The Unofficial Kiwi Poorfag Resource Thread - share recipes and resources for your area (both government and personal) here

[glass_houses]

[assuming you live in the US with access to a reasonably populated area]

There's always someplace to get free food and water.
There's always someplace to get free entertainment.
There's always a way to not freeze to death in the winter or die of heat exhaustion in the summer.
There's always a way to use the internet for free.
There's always a way to get help getting a job for free, and work clothes.

But it's hard as fuck to get someone to pay your rent. Rent comes before everything. Everything. Go without shoes before you go without rent money.

No matter your religion, if you're in a more rural area and need say work boots and there's just no thrift stores in thirty miles, try the church. Or a fan, or medication money, etc.

If you're a fuck up I can't say it loud enough: get in some sort of program. Get a case worker. Get in touch with the department of rehab services to get a job coach. Or any sort of job service: every state has them. If you can read this website, there are people more retarded than YOU with jobs and homes. There's only two factors at the end of the day: how much money comes in, and how much money comes out. And the money coming in, comes first. You need income. If you think you are so fucked up you can't work, you doubly need a case worker. Either you can work some accommodated job or special program, receive some sort of training or therapy, or get on disability. If you're going "wah I'm not such a fuckup I need to go on welfare!" perfect. Get a job.

If you want to get on welfare, not wanting welfare is a good place to start. My country's social services is run by an organisation called Centrelink. Everywhere Centrelink is mentioned there's someone complaining that Centrelink won't give them money or keeps refusing to let them stop working. My experience has always been exactly the opposite, fucking Centrelink won't let me go.

Also, having an advocate is pretty essential if you need to navigate the system, or have cyclic health conditions. The system is labyrinthine and complex, and unless you essentially live there it's impossible to know all the twists and turns. If you are cyclic, you need someone who can connect you to services when you aren't in the condition to make the connections yourself.

One vital thing that you need to do is to minimise the impact and drain you have on your family, and any other people you may need to call on for help in your worst hour. Your family may love you, but if it comes down between taking care of you, or taking care of the kids, you are going to be out on your arse. Reserve drawing on family support for when it's truly dire. Also do your best to build up good will, babysit occasionally, if they need help with something you can do, do so. There are a lot of shitty people in the world, and many of them are your relatives, but if you think that you may need them in the future, make at least a token attempt to keep them sweet. A sibling of mine used and treated our family badly for a great many years, and was shocked when we finally told her to fuck right off and stay in the shelter, we were done with her. She got her shit together after that and has definitely changed her life... but she will never get so much as a single fucking pot plant from us ever again. Yes, a lot of investment in relatives and family ends up wasted because humans are scum, but it's still a worthwhile investment to make.

 

[JanuaryViolet]

It was a big outlay of money for us but it's definitely one of those things that is worth squeezing the money from somewhere.

I am planning to budget enough (the equivalent of several house payments) to get a good fireplace insert so I can actually use the downstairs of my 1908 Craftsman without paying out the butt for gas to heat the greater metro area (drafty big house, new glazing and insulation is out of reach just now but the fireplace insert isn't). Foraging for kindling in the city isn't impossible - if you ever get nasty weather right after is good time to look. People have downed branches (and sometimes trees) that they would love to get rid of. If you know of a tree coming down, you can cut sections your firebox can handle - just have enough storage. Carry a tarp to gather it - you may look like a medieval peasant doing this, but so what? Good luck. (edited for typo)

 

[JanuaryViolet]

We have a fireplace in our newly rented house.
Last year we bought firewood for it at a cost of around $20-$40 per week. It was less than the electricity cost of using a heater, but more than I wanted to pay.
This year my husband splashed the cash and bought me a electric chainsaw. It cost nearly $500 but has paid for itself already. I get wooden pallets free from the side of the road and branches/logs from various parks etc. We have enough wood to keep our fire lit continuously and haven't had to spend one cent beyond the cost of the chainsaw.
It was a big outlay of money for us but it's definitely one of those things that is worth squeezing the money from somewhere.

Sorry for the double post, but this is important. Have a professional clean and check the chimney, seriously, this is important. You do not want to find out how good your fire insurance is. I spent two winters heating with a fireplace in a very old rental house and just paid for the chimney cleaner myself (since the landlord was a cockroach). Schedule an inspection/cleaning in summer, as fall comes on this will get harder and more expensive.

 

[Hepativore]

Buying a whole turkey or roasting-sized whole chicken is one of the most economical things you can buy in terms of what you get out of it vs. the cost per pound, and it only takes about five minutes of preparation before shoving whole birds into the oven to cook themselves for a few hours without having to babysit them constantly.

