I have $24 to last me til Friday, what should I buy with it?
a pallet of ramen noodles
I hate ramen noodles tho
hmmmmm
bees?
Are you suggesting that I eat bees for a week
This is roughly what I make sure I have in my kitchen all the time along with rough estimates of local prices (MN). I buy a lot of things when theyāre on sale and stockpile them.Ā
instant oatmeal packets with fruit in them – $3 probably and this can be breakfast all week and maybe even a lunch or dinner too since you usually get 10 packets
bag of rice – $2-3 depending on size. 1 cup dry rice makes enough for about two meals depending on what you add in. if you get cheap rice, rinse it before cooking
canned beans – usually under $1 per can – mix the can with your rice and you have a meal. chili-spiced beans will make bean tacos. Rinse non-spiced beans before adding to anything.
Tortilla – usually around $3 but you get like 8-10 of them. Tacos, wraps, and quesadillas are all fair game here
lettuce – $2 max around here, either a head of something or bagged precut depending on preference, use as a salad or on tacos
protein other than beans of some sort – probably $5-7 for meat, $2-3 for eggs. sometimes I can get bags of frozen chicken breasts in this price range and each is usually 2 meals if I add in a bunch of veggies. fry/scramble eggs and add to any of the options.Ā
your favorite stir fry sauce – $3ish
vegetables – $5ish. literally anything that you can 1. fry in a pan and 2. youāll eat. fresh carrots are usually pretty cheap. get frozen if itās cheaper and youāre strapped for cash/prep time on this part.Ā
alternative to stir fry: Ā pasta (~$2), fresh tomatoes (~$2), cheese (~$3).Ā
cheese and fruit if you have extra – look if your store has loyalty cards for free that you can load coupons on for cheese thereās always one it seems like.
ahh thank you!!!
Reblogging because thereās never knowing whoāll need it.
Adding also: the single most nutritious food on earth is potatoes in their peel. Potatoes + some milk and butter = everything you need. They donāt last all that long, but theyāre fairly cheap and the quickest cheat to āHow do I not fuck my body up.ā
(Cooked potatoesāll last a while in the fridge. Potatoes nearing the end of their useful lives? Cook them to half-done first, figure out what to do with them later.)
Easiest baked potatoes: slice thinly but not paper-like, spread like cards, brush with oil (a silicone baking brush is totes worth the little it costs), spread salt and pepper (a little less than you think youād like), cover with foil, stick in oven or toaster-oven at 150C for 40min. (If you have the patience, at that point click up to 180C, remove the cover and add 10-20min.) Reheats well, lasts in the fridge longer than itāll take you to nom.
Dead-Animal-Free Whole Protein: some legumes + some grain. AKA rice and lentils, or rice and beans. (Maybe some fried onion for flavor; onionās cheap and stays good a descent while. Fried onion makes everything taste better and keeps forever in the freezer, so frying up a bunch and keeping portions is not a half-bad idea.) (If going for the beans option – lentils are cheaper around here but fuck if I know what itās like in your area – dump some tomato sauce and oil in; canola or soy are best health-wise, and far cheaper than olive; avoid corn.) Oh, what does instant couscous go for in your area? It keeps for fucking ever, itās usually cheap, and it takes well to any and all added taste.
If you get to choose, black lentils taste the best and need the least soak-time (0-20min), green lentils are best for cooked stuff and red lentils are best in soups. (Red lentils + potatoes + root vegetables of choice + spices; cut into small pieces, cook, run through the blender if you wanna [stick blenderās awesome], freeze in portions.)
When possible, get instant soup mix. Get the good instant soup mix. (The kind thatās not made primarily of sugar, yeast or both. The rest is optional.) Dump 1/2tsp (or more, but start on the low end) into couscous, or chicken, or sprinkle over potatoes being stuck in the oven. Whatever. Itāll make most cooked-food-type things taste better. And again, lasts forever on the shelf.
