Realms Beyond Recipies

[Doc]

I have no idea what posessed me to post this, but for some odd a reason a communal recipe thread seemed like a good idea. To get into each other's heads better and maybe try a new food.

I'll start.

I used to call it "The Reason I am Still Single" but now is refered to "The True Love Tester." A lot of my foods have fun names. No idea why. When I fix one of these now, my wife pleads and bargains with me for me not to eat it. I only feel that it is fair to post a warning, don't plan any romantic encounters or even any social functions for a few days... Or, if you are evil, make social plans. Punish society for their sins.

What you need.

6 large fresh eggs.
Several thick crusty slices of rye.
Bell pepper, cut into rings. I like using red and green for festive colours!
Cilantro, oragano, rosemary, dill, and salt and pepper to taste. Greens should be fresh and minced.
One vidalia or burmuda onion. Take your pick, both drastically change the sammich dynamic.
Good olive oil.
Red wine vinegar.
Mozerella cheese, hopefully freshly home made. Can also use feta cheese or even ricotta.
Capers and a pickle.
Oh yeah, some baby romaine head lettuce.

Be very careful how you prepare the eggs. Cook them wrong and your sammich is ruined. Yucky. I like the 13 minute method, which I will cover here. Fill large pan with cold water. Add eggs. Salt water and add a splash of olive oil. Bring to rolling boil. The moment it comes to a rolling boil, remove from heat, cover, and let sit for 13 minutes. When the timer dings, quickly spoon out eggs with a bit metal spoon and drop them carefully into a cold water and ice cube bath to stop the cooking. Egg whites should be soft and silky feeling, not rubbery. Yolks should be velvety and slightly crumbly, never hard or green or black. Eww. The texture is everything here.

Chop eggs into hunks. Don't mince, chop. Hunks. Large bit sized pieces. Chop mozerella into hunks. Add a small portion of eggs to a large stainless steel mixing bowl. Add a slight splash of olive oil and red wine vinegar. Add more eggs. Toss the mix, don't stir it with a spoon as you will only moosh the eggs. There should never be to much oil or vinegar. Just enough to coat the eggs, but not enough to be loose and runny at the bottom of the bowl. Add seasonings. Toss carefully. Add cheese. Toss. Add capers. Toss.

Prepare bread. I like mine lightly toasted, to carmalize. On bread, drizzle a slight amount of olive oil and vinegar, and add a smidge of the freshly minced oregano. On the bottom slice, lay a bed of fresh baby romaine leaves. Carefully spoon egg salad mixture on to lettuce bed. Add a slice or two of onion, a few rings of bell peppers, add top slice of bread. Serve with a fresh dill pickle... Hopefully home made as the store bought ones are nasty... Eww. Especially good with a dark bitter ale for some reason. I find the taste irresistable and delicious... I eat these probably, hrm, 2 or 3 times a week.

Delicious... And good for you. Different, as most people think of egg salad as nasty mustardy mayo nastiness smeared onto bread. Blech.

Again, I must warn you...

After eating this, your breath will smell like you french kissed a zombie. Your SO will most likely flee from you. So will most other folks. Eating one of these is antisocial at best, criminal at worst, with Dubbya showing up at your door asking you about Dubbya Emm Dees. Please, for the love of all things good, don't dutch oven your SO after eating one of these. (Farting and pulling the blankets over their heads) Don't go on car trips. Don't go to movie theatres. Don't take romantic baths together, unless you really did want a bubbling hot tub on the cheap. Do NOT feed to small children and then send them home with their parents, as said parents might try to put a voodoo curse on you or give you the evil eye come next gathering. Do NOT feed to dog or cat or fox or house hold pets. Just take my word on this one mmmkay?

[Sirian]

Doc's egg sandwich sounds... er... like a real gas. I may try it at some point, but I tend to shy away from intensive recipes with rarified ingredients or procedures.

One of my specialties is also an egg sandwich. (Not the first coincidental likeness to Doc, I might add). However, my creation has a distinctly Sirian bent to it: low maintenance! Quick, offbeat, and easy. Highly replayable, adaptable. Oh, and it comes with variants!


Ingredients:

Eggs. (one, two, three, four, as desired)
Bread. (Two slices, or three, as desired. Wheat or rye standard, other breads if desired).
Cheese. ("pasteurized process cheese food" or real cheese, any variety, as desired)
Onions. (Chopped onion (dried, spice rack) is standard, but use fresh if desired, any variety).
Bagged sauerkraut. (The main ingredient).
Black pepper.

