Salmon near me is $8 per pound on a good sale (9-10 is more frequent), so a 6 ounce portion is $3ish. A lemon for 80 cents, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, 2 portions of salmon, and an ounce of butter, and dinner is $10.

I would add rice, and then probably get a pound and a quarter of salmon to have some to make leftovers into onigiri, then it's lunch the next day too, but the cost goes up.

It's possible $10 is out of reach, or you live in a much more expensive area. Apologies if either of those applies to you, but this seems to be an approachable option.

I've been: Lucky enough to get salmon from the FoodBank every other month or so. This just sounds like lazy writer cooking to me. Which I aspire to be.

American Catholics in 1960: "We eat fish every Friday during Lent to represent the poverty of our forefathers long ago. The ancient peoples who could subsist on nothing else pulled great bounties from the Mediterranean. It sustained civilization in that humble way for centuries and today we remember our simple origins."

American Catholics in 2020: "Fish for dinner? What are we, made out of money? Have a hamburger instead. No, I will not think for one single second about the sociological or ecological ramifications of this decision."

Look for farm raised Atlantic salmon. Fish caught in the wild is way more expensive.

If people can't afford salmon, they should probably get acquainted with the relatively inexpensive cost of glass bottles and gasoline.

At this point its not much more expensive than beef etc. Fish is a more competitive market than the beef processor monopolies, at least in the US