Hey guys, I'm not from this board but I'm hoping you can help me. I'm a pretty poor college student and I need to find a cheaper way to eat. I just eat from like the food court at my school but the meals are basically like 10 dollars give or take. Is it possible to make a meal that's cheaper than that? I know that it probably won't have vitamins and nutrients but I need cheaper food than 10 dollars a meal.
Thanks in advance.
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Do you have a kitchen?
$10 is a ton for one fucking meal.
Beans
I hope you like rice
Sandwiches
Yeah I do, I know it's just that since I don't bring my own food/know how to cook that's what's left for me, the food court food.
What do you mean? Should I go get rice? Will I be nutrient deficient? Actually I'll just go get some vitamins.
How far is the closest For Me® factory?
>I don't know how to cook
Spaghetti with meat sauce
Preseasoned frozen veggies
I don't know what that is?
>be aware that you are totally ignorant on the subject of nutrition
>instead of reading up on how to make a balanced diet, just go buy more extra shit and stay ignorant
college students, everyone
How much will that cost?
the point is that rice is cheap as shit.
a good rice cooker costs less than $20
You can get a fuckhuge bag of rice for $20
You can get a shitload of beans for like $10
Add in some dark green veg for a few bucks, maybe some eggs
boom, balanced diet and you have meals on the cheap for like a month
Are you a dormcuck? If so, good luck.
If you live in an apartment or house, do you have Google? If so, why haven't you fucking used it?
have you ever been to a grocery store?
Well no I'm just assuming to have a balanced diet it would be expensive
>Box of pasta $1
>Jar of sauce $3
>Ground meat $4
That's $8 and will last you several meals. Those frozen veggie things are usually around $2 and provide one large serving or two small servings.
see
making assumptions out of ignorance is dumb
organic food is a meme
don't forget salt and pepper and maybe a couple other spices or you will hate your boring life
Okay I'll go look this up, will I be okay with no meat?
>or you will hate your boring life
What do you mean?
Yeah, just won't be as good
It is possible to make far cheaper meals than that.
Assuming that you are having 3 meals a day, that's 30 dollars per day, which is a monthly budget of about 900 dollars for food.
Right, let's start with breakfast. I really like Birchermuesli and it's a good place to start, and you can actually make most of it, but save it for the rest of the day. It's oats, nuts of sorts, yoghurt, lemon juice and some fruit. That is some of the healthiest and cheapest stuff out there, and ultimately you don't need to buy everything every day. A box of oats can last a week or even more. Yoghurt's the only non-essential thing, but you may want to use milk rather than eat it all dry.
Anyway, you're probably gonna find yourself spending about 20 bucks (or less, it's about 20 bucks where I buy) on this, keep in mind you're gonna be spending that per week, not per day. Which means that this is going to cost about the same as you would for breakfast for two days - this can last for about a week or so eating it twice per day.
Then for lunch and dinner, well, you kind of need to learn how to cook. It's not difficult in any way, you just need to pay attention to what you're doing. If you've a pan and a pot, you can just about do anything. Rice and beans is kind of a classic, as is pasta. Frying meat is not difficult, and you will learn with time. Making soup is also a thing you ought to learn how to do, it's not difficult at all and they tend to use ingredients you can buy on the cheap or by the bulk. One of my favorite ones on the cheap (French onion soup) is quite literally one onion which you cut it thin and water, but you can switch the water for broth or wine, and add in milk or cream, or even cheese.
As for buying habits, I reccomend farmer's markets, butchers and just about anywhere you can get stuff on the cheap. Get them by the bulk, too, since it basically means you don't have to go out to buy as often and you restrain yourself from buying unneeded stuff.
food is boring and bland without spices
>tfw my college forces me to spend 300 bucks every semester for a "meal plan" to buy overpriced, greasy food on campus
>funds in the meal plan don't roll over from Spring to Fall
I'll be a senior this fall. So much money wasted on Sysco shit.
It's a dip, you meme.
If you want your food to be flavorful, buy spices. Salt and pepper for the basics, onion and garlic are cornerstones too. Cayenne pepper, paprika, basil, thyme, oregano, curry, cumin, nutmeg... There are many spices you can use to season your food, which will make that dinner of rice, beans and egg feel a lot less boring.
For me, its the McChicken.
Oh I'm sorry guys, I don't really know any Veeky Forums memes
Uh there's a Carls Jr on campus if you're asking what I usually grab
We need to come together as a board and contribute to material for a decent sticky thread.
You will need:
3 eggs
some butter
melt some butter in the frying pan, beat 3 eggs into a bowl and whisk them, pour the egg yoke into the pan and carefully fry it on medium heat, flip it when you see that one side is already somewhat hard, and fry the other side carefully. It's really quick and easy, and who doesn't need eggs? Eat it for breakfast.
