One thing, is if you have a domino's pizza or something around save up those little marinara sauce packs they have when someone else orders just nab it. IF you can get these little packets mix one with a bowl of ramen noodles instead of adding the flavor packet. Dump some cheese on it and WHAM! Hobo spaghetti. Its awful and I wouldn't recomend it except that the two or three times I was lowered to this level it seemed rather filling.

The poor mans Burrito: Put two cheap hot dogs in the middle of a cheap tortilla shell. Dump some cheese, and some salsa or taco sauce on it. Roll it up and microwave it. I make and eat those even when I'm not poor for some reason.


Last but not least there is the boiled egg. If you have a microwave, and a coffee mug you can boil an egg. This has saved me on so many occasions that I cant count. Never comes out very nicely, but if you can get the shell off (without burning yourself in your hungry haste) and scramble it up on a paper plate with hot sauce, cheese, and pepper it'll do a hungry stomach good.


Hope that helps man.

If you're looking for protein, I've always had good results in the "danger meat" area.  Go to a supermarket -- not the high-end ones, they frown on this -- early in the day, and you'll find any number of packages marked "Special Today!" or something like that. Sometimes they're in their own forlorn little section, sometimes they're placed with other, non-discounted packages of the same type. What they are are meats approaching or at their expiry dates. Sometimes you can't tell the difference to look at the packages, and those are the best kind to get; sometimes there's a little bit of discoloration. DON'T buy anything that's going shiny or green, but a little bit of brown never hurt anyone.

Obviously, stick to the cheap cuts of meat and ground beef, and pay attention to what the discounted price is. Filet mignon at 40% off is still pretty pricey, and if they're only taking thirty cents off a package of aged ground beef, it may not be worth it.

Once you get the meat home, use it or freeze it the same day, or you might lose your investment. Once you open the package, check the smell, and watch out for sticky- or tackiness. If in doubt, throw it out. Once you do this a little, you'll get a much better feel for what will most likely be okay to use.

If you're a student with limited travel options, you may not have much choice in stores, but if you can shop around a little bit, chances are you'll find a market with much lower prices on meat than others.  Combine that with the "Danger Meat" concept and you'll have a winner.

One of my favorite specific cheap meat options is chicken thighs. One local market will frequently run a special of $.77 per pound. I buy two large packages, something like 16 thighs, for about $6. I take them home, dump them in the crock pot with a cup of cheap wine and a cup of chicken stock ( you can replace that with 2 cups of water and 2 bullion cubes), add some garlic powder, and then I basically let them cook until they fall apart. I take them out of  the liquid, let them cool a bit, take off the skin and remove the chicken from the bones. I wind up with about 3 pounds of chunked/shreddable chicken, and when I strain the remaining liquid it makes an incredibly rich chicken soup, because of the slow cooking of the bones and skin; just add some chopped veggies, a little bit of the chicken, salt and pepper, and maybe a pack of ramen, and you have several meals before you even start to touch the remainder of the chicken, which can be used in barbecue, sandwiches, wraps, tacos, salads, etc.

All in all, a pretty worthwhile purchase.

Heh. This is probably going to wind up on my blog.

Get in the habit of going shopping around half-an-hour before closing, that's when the produce that expires that day will be more agressively marked down. But sharpen your elbows, you might end up in a scrimmage with a bunch of OAPs when the guy with the pricing gun comes round! I used to vie with the little old ladies for the posh bakery breads marked down to 10p a loaf.

Also, try and work out when your supermarket gets the bulk of it's deliveries - more things will be reduced to clear the night before. My local supermarket seems to get fruit and meat delivered on Wednesdays, so Tuesday evenings are great for picking up bargains.

Ramen can be turned into a more complete meal by adding veggies and (if available) meat. Cabbage and onions are cheap and nutritious, and work well with ramen soup. Add in a few chunks of a cheap cut of meat, some cooked beans, or drop in an egg at the end of cooking, so it can poach lightly in the broth, and you have a complete meal. Stock cubes/bouillon cubes are your friend - turn a cheap can of tomatoes into a pasta sauce by adding a stock cube. Throw any veggies, pulses and or meat into a pot with some water, a hanful of rice or pasta, and a stock cube to make a soup or stew (I think my lowest point was making a stew of broccoli stalks and broken spaghetti because I had nothing left in the cupboard). Canned tomatoes are also great - they can be found ridiculously cheap, and you can use them as a base for a chilli or pasta sauce, on their own on toast (mm, tinned tomatoes on toast...) - how about pizza toast (seems to be a Japanese thing *lol*)? reduce canned tomatoes by about a third by simmering them gently. Spread the thickened tomatoes on thick sliced bread, add a sprinkle of grated cheese (grating seems to make cheese go much further than slicing) and brown under the grill.

Talking of pizza, I used to make a mean one from scratch...

