (I have a quite serious fruit garden and sometimes find a lot of mushroom…). I just put them into jars and pressure can them Why people water down their stuff I don’t know. I really should try canning meat but only a little as it’s so extreme to me, almost no one does it here but it IS a thing… I just always can buy meat and my tiny freezer is enough so I never felt the pressure to do it…
Stews are good to freeze At least ours, I imagine lots of vegetables change this but the meat and onions? Those don’t mind. And even if you must eat carbs at some point, some stew with it should help. My body always handle carbs loads better if there is some fatty protein present… But of course, it’s more enjoyable that way too.
Good luck with this winter!!! Hopefully you will be super ready for the worst and it won’t come? I really hope that will happen!
Nice? I am glad I live super far from there…
I am very selfish but yep, I wouldn’t eat our cats either, so tiny meat, not fatty either… It wouldn’t be worth it, I couldn’t win a day with all cats while they are so lovely and comforting alive and when starving, I would need that. If I had a huge pet pig, well that would cause some serious thinking at least. Such a beast would eat much too so…
It’s always so odd to me what tiny places Americans call a city… I lived in a bigger village (okay, it was a big, important village)! It is a town now. But I moved and this side of the country (where there are more but smaller settlements) has super tiny new towns. Like 5000 people. It should be a village with this tiny population but nope, it is a town now. A very tiny one. Villages below 2000 don’t even have local goverments. 15000 sounds a cute sized town to me. But I may not fully know when to call something a city. It’s a big town to me so I call the centers of the counties cities. Ours is close and has a population over 100,000. That’s big to me.
So the centers are called county seats? I looked it up. “The term is used in Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, and the United States.” Wow, so we have them too but most countries don’t…? Oh well. We have tinier areas too with their own center town. We are 20km from the city (county seat) but we belong to a way smaller town (at the same distance) for some reason.
Thanks for all the details (is storm shelter a thing there? I don’t even know what that is), I like to read about such things I lack a pantry too and it’s a little pain, pantries are cool…