Hot dogs with white bread instead of a bun goes CRAZY imo

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.

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.

Struggle broke or struggle sad?

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.

"stuggle" ?

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.

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