WHAT’S SO FUNNY: Cheap food for lean times

It’s not enough that we’re all hemorrhaging money, now it’s Christmastime and we have to buy gifts for our loved ones. Will the rain never stop?

In an effort to help those of you who are down to the bone, today’s column will feature dining recommendations for lean times. I recently tested these dishes myself, and I can testify that they’re cheap.

We’ll start with a staple from the old days. When I left college I was afraid of starving, and as a theater major, I had reason for my fear. Back then I decided I could live indefinitely on Top Ramen. It’s still a hard-time standby and I recommend it, kind of. I don’t know how long you can stand it, but you should be able to buy it.

Most of us have said goodbye to rib-eye for now, and ground bison, of course, but pork and chicken are still affordable. I recently read that it’s OK to eat rare pork chops, and that’s good flavor news even if it turns out to be fatal. As for chicken, I just saw 14 Sanderson Farms drumsticks down at Ralph’s for $7.12. Roll them in flour with some garlic salt, fry them for 20 minutes and then bake. You won’t be sorry.

Foster Farms offers a pound of chicken gizzards and hearts (“mostly gizzards,” they add underneath) for about $2.35.

Macaroni is available in cans or bags for a dollar, but you’ll find it rather bland with nothing on it, so you might want to splurge for some cheese. Cans of Chef Boy-R-Dee spaghetti, ravioli, beefaroni and other ronis are four cans for $5, and the sauce has a sugary under-taste that’s quite piquant the first couple times.

In case times get even harder, I can state that doggie treats have come a long way since the biscuits I tried in my youth. I can state this because I tested a few the other day while Patti Jo watched in queasy fascination.

Blue Dog Bakery treats, for example, actually taste like cookies. Unfortunately, they’re also as expensive as cookies, so you’re better off with a big 56-ounce box of VitaBone biscuits. They taste almost exactly like the fashionable diet wafers so many of us were eating some years back.

I find I still don’t like cat food. You may have some holiday fun with Friskies turkey and giblets dinner, five cans for $2, but I had to draw the line somewhere and I drew it there, so I can’t testify to the taste on that brand. I felt, and Patti Jo agreed, that once I’d tried Iams I’d gone far enough.

The point is that even in times like these it doesn’t take much money to survive, at least for awhile. And I think if you keep to the diet outlined above, you’ll probably die before you go broke.

SHERWOOD KIRALY’S novel “Diminished Capacity,” made into a movie with Matthew Broderick, Alan Alda and Virginia Madsen, is now available for rental exclusively at Blockbuster.