You can get Kirkwood brand whole, unfrozen chickens at Aldi for less than a dollar a pound that weigh 5-7 pounds on average, and whole turkeys often go on sale around this time of year. Even if you live by yourself like I do, it is easy to break down a cooked turkey or chicken carcass and live off of the leftovers for a few days or freeze the rest to eat later if you are worried about spoilage.

Finally, here is a small tip when it comes to buying whole turkeys and chickens. It make sense to buy the largest birds that you can find, as once you hit the 16-pound mark for a turkey, you start getting a larger proportion of meat-to-bone in terms of carcass weight ratio. For whole chickens, it is around 5 pounds.

 

[Yandex Captcha Solver]

With fall creeping up, it's time for deer season for much of the US. Find some good hunter friends to potentially get some good free venison. My family picked up 3 deer last year for free, I butchered 2 myself, while the other family member sent theirs off to a processing plant. Venison makes a hell of a stew (tastes like beef), backstraps that are filet mignon, dogs get to get a ton of free bones to chew on, liver to eat, or dehydrate it to make dog treats with.

Your gonna need a gambrel to hold the deer up to process it and a winch/tractor/few strong guys to lift the little guy up. Let it hang for a few days in the garage if you have below 40*F weather. Skin it as soon as you hang it, nothing worse than skinning a frozen deer. Quarter it up, bleed it on ice, break it down further, then vacuum freeze it for eating. Did mine in a few hours worth of work and got to practice some butchering skills which is always appreciated. More hands always makes the process faster. Or just send it to a processor and you'll still come out ahead money wise, versus buying meat at the store. No hormones, free ranged, and semi organic as they do like to eat that GMO corn and soy.

 

[A Cat in a Minefield]

I am planning to budget enough (the equivalent of several house payments) to get a good fireplace insert so I can actually use the downstairs of my 1908 Craftsman without paying out the butt for gas to heat the greater metro area (drafty big house, new glazing and insulation is out of reach just now but the fireplace insert isn't). Foraging for kindling in the city isn't impossible - if you ever get nasty weather right after is good time to look. People have downed branches (and sometimes trees) that they would love to get rid of. If you know of a tree coming down, you can cut sections your firebox can handle - just have enough storage. Carry a tarp to gather it - you may look like a medieval peasant doing this, but so what? Good luck. (edited for typo)

This is a late reply, but also check that everything is up to code. I know a person who almost killed themselves with monoxide poisoning because it was not correctly extracted. It took months for them to partially recover.
Or get a monoxide detector just to be save.

 

[AnOminous]

Even if you live by yourself like I do, it is easy to break down a cooked turkey or chicken carcass and live off of the leftovers for a few days or freeze the rest to eat later if you are worried about spoilage.

The best part is using absolutely every part of it you can. If you save up two or three you can make an enormous amount of stock, condense it down to about the consistency of a demi-glace and freeze it in an ice cube tray. I also like rendering the fat if I didn't just eat the skin. If you do this you can then also eat the crispy bits of skin left over.

Or just directly make soup out of it.

Another thing I like is making chicken and dumplings using the rendered fat in the dumplings.

However, if not buying whole chicken, one of the best value items is either leg quarters or just thighs. Even in the current market you can often find leg quarters at less than a dollar a pound. An excellent cut for both flavor and price is thighs. Imo this is not only the best part of the bird but the cheapest. Breasts are both overrated and overpriced flavorless blandness bombs.

I generally buy these in 10+ pound quantities and immediately divide them into 1/2 serving portions and freeze in separate freezer bags.

The good thing about being a total miser about the staples is you save enough money that even on a budget you can afford to splurge on a few ridiculously expensive spices/condiments and other ingredients that cost a lot to buy up front but last forever, so you can pay like a peasant but eat like a king.

With fall creeping up, it's time for deer season for much of the US. Find some good hunter friends to potentially get some good free venison.

It's not a food hack available to all, but if you operate a farm there's usually an exemption for culling deer in or out of season. When I was in my computer touching days, I had two brothers as clients who would let the deer graze on their corn for most of the year and cull them whenever they'd fattened up nicely.

Corn-fed venison is ridiculously sweet and savory.

I've had some bad luck with seriously gamy venison after a bad winter where they'd been chewing on bark and all kinds of other foul stuff. You'll never go wrong with corn though.

