Oy, help me with college dinners

[Joecoolyo]

So basically for the past two weeks I've been living off of grapes, apples, pasta, corn chips, and peanut butter sandwiches. It's starting to get a bit drab, and I'm looking for something new to cook/eat. Problem is, I barely know any recipes.

I assume a majority of you cook for yourselves on a daily basis, and know a decent amount of recipes. So, all I'm asking for you to do is to help me and divulge a couple good easy ones I can make for dinner. I don't want anything that's going to take extraordinary long, or require a lot of equipment to make (i.e. can't make lasagna since I don't have a baking tray to make it in). Just simple, yet filling things that are preferably good for me. Also cheap-ish if possible.

United citizens of the OT, whatcha got for me?

 

[Defiant47]

Sausages.

Buy cooked sausages. Put them in a pot of water and warm it all up. Eat sausages with bread.

Buy uncooked sausages. Throw them on a pan, or an oven-friendly pan and throw that in an oven. Eat sausages with bread.

If you want a bit more excitement, get canned beans, green beans, etc.

 

[Borachio]

Summer salad

Dice some cucumber, and sprinkle with salt.
Finely chop some red onion. Sprinkle over the cucumber.
Very finely chop some parsley. Sprinkle over...
Take a few chili bits. Sprinkle..
Roughly chop up a little lettuce. Spr...
Slice up some tomatoes. (You know the rest.)

Mix 3 parts best quality olive oil you can afford with 1 part white vinegar by shaking them up in another bottle together.

Liberally apply to the salad. And mix it all together. Leave it to stand for 10 minutes.

Slice some nice crusty bread thickly.

Shovel the salad into your mouth with a spoon, while mopping up the oil and vinegar with the bread.

(Get adventurous: add nuts, beetroot, spring onions, mushrooms, hard-boiled eggs, tinned fish, sweetcorn, oranges, apples, basil, rocket, mustard, etc. Pepper? Do you like pepper. Sweet pepper or black pepper.)

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

So basically for the past two weeks I've been living off of grapes, apples, pasta, corn chips, and peanut butter sandwiches. It's starting to get a bit drab, and I'm looking for something new to cook/eat. Problem is, I barely know any recipes.

My college diet was basically bananas, bread, hummus, deli meat, pork & beans, and tea. Sounds like you're doing fine.

 

[civver_764]

Try consuming your fruit via a fruit smoothie. Idk how much money you have but you could get deli meats and cheese and make sandwiches. You can buy dressings and seasonings for it too. Eggs are really easy to prepare, so you could make omelettes or egg sandwiches(get bacon too if you want).

If you're into frozen food you could get frozen pizzas, waffles, toaster streudels, hot pockets, etc. Ramen noodles and Mac and Cheese are pretty popular.

If you have more time you could just buy frozen meat and make all sorts of things.

 

[Ajidica]

Chicken tacos are quite nice. Boiling the chicken can be a bit of a pain, but you can make a big batch at once and reheat it throughout the week. The meat that goes into chicken tacos can go into pretty much anything.

Also; experiment with black beans, rice, some sort of sauce (I prefer A1 sauce or taco sauce, some prefer salsa), and whatever meat you have in the fridge. Microwave it until warm and it is pretty tasty.

Lastly, the local grocery store should have a lot of seasoning. Try Greek seasoning on pasta, it tastes much better than plain pasta.

 

[Borachio]

Buy yourself a cook book. A nice simple elementary one.

Read it until you feel very hungry. And then go to work.

 

[Antilogic]

I assume you have access to at least a small kitchen?

If so, either soak some chicken breasts or pork chops in a marinade (you can buy pre-packaged ones if you want to do it quickly), and then bake them in the oven for about 30-35 minutes (for the average American-sized chicken breast, smaller organic stuff will require less time) at 350 °F. Alternately, buy a dry spice rub from a butcher's shop and coat the breasts/pork chops with it immediately before baking. This is my preferred method since it is quick.

While this is in the oven, microwave up one of those steamed vegetable packs from the frozen food aisle or do a stovetop rice/couscous dish (they have prepackaged box stuff if you don't want to cook everything from scratch and do it quickly). Or, do both--with a little practice, you can have a three-part meal within 40ish minutes. And you'll have more than enough leftovers for probably another 1-2 meals so it will cut down on future cooking time.

The eggs and sausage suggestions above are pretty good ideas too--you can do a few different things with eggs, whether scrambled, sunny side up/over easy, or omelette, and you can put about any diced vegetable or meat in an omelette and it will be good.

Tacos/quesadillas are great for a change of pace, and I'll even do hamburgers stovetop too for some variety.

