Bachelor Food.

So, I live alone and poor, and I want food. I'm not interested in cooking, but pre-packaged stuff tends to be expensive and gets old after a while. I've made up a couple of simple recipes that I can share, but I'd like some help in return. My diet sucks!

My first one is a breakfast food, and dirt cheap. You just cook up some rice (I use 3/4 cup for one meal, and 1 cup for if I want lunch too), two eggs (or four, depending), a tablespoon of butter (I'm sure some would argue that's too much butter, but I counter with the assertion that there is not such thing as too much butter), and some honey (I dunno how much, one or two tablespoons maybe?) all together. Let it cool, open it up and sprinkle grated cheese over the top, close it again and let the cheese melt.

So far, that recipe has served me well. Eggs and rice are the cheapest foods you can buy. Cheese is more expensive, but comes in bulk and lasts forever as long as you store it right. The honey made me balk at first, but the amount you use is so small that you're effectively buying it in bulk. If you can't get honey, you can replace it with brown sugar. It doesn't actually contribute to the flavor much, but I've found that if it's not there, then the egg and rice flavors combine in a very non-tasty way.

Anybody out there have ideas for me? I could especially use a snack food idea for gaming right now for, something that tastes good, but doesn't leave you feeling gross or dehydrated, or leave crumbs and grease all over everything.

Spaghetti.

Cheap (especially with bulk deals), quick, and customizable

Here, I'll share my "student wok" recipe. Super cheap, easy to make and pretty good.

Slice any kind of meat (feel free to use the cheapest you can find of chicken, pork, fish, beef) into small pieces, and start frying it in a frying pan with oil. Estimate about 100 grammes for each portion and make sure you fry it until it's cooked all the way through. Then add the same amount of vegetables (preferably cheap frozen vegetable mixes, or cut your favourite vegetables down to an appropriate size). Add salt and pepper (and soy/teriyaki sauce if you like), then let it sizzle on medium heat until the vegetables are done. Serve with rice or noodles (cheap storebrand noodles work great).

Normally, I can make this dish for under 20 NOK (2.6 USD) per portion with chicken.

I'm not a bachelor but I try to eat inexpensively and reasonably healthy food. I got this recipe off a Tumblr post and it makes a really tasty soup.

YOU WILL NEED: Fresh tomato(es), whatever kind is cheapest. I use one medium tomato's worth per serving. Eggs. Some sort of bullion cubes/soup base. Quick-cooking noodles. (I use rice noodles but you could even use a packet of ramen for the noodles and the seasoning for the soup base). And a little oil.

Put a pot on the stove. Chop up the tomatoes, plop them into the pan with a splash of cooking oil, fry them up a bit. Add water (depends on how much soup you want to make) and the soup base/bullion/flavoring. Bring to a boil. While it's coming to a boil, crack eggs (1-2 per serving depending on how eggy you want it) and whisk them (same as you'd do for scrambled eggs.) Pour a little at a time into boiling water. They'll start cooking right away; this is what you want. Throw in the noodles, continue cooking until noodles are soft. I like to add some sriaracha sauce before I eat it because I like a little more "zing".

This is cheap, especially when tomatoes are in season, quick to prepare, and quite filling. Can be a bit high in sodium depending on what sort of soup base you use but if you're worried about that you can either use low sodium broth in place of water or use a saltless seasoning blend. It also keeps well enough if you want to make a double portion and put some in the fridge for lunch the next day.

Not a bachelor just a student but is there anyway to get spaghetti sauce in smaller sizes every time I look for the sauce it's always family sized and goes bad before I can eat it all. Is there any size for a single student living alone with a small appetite.

None that require meat, sorry. Meat sauces that use ground beef or similar are normally made for about 4 portions because of how meat is usually sold. While you could ask a butcher to make just enough ground beef for one portion, the cost would outweigh the benefits.

