Whats your favorite "struggle meal"?

A whole string cheese with a piece of bread wrapped around it. Still goes crazy honestly. You just can’t let anyone else see you eating it 😂

Until more recent times, a handful of hard boiled eggs was cheap, highly nutritious, and damned good with a sprinkle of salt/pepper/tajin/paprika/furikake or a dollop of mayo/sour creme/sriracha/nacho cheez/butter/etc. Potatoes are still pretty good in the same ways; just bake and let cool and you can add any of those same toppings and chow down at any time. Or get the smaller ones and airfry with a spritz of oil and salt. As long as you eat the skins, it's good nutritionally too.
- Cube, oil, salt, pepper, garlic, oregano and squeeze a shot ton of lemon on them after rising to a nice golden brown
  Surprisingly quick
  Carrots salted oiled and waay more dill than it looks like you need also delicious. Grow your own, finding the right variety of carrots and you will be wondering where they have been all your life
  Still cant find the ones my grandparents used to yell at us for eating straight from their garden

Cup of steamed rice. Small tin of tuna - I like the lemon and cracked pepper ones. Splash of soy sauce. 30 seconds in the microwave.
- I dry nori sheets out, crush them up and put them in an old pepper mill. Few grinds into a bowl of tuna and rice with a splash of soy and its a ghetto sushi bowl.

Tortillas. Just tortillas. Warmed over a gas burner. It’s a comfort food to me now, but there was a time when all I had was tortillas, and it tastes better than my other struggle meal, which was a single cup of rice with whatever spices I had on hand and hadn’t put on the previous day. I lost a lot of weight around then. Still haven’t fully gained it back ten plus years later, and still struggle eating regularly more than once or twice a day.

I once made "Povery rolls"
I took every last scrap of leftover food, all the half bags of frozen veggies and so on from the freezer. Defrosted it all, put it in a stock pot and cooked it till it was a thick stew moved it to a giant bowl and went buck wild with the electric mixer then threw in about 4kg of self raising flour and water. The dough tasted ok, but then I did the same thing with the spice rack... stock cubes, french soup mix... the works. They tasted odd. But I rested the dough, divided them up and baked them anyways.
Fuuuuuuuck they were amazing. They tasted like a family sunday roast dinner flavored heavy doughy roll. It made about 50 of them. I scoured the house for change and found enough to go grab a decent sized packet of powdered gravy mix.
I was genuinely sad when I used the last ones.

"stuggle" ?
- damn its been like that all day and you're the first person to point it out.
  
  One might say it was quite a stuggle.

Scramble some eggs plain and mix into rice and some canned corn. Butter + Sriracha + soy/tamari . We call it "bachelor stir-fry" and it's especially good if you can get your paws on some sesame oil!
- A former partner taught me that a drop or two of sesame oil in most things give a nice umami kick.

Toast bread with a bit of ketchup and a slice of cheese on top, sprinkle a bit of salt if necessary, then bake until the cheese bubbles. I call it the poor man's pizza.

Elbow macaroni and pasta sauce

Cook 2 bags of ramen and strain it. Add a can of tomato soup and some cheddar. I like to call them regrettios.
2nd up is ghetto pizzas. Make some toast put on tomato sauce and cheese also pepperoni if you can afford it

If you live near or attend a large university, the real struggle meal is just food from free events on campus.
When I was a grad student I’d show up to every event on campus where I knew there’d be food and fill up a Tupperware or two. Didn’t matter if it was connected to my department or not.
- The rule was if you wanted the grad students to come to a talk you had to put out little cubes of cheese.
  
  Seminar and BEvERages provided
- Unrelated: I used to go to tech meetups in my city fairly often. There was one guy who always seemed to be there just for the food. I only knew him by his username ('Lex R' - a programming pun) and never talked to him. Tall skinny dude; if I had to guess, I'd say he was around 50ish.
  Every meetup without fail, this guy ate so much pizza. One time I counted 11 slices. He also drank at least a 2L of soda - didn't matter if it was diet or regular, he drank it. About 10 minutes before the meetup ended, he'd put a bunch of leftover slices in a pizza box to take with him. And he had a bottle of some kind in his bag that he'd pour the dregs of all the soda bottles into, and would take that with him too. It was weird because it was a tech meetup, presumably most people were making at least 6 figures.
  Until today I had never considered that this might be his only source of food.

Store brand white bread.
Mayo or Miracle whip, whichever was cheapest.
Sliced American cheese, cheapest variety.
Maybe some pepper, if feeling enthusiastic.

Long live poverty nachos

https://www.knorr.com/us/en/p/spanish-rice-side.html/00041000022685
Depending on your level of struggle, these rice packets cost about ~$1.25 USD and cook in 7 minutes, you just gotta stir 'em a bit.
To that I'll add some protein, either some sausages I cooked on the George Foreman grill and sliced up or a packet of flavored tuna. This is mostly no effort or unattended.
For veggies, I'll steam up something fresh or microwave some frozen mixed veggies. Either way this can be done in 3-5 minutes, unattended.
Some effort, but still very low. You can get everything started at once while you stand there and stir the rice packet on the stove, everything should wrap up in less than 10 minutes and you'll have a relatively complete and filling mill for hopefully less than $5 USD but I don't even fucking know anymore with inflation, tariffs, and out of control groceries. Should still be more cost effective than a lot of alternatives, though.
EDIT: The rice packet can honestly be quite a bit for a single person, depending. You may want to pad it out with a few more things like mushrooms and beans, then you can split the meal in two. Eat half now and save half to be microwaved later to stretch it out and for when you have no prep time at all.