 

[illram]

College grocery store run in no particular order:
Spaghetti, rice, sausages, ground beef, tortillas, black beans, pasta sauce, bread, peanut butter, jelly, cheese, tuna, eggs, mac and cheese, maybe some milk, cereal, yogurt, spinach or romaine, onions, garlic, bell peppers, sausages, avocado, bananas, hot dog and hamburger buns if you're feeling it. I am probably forgetting some things but you get the gist. Buy all of this and you can make three square meals a day for a week. Box of Ramen for when you have no time or energy.

 

[Zelig]

Buy a bunch of vegetables. Chop up, put in wok/frying pan, add to noodles/rice/quinoa. Add hot sauce.

 

[Traitorfish]

Curry is a student's best friend. Cheap and easy without being bland, and a few variations on the same basic recipes can stop things getting repetitive. You can put together a vegetable curry for something like £1 a meal, and even meat curries aren't too much more because of the relatively sparing way the meat is used. Get yourself a wok, a curry cookbook and some spices, and you're sorted.

It does, unfortunately, require learning to sort-of-almost-cook, but there's margins of error you could drive a bus down, so it's not as difficult as it might seem.

 

[Zelig]

Most cooking has pretty big margins of error - I cook a lot, and the only things I have to be really careful with are baked goods. So I generally don't bother baking.

 

[mangxema]

I'm a pretty lazy cook. I don't eat out much because I'm lactose intolerant but I don't particularly enjoy cooking. So everything I make is something that I can throw on the stove, do something else (like say... write this post), and then jump back when it sounds or smells like it's time to do something. (Fair warning: your stove might get a little dirty occasionally. Whoops.) So here's what I've made recently/will be making this week:

- Lemon Pepper Chicken: Put some chicken in a pan. Squeeze the lemon juice onto the chicken. Add pepper to your taste. (I like a great deal.) Serve with rice or something and maybe some steamed vegetables. (You can by the bagged stuff if you want, but if you have a veggie steamer it tastes much better to steam fresh veggies than use the frozen stuff.

- Blackened Chicken: Same as above except replace the pepper with a blackening/cajun spice mix and the lemon juice with a bit of olive oil. Can also eat on a sandwich or over a salad (I like spinach myself).

- Basic BBQ: This one will require a crock pot and some time, but it's pretty cheap, requires little effort. Put a pork roast in the crock pot along with a bottle of root beer. Cook for several hours. Take it out and pull it apart. (This should be very easy!) Then add a bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce. Makes enough for probably 8-10 sandwiches. Great for if you have friends over.

- Tacos: I'm guessing Ajidica uses one of those seasoning packets. I just get a can of chipotle peppers in a adobo sauce, dice 'em up, add some other spices (mainly red pepper and paprika), and use that as a marinade of sorts (that's probably not the right word). Afterwards, I usually throws the leftover meat and veggies into a batch of mexican rice mix. That will get you another couple meals.

 

[Zelig]

Corn is in season now (depending on location) and super easy to make - put in pot of cold water, bring to boil, remove and eat. (Season with salt/butter/pepper.)

 

[capslock]

Go to the cafeteria. They have everything you need.

 

[sophie]

If it hasn't already been said, I'd also recommend buying a cookbook and just picking a day of the week in which you cook something from the book. If you have friends (particularly friends of the opposite sex) it can be a lot of fun to do it as a "party night" or group event or whatever.

It'll add some variety to your diet, you'll learn a lot about cooking (nothing sexier than a man who can cook ), and you'll get some great ideas for future meals.

If your school is part of the collegiate readership program you probably get access to free copies of the New York Times and every Thursday the NYT has a food section with great recipes to try. Doing that was one of my big hobbies last year.

Also I am disappoint that you didn't riff on The Hunger Games in some way in your tags :<

 

[Zelig]

If it hasn't already been said, I'd also recommend buying a cookbook and just picking a day of the week in which you cook something from the book. If you have friends (particularly friends of the opposite sex) it can be a lot of fun to do it as a "party night" or group event or whatever.

The cheap way to do this is to go to the grocery store with the book, see what's on sale, and pick meals based on those.

 

[illram]

Do you need a cook book these days? Google "easy chicken dinner" or whatever. Done.

 

[Zelig]

It's nice to have a book that teaches techniques, rather than focusing on specific recipes.

 

[sophie]

It's nice to have a book that teaches techniques, rather than focusing on specific recipes.

It's also an easier way to narrow down your focus. There are so many recipes out there it can be overwhelming; getting a simple standard cookbook will help you narrow it down to things you can a) conceivably do, and b) are actually going to reliably taste good (assuming you pick a good book). It also helps turn the thing into a game or challenge or event or whatever. You can see yourself progressing as a cook as you make your way through the book. Plus it's more fun.