IfĀ you can have eggs (goodness knows theyāre sometimes expensive), dump some tomato sauce in a pan (tomato sauce lasts forever on the shelf), add some oil, onion/beans to cook in it, hot peppers if you wanna, then when itās nearly ready crack an egg or two in. Hard-boiled eggs last a remarkably while in the fridge, so when eggs reach near the end of their usable lives, just hard-boil and stick in the fridge.
(Have eggs as often as you can, particularly as you have brain-shit going on. You need all the eggs, salt, and 60%-or-more chocolate you can get. Brains are made of cholesterol and salt, so folks with neuro or other brain shit need more of both. Potassium is also aces. You know what has the most potassium? Tomato paste.)
Grated cheese keeps in the freezer for ever. Grated cheese will make a lot of things taste nicer. Preserved lemon juice keeps forever in the fridge. Grated cheese + oil + lemon = instant and awesome pasta sauce thatāll liven up the weeks-old dry pasta in the fridge.
Slices bread also keeps well in the freezer. Try to have half a loaf or a loaf. Dry bread gets cut in cubes, mixed with oil and the aforementioned instant soup, stuck in oven at lowest until properly dry, then kept in an airtight jar to add to soups.
(Over-ripe tomatoes come cheaper. They get turned into soup or sauce, then frozen in portions.)
this is a very good post but why are we glossing over the fact that the alternative to ramen is bees
i have it on pretty good authority that bees are notĀ an affordable eating alternative to ramen.
Seriously, bees are expensive
Trufax.Ā
And speaking as someone who is also living off oatmeal, beans, and brown rice, if you need recipes, I have them!Ā
Today I made 16 bean soup with chicken sausage and it was crazy good and I got 8 servings out of the one batch (froze half). I usually get the cheapest beans I can find, and GOYA bags of beans are usually $1-2. I soaked them overnight,rinsed them, and threw them in a gallon lidded saucepan with 2 boxes of chicken stock (also on sale for $2), two bay leaves, sauteed green pepper, onion, and celery, some garlic from a jar, about two tablespoons of dried herbs de provence,and theĀ āfancyā bit was adding $6 bourbon and apple chicken sausages. You can actually sub veg stock for chicken and skip the sausage and make it vegan and it would still taste great.
Oh and Iāve been doing steel-cut oats. I donāt buy the name brand ones, I just pick whatever store brand/generic I can get for less than $4. They take about Ā½ an hour to make, but theyāre super tasty and I make 2 cups
of dried oats at a time
with dried cranberries and thatās breakfast for 4 days at least.Ā
Iāve also been making black bean soup, red beans and rice, and curried potatoes and chick peas. I got 100 quart and pint take-away containers from Amazon for $20 and they all stack neatly and are perf for one serving of whatever.
Additionally, depending on where you live, whole rotisserie chickens are something like $4-$7 and are easily 4 – 6 servings of protein and on TOP of that, if you stick the carcass in a ziplock bag and then the freezer you have excellent soup makings. Using bones in soup literally squeezes all viable vitamins and minerals out of the suckers. Soup made from lots of bones is great to keep around if you get sick, itāll feed and sooth you relatively easily and as you get better you can add noodles. ON TOP OF THAT, a quarter to a half cup of soup broth added to a lot of dishes also adds those nutrients PLUS flavor.
Iāve never really wrote a tutorial before so apologies if this is bad
1. okay first thing I do is pick three colors, a mid, dark, and light. I like to check the colors in greyscale to make sure thereās enough contrast between each one.
I then plop down a blob of whatever my middle tone color is.
2. next, I take my dark color and just sort of randomly place it around. I try to make sure thereās a good amount of both the mid and dark tones spread throughout. I personally like to keep it kinda messy. I also have pen pressure on for both brush size and opacity, so I can have some blending action going on.
3. for the next step I do the exact same thing as before, except with the light color.
4. aight this is where we start adding details. see how you just have a bunch of colors and edges where two colors meet? use the eyedropper and go to an area where two colors meet, eyedrop a color, and then use that color to draw in your grass blades. I do this at every point where colors meet. should note I personally like to use a square brush, but you can really just use anything.
