Patatoes
Eggs
Cheese
Rice
Legumes (lentils, beans, chickpeas…)
Salt
Oil
Vinaigre
Spices

This make a cheap but healthy diet that can be cooked as something terribly bland in texture and flavor or extremely flavorful and diverse in texture depending on what you like.

Add bread sometimes and you can makes hundreds of recipes.

You have a small budget but since eggs and cheese are pricier in many places, by reducing them, you can easily add the legumes and oil.
Sometimes don’t buy potaoes and replace it with rice.
Do use salt, it is crucial for health and for making a recipe work.

This way, you bugdet should stay the same.

Now, for spices, there is two routes :

1 - Buy prepackage mixes. They are cheap for the unit, the easiest to squize in a budget that can’t be streched any further. After a few servings the package is used up, so you can change the flavor for the next time. But they have additives that make them not the healthiest. But if you don’t eat or drink anything but water and what you say this is more than healthy compare to most people

2 - build you spice (and herbs) cabinet. Spices outside of blends are cheaper but sold in bigger format so you need more money in the short run. You might find the money by reducing slightly further cheese or eggs once a groceries trip every month or every six weeks and buy one more jar of spice to use in your cooking. If you are cooking for yourself and since you are not used to cook with spice yet, take a small size not the biggest one even if it is cheaper by the ounce. Focuse on what is used the most in your cuisine : For a westerner culture, it would probably start with pepper, then garlic powder, then oignon powder, then a herb mix, then paprika. You can get inspiration for ingredients in you favorite premade mixes to know what to buy next.

Choose an oil that has a neutral taste and that can be heated a lot (sunflower or canola) so it could be use in plenty of way. Use it generously, it help with feeling full, better tasting food and weight retaining.

Legumes can be bought in tins. They are very cheap, already cooked perfecty, for a price premium already flavored. They can be eaten cold, as a salad with a bit of acid from the vinaigre.
At the beginning eat small portions or you get flatulences. With the time, your body will get use to digest them.
Legumes can be smash/blend in sauces, soups or spread. They can be place on the side of potatoes or rice.

When you are use to them (you know which one you like, which ones you eat the most), buy them dry. It is even cheaper and makes your groceries bags much lighter. It is not complicated to cook but it you have to figure out how to manage a budget, eat differently and gain weight, make it easy on you and start with the tins.

White vinaigre is so cheap. You buy one bottle and it least very long. It is much more acid than lemon juice so it is used in very small quantity. But it is not flavorful, just acid.

For specific recipes, it will depend on :

• your time available
• the cooking equipment you have
• the space you have

But I speak from experience, with a very very small space and limited cooking equipment these ingredient can bring you very far.

Other useful cheap ingredient you might buy from time to time are :
All-purpose flour, baking soda, semolina, oat, granulated sugar. They will add even more diversity and will make you a pantry from which many dessert can be cooked.
Tins vegetable are cheap…ish. They store well, so they can be bought in advance when you got a little room in your budget or when there is a nice reduction. Same with the cheapest kins of jams and preserved fruits. Some frozen vegetable are cheap as well but you need a freezer, freezer space and to use electricity to store them.

I currently need to learn how to cook for people with diet very limited in diversity. I’m on a budget and want to do it healthy. So I would be very interested to know how your diet evolved and if I can be of any help don’t hesitate to message me. I’ll help you to the best of my advices.

Cheers

As someone who’s been cooking every meal with what is largely the same four to five ingredients for the past six months due to the economic situation here, I can say with confidence that varying preparation methods and spice profiles is key to thriving in spite of repetition.

Potatoes like the ones in your picture? Use them to make something akin to boxty: https://donalskehan.com/recipes/boxty-irish-potato-pancakes/

Unless you’re planning to make mash, though, you might benefit more from a method other than boiling your potatoes. Baking is far less effort and if you don’t feel like sticking them in the oven for an hour, you can microwave them for 6 minutes or so in a 1,000 watt microwave (if theyre still not soft, use more time).

What kind of bread are you working with?

Eggs, potatoes, cheese, and “bread” (traditionally tortillas, but wheat flour is wheat flour) are primary ingredients for a breakfast burrito. Splash of cumin, pinch of paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and salt (maybe a tiny pinch of chili powder, cilantro, oregano, annato, and coriander if you have them, or lime juice, or tomato) if you can squish the bread flat and warm it in a pan a little you can slightly crisp up one side for texture and make an improv breakfast burrito sandwich.

