Danish was a fair choice but your buns and burgers were premium stuff, expect premium prices Mr. Ultimate burger

Meanwhile at Aldi, veggie burgers $3, brioche buns $4, family sized Danish $4.

Yeah, it’s your shopping.

If there weren’t price tags in the pic I would have guessed this would be $25-$30. This type of convenient food, none the less fancier versions of convenient foods, are expensive. Go figure.

If “proper shopping” is buying cheap and healthy food then yeah OP you suck at it.

The only thing that seems expensive is the veggie patties in my opinion. For $4.99 I would have expected a 4 pack.

The buns are a bit pricey, but we’re talking a dollar and some change then.

Looks to me like you have most of 4 lunches and 4 breakfasts for $18.

Buy vegetables and actually cook stuff, it’s a fraction of the cost and a lot tastier.

Where I live it would cost at least twice that. The veggie burgers would be about $12 per pack of two, buns would be around $9 (but only come in a 4 pack) and the Danish would probably be $8 or $9.

Real beef is still way cheaper. A pack of probably 15 patties is around $40.

I live in Alaska. Frozen stuff is a premium. And otherwise prices are all over the place, and supply depends on what came on the barge.

Please stop calling that junk “danish”

Buying prepared food is expensive.

I get a sack of rice, a couple avocados, dry beans, frozen broccoli and corn, lime or two, bunch of spices if you don’t already have. Whatever Mexican spices recipe online but definitely get smoked paprika it’s straight up drugs. This will cost more than the burger set in the picture but it makes more meals.

Instant pot rice, instant pot seasoned beans with a second inner pot, 1/8 of tall wide mouth mason jar each of rice and beans, arbitrary amount of broc corn and cubed avocado leaving about 1/8 of jar as air, tablespoon or so of lime juice. Cool the jars and freeze once cool. I use plastic lid rings with silicone insert since the metal ones get rusty when used like this. I’ll prep like 40 of these in one session but that’s definitely using a bigger budget so I don’t have to do it as often.

My recommended rice is long grain brown with about 1/16 to 1/8 of the amount cooked being wild rice mixed in. They both take the same amount of time to cook when mixed, but it’s a decent amount longer than white rice. I usually put an arbitrary splash of sake or gin in the water for cooking the rice but it’s largely a habit from copying grandpa.

I take a frozen jar to work with me in a lunch bag and it doubles as an ice pack for whatever else I want in there. I aim for it to be thawed enough to shake it and mix it before microwaving. For at home I thaw it in the fridge the day before. When I didn’t have a microwave I just steamed the whole jar in the instant pot.

Jars and instant pot + accessories were all things I waited for sales on. It can be done without instant pot but it’s probably the safest way I can think of to cook things and fuck off without worrying about it burning the house down. Jars are merely the cheapest I could find in decent quantity and dishwasher safe.

This is probably the cheapest with highest output volume food option I batch prep. I also do things like potato leek and/or squash soup, or potato cheese and soy bacon soup (I’m not actually vegetarian or vegan but it’s a real pain cooking all the bacon needed and cutting meat is tiresome), and some other stuff that has been hit or miss that I only tried once. I keep them all in a chest freezer and I take out whatever I feel like eating as an easy microwave meal, unless I’m running low and need to reserve them for work lunches.

Artisan brioche buns. Plant based burgers are more expensive then the real thing for some reason (and full of salt). That Danish is a ripoff.

It’s so sad how many posters would rather blame OP for spending an extra dollar on better bread and veggie patties rather than actually acknowledge the blatant price gouging on food. The idea that everyone should only be buying the cheapest ingredients is just stupid. No one is living a fulfilling life eating nothing but cheap beans and rice everyday, and food prices have been ridiculous for a while now.

Ok but what is that flavour? Strawberry cheese coffee? Is that common?

Well, those are some fancy burgers… Worth the money if you have it, IMO, but not something I’d buy on a budget. I usually get the Morningstar Farms chipotle black bean burgers, which Costco sells in a big box for a good price. They aren’t trying to be indistinguishable from meat (which isn’t a priority for me anyway) but they’re greasy (in a good way) and delicious.

Plus the Morningstar burgers have the rare advantage of being microwaveable. (I suppose you can technically microwave anything, but they’re good after being microwaved.) I’m not just saying that because I’m lazy - I have a little electric grill I can use, but I don’t need to for them and it’s nice to save a little bit of time that way.

That is kind of what you get when you buy super processed foods. If you want to save money you have to buy low processed foods. For example, you can get a 3lb bag of apples ($5), 5 cans of beans ($5), 2lb carrots ($2), 5 lbs Potatoes ($5) for the same price.

Hey you’re from Indiana too! I’ve noticed Kroger’s the worst about this, Meijer is usually lower. Shop Aldi then Meijer if you can.