NOTE: Play loose with the ingredients as desired, except the sauerkraut. If you use canned kraut with this recipe, men in black will track you down and exact cosmic justice upon you for crimes against nature.


Directions:

1) Grease, butter, or spray your frying pan to prepare for cooking. (I use Pam, any cooking spray will do).

2) Crack your eggs and empty their innards into your unheated frying pan. Stir/scramble until the whites and yolks are thoroughly intermixed. (Fussy folks can prescramble in a bowl, use a wisk, etc etc. I use my metal pan-flipper or in a pinch, a fork, to scramble right in the pan, takes only a few seconds, great for on-the-go cooking and anybody who wants to eat without making a lot of mess).

3) Sprinkle dried onion flakes to taste. Don't be afraid to use a lot. Adjust over time (ie, the next time you cook this meal) as desired.

Note: DO NOT MIX THE ONION into the egg! It will bunch up, give you too much in one bite, not enough in the next. If you sprinkled competently, you'll have it scattered around fairly well. Leave it like that.

4) Sprinkle black pepper to taste. Don't be a wimp, use at least a little. Use as much as you like. If you are a regular pepper user, you'll know what you're doing. If not, go light at first, add more each time until you get to "too much" and back off. Or whatever method suits you for finding the right amount for you.

5) Turn up the heat. Cook the egg. If your frying pan, heat, and egg cooking skills are perfect, ideal is to cook the eggs to where they are thoroughly dry (no goo, no runniness) while having to flip them only once. If instead you are human like me, you'll probably have to flip a couple of times in search of balance between "done" and "overdone" and you may get it wrong sometimes. Usually you need to cut your heat off BEFORE they are done, and that will depend on your equipment, so you figure it out. "Coasting" to the finish line usually takes about fifteen seconds. Better too dry than too runny, but your mileage may vary.

NOTE: Geniuses may have tools or skills for flipping an entire pan sheet of egg in one shot. Normal folks can run the edge of their flipper or fork across the pan diameter to cut the egg into wedges. DO NOT SCRAMBLE INTO SMALL FLUFFY BITS, leave the egg in a thin, dense layer. Flip your wedges one at a time, try to be quick about it so they come out about the same. If you see goo on top after flipping, you'll need to flip again. You want dry eggs when you're done.

6) Toast your bread. If you are a superwoman or a chef, you can toast your bread during the egg frying and have both ready simultaneously. If you are human like me, don't try to do both or you'll end up burning egg. If you're in a hurry, put the toast in before you start the egg. It will cool off (not ideal) before the egg is done, but if you're in a hurry you won't care anyway. If you're not in a hurry, do the toast after the egg is done.

7) Apply your cheese to the toast. (This is why it's better if it's hot out of the toaster. Melts the cheese a bit, but not too much).

8) Apply your egg sheets to the bread. Depending on the width of your frying pan, you may have to trim edges, etc, but try to get an even layering of eggs. Dividing your egg sheet into quarters will fit most neatly on the bread, but whatever works best for you.

9) Dip your sauerkraut out of its container (you probably should transfer it from the bag to a jar after first opening) and add lots. (I use more kraut than egg! You should adjust to your preference, though). Add it raw. Drain it, squeeze it, or let some juice drip back into the container, as desired. If you get too much juice onto the sandwich, your bottom bread will go completely soggy. That's not necessarily bad, but could get a little messy. Up to you how much draining to do and via which method. You want to keep the kraut stored in its juice in the fridge, though, between uses.

10) Apply the top bread slice, mash it down a bit (as desired), cut and serve. Eat up!


That's my "eggs and sauerkraut sandwich". Sorry for the uninspiring recipe name. Whaddya want? I'm no chef.

Variants chiefly include adding fresh ingredients: chopped bell pepper, chopped celery, chopped onion, chopped mushroom, chopped garlic. Adding meats can also work: ham, Canadian bacon, bacon, sausage, would be standard American choices, but for both meats and vegetables, pretty much anything that would go good with eggs in another recipe can be adapted here. I actually prefer the dried onion to fresh onion for taste, with this particular concept, but fresh onion is better for you and tasty in a different way. (Competes with the kraut, though).

I like this concept because I can have something different with little (and I mean little) extra work. Great concept for beginners. You can't hardly muck it up (except by using canned kraut, which really is a no-no). A good bachelor's recipe. Suits rugged individualists. May be ideal for variant scum.

If you don't like sauerkraut, I can't help you. Try somebody else's idea.