Polish https://eatingeuropean.com/authentic-polish-pierogi-potatoes-cheese/

Or even

Japanese https://www.kaveyeats.com/hokkaido-potato-cheese-dumplings-chizu-imomochi

Kitchens have been known to make potato cheese dumplings. Make the innards and serve as a spread on pan-fried (low heat) bread if you can’t make the dumpling exterior. (Edit – just saw that you said you’re from an eastern european country and I just recommended dumplings. LOL. That’s like asking an american if they’ve ever eaten a hot dog. I feel a tad silly. )

Italian potato frittata: https://cookingitalians.com/the-classic-italian-potato-frittata/

I’m sure someone has reccomended a Potato cheese omelette, but you can do those lots of ways, from a souffle omelete (separate eggs, whip the whites into stiff peaks, then fold in the yolks so it’s super fluffy) to gyeran-mari type rolled omelette https://www.koreanbapsang.com/gyeran-mari-korean-rolled-omelette/

Got sugar? Tired of eating bread in bread form?

French Toast Casserole: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/240502/easy-french-toast-casserole/

I’ll edit the post to add more if I think of them, but I’m not awake yet.

Edit – just read your comment about the sugar tax. Boo :(

And about boiling being cheaper. (which is weird to me because boiling water is one of the most energy expensive methods of cooking when i go camping, but that might be due to wind, and as you said, circumstances are different in your area of the world, so boiling it is )

I saw rapeseed oil mentioned, got any other ingredients handy that you’re willing/able to use without causing family strife?

Even seemingly minor ingredients can make a big difference.

I’ll see what I can come up with for ideas.

First, if you can, try eating the potatoes with the skins. Less food waste, less time peeling, and it’s where most of the nutrients and fiber are.

Next, consider something like canned beans. Not “baked beans” because those are mostly sauce and honestly kinda gross. Like a can of black beans or chickpeas or red beans or black-eyed peas. You can season them however you’d like, but they’re good plain too. Versatile and can pair with almost anything. High in protein and fiber. And they’re affordable.

Another option is dried beans which are the cheaper option per bean but they’re more work to prepare because they need to soak. Lentils don’t need to soak though, and a pound of dried lentils isn’t too pricey.

If you can afford whole grain bread, it really does have much more nutrients than white bread. If you have a high metabolism, your body is just going to burn off all the empty carbs from white bread. Butter can add some easy fats too.

Oatmeal is another affordable option. Not the packets. Get the giant cylinder of instant oats. It’ll last you many meals, and all it takes is some hot water. You can adjust to your preferred consistency, whether you like it thick and clumpy or a bit more soupy is up to you.

If you can eat nuts, find one you like and get a big bag of them. Larger quantities are usually cheaper by weight. Walnuts are pretty affordable. Lots of omega-6 fatty acids. You can even crush them up and put them in your oatmeal if you like that.

If you’re not opposed to poultry, you can get a carton of chicken broth and drink maybe half a pint of it at a time. Heat it up first of course. It’s very gentle on the stomach and can stimulate an appetite. Also provides lots of good fats which are what your body needs if you want to put on weight and keep it on.

If you don’t eat meat, then vegetable or mushroom broth could do for stimulating appetite, just be aware that the fat content will be lower.

That’s mostly what I can think of. If you have troubles with digestion you might want to consider live foods/probiotics like yogurt, miso, stuff like that. A little bit pricier but it can make a big difference if your GI tract just doesn’t feel right. And again the larger containers are usually cheaper by volume.

Someone recommended you setup a donation link for a more varied diet… I second that.

Have you had your Vitamin B1 levels checked? Asking for two reasons, one is your diet seems like it would be low in thiamine, the second is thiamine deficiency can cause or exacerbate a lot of conditions that cause low or no appetite.

Like half of America is thiamine deficient, so I am sure the supplement would be helpful to you. If you DM me I would buy it for you.

Do you use spices or hot sauce to add flavor?

A slow cooker could make soups and stews with potwtoes and whatever vegtables or scraps.

Im sure lentils will send a represenitive to talk about them.

please buy some fruits and vegetables from time to time. Actually a lot of time. Different vegetables and fruit. Some nuts too. Eating the same meal every day is very unhealthy and can have very bad l andasting consequences for your health, especially in combination with stress (i know this from my personal experience of being poor and autistic unfortunately). And “hunger pains”? This is already very not ok.