They couldn't just sell it directly because of regulations, but they'd basically use the whole deer and make steaks, sausages, jerky, roasts and pretty much any other usable cut, and then use them in barter for goods and services. The sausage in particular was amazing. It was still considerably leaner than beef, but there was actually some visible marbling in the steaks and roasts.

I don't think I ever got an actual dollar from them, because given the choice, I'd always take the meat instead. I'd load up on half a freezer full of the stuff in fall and be eating it all winter.

 

[FaXmachine]

Dunno how it works for everyone else but I go to all the local supermarkets and never buy stuff that isn't on offer. My typical food is soup and bread or egg fried rice, both are filling and have an okay amount of calories to sustain yourself.

As for winter, buy blankets with the highest tog and hot water bottles (apparently Americans don't have these but there rubber things you put hot water in and they last afew hours), wear thick clothes if possible also. Always cover your feet and center mass, if you wear a hat it'll help too though not essential and tbh wearing one is annoying lol. Btw another tip, try and acclimatise your body to the weather so allow yourself to be a little cold or a little hot, it means when the temp dramatically changes it won't be as painful. Another thing limit your movements within your home, if it is freezing moving will waste energy and heat so keep anything you need near by, ideally never get to the point of shivering ether its hard to get your body temp up again after that.

Try not to turn down meals people offer you too, its one meal you don't have to pay for. Try and use local food banks if they are available too. Luckily starvation tends to make things taste a little nicer too.

 

[Aunt Carol]

hot water bottles (apparently Americans don't have these but there rubber things you put hot water in and they last afew hours)

We have those but they're not ubiquitous. They're either in the old people section of the drugstore as a combination hot water bottle/enema kit, or they're sold as a seasonal novelty pre-wrapped gift with a cutesy machine-knitted cover.

As far as keeping warm in a cold house, an electric heating mattress pad/blanket is really nice for heating up a focused area (you, your bed) underneath all the other blankets. It can preheat the bed before you get in, or stay on until its auto timer turns it off if things are really cold. The initial cost outlay is the hurdle; if you keep an eye out for post-seasonal sales (six months from now) they'll be on clearance to make room on the shelves for beach towels.

 

[NoReturn]

As for winter, buy blankets with the highest tog and hot water bottles (apparently Americans don't have these but there rubber things you put hot water in and they last afew hours),

They aren't as popular in the US. Americans tend to go for other methods including but not limited to:


And more recently:

 

[sheepworldvizor]

We have a fireplace in our newly rented house.
Last year we bought firewood for it at a cost of around $20-$40 per week. It was less than the electricity cost of using a heater, but more than I wanted to pay.
This year my husband splashed the cash and bought me a electric chainsaw. It cost nearly $500 but has paid for itself already. I get wooden pallets free from the side of the road and branches/logs from various parks etc. We have enough wood to keep our fire lit continuously and haven't had to spend one cent beyond the cost of the chainsaw.
It was a big outlay of money for us but it's definitely one of those things that is worth squeezing the money from somewhere.

For your own health, please don’t burn treated wood.

https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/firewood-not-to-burn/

 

[TismFarmer]

For your own health, please don’t burn treated wood.

https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/firewood-not-to-burn/

Thanks to all the Kiwis who are concerned about us burning pallets.
I'm very careful to make sure and only burn the untreated wood pallets and mostly use branches etc that are EVERYWHERE after each windy stormy day. The local parks maintenance guys now put large branches aside for me as they have seen me cleaning up the parks after storms.
If you're looking for wood in your area, I would suggest you ask your local parks maintenance people and you may have a new source for firewood.

 

[PetiteFeet]

I love cooking and I recently moved to a new place where I have the ability to actually cook for myself.
My favourite type of dish is a hearty stew or curry with lots of spices, and since I'm single I can easily freeze portions for a day where I'm lazy.
My current favourites are:
Chickpea and butternut curry, I typically add some kind of animal protein because I'm not a vegan pussy because I can afford it. You also don't need to roast the butternut in the oven if you don't want to. Normally I give whatever veggies I add to stews a quick sear with the finely chopped onions + garlic to enhance their flavours, plus a bit of colour never hurt any ingredient unless you accidentally char it to fuck. Switching up the butternut for diced Hokkaido pumpkin or potatoes, or all three (you might want to adjust the spices to combat the sweetness of the squash and pumpkin) isn't an issue. The curry sauce itself loves almost all veggies.
Japanese style curry with cutlet, the basic Japanese curry sauce made from premade curry roux blocks is very versatile and fits many different vegetables as well as animal proteins. If you're daring, making the curry roux from scratch is really easy and shouldn't break your budget. If you're a single-person household, opening a box of curry roux and only using half but you don't want to waste the rest, consider trying curry soup, deep fried vegetables optional.
chicken tortilla soup, I mix up the animal protein I use when I make tortilla soup. Sometimes I use ground beef, sometimes I dice the chicken, sometimes I shred it. I almost always add more legumes, either more beans or a can of chickpeas because I love them.