Could also buy top ramen packets solely for the noodle part and use almost anything with it to make a meal. Just toss the little death packet
Someone just needs to sticky the ramen infographic and kill this little bitch.
desu i would suggest just buying some frozen vegetables and frying them, spice them up if you need to.
Let's face it, we're autistically discussing cooking and mixing it with our own dose of internal memes on a Czechoslovakian flag-waving radio station system.
We're going to get asked the questions we find obvious, and this is probably the most common one of them.
If we had a sticky, I reckon we ought to cover the basics of learning how to cook. Now, the only issue is figuring out the cooking knowledge of the lowest common denominator...
how2boilwater
might I ask at what institution you are being educated my fine young gentleman?
I thought frozen vegetables didn't have that many vitamins compared to fresh veggies?
You say that everytime
Why would you think that? Why would the vitamins magically disappear just because the food was frozen?
Veeky Forums can't agree on the best way to turn on an oven, let alone fundamentals of cooking.
well there are plenty of compounds in foods that will break down upon being frozen and reheated but nothing crucial to survival I don't think
Name one.
>▲▼
Just turn it on
Lentils are the shit. Buy em, cook em, love em.
>cheap
>no need to soak
>cooks quick
>tons of fiber and dece protein
>many very easy recipes involve lentils
The half-assed recipe that carry me through college was the following:
Lentils
Water
Leeks
Potatoes or Carrots
Spoonful of Butter (or clarified butter if you can manage it)
Salt and pepper
Dill and bay leaf (optional)
Measure about two cups of lentils. Wash them in the colander or don't bother if you can't be arsed. Put them in a pot and fill with water until the lentils are covered by about 1.5 inches of it. Start boiling that shit. When it's boiling turn the heat down to about 6 or 7 to keep it steady.
Meanwhile, chop up the leeks and potatoes into small pieces.
After about 10 min of boiling throw in the taters, spices, and butter. Keep it simmering until the lentils are soft enough for you. At this point you should adjust salt/spices to taste.
Finally, toss in the leeks and mix. Turn the heat down to 3 and cook for 4 minutes. Take it off heat and start eating, blyat.
well not an exact example but raw garlic for example makes a chemical upon being exposed to air that break down within an hour of being made, called allicin.
It's not much of a stretch to assume that temperature changes affect the chemical composition of foods
I know potatoes have an issue involving freezing up and their internal water which screws up a bunch of stuff.
>It's not much of a stretch to assume that temperature changes affect the chemical composition of foods
Assuming you understand even basic chemistry, yes, it's a fucking major stretch.
Physical changes? Sure. That makes perfect sense--freezing is a process of physical change, after all. Drip loss is certainly a thing. But chemical changes? No way.
idk why you're upset about this
one of the major reasons for cooking anything is that heat destroys pathogens and bacterias in foods.
I'm not saying it's bad to eat frozen foods or bad to cook things, just that freezing and cooking things changes their composition slightly
pubs.acs.org
>How Heating Affects Extra Virgin Olive Oil Quality Indexes and Chemical Composition
>From these results, we can conclude that despite the heating conditions, VOO maintained most of its minor compounds and, therefore, most of its nutritional properties.
as I thought, we are both right. there are minor chemical changes that don't really affect the nutritional profile, at least in olive oil
>idk why you're upset about this
I honestly can't understand how someone could believe that freezing food somehow causes nutrients to be lost. It's an absurd statement. The fact that someone thinks it's even remotely possible is puzzling to me. It's like hearing about an adult who believes in the easter bunny or santa claus.
Now heating food? Sure. Heat accelerates chemical reactions and can push things over their activation energy. Cooling food? That has the opposite effect.
1. what's your kitchen like
2. time = money. you can eat really good for cheap depending on how much time you put into it
Buy chicken hind quarters, rice, whatever veggies you like. That's dinner. Eggs and ground sausage for breakfast. You can either do cold cuts, or buy a whole chicken to roast and pick to make chicken salad sandwiches for lunch.
I also like to make a green drink in the morning (some kale, cucumber, celery, an apple, garlic, and ginger all blended up).
I guarantee shit like this will be waaaY cheaper than what you are doing. Chicken, especially dark meat, is fucking cheap. Veggies are fuckin cheap. Rice is massively fucking cheap. You might have to spring a bit for spices and stuff to make it all palatable, but those last forever.
As long as you eat enough eggs / beans to substitute your protein intake, yeah, you will be fine.
You can be pedantic about the temperature loss involved in freezing food not directly causing reactions, but acting as if it's some sort of ideal gas mixture is just as simplistic. The structural changes will affect how stable the various compounds are, it's entirely plausible that some of them would be made available to react more readily.
>it's entirely plausible that some of them would be made available to react more readily.