Spaghetti with tomato and avocado. Add some olive oil, sunflower seeds and a bit of cheese if you are feeling rich. *Avocado is really cheap where I live, you can literally get them for free

Tuna with saltines.

Bacon and white rice with pickles.

Fried chick peas (I use cans since they’re more convenient, but even cheaper dried beans are fine too but you have to soak for 24h and then boil them first). But either way, seriously cheap, loaded with protein and fiber, and delicious:
Rinse beans and dump into a large dry pan on high heat. Move them around until they have mostly dried up and just barely start sticking to the pan. Then add oil - just once or twice around the pan is plenty - and some salt. Then let them fry in that little bit of oil. Move them with a spoon every so often to keep from sticking too much.
After about 15 min you have these golden brown crunchy and slightly salty little things. They’re great, and go with everything as a side dish.

Struggle broke or struggle sad?
- *stuggle
  
  I didn't realize it until now...
- Broke.

Hot dogs with white bread instead of a bun goes CRAZY imo
- Cut the hot dog lengthwise. Brown it in a skillet. Hot dog sandwich.
  
  Disassembled hot dog
- It's like eating with a time limit!
  Do you lay the hot dog diagonally?

Beans and rice are so healthy and cheap, with so many variations. It's always beans and rice for me.
- A can of chili over some cooked rice, add a little salt and extra hot sauce. This was my broke young adult fancy meal.

Rice and black eyed peas, cooked with some millet leaves for color. Fry slices of onion in about 1 T of oil and pour it over the top. Then sprinkle a mix of fine crushed red pepper, bullion, and salt over it.
Most of West Africa has this in one form or another on the regular.

Used to be rice with a fried egg. In my family we call it Ghibli rice. Nowadays I just bake my own wholemeal bread and that's the cheapest eats there is. So cheap you can afford the nice butter!

I had water on stale bread with sugar 💀

Hotdogs in ramen, hands down.
Our poverty "treat" as kids was toast with tomato sauce and a slice of government cheese, for a makeshift pizza.
- We would put hot dogs in Mac N Cheese but never ramen, I did learn recently that some people put hot dogs in spaghetti and I wanted to try it but my husband absolutely refuses.
  
  Hot dogs in spaghetti is the bomb. Add some butter and grated cheese and mmmmm delicious

Spam fried rice, cheap, tasty, full of protein.

Popcorn with garlic powder and black pepper.
- This sounds highly illegal.
  Yet, so alluring.
  
  Popcorn & eggs are where I test spice combinations.
  If you want to get really illegal with popcorn, go for lemon pepper, sea salt, and a splash of cinnamon sugar.

My mom used to make my sisters and I cinnamon toast for breakfast when we were kids, pretty much like you describe only on toast.

Crunchy peanut butter on a tortilla, rolled up. Add honey if you are feeling boujie
- This except toasted on a frying pan and maple syrup instead of honey.

Rice and beans. Mine are usually white rice and black beans. Beans cooked with a little onion, green pepper and garlic. Salt and pepper. Hot sauce.
I eat it regularly, to the point I have a tiny slow cooker that I pretty much just use to cook beans.

Fried bologna sandwich!
- This was a staple growing up! I still fry some up from time to time, but now we use "fancy" thick bologna because we're bougie.
  
  M’Lord

Rice + blackbeans + whatever is around + a tortilla = poverty burritos
Also, potatoes in many forms.
- All forms of potatoes are whats gonna get me through this next great depression.
  
  Gardening is awesome. Just had some home made mashed potatoes with chives I grew.

Here my favourites:
cook rice, add a canned tuna, shred a boiled egg (optional) into it and some ketchup and you got yourself a banger.
Mix 1 can of corn, 1 spoon of corn flour, 1 egg, and milk (enough to almost cover the corn), season it with salt and pepper and blend it till homogenous. Add some shredded cheese to it. Put it into a pyrex with oil and bake it for like 30 mins or till it's golden brown on 220°C.
Roast 1 or half an onion (depends on the size) in a pan. Add Corned beef to the pan and break it down. Add your left over rice stirr it a little and enjoy it.
shredd some patatoes (about 300g for each egg you use), add half an onion, add some shredded cheese, add some beaten eggs and season it to taste (salt, pepper) Put it in a pyrex and bake it for 30 mins or till golden brown on 220°C. Alternatively fry it on low heat in a pan. Make sure you can put a lid on that pan (I prefer the baked version as turning that thing in the pan is usually difficult).
- Saving this one, they seem like good "I just need food quick" meals as well as being cheap

Graham crackers with whipped cream on top. This one was very much the bottom of the barrel. 🥲
Ghirardelli brownie mix from Costco, filled up to about 1/3 of a mug mixed with milk and microwaved for 45 seconds to make a little brownie. Serve with ice cream on top, or with a glass of milk. I actually still do this one, it is delicious and costs basically $0 per serving.
Rice + milk + sugar and then mixed up in a bowl into a kind of puree. This goes great as a dessert after rice + frozen vegetables sauteed up from those massive Costco bags lol. If you're feeling bougie you can shred some cheese on top.

Fry ground pork and break them into small pieces (like 1/2 cm diameter). Add minced garlic (and onion optional), salt, and Maggi seasoning.
Eat with rice, butter, and fried egg (optional). To make it more nutritional, add some sort of vegetable. I like stir fried spinach with garlic and fish sauce.
- Tip; use some kecap manis (sweet soy sauce) instead of maggi.

Take a pack of hotdogs and dice them up. Open a box of Mac and cheese and follow the instructions, but add the diced hotdogs to the water first.

Indomie bbq chicken flavor.