With food prices expected to go up, what is your plan to minimize the impact personally?

I’ll go first. I think I may somewhat limit the cuisines I make at home. I just made some jambalaya and it turned out so good, my gf asked me to focus on making more creole food. Creole just has the holy trinity (bell pepper, onion, and celery). And I was thinking, I made about 4-5 days worth of lunch and dinner for about $30 plus basmati rice and spices that I already had.

Aside from that, Italian food doesn’t really take too many expensive ingredients unless you’re making it expensive. Asian food is all about making the main protein stretch more with sauce, veg and rice.

But I always have the urge to make something very different from what I made before, so I go out and I buy a bunch of different ingredients and make a gochujang stew when I just made lasagna three days ago, and I have leftover ingredients I could use to make something similar.

I’m wanting to switch from a recipe based home cooking method to a food-based one, that’s more focused on using the ingredients I have to make something that isn’t necessarily authentic, but it is tasty, good for you, and feeds you plenty. My friend is good at just throwing something together, whereas I’m good at perfectly replicating a recipe and creating something top notch. I make fried rice that’s as good as the Asian restaurant, but I go out and buy ingredients to make it, such as scallions and oyster sauce. I could’ve just omitted it and it still would’ve been delicious. That’s what I need to do.

What are your plans for/how are you changing how you make and prepare food, utilize ingredients, and create something that’s good at home without breaking the bank?

Edit: wow this blew up. I got my inspiration to make this post after watching some cook well with Ethan chebowski on YouTube. He pitched this method of doing food as a sort of forgotten technique in the world of recipes, and it has made me rethink my approach to home cooking and continuing to feed myself fresh food rather than continue to fall back into the life of buying frozen pizzas and prepackaged foods.