No Stupid Questions

If you buy local, and go with the seasons, I'd argue it is rather hard to not have all three (cheap, delicious, healthy) at the same time.

You won't have to rely on produce which is optimized for long transports but can tap into fresh, original flavors. Ripe fruits and vegetables from the fields, harvested just this morning. And because they all ripen now, quality maximizes when prize minimizes.

I am making vegetarian lentil soup today.

Ingredients are cheap (you can add nearly any seasonal vegetables) and lentils can be grown locally (America, Europe, Asia, maybe elsewhere too) without too much environmental damage and dried lentils can be stored for long times, you do not need expensive spices and no industrial processed stuff.

Cooking it in a pressure cooker makes it energy effective and done very fast.

You can freeze it over longer periods, so you can make one big pot, but eat multiple times. It should stay perfectly fine for three month in a freezer* and we kept it for three days in a fridge just fine (could stay good longer but I haven't tried it).

And we love it.

• If you plan to put it into a freezer do not salt it. Salt it when heating it up again.

Highly nutritious. Lentils are often overlooked, even though they're an inexpensive way of getting a wide variety of nutrients. For example, they're packed with B vitamins, magnesium, zinc, and potassium. Lentils are made up of more than 25% protein, which makes them an excellent meat alternative.

I find brussel sprouts to be delicious when roasted in the oven with olive oil, salt, and pepper. They're fairly inexpensive at Costco, are great for you, and tasty. My mother used to make brussel sprouts out of cans or boiled when I was a kid and I thought for a long time that I hated them. Turns out I just was having them prepared wrong.

Tinned tuna. Inexpensive, high in protein and fish oils, low in fat and calories.

Probably not great in huge quantities because of iodine, but generally very healthy

Look into fresh produce that you can eat raw. IMHO there's no nicer snack than a crisp crunchy carrot. They're cheap, and pretty much always available. Carry a mini peeler with you and you can just grab one from a store, peel it over a rubbish bin, and scoff it. :)

Oh boy I've got one! Bonus, it ticks a 4th box - convenient!

Not sure where you're located and there are different brands, so you'll have to investigate for yourself. But the Tasty Bite brand microwaveable Indian pouches to me manage to hit each of these dimensions. They're cheap (-ish, I wanna say $4 per meal?), healthy (probably high in sodium, but if you look at the ingredients list it's all just food - not weird processed and/or synthetic crap), microwaveable and totally delicious. Granted, it's delicious for a microwaved meal...can't exactly compete with a properly prepared Indian dish. But it's easily the best microwaved food I've ever eaten.

And they're vegetarian and sometimes vegan so a small win on the critter ethics too! Can't recommend em enough unless you mean REAL cheap or you're used to eating home cooked Indian dishes on the regular.

You should shop at a grocery outlet, that's how you get all three achieved. there's so much cheap overstocked healthy food, because originally was too expensive and people didn't want to pay that much, so I benefit. Best grocery store there's ever been, prove me wrong!

My very Italian answer is "pizza bianca" . I guess "healthy" depends, but it's generally OK carbs, it's delicious and with few Euros you can buy quite a lot (enough for a lunch).

Extremely easy, you put carrots potatoes peas salt and a few garlic cloves, and a bay leaf to simmer, drain all, mush the garlic in olive oil and use it as dressing you got a surprisingly delicious healthy and cheap dish. Another great combination comes from cauliflower potato a pinch of garlic some strong cheese pepper salt butter and lemon juice, this combo has all the cheesy taste profile of a fondue without all the calories. Last eggplant and pistachio pesto (pistachio oil basil and pecorino or any other strong cheese) is like the most delicious combo and cheap ish too, it makes for an amazing base for sandwiches!

Roasted broccoli from the freezer

Herb Chicken on the stovetop

Lemon vinaigrette with garlic (pour it on the chicken and toss the broccoli in it)

Herbed rice, or rice steamed with coriander

Granita (frozen fruit juice and sugar, stirred occasionally for a icy creamy texture, or do coffee and sugar)

All of these work independently, or together they are wonderful.

Carrots. Same as potatoes. Boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew. Someone already mentioned onions, same idea.

I know your edit says you were thinking about dishes, and I think carrots can be their own dish with very little preparation. I like to bake mine on a sheet for half hour or so at 425f, and they are wonderful on their own. Also so low-calorie you can eat a practically infinite amount of them without spoiling a diet!

Purple asparagus! You can grow it and it grows in incredible quantity quite quickly. Then you can toss it in the air fryer each day for ten minutes with some seasonings and it's phenomenal.

Fried grasshoppers

I don‘t know about economics, but this is my entry to research:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0Xa7Dp3-eYA

And cucumber prices went up more than 50% for me in the last 2 years alone, so maybe you‘re onto something.

parsley in the form of tabbouleh salad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbouleh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsley

check out the vitamins and minerals in parsley, it's one of the super foods.

Tacos and burritos could absolutely meet this criteria If you're doing them well at home, with the most unhealthy thing being the tortilla itself (You could argue that those are empty calories). Of course that means no sour cream or cheap cheese abuse among other things

Oatmeal with bananas, cinnamon, soy milk(unsweetened), flaxseed and sugar + extra fruits according to preference.

I eat it everyday for breakfast and I never get tired of the flavor. Sometimes I even get a bit greedy and eat it more than once. It's very filling, healthy, and cheap.

Peanuts and other nuts

Buy raw material and cook yourself.

Most premade food is expensive because:

• labor on cooking
• restaurant profit
• rent of the restaurant/owner of the place sell you food
• service