Recently Plinky got all nosey about my go to "broke meal"

I still occasionally crave it, even though it sounds pretty bad:

When I was a student in Australia, I hit a rough patch. And by rough I mean I lived on about $40 (Australian dollars were not worth very much back in 1997) for a month or so. It was in the middle of the summer holidays and I wasn't allowed to work when I wasn't also enrolled in courses at the university. Man was I stressed when I saw my bank account.

I still had to eat though. So I bought a big bag of rice and an industrial sized bottle of ketchup. And yes, I lived on rice and ketchup for weeks. Fills you up. Has some semblance of flavor. Dirt cheap when considered on a per meal basis. Didn't you know that Reagan classified ketchup a vegetable for the purposes of school lunches back in the eighties? I was being healthy people!

During this period I also spent one night on a couch in a hotel lobby. It seemed like a good idea at the time.  Especially since I had spent the night before on the couch on someone's front porch.  Which seemed like less of a good idea.  Neither night was particularly restful.