Of course, the simple solution to that is to simply make a big family-sized pot of sauce, divide it up and freeze individual portions. Spaghetti sauce freezes well and then it's just a matter of reheating it with freshly cooked spaghetti. It's also wonderfully cost-efficient.

^ That. That's the thing when cooking solely for yourself. You never NEVER just make one serving worth of something. You cook once and eat multiple meals out of it.

For example I have a recipe I call "enchiladas gringas" (kinda like the enchiritos of old from Taco Bell). You cook up some refried beans, some ground beef, get some cheese, some enchilada sauce or green chili. You fill a flour tortilla with beans, beef, cheese and a little bit of sauce/chili, wrap it up tight and place in a medium glass oven pan (I wanna say 8x20 but I think that's too small). Keep doing this until you've either exhausted your beans/beef or you fill the pan, whichever comes first. Then you smother the top of the tortillas in the pan with your sauce/chili and top with cheese as heavy as you like. Throw into a pre-heated to 450F oven and cook for 10-15 minutes depending on size of tortilla. You'll end up with about 5 or 6 enchiladas per pan. For smaller eaters a single 8-10 inch tortilla per enchilada can make a meal. For bigger eaters, you use the big burrito size ones. Depending on how many you can eat in one sitting, you can make a minimum of 3 meals out of that and a maximum of 6. (You can eat for a week if you only eat half a burrito size one.) They keep really well too for upwards of 7 days. Just wrap em up in aluminum foil and throw in the fridge. Any leftover beans and beef you might have from wrapping up you can make burritos out of.

A lot of food for only about 20 bucks maximum. If you shop around right you can make all that for less than 15. Think about it, possibly a half dozen or more meals for a maximum of 4 bucks per meal (usually less if you have burrito leftovers) and it's a good tasting, good filling meal each.

edited 15th Feb '15 8:20:06 AM by MajorTom

^^ If you shop at a store that has a butcher counter, odds are that they sell ground beef and pork sausage in bulk. You can buy as much or as little as you want You aren't limited to the prepackaged 1- 3- and 5-pound rolls.

But yes, if you have a fridge with a freezer, you can make up a biggish batch of spaghetti sauce and freeze it in serving sized amounts.

^ Pan size? I think you're probably talking about a 9x13. That's a standard rectangular cake pan. I don't know that I've ever seen an 8x20 . Square cake pans come in 9x9 and 8x8. Then there are jelly roll pans, that are something like 13x20, but are less than an inch deep — no room for sauce there.

edited 15th Feb '15 9:12:42 AM by Madrugada

Huh, cool. That sounds more expensive than just buying 400 gram packs from the cooler, though.

^^ Something like that.

I just meant the tomato sauce but yes freezing it works well to a point, my freezer is a tiny one which makes sense since it has to fit in my tiny dorm.

^^^ You have to price check. In my store, sometimes the pre-pack is less expensive, sometimes the bulk is.

I love my little slow cooker. It is a godsend and can be used in dorms most of the time too depending on your specific requirements because it's not an open heat source.

I have a little crock pot that cost $9 and you can do anything with it from rice to beans to mean, casseroles and cakes even. It's the right size for my family without making too much and is nice because I can just throw everything in it before I leave for work or before bed and it's ready when I come home/wake up.

This lets me save money because I can make dry beans which are pennies to the pound compared to canned stuffs.

Rice, beans, corn, and peas were my token meals. Just mix a bit of those four ingredients together and you have a filling meal that will also sustain you between workouts.

Does vodka count as food?

No, Mark. Vodka is not food.

Maaaannn.... Maddie why you gotta kill my vibe?

But seriously, Hamburger Helper, 4 Cheese Lasagna flavor. Delicious and perfect bachelor food.

A favorite "gamer snack" of mine could not be more simple to prepare.

Edamame. Bags can be found at most supermarkets now, but if you have an Asian specialty market near you (I have an H-Mart) big bags of it can be found cheaper there.