- Sirian

[Drasca]

Since there are D2 guides, LoL guides, variant guides, and the age old "review my character" from Classic Diablo. . .

I request a "Cooking and Eating guide" for bachelors and college students that are cooking on their own. So what did you live off of? What do you recommend living off of? I mean I'm *surviving* off various foods right now, canned Progresso Chicken Noodle soup (only sometimes stove heated, sometimes eaten directly out of can), Ramen Noodles, eggs, very occasional fruit, soda, popcorn, and water. Did I mention Ramen? Rice too. I can do rice, and none of that rice-cooker or instant rice nonsense (and can you believe it, some kids are using a MICROWAVE to cook rice. Heaven forbid---I mean if that's all that's around fine, but this isn't the case). Various other meats too. Mostly chicken. I lived off tater tots one week, chicken soup another, and boy were those bad choices. I need a staple food.

Maybe a few guidelines:

*Easy access (any of the following)
--Fast cook? I can make and eat these this week every ten minutes!
--Lasts long? I can eat a week or century later and not be sick!
--Easy to make in large batches. Hoo ha! I can eat a thousand of these this week
--Low preperation / clean-up time Woohoo! I can eat and do no dishes this week!
--Easy to get ingredients

*Preferably list foods/consumable ingredients cooking that don't easily spoil.
--I used to, but now refuse to eat anything that fuzzes over, ripened so sour and mushy soft that I hurl upon biting into, grows extensive mold (though I still eat partly moldy bread, no sight, but the taste of bitter mold is there), or any other "food" that has more nutrient consumer than nutrient. Nutritonal waste is a different matter. Cheese! Yum. Yogurt! Yum. Honey! Yum. Honey Ants! I want to try those yummy things!

*Can be eaten within the first few attempts to swallow.

*Nutritional--enough.

*I will not die from eating this. Its arguable that food helps speed the death process, but no-food, fatal disease and definite poisons are much faster ways of dying. The recommended recipes must not kill the person eating as comparably fast or faster than the above three conditions of ingestion.

*Cheap! That would be nice.



My own taste isn't so picky, considering I've eaten fried ketchup and liked it, eaten fried'n'dried /w salsa po'tater chips and loved it

So go ahead. Recall (or simply write down) your bachelor foods. Food on the go that I can preferably thrive on, instead of meager survival.

One more: I'm not embarassed to say this, because I've already reached critical mass for humilation. How does one prepare corn? Still unshucked. Well? Might I please have some corny responses? I have corn frozen in my freezer. Don't remember how long its been there. I want to eat it. Suggestions?

[Smegged]

I am one of those rice microwavers. If I want rice just to eat plain (with milk and sultanas) that's how I'll cook it. Why? Cause it's fire and forget. If I want rice for a recipe I'll cook it the good old fashioned way.

-Smegged

[Zed-F]

Well, I'm no cook, I'll freely admit. In university, I usually had soup & a couple buns for lunch at the faculty club (since my father is a prof at the university I attended) plus on-campus fast food: burritos, rice, whatever was cheap, filling, and convenient to where my classes were. But, I always could look forward to a nutritious meal when I got home.

Now that I'm working and don't live at home, I have to provide my own lunch, of course. And, I hate packing stuff around to and from work, like lunch bags, containers that I have to wash, packing a lunch in the first place, etc, it's all so inconvenient. So here's what I do instead:

1 can mixed vegetables
1/2 can beans (pick what you like, I use black beans, red kidney beans, navy beans, chick peas, or mixed beans)
Seasoning (pick what you like, I use pepper, onion flakes, and a dollop of pizza sauce)

Empty the veggies into a 500mL soup mug (juice and all.) Put in your seasonings. Drain the beans and put half the can. Mix well. Microwave for 3-4 minutes.

Voila, hot & hearty soup lunch is served! Pros:

• Cans will store indefinitely, no worries about spoilage, unless you leave the other half can of beans out and don't use it in the next day or two. You could substitute frozen if you have access to a freezer.
  
• I can buy a whole bunch of lunch fixings at once and store them at work, I don't need to cart stuff around all the time
  
• It's quite nutritious, especially since I use the veggie juice, and reasonably rich in protein and energy
  
• It's inexpensive. It works out to about a buck and a half per meal.
  
• Minimum fuss to prepare.
  
• You can vary the flavour by picking different types of beans and seasonings
  

Cons - you'd better like soup if you're going to have it often. Plus, we all know that beans are sometimes referred to as the musical fruit, so decide beforehand whether that will be a problem.

