I cannot stress how tight money is the first year of being a flight attendant, especially if you are commuting and living in a crash pad in a different city than your home. If you have been in this position, you know what I mean. The struggle is real as a new reserve (on-call flight attendant). As a Dave Ramsey “Baby Steps Plan” follower, I came to realize that keeping a strict budget is a huge the key to financial freedom and peace of mind. If you are a flight attendant struggling with debt and worried about money for food on your trips, I can help with this series which will focus on extreme budget survival meal prep. For the debt, check out Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps program. I am so glad I came upon it when I did.
On this meal series, let me be clear, this is not a nutrition article or claiming to be. Rather, I just want to help flight attendants who are struggling to eat affordably, by telling you exactly what I eat and the cost. This is to help flight attendants who are not willing to run up debt, charging expensive airport food on a credit card. Obviously, these food ideas can be dressed up with more ingredients, but my goal is to make them with as little as possible to save money, and still taste good, and freeze well. When I was trying to get myself into meal-prepping for flights, I often found the ideas out there to be costly in ingredients, albeit very good tasting and nutritious. I am glad those are out there too, but today I will focus on as inexpensive and filling as possible.
So let me get to the first meal in this Extreme Budget series:
Cheesy Orzo Kielbasa $1.41 per serving
This meal is so simple, and so inexpensive. At Aldi I bought a box of Reggano brand “cheesy skillet dinner kit”, for $1.89. The flavor is “Chicken and Broccoli”. Instead of using chicken which is more costly, I substituted Aldi Parkview brand, Turkey Polska Kielbasa, which cost $2.35. Follow the directions on the box, mixing this all together.
The grand total was $4.24
This yielded 3 dinners for me ( this is $1.41 per serving) , scooped into glass meal prep storage containers. I freeze these, and when I get called out for a trip, I put them in my Ebags Crew Cooler with ice bags. In the hotel room, I heat them in my hot logic mini. Sometimes, I will have raw carrots on the side in addition to one of my meal prep containers.
That is all it is! Easy, and very low cost. It tastes good too. What are your favorite extreme low cost meal preps? Let me know in the comments.
Aldiextreme budget meal prepFlight Attendant Meal Prep