Steam or boil - add salt. Put them in a bowl with a second bowl to put the spent pods. Not greasey... good if you like vegetables. Personally, I like Kosher salt on them because it's flaky. If you aren't familiar with edamame, you eat them by sucking on the pods and popping the little beans into your mouth.

If you want to make food for multiple people or have freezer space to store stuff and you have a crock pot / slow cooker, there are my chimichangas. I learned from my mother, though they were a common food where I grew up. For those, you need large flour tortillas, basic cooking oil, a jar of salsa, a can of green chilies and a small beef roast or london broil - which can be cheap if you manage to get it on sale. You don't need to worry about it being "good" meat, either, since you will be slow cooking the heck out of it. You toss the roast in the crock pot with salsa and the green chilies, let it cook on low for a few hours, take it out, shred it up, put it back in. After that, you roll it into little burritos with the tortillas and lightly fry. Recommended with sour cream. My guy likes to take the leftover juice in the bottom of the crock put and reduce it down into an enchilada sauce for them.

Now CDRW, that sounds delicious and all but it's way too much effort for breakfast. Allow me to present an alternative. The ideal breakfast, lunch, and sometimes snack: yoghurt with oats.

Literally just that. You throw oats into a bowl, pour yoghurt over them, and stir. When you're done stirring, put the spoon into the bowl vertically; if it doesn't stay upright, add more oats. If you like, you can sweeten it with jam, honey, brown sugar, etc..

This breakfast of champions can be prepared and consumed very quickly; it delivers a hefty dose of energy; it doesn't leave crumbs on your desk (unless you have terrible hand-eye coordination); and both yoghurt and oats will keep for a long time – very convenient if you're on an irregular schedule and often find yourself away from home for a couple of days.

As for dinner, an old favourite of mine is my dad's spinach recipe. It's cheap, quick, easy, and delicious. For 4 servings, you will need:

• ~800 g of canned spinach
• 350 g of pasta (I prefer fusili, but penne or macaroni work just as well)
• 2 onions (one large, one small)
• 1 red bell pepper
• 150 g of diced ham
• 100 g of grated cheese

Preparation:

1. Put the spinach in a sieve, to lose the water from the can/jar/pot/whatever it came in.
2. Put on some water for the pasta.
3. While waiting for the water to boil, cut the bell pepper and the onions. (Wash the bell pepper first.)
4. Once the water boils, throw in the pasta. At the same time, melt some butter in a sizeable casserole pan (you can also use olive or sunflower oil, of course.)
5. Fry the onions in the casserole pan until they're nice and glossy. Don't fry them too long before adding the other ingredients; they should have a few brown spots, but not much more than that.
6. Add the spinach, the bell pepper, and the ham. The order doesn't matter all that much; neither does the timing. Regularly stir the contents of the casserole pan.
7. The spinach mix and the pasta should be ready in about the same time (7-8 minutes). If one is quicker than the other, just turn the burner of the "fast" pan down low, so it is kept warm but barely cooked any further, while you wait for the "slow" one.
8. Drain the pasta, then throw it into the casserole pan with the spinach mix. Also throw in the grated cheese. Stir for a minute or so, until the cheese is molten and the pasta is more or less uniformly mixed through the stew.
9. Season with pepper and/or Maggi, and enjoy!

Note: Spinach contains nitrate. If you keep it for more than a day or so once it's out of the jar (like Major Tom said, you cook once for multiple meals) the nitrate can turn to nitrite, which is traditionally seen as a health hazard. However, modern fridges and freezers strongly reduce the effect, and the actual health risks of nitrite are dubious at best. Still, if you're having "fragile" guests over (small children, grandparents, pregnant women, etc.) it's probably better not to feed them reheated spinach.

edited 7th Mar '15 4:09:05 AM by MidnightRambler

This site's been a godsend for me: http://www.budgetbytes.com

edited 4th Mar '15 3:48:39 PM by MedusaStone

Thanks! This is a nifty site!