Any leftovers I have I either freeze or I eat the same dish over several days.
Also things like beans or rice freeze surprisingly well. If you eat a lot of rice, freezing rice is a shortcut for making congee.

 

[Stan]

Gotta make use of swap sheds at the town dump and thrift stores. I got a lot of my housewares this way.

 

[Diet Coke 4 Life]

Ahhhh, it's about time for my favorite poorfag holiday fun time.

If you have to purchase pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns, process that shit. You don't need specialty pumpkins for pumpkin recipes. Any old pumpkin works just fine.

Cut up your jack-o-lanterns after you're done with it in order to make nice, manageable chunks. Skin them, cut off any portions that have fungus or candle burns on them, and bake them in the oven on a baking sheet for 45 minutes at 350F/175C. This should make them nice and soft. Now run them through a food processor. You have pumpkin puree for baking.

Typically I end up with enough puree from a single large pumpkin to fill 2-3 gallon-size zip-lock baggies and freeze them after using a goodly amount to make a fresh pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. Other things to do with this beyond pie are pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin-based bisque, and pumpkin chowder. This year I intend to make a pumpkin strudel. We'll see how that works out.

Additional bonus is the seeds can be lightly roasted in the oven as well, though this knowledge is pretty universal. I have simply run across many, many people who think you have to purchase a specialty pumpkin to process them and don't realize that your scary-faced goblin-attracting squash works just fine.

 

[glass_houses]

You Americans are weird about your pumpkins. In my country we roast, boil, or make soup. All the elaborate shit you do, and only once a year, is a ridiculous amount of effort. Especially making sweets with them. Pumpkins are savoury vegetables, they're dinner, not desert, and they're eaten all year round.

Mind you, I had a couple of South Africans say much the same thing to me a ways back. In SA, pumpkins are animal feed only. Here, they're both.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

You Americans are weird about your pumpkins. In my country we roast, boil, or make soup. All the elaborate shit you do, and only once a year, is a ridiculous amount of effort. Especially making sweets with them. Pumpkins are savoury vegetables, they're dinner, not desert, and they're eaten all year round.

Mind you, I had a couple of South Africans say much the same thing to me a ways back. In SA, pumpkins are animal feed only. Here, they're both.

We do use them for savory things too, europoor, and in the same ways you do. Soups, roasts, as pasta fillings, etc. We just prefer using them for sweets because pumpkin desserts are awesome.

You are right about the fact that we should use them all year round, though. Pumpkin pie shouldn't just be an annual thing.

 

[Aunt Carol]

You are right about the fact that we should use them all year round, though. Pumpkin pie shouldn't just be an annual thing.

The nice thing about hard-rind squash is that they store so well in a pantry, as long as they don't have any breaks in the skin.

The nice thing about Americans thinking of pumpkins as seasonal is that you can pick up canned pumpkin purée on deep sale after the winter holidays. This is helpful if you're lazy, single, have a full freezer and/or live in a smaller place.

Typically I end up with enough puree from a single large pumpkin to fill 2-3 gallon-size zip-lock baggies and freeze them after using a goodly amount to make a fresh pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.

Growing up, we made crustless pumpkin pie (essentially baked custard) weekly or so, all year. Blender and straight to the pie pan to bake; you get your egg protein and your pumpkin goodness. You can titrate the sugar down pretty far, especially if you have whipped cream or ice cream to top for people who want it super sweet.

 

[NoReturn]

The nice thing about hard-rind squash is that they store so well in a pantry, as long as they don't have any breaks in the skin.

Kobocha is the shit if you can get it.

 

[Aunt Carol]

Squash is also a great choice for a backyard garden, too. Imagine something as easy and prolific as zucchini, but after you pick it, you can just make a big stack and eat it all through spring. One year my parents had a 3-foot-tall pyramid of butternut squash in the guest room.

When the freezer had enough room, we'd boil and process another batch of them like @Diet Coke 4 Life does with pumpkin, except we cut them in wedges, steamed them (swapping in and out, keeping the steamer boiling), took off the rind and then ran them through a hand-cranked meat grinder. It was a bigger production but I'm told that's what kids are for.