5. you can technically stop at the last step if youāre going for a more simple look, but to add more details I go to the āemptyā areas of solid color and just draw in random strokes using a color nearby. itās just a way to fill up the empty space.
6. basically more of the same idea of eyedropping and drawing. for more variety so things look interesting, I like to add random plant shapes.
7. and so the grass doesnāt look too plain, I add random dots of color and pretend itās flowers and stuff.
and there you have it, this is how I approach drawing grass.
Great question! When youāre starting to work in digital art, layers can be incredibly confusing to start out with. They seem almost like magicā¦ but what are they, really?
Personally I also work in Medibang, so I think these screenshots will be helpful.
To begin with, letās take this picture of a zebra I drew a little while ago:
It seems like thereās a LOT going on here. But actually, layers make it easier than ever to make your drawings feel nice and clean digitally. Lots of programs also have specialized tools to help you color effortlessly – and itās VERY different from the traditional method of being careful to not color outside the lines.
First of all, letās take a look at layers. What ARE layers? They areā¦ wellā¦ a way to organize your art, for a start. Anything on the top layer will be BOSS and will (generally) be on top of everything else. Thatās why most artists use the top layer for lineart, as you yourself said.Ā
Artists can use SO MANY LAYERS. Like, some artists use 100+ layers in one piece. But thatās a lot, so letās start withā¦ 3. Just 3 simple layers. For exampleā¦
Now, letās say you have this lineart and you want to color it. The color will go on the bottom, so that it doesnāt interfere with the lineart layer. But how do you color it? Well, you COULD do the very slow and tedious process of going over it bit by bit.Ā
But thatās honestly very tedious and no one actually likes it. It leaves a lot of room for error, and it takes forEVER.
Instead, letās make this easier.
HOW TO COLOR USING THE SELECT TOOL!
First of all, this requires that your lineart not have gaps. That means all black lines are connected.Ā
Second, letās go to our color layer and make sure itās selected (and not the lineart layer)
Next, use the magic select tool on the left hand side. It looks like a little magic wand.
Click on the empty space you WANT to color. In my case, itāll be the scarf area. Medbang will sense the area based on the visible lineart layer, even though you are still technically on the color layer.
(you can select multiple areas, like the two little ends of the scarf, by holding down the Shift key and clicking those areas)
The next bit is a bit more technical.
With these parts selected, you COULD just use the bucket tool and fill everything in. BUT, with the way digital programs work, you might end up with a VEEEERY thin layer of white between your lineart and your colors.
So what I (and a lot of artists) do instead is manually expand that selected area by just a few pixels to make sure that border is caught in the all-encompassing COLOR CONQUEST.Ā
To do this, just go upstairs to theĀ āselectā menu and clickĀ āexpandā. Give it a few pixels, hit enter, and THEN use a filling technique of choice. I just throw a large square over the area.Ā
Now, I know what youāre thinking.Ā āokay, I have the flat colors. But what if I need to add details, like shading and patterns?ā
Let me introduce you to our friendā¦. CLIPPING!
What is clipping? I thought you might ask. Well, consider this scenario. You have your color layer, your lineart layer – and between them – your shading layer. You want to shade stuff, but again, you might have to go through and color things bit by bit so as to make sure nothing goes outside of the lineart.Ā
BUT look there! Whatās that checkbox up at the top? Itās a bird! Itās a plane! Itāsā¦. CLIPPING!
Go ahead and check that box – and it will trap your Shading layer in a prisonā¦. a prison of the color layer!
Basically, clipping means you lock the layer onto the layer directly underneath it, and the shading will ONLY affect whatever exists below it. If you didnāt color outside the linesā¦ the shading will also not cross that border.
Voila!
Now, layers are MUCH much more than this. We could probably have an entire class just about layers. However, I recommend just playing around and discovering as much as you can on your own. Digital art is a lot of fun, and opens many doors. You can allow layers to interact with each other in many crazy ways – thereās settings likeĀ āLightenā andĀ āMultiplyā andĀ āOverlayā that all have different functions and allow you to play with colors quickly and easily for your art.Ā
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