[Griselda]

If you're looking for a staple food, what's wrong with rice? You already know how to cook it, it can be made in large batches, is not poisonous, and it's pretty nutritious. Then, if you feel like adding something to it, you can, but if you're not motivated, well, the rice will do fine on its own. You could keep a week's worth or so around, and just have it available if you were hungry.

I've never been a bachelor (for obvious reasons ), but in college I think I lived off of ramen, macaroni and cheese, and those frozen microwaveable burritos. :chef:

-Griselda

[Sirian]

Maybe a few guidelines:

*Easy access (any of the following)
--Fast cook?
--Lasts long?
--Easy to make in large batches.
--Low preperation / clean-up time
--Easy to get ingredients

*Preferably list foods/consumable ingredients cooking that don't easily spoil.

*Can be eaten within the first few attempts to swallow.

*Nutritional--enough.

*I will not die from eating this.

*Cheap!

First, if you are thin as a rail on your current diet and amount of physical activity, then you're fine. If not, then I strongly recommend dropping "enough" from "nutrional enough" and moving that "enough" over to "easy enough to obtain ingredients". You may also want to add "enough" to "cheap" as in "cheap enough". The purpose of food is nutrition, and you will regret neglecting nutrition in favor of time saving when some day you look back and wonder what the heck you did with that time you "saved" that was so valuable to have made such an unwise tradeoff.

Second, fuzzy mold and other spoilage is a matter of time. Avoiding such is a matter of coordinating purchase with usage. Plan the general shape of your meals in blocks of at least a week, no more than two weeks. You can improve "cheap" but that comes into conflict with "don't spoil" or with "tastes good" or with "nutritional". Nutritional stuff means fresh stuff, for the most part. Produce. Milk. Bread. Meat. You can buy these in larger bulk and save money, but you need to consume what you buy before it spoils. Some things, especially meat, can be frozen, but freezing always harms taste to some extent. Use freezing to the extent that "cheap" really is the end all priority, looking for sales and stocking up when the price is lower, avoiding purchasing at regular price. And depending on your freezer space, of course. Produce doesn't generally freeze so well. The more fresh stuff you include in your diet, the better off you are on both taste and nutrition. You can't avoid work when using fresh ingredients, but you can prepare food in large batches, including some staple foods you won't tire of that you can prepare for an entire week, with one block of hours (two to four) invested, then a whole lot of good eating with later per-meal preparation measured in minutes or even seconds.

Third, the more impulse-driven and planning-resistant you are, the more it will cost in money. You have to decide which priorities are higher and how much they're worth. Think carefully. You're still forming your adult habits. Choosing wisely now can serve you well. Fail to do so, you'll look back and wonder what you were smoking at the time and wish there was a "reset button" so you could go back and play it over.


Some choices that have worked for me.

* Sandwiches! These are a staple item. All fresh ingredients, rapid preparation, great fallback item when you don't have the time, the will, or the energy to do more. Only problem is planning. Sandwich meats will spoil within a week to ten days, for some meats, maybe a little longer for others. Tomatoes, lettuce, onions or whatever other fresh vegetables you use will also spoil. Expect some wastage at times. You have to buy bread by the loaf, that's the chief thing that will waste. Be prepared to throw some out. It's cheap enough you can afford to waste some of it. Refrigerate to extend bread life. At the very least, store in a cool dry place (if you like your bread really fresh). Freezing the unused portion before it molds will also work, if "cheap" is a higher priority than "tastes good". Frozen bread is pretty much good only for toasting, so unless you have a toaster, that won't work. Since you have to buy bread by the loaf, lettuce by the head, meat by the half pound (at least) or full pound (unless buying deli meat, more costly, but also tastes best), then sandwiches are a week-long commitment. Plan for them as such and you'll have lots of quick, good eating.


* Spaghetti! Another staple item. You can do "quick spaghetti", throwing a jar of sauce at a pound of noodles with whatever else you're in the mood to add. Stinks on taste, modest on nutrition, makes a small batch.

MUCH better is to make real spaghetti. Prepare and cook fresh veggies and perhaps a pound of meat, makes three batches. Each batch matches with a jar of sauce and canned tomatoes to make a large helping of sauce, which goes with whatever noodles you like. Makes lots and lots. You get great, tasty, nutritional meals for all week, as long as you don't mind eating spaghetti every day, sometimes twice a day. Takes two hours minimum, up to four depending on how much fresh stuff you use and your vegetable preparation methods. (Food processors can save some time, but not as much as they'd like you to think). You need a frying pan and a large pot for cooking noodles, plus a stove with two burners