Lol!
For us it was a lot of potatoes and generic mac & cheese (still 5 for buck back then). Often when butter was too dear, we'd have mac and cheese with margerine and water - yuck. Peanut butter was pretty common too... I hated ramen noodles.
I still like pecan twirls occasionally
What I liked best about the area, outside of doing whatever you wanted (and the super cheap rent!), was the kids. They generally didn't get treated very well by just about everyone, and we did. My car was never broken into, not even when unlocked.
Pete