I do snag whatever food I can from work. Patients are pretty awesome about feeding us around here. I got a whole bag of satsumas from a patient, so good bye scurvy for at least a little while.
And I’m on a vitamin D supplement from my doctor, because I’ve been low with it since I was a child (not related to diet).
@NOLAbetic You can also add frozen veggies to ramen like peas, spinach, etc. An egg if you’ve got some for protein. I’d never thought of peanut butter—that sounds interesting!
@David49, fair enough! Yeah, it’s interesting to consider how long various things would work as “deserted island” foods, assuming a person somehow had enough insulin/meds.
Well thank all that is holy for that! Not a way you want to go 
One of the only real drawbacks to my particular diet is having to plan in advance, cook most of my own food, and shop on a regular basis. I actually quite miss bulk, carb-heavy foods like rice and beans because it makes things so much easier. But I do have a trick that served me well when I was a vegetarian (and lived largely on beans and rice):
Cook a big batch of rice and beans on Sunday (or whenever your last day-off is before heading back to work), portion it out into small packable containers, and refrigerate it. Grab one to go as you head out the door for lunch. One of the cool things about rice is that if you cook it and then cool it, a significant amount of starch converts to resistant starch, which doesn’t raise blood sugar and acts as insoluble fiber. So you do have to figure out how cooled-rice compares in terms of raising BG to hot rice. But regardless, make big batches ahead of time, and then you just have to pack and reheat at work. I still do curries in large batches like that, since they keep better due to the large amount of spices.
Is there a Food Bank or Pantry nearby? Most of them do not ask about finances. How a about a co-op? If you have the time to volunteer.
A crock pot (begged or borrowed; you could probably find one really cheap at a goodwill store), can be a brilliant way to have foods prepared… You can put it on and leave it… might make the beans, rice, and lentils doable. Take the previous day’s food as lunch the next day.
Duh, I always forget mine is hiding under my sink (not much space to hide things in a kitchen smaller than most closets!). That would be a smart way to make a pile for throughout the week.
Years ago, long before I went LCHF, I was aggressively saving money and set myself on a challenge budget of $20/week for food. I shopped at the local discount grocery store and stuck to the outside walls of the store, usually creating a massive stirfry dish that I would eat for the week. So I’d pick up cabbage or another dense but low cost vegetable, a protein source (I usually picked up ground beef, but it’s possible I would get tofu every once in a while), and a bag of rice, among other options. I had plenty of food, although not a ton of variability, but that didn’t bother me. I never ate out and brought leftovers to work for lunch each day.
Good luck!
I follow @Budget_bytes on Twiter, and this slow cooker bean soup came up this morning
about $5 for the whole pot. of course, there’s no carb count and it’s likely to be fairly high
I love all of her recipes, although I haven’t made any since going low carb. Our family favorites from her site are the lentil sausage stew, the turmeric chicken, and the ground beef with peas recipe (curry, maybe?).
Hi!
First of all, it looks to me like you’re going to have to find some more money, and some cheaper food, and maybe modify your eating habits somewhat.
As a tiny stage toward getting cheaper foods, you might try cooking and eating more dried legumes. The plain old kind, where you just buy the legumes and make the sauces, etc. yourself. They are very cheap, tolerable as to carbs, and high in fiber. Also easy to cook, once you get the hang of it.
It also won’t help to find a professional social worker of the kind whose job (among other things) is to help you get what money you can from the bureaucracies. My diabetes team has one, BUT ONLY FOR THOSE WHO ASK ABOUT IT. Whoever provides your insurance may have one; your town or parish may have one. Can’t hurt to try to look. And they might be willing to help, or not.
I you tell us something about your eating styles and habits, and the rest of your life style, we might be able to at least point you toward some recipes.
Good luck.
M.
Just checking in, @NOLAbetic, were you able to find a way to supplement your meager groceries with more nutritious food?
Nope, not really. I got denied for food stamps because I “make too much”. Do they not realize literally HALF of my paycheck goes to insurance premiums and flexible benefits? Nope, of course not.
I did, however, just got to take a trip back home, so at least my parents stocked me up on some food to get me through until Christmas.
Just a thought. If you are struggling to find time to cook, you might want to look into a pressure cooker for your kitchen. You can make many dishes like dried bean dishes in 30 minutes or less. You can usually find decent used ones on Craigslist for pennies.
I’d send you a picture of my kitchen… I have a studio apartment. There are two cabinets. One is food, another is pots and pans. As it is, I have to hide my slow cooker and stock pot (filled with any other kitchen items I can fit in it) under the sink as it is. It’s hardly the cleanest or best option, but as with everything else, I’m making due with what I have!
Of course, thank you for the suggestion, though. I’ve been using my slow cooker as often as possible to do the same thing–cook when I don’t have time to stir/chop/etc!
@NOLAbetic, I was a very poor student for a lot of years, paying out of state stution working full time while going to school through all of grad school. So I empathize a lot with you. I had no money to buy much meat so I tried to do without, and btw classes and full time work (my car was not working half the time because i had no money to buy parts for it) I had very little time to shop.
So what I did is that I shopped 1-2x per month, cooked everything fresh that could be cooked right away, then froze it. Do you have a decent size freezer?
This was my typical recipe:
Eat with bulk couscous (also cheap). What I did with the couscous was that I combined it with 2x water in volume, then let it rest for about 15 minutes before heating it - this way it had more volume per dry weight:-)
I could (and still can) make easily 20 meals out of one such recipe from a very large stock pot. I can send you exact recipes of that kind if you want, that I still use.
Do you like quinoa? for some weird reason I ended up with enormous quantities of it (way more than we can eat), and could send you 15-20 lbs of it easily, that we simply won’t ever be able to eat. I also have large quantities of couscous that we will never be able to get through. Don’t ask how I ended up with so much - it is highly embarrassing for me:-)
Also - do you live near a Trader Joe’s where you are?
Trader Joe’s is the only thing keeping me from dying of scurvy! I raid their produce and frozen sections regularly.