Ultimate College Cooking Challenge!

[ehraihcn]

Here is the deal. I'm a college student living in an apartment with 3 other guys (fridge space is at a premium). Due to my schedule, I don't have that much time to cook. I also need to make food that is cheap.

So, I'm looking for recipes!! Let me know!
they need to be:
-tasty
-healthy
-relatively cheap
-relatively quick (1.5 hrs or less, unless it's slow cooked)
-does not have lots of waste (I don't want 1/2 of an onion floating around)

If you know of something that fits this criteria, LET ME KNOW! please!

My current diet is abysmal, due to my lack of knowledge of recipes and reliance on fast food... please help!

 

[Steve Kroll]

My daughter is a college student. I think she lives on mac & cheese and salads. The m&c part isn't exactly healthy, but it meets the rest of your criteria.

Maybe you can narrow it down a bit. "Tasty" covers a lot of ground. What kind of food do you like?

 

[PolishedTopaz]

First off.....Welcome to DC!!!!

Question .......... are you and the fellas cooking for the four of you or are you just cooking for yourself?

 

[CWS4322]

Welcome to DC! There are a lot of healthy, budget-friendly recipes in the archives. Unfortunately, the "Budget Meals" link doesn't seem to work.

The best advice is to stock up on staples (brown rice, dry beans, lentils, pasta, etc.) when on special that you can incorporate into meals. Stay away from processed food as much as possible. Buy only the veggies and fruit you like and in quantities you can eat before they go bad. Buy things that are in season and, if possible, things that are not shipped in from other countries. Watch for specials on meat--buy whole chicken and cut it up (or at least chicken breasts with the bone in and skin on and learn to skin and debone). Turkey drumsticks (or chicken legs) in the crockpot are great--you can use the "juice" to make a chicken vegetable noodle soup. Roast a chicken on the weekend and you can use the bones to make stock/broth, leftovers in a stir fry. Have a plan--plan what you are going to eat based on the ads--if ground beef is on special this week, spaghetti might be a good option. Where I live, pasta, tomato sauce, and ground beef seem to go on special the same week. If you have 1/2 an onion floating around, you can always chop it up, put it in a ziplock bag, and toss it in the freezer. Keep a list of what is in the freezer so stuff doesn't get lost. If green peppers are on sale (or on the discount rack), you can chop those up and throw those in the freezer to use in sauces or stir fry at a later date.

 

[betterthanabox]

I have a great cookbook, The Teen Vegetarian Cook book. It's $0.78 on amazon. It has tons of really great and healthy ideas for dorm cooking. I figured out ways to work meat in or when my budget was a little tight, I would leave it out.

I assume your college has a salad bar, one thing that you can do is get fresh produce off of there when you are cooking so that you don't have that half of onion hanging around.

Pasta dishes are fast, easy, and cheap so give some of those a try. Also, when my husband and I were in college, one thing I helped him discover was individually packed frozen chicken. You just pop one in the fridge the day before you want to make it. It cooks quickly, and is usually quicker and cheaper than getting the same thing in your cafeteria.

I assume you're cooking for one, or on the occasion two. But it is pretty easy to get good nutrition by adding things like yogurt, nuts, veggies, and fruit. They don't take up a lot of fridge/ freezer space either.

Good Luck and let us know how you make out. BTW where do you go?