Flavor does not matter, presentation does not matter but the food shouldn’t make you sick, and should ideally have enough calories per day for the average person to survive (2000 kcal min).
Edit: I am not in any danger of starving or malnutrition, nor am I insolvent. I’m mainly asking this question out of curiosity on how people would approach a solution :)
Try figuring out cheapest vegetables available year-round, from which you can make a salad. In the US, this probably includes corn. Where I am, it’s potato, carrots, and beets, which coincidentally make a traditional salad. I boil a pot of them once or twice a week, and chop them in large-ish cubes right before a meal, so preparation takes very little time. Of course, I typically add onions, mayonnaise, maybe herbs.
I’m currently spending about twenty bucks a week on food, and that’s only because I’ve been too lazy to prepare the vegetables, making sandwiches instead.
This is not a coincidence :)
Really, if you want to look into cheap and good food, look no further than what your ancestors ate. They ate it precisely because it was cheap and as nutritionally adequate as they could get.
Sure, some modifications must be made now that we have more foods and clean drinking water available on demand, but this is a good starting point.
Speaking of modifications, soy sauce in vinaigrette salad is great. A few drops of Worcestershire sauce would probably be awesome, too.
Quite unexpected. I love soy sauce in a classic tomato-cucumber salad, but soy sauce + beetroot is something I cannot comprehend. Maybe I’ll give it a spin, though!