Maybe start a gofundme campaign to at least temporarily somewhat mitigate the money problem? I’ll gladly send you a few bucks, if it helps you avoid what i got through.

Dude potatoes are awesome, you can make them into amazing soup, fried, mashed, baked its the best ingredient. You can make pasta, potato gnocchi is great. One tip is to buy cheap seasoning. You change the seasoning in potatoes you change the everything. Try making some potato gnocchi and tell me it’s not amazing (If you don’t have flour you can just blend your bread and turn it into flour for the pasta) Bread Flour + Eggs = Any pasta

Cook with real Butter, and learn how to make all the potato foods you can; hash browns, big steak chips to small fries, mash with a bit of milk and butter, jacket potaotes stuffed with things like beans and cheese, try see if the act of cooking something new helps build an appetite by association.

Another food to go for is purple sweet potato, not only is it delicious its genuinely full of nutrients.

Another method is finding a cheap soylent recipe and having a bottle of that every day to supplement your calories without being unbalanced.

https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes?sort=favoritesCount

This site has a whole list of varying types, including from expensive to cheap

https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes/sean-superfood-v3

For example this one is for making gains in the gym but the calorie excess would still help if you’re only eating once a day.

The recipe says it can be modified to replace the maltodextrin with rice flour (and imo the stevia for actual sugar or honey if you’re like me and can’t stand the taste of sweeteners)

Flour should be in your budget. Learn how to make a pan fried wheat tortilla - super quick and easy. Then you can look up Turkish flatbread or Italian focaccia. That will spice up your routine.

Fried potatoes, refried potatoes (from boiled leftovers).

Make sauces with nothing but a bit of butter, flour, instant buillon cube/powder. Optional: cream, milk, onions, garlic, anything that was left in the pan from something you just fried.

You can also steam some potatoes with canned meat in a pot.

But onion - I think - would be a great game changer.
And if you can plant some rosemary or thyme in a garden or pot on the windowsill. Those are hardy plants and won’t likely die on you and they taste amazing with potatoes, especially freshly picked.

If you’re eating only plain boiled potatoes, I feel for you. No wonder you don’t want to eat.

If you can, get real butter and 33% cream and learn how to make silky smooth mashed potatoes. Lightly fried bacon chunks and onion scallions also go really well in that. I could easily down an entire pot of mashed taters done just right.

The problem you may also experience is that white bread by itself, while you are chronically malnourished, may bring on Type 5 diabetes. And white bread has almost no nutritional value. You really need to up your proteins and macronutrients. Expensive if you rely on meat, cheap AF if you work with beans and lentils.

If you can afford flour, you can create a lot of dishes that are much healthier and even more fattening than plain white bread. Any German will know of Spätzle, especially when it’s drowned in butter and three or four types of melted cheese.

And a cheap or free crock pot, along with ground beef (which can be cheap), can allow you to make many dishes with beans or lentils that will allow you to gain weight.

Good luck.

Why not add other cereal crops into your rotation. They’re also very very cheap - like rice, pasta, corn and flour? Add in some cheap herbs and spices to keep the raw ingredients interesting. But you do need protein too. Tinned fish is a good option. As are lentils and beans and also very very cheap. If you can, get from an Asian supermarket. You can certainly gain weight from eating these foods. You can buy cheap tinned vegetables if fresh is too expensive. And try food banks.

Isn’t buying pre-baked bread usually more expensive than raw ingredients?

Anyway, what’s more important is that you have enough energy for your everyday life.
As long as you don’t start feeling weak at any time of the day, even lower weight should be pretty fine.

If your lack of weight is due to heavy physical labour, you can check if glucose powder has a higher calorie count per $ as compared to bread in your area.
Remember though, glucose powder will mean even lesser essential nutrients, so take the advice of bean people. Dehydrated beans should be cheaper than canned ones. It will take longer to prep for eating though. And simple stuff like ginger, garlic and onion can make the thing way more appetising.

Mashed potatoes and whole wheat or multi grain bread

Fermented grains and potatoes may help you gain weight at an accelerated rate without all the pesky eating. You can batch making calories in multiple gallon quantities. Set uqp and processing are about as expensive as adding an extra week or two into the monthly food budget and are rapidly diffused over time. You can serve yourself hot, cold or in between!