Favorite cheap foods

When I was in college, I had a very limited budget for groceries (and everything else). And though I didn't eat any ramen (only because I really dislike ramen) I lived on meatless spaghetti for an entire semester - breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And though it is my favorite food (even still) I couldn't eat it for the entire summer after I went home. In general, the older you get, and the better your financial situation, the better the quality of food you eat. And we definitely follow that rule. Most of the time better brands, or fresher foods taste better. I definitely like really GOOD food. But occasionally, there are foods that I like, that aren't good for you, or really good tasting, but I leat anyway.

So here's a small list of foods that fit that category:

• Kraft macaroni and cheese - the original kind.
• Ding Dongs and Twinkies and Cupcakes
• Bag of White powdered donuts
• Crumbette donuts are even better (I lived on these for breakfast in high school)
• Chocolate cake donuts with chocolate frosting from convenience stores (actually really hard to find these. not all are the same.)
• $0.89 frozen Totinos combination pizza
• Malt 'o Meal Marshmallow Maties cereal
• hot dogs
• Beans and Dogs casserole
• Bottle Caps (most candy in general)
• Big League Chew bubble gum (most true bubble gums in general)
• Devils Food cookies
• Sugar wafer cookies
• Actually I'll agree to most cookies/desserts

My kids/husband would add Pop Tarts (perfect for scout camping/back packing trips) and ramen (neither ot.

Anyone else have some food secrets hidden in their pantry?

White bread

For the most part, I usually only buy wheat bread. 100% whole wheat bread. The coarser the better (for me anyway. It's not neccesarily a shared opinion in our house...but I'm the one doing the shopping:) so I get to pick.)

Last week, when I went to the grocery store, I bought some deli ham, and ended up with a loaf of cheap, store brand, white bread, a bag of store brand potato chips, american cheese, and something else that I can't remember right now. (Our grocery store does these "meal deals". Basically, buy this one product, get these five other products free. And white bread was one of the free items.) Usually, I don't do the meal deals because they are usually things we don't eat. But the ham was actually something on my list, and occasionally I get chips. Everything else was just extra and I figured, "oh well".

When I brought it home, you would have thought I was giving sugared cereal to kids that never get it. Aspen, especially, was in heaven. So the whole loaf is just about gone. They've used every excuse to eat it.

And I think Isaac might eat all the american cheese.

At least it didn't go to waste.