Thanks for saying nothing, freshman. When you reach third year chemistry, post again.
I'm not the one that thinks freezers are some sort of magic time stop device.
What's going on in this thread?
Ramen is cheap.
Examples?
>Scientific facts are now magic
this nigga is more dense than the nucleus of an atom holy shit
no retard thats a fucking heat change, aka one very common method to speed up a chemical reaction, this was not a generalization about heat changes, we were talking about how freezing vegetables may change it's chemical structure and how it could lose nutrients due to the freezing process (Btw it doesnt lose nutrients retard) heating and cooling are two different things you unrelenting retard
Lived for 3 years on less than 20 dollars a week while still eating like a lazy slob.
2 loaves of French bread a week for 2 dollars max, 1 dollar if you get the expired ones. Easy eating.
Package of tortillas for 3 bucks.
Giant jar of peanut butter for 6 bucks, will last you a month or longer.
Bananas, one a day, costs maybe 2 bucks.
Make a peanut butter and banana torilla roll. Filling, portable, no cooking required. 11 bucks the first week, less every other week because peanut butter lasts forever.
Rice you can buy in bulk but a small bag is about a dollar and you'll probably not even need 2 of them. 2 bucks max.
Frozen veggies are about 1 dollar a bag that will last you 2 meals. Buy fresh if your anal about that, the price is basically the same. Buy 4 for 4 bucks.
Beans are crazy cheap. I buy canned because I am lazy and it's still cheap. 1 can makes two servings and costs about 1 dollar. Buy 4 for the week.
Cook two cups of rice. Throw in half a bag of veggies and the whole can of beans after. Eat half today, eat other half tomorrow. 10 bucks for dinner the whole week.
If your still hungry spend a few dollars a week buying apples, oranges, more bread, pasta, etc. Don't buy chips or cookies or other stuff your mom used to warn you about. Not because it's bad for you (I personally don't give a shit) but it's not very good value for your dollar. Doesn't fill you up and costs a bunch. On the other hand I've found junk food like ice cream to be really good value for your dollar if you buy the crappy cheap stuff. Pudding is also super cheap and easy to make.
I didn't die in college so I assume there's plenty of nutrients and whatever in the food. Almost no cooking too which is great for someone like me who is super lazy.
You're hung up on an over simplistic view of chemical reaction energy. Remember things like solute precipitation or aggregation as compounds are concentrated. Again, you can be pedantic about the freezing not directly causing a chemical change, but the structural change allows new reactions to occur, things like fat going rancid and proteins denaturing.
>loss in salt solubility of myofibrillar proteins (approximately 50% in 15 days) and in a gradual loss in water solubility of sarcoplasmic proteins
>Evidence presented supports the thesis that disulfide bond formation contributes to the observed loss in protein extractability during frozen storage
>onlinelibrary.wiley.com
>total extractable protein content dropped from 91 to 51% [...] primarily caused by the insolubilization of both sarcoplasmic proteins and actomyosin.
>increase in the free fatty acid content from about 1.6 to 9.1% [...] attributed to phospholipid hydrolysis.
>onlinelibrary.wiley.com
>on frozen storage, myosin, in particular, undergoes aggregation reactions which lead to toughening of the muscle and a loss in water‐holding capacity
>tandfonline.com
Rice cooker guy is right.
Get a decent-sized rice cooker and you can cook your whole meal right there.
Fill the bottom with rice and water, put eggs and veggies in the steamer basket on top and set it. Once the rice is done the eggs and veggies will be cooked through and all you need is salt/pepper/red pepper and you have yourself a basic meal that is probably less than 3 dollars.
I've steamed fish in the steamer basket and had Cantonese steamed fish and sometimes I use it as a standalone steamer. Rice cookers are amazingly versatile and if you're looking to eat on a budget and don't have much space it should probably be the first cooking implement you buy. You can make stews in them, mac & cheese. You can even brown meat if you jam a few quarters into the switching mechanism and don't let it flip from "cook" to "warm".
>Get them by the bulk, too, since it basically means you don't have to go out to buy as often and you restrain yourself from buying unneeded stuff.
i can't get meat on bulk because i live alone and even if i eat meat three times a day, by the time i finish it it isn't even close to fresh.
I thought this was cooking not chemical reactions board.
"turn the heat down to about 6 or 7" this is the least useful measurement ive ever seen
1. not every stovetop has the same settings.
2. many of them don't *HAVE* a 6 or 7
3. "6 or 7" is just completely arbitrary with no discernible real-life counterpart
fix your temparatures and you have a decent little guide there
Cheap healthful foods?
>Rice, make it it's quick, 10 cents a day
>Kale is the best vegetable, get like $2 worth each day to eat
>Whole Cooked Chicken for $8, it should last you a few days.
