Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.

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You had rice?

luckily for me, there was leftover rice in the empty cupboard.

I have travelled extensively in Africa, the Middle East and SE Asia, and seen how people live with absolutely no money, or a dollar or less a day. Not only seen but learned from them. Bedouin women in the Sahara or Bantu women in the Kalahari aren't able to pop down to the corner shop or the MacDonalds when their families are in need of a meal. They make it themselves. In Papua New Guinea their staple diet is tinned pilchards and rice.

Far too many people in the Western world have either never learned or forgotten how to prepare their own food. Food preparation is recognised as the most lucrative business to be in as the profit margins are generally huge. Buy cheap ingredients and sell expensive. If people choose to contribute to those profit margins then that is their choice. It's easy to babble on about possibilities, so here's some practical advice.

For instance I make flat bread everyday, only cooking a lump of the dough for a meal as required. Any flour can be used, but does need some gluten to hold it together. First I spread some cling-wrap film on a separate bench ready to wrap the dough in. Then I place 4 heaped tablespoons of wholemeal flour in a small mixing bowl, adding a teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt and mix well.

Next comes the difficult bit, adding the water. There is no fixed quantity, as the dryness and variety of flours used makes a big difference. Wholemeal flours seem to need much more water than plain flours. I just turn the cold water tap on until it just runs and hold the bowl under it whilst mixing with a fork. Very easy to add too much water, so be careful. Once you have a dough in the bowl, take it out and knead it in your hands. Does need a least five minutes of continuous kneading.

The dough should be sticky to your fingers but not stick to them. Add more water or flour as needed - in very small quantities. Wrap it up in the cling-wrap and place in the fridge for a hour or so. Wrapping the dough in cling-wrap stops it drying out in the fridge, and by laying a sheet out beforehand means you don't get dough all over the cardbox it comes in.

When I need some bread, I break off a chunk of the dough, roll it out until it's paper thin, and pop it into a hot frying pan with a tablespoon of cooking oil. I refer to it as flat-bread, but it is known as Lebanese bread, pizza base, chappatis, etc. etc. Normally mix the dough in the morning first thing while my first cup of tea is brewing.

Bread is the staff of life, and there is something quite profound about making your own on a daily basis from essentially just flour and water. Did try fermented Yak's milk instead of baking powder, but my fermented Yak died. This bread costs me just 12 cents for a large piece more than adequate to supplement a meal.

The only trouble: it seems as if gluten is troublesome for some people on the Spectrum.

So is starvation.

I'm a glutton for gluten myself.

Is there any substitute for it?

I'm actually in agreement with at least some of what you say, Allison. There are times when people have to be resourceful with little.

It doesn't mean that poverty is easy, though. It's a hard, grinding thing.

Yes. I've used xanthan gum as an additive to gluten-free flours like buckwheat, rice and millet flours. There's an Ethiopean recipe for flat bread using millet flour which is fabulous. Flat bread is the most commonly cooked bread around the world. Not the sliced stuff in plastic bags with no taste.

I'm partial to potato bread myself.

But I also like pita and various Indian breads.

Many years ago I spent a couple of days chugging up the Persian Gulf on a Dhow with a bunch of Arabs. Remember a very acceptable dinner of curried fish - freshly caught by a line over the side, and flat bread as I previously described.

They cooked the fish on the top of the Lister diesel engine driving the boat, and cooked the flat bread there as well. The curried fish was poured into a large wooden flatish bowl, and the bread was passed around. Sitting on the deck, you tore off a piece of bread, passing it on, and dipped the bread into the curried fish as a scoop.

I have thrown a line over a jetty where I live, catching a few small fish, which I have curried in the same way, 'cept not cooked on a diesel engine. Cost, a matter of a few cents, yet most enjoyable, nutritious and filling.

The problem is that to make your own bread the way Alison describes you need to have a refrigerator, a frying pan, and something to heat the frying pan. You also need electricity to power the refrigerator. Alison also mentions getting water from a tap. You can get water elsewhere but it's a lot harder. If you don't have access to running water that makes this even more difficult.

For some people this isn't even a solution. Making your own bread using Alison's method is impractical at best and impossible at the worst if you're in a very desperate situation.

If he's a millionaire, no reason to insure a beat up car....not like it would hurt him financially if something happened to it he could just get another. Also quite bad manners not to leave a tip or such a small when when you can afford to tip decently and good service is provided. Trouble is though your millionare friend is not doing those things because he has to...he does not have to drive a beat up un-insured car, compared to many people who have that as their only option to drive its not by choice like your friend for instance who would hypothetically have the option to upgrade if he so chose.

The way I make flat bread now isn't necesssarily the only way as noted in the reference to eating said bread on an Arab Dhow chugging up the Persian Gulf. I have seen similar bread made from the Southern Sahara to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. If the objective is to pick holes in the premise that preparing one's own food significantly reduces the cost then there is little I can add.

Just note, to many a $5 Macdonalds "Happy Meal" as quoted by the OP would be the heights of luxury, with the $5 being sufficient to feed a family for a week in many places.

How did you recover from being sick than? genuinely curious since typically nutrients and liquid helps one recover from sickness so without those things how did you manage to get un-sick to take on more odd jobs and what not? Admittedly I'd be consistently sick if I was living on happy meals.

Something I certainly agree with you on....unfortunately healthy food as a rule is much pricier than say junk food or mediocre quality crap so when one is poor you eat what you can. Much of the time I cannot eat as healthy as I'd like because I cannot afford I can only imagine how much harder it would be for someone even poorer who doesn't even have a roof over their head. My dad is homeless now and over the summer he was picking apples and grapes that just grow around the city and partially living on that cause sometimes you can't even afford a happy meal or even just a burger or whatever.

Poverty must be considered from place-to-place. Poverty is the point where one is excluded from society in some way due to a lack of resources.

A Happy Meal make cost $5 but it is probably one of the cheapest & easiest to find complete meals if one is *unable* to make their own food. Sorry, but if you don't have a home, you don't have a kitchen. I suppose that one might be able to get a can of beans with those new pop-top lids now-a-days, but in the past if you didn't have a can opener, you were out of luck. Protein is expensive.

$5 may feed a family for a week in a third-world country, but $5 doesn't cover *one* complete meal in the US for 4, even when one buys basic ingredients and makes it oneself. Believe me, I have done the math and done the math and done the math. I know that I can stretch a pound of hamburger to feed 8 in a casserole. I know beans are the cheapest protein one can buy. I know that soda is cheaper than milk. (That is a horrible fact!) I know that restaurant meals cost about 4 times the amount of making the same food at home. But I also know that making something tasty is expensive because spices are outrageous if one cannot buy them in bulk at a health food store. Again, when one is talking about poverty, taste isn't a consideration.

But, that gets back to my point that poverty = no choice. You can't choose to have tasty food.

Most people in the US just don't realize they are living in the lap of luxury, and that not too far into the past people just lived with whatever lot they got in life with few choices. But that doesn't mean that there are not many people in the US who are living in poverty and how are excluded from society because of it.