Scone-dough pizza base (serves 2)
8oz (225g) self-raising flour (My local Aldi used to sell SR flour at 25p a kilo)
4tbsp olive oil or 4oz margarine (depending on budget - block margarine tends to be cheaper than the kind in tubs)
pinch of salt, pepper to taste
milk and/or water

rub the margarine/oil into the flour until you have something that looks like breadcrumbs. Add seasoning. slowly mix in enough water or milk to make a stiff dough that clings together in a big lump but doesn't run. If you make it too soft, add a little more flour.
Roughly flatten the dough out in the middle of a baking sheet, it shoud be 2 or 3 cm thick. Don't worry about it being rough and dimpled, this just helps the topping stay on. Reduce a can of tomatoes by a third by simmering gently. Spread on top of pizza base. Add anything else you fancy - garlic, onions, sliced cooked meat or sausage, drained canned tuna, veggies,  whatever you have to hand - and top with a handful or 2 of grated cheese.
Cook in a medium oven until the cheese is golden and bubbly and the base is crispy on the bottom. Probably costs about the same as the really cheap frozen pizzas from the 'value' section at the supermarket, but is more filling and tastes a lot better (and is much more impressive, if you have anyone to impress). A kilo of flour and a block of margarine will probably cost about 1euro, and make 4 pizza bases.

I just wanted to let all the cheap eaters out there that, even though the dietary needs are not met by ramen, I have found a line of ramen noodles that make an excellent base for any cheap meal.

The line is Nissin's new "Chow Pasta" line.  The "Chow Mein" line is pretty good too.

I just mention it because it is $1.00 per package, and has extras that make it more enjoyable.  For instance, the Alfredo version has dried real onions and garlic clove in a seperate packet that adds a nice "real food" flavor to the noodles.  The Tomato and Basil one is tasty, too.  Both are good with some canned chicken and some added vegetables.

In a pinch, they make a really quick meal by themselves too... though not terribly nutritious.

I just found out about the most wonderful thing a few weeks ago: Angel Food Ministries. Unfortunately, it only operates in the US, but I strongly urge everyone here to check it out. From checking their home site, it looks like it operates in 39 states and the District of Columbia.

Here's the deal: Once a month, you place an order for a box of food. You have no say what's in it, but the monthly list is up on their website. You pay $30, which is roughly half the value of the contents. On a designated day, you go to the church you ordered it from and pick it up. It's that simple.  Here's the list of contents from this month:




Even if there's one or two things you don't want in there, you're still getting a hell of a deal. If you really don't want it, donate it back to the church. I'm sure someone WILL want it.

I have to admit my first instinct was, "Well shouldn't I leave this for the people who really NEED it?" The answer is, oddly enough, no. Because the more people order from this ministry, the more food they can provide. They buy in bulk, and the prices drop through mass ordering. This is something that can benefit everyone. I challenge ANY college student not to be able to live off of this for close to a month. Plus beer, of course.

For seniors (the citizens, not the students) they provide boxes with premade meals. And if you buy either the basic or the senior box, you get access to ordering the specialty boxes. Here they are for January:


Make no mistake, those are some damn good prices. This almost isn't a charity, it's a collective, and it's working.

I urge you to look into it in your area, and support it. I'm going to this month. And next month I'll start doing one of the specialty boxes as well.

That's an insanely good deal for the meat alone, Aldy. 

I'm not sure to what extent this applies to the world outside the UK, or even how many people may know about these, but it's worth mentioning, especially if you're from a small, rural town like me.

Most universities in the UK seem to be in the larger, more multicultural cities. This is a tremendous advantage for us students. What I've discovered recently, is that there are hundreds of small shops selling foods from specific regions for basically nothing. We've got some fantastic Thai, Indian, and Polish shops near us that sell some of the most wonderful herbs and the like you can imagine. The shop owners near us are really good and can often give advice on their use. These can be used to break the mundanity that is, to my knowledge, a lot of university cooking. Some of them even give completely new flavours I never even knew could exist.

Obviously, you have to smell and taste them first, and work out where they might work, but if you're living off a few cheap and easy dishes, these odd spices and the like can be used to extend the amount of time before you get sick of them.

They often also sell super cheap counterparts to regular stuff we'd find in stores (We're talking 10p cans of cola that don't taste like plastic bags or nothing), along with peculiar snack foods. A current weakness of mine is the shrimp tom yum flavour ramen sold at the oriental supermarket down the road from me, which weighs in at 15p a pack.

One thing I realised after I told a few of my coursemates about these little gems is that people seem to have reservations about using these shops. I'm not sure about other places, but Leicester, in all it's diversity, is very culturally segregated, with a lot of people sticking almost exclusively to their own ethnic groups. This has led to a widespread belief amongst students that if you're white British, you shouldn't be going in to the Thai or Polish or Oriental shops. This is completely wrong, in fact they basically welcome you in, and are far more helpful than the staff at the average corner shop or Sainsburys.

Buy lots of veggies when they are on sale and dry them. If dried properly they will store in the freezer for a long time. The problem of buying fresh is not being able to eat them that week. Drying them will depleat the vitamin c, but most of the other nutrients will be left unchanged. To cook with them in a stew or something just throw them in and they will rehydrate themselves. Otherwise you can soak them overnight in water or a marinade.

Another tip to buy veggies is to get them before the showers turn on. They absorb the water and end up weighing more.

Beans are a good buy and to get rid of the sound effects you soak them in water longer than overnight. You may loose some nutritional value but it will get rid of most of the sugars that cause gas.