>Egg every day $0.50.
>Sunflower Seeds, 1 or 2 ounces per day for $0.30
You should find these at most supermarkets. Comes out to $5/day for 1500 calories. You can spend the rest of your money on good fruits like apples or avocado. Also I recommend supplementing B12.
Oh also frozen vegetables are cheap and good I recommend peas
>Chicken last a few days
I see you don't lift
Mine only goes to 5
Bong here but I imagine some things are even cheaper.
Cheap and Healthy Protein:
>Chicken Thighs £1.50 per KG
>Tinned Beans 25-50p for 400-500g
>Dried lentils £1 for 500g at most
>Nuts of various sorts 500g for maybe £2 (bare in mind they're very high calorie)
>Quinoa I've seen online for as cheap as 99p for 5KG
>Various forms of pork also cheap
All very cheap.
Cheap and healthy Carbs:
>Potatoes
>Brown rice
>Quinoa
>Lentils
>Pasta
Cheap and healthy veg:
>Carrots
>Onions/Shallots
>Leeks
>Bell peppers
>Swede
>Parsnip
>Brocolli
>Peas
Basically cook up 1 protein source (can be quinoa and beans can be added to any other), 1 form of carbs if not already used, and anywhere from 3 to all of the veg types and add stock and or wine and or water and or tinned tomatoes and herbs and spices and stew the stuff. Just make it up as you go along and it'll be cheap af and not cost too much as well as being healthy and wholesome.
>>Box of pasta $1
>>Ground meat $4
lol
I thought threads like these were not allowed.
Anyways, get fucked OP, youre in college and yet you cant even into basic shit like cooking for yourself.
They're not? Since when?
?
$10 is enough to eat for a day, easily.
Can you boil water? Congrats, you can make soup. Go to Wal-Mart. Look for a bag of Hurst's Split Peas. Copy the recipe off the back of the package (pencil and paper, use iPhone to take photo, whatever). Put the package back down. Look around the shelf for the Wal-Mart split peas which are half the price of Hurst's. Buy the Wal-Mart split peas. Also pick up some ham with the money you just saved. (You're welcome.) Grab some carrots, onions, salt, pepper, bay leaves, and butter while you're at it. Go home. Chop the carrots and onions and ham up, throw everything in the pot according to the quantities on the recipe (except you're using real ham instead of "ham flavoring packet"), and simmer for two hours. Let cool, remove bay leaves, serve.
Different places have different prices you retarded sperglord
Dude theres this video series on YouTube. It's a meme but it's actually pretty helpful. I actually love it. Here's a link. youtu.be
Ever since the McChicken came out, we've only been allowed to post about those.
This is depressing what are you talking about? Jesus that guy needs a hug
>$300
Where do you go to school? The minimum where I am is like $550.
Incorrect.
Fresh =/> Frozen >>>>>>>> Canned
Your story has touched my heart, leave you bank account details, I'll donate you some dollars to keep you well fed until end of semester
>is it possible to make a meal cheaper than 10 bucks?
Jesus user, you never cooked anything, have you? Next time you're home ask your mother to help her in the kitchen, so you learn something.
Stir fry every night. Make like 15lbs in one day and just eat that for a few days and repeat. Throw eggs on top. Ez pz
Go to Veeky Forums no place more frugal than over there
>Implying they know anything
They're like the Veeky Forums for business
>not from this board
damn i really hope people check out boards that interest them rather than "sticking" to one board
>college student
Ahhhhhh~ nevermind
>Buy a shitload of ramen
>Cook ramen
>"enjoy" ramen
Bonus points: Add flavour in ramen
you can get cheap and shitty cuts of beef at your local store and use that too. grill some onions, toast some bread, cook your beef and make a sandwich. put some lettuce on it too.
But I want to have nutrients, isn't ramen just calories and nothing else?
It's also a shit load of sodium
Thank you
Not that guy but if I was you I'd eat a lot of oats, eggs, and rice. Onions are good to put in rice, if you fry them first
Also one thing I do is but a giant 10lb bag of frozen chicken breasts, you can find them at like any supermarket, just season them with salt and pepper and whatever else, and cook them for like an hour at 375-400 degrees. You can eat with the rice, chop them up, etc. I'm surprised nobodys mentioned it as they're very cheap for the amount of chicken you get
do you not have a freezer? You can freeze meat for later
Oh shit I'm retarded I guess if you're in a dorm you might have to disregard almost everything I said
Where's the ramen infograph when you need it?
Is it impossible for dorm people?
How long do you let the fish steam in the basket? I'm pretty newish to cooking too and cooking meats is daunting to me.
He's a registered sex offender, m8.
yes it is. buy a cook book. even with a basic hot plate and a microwave / toaster oven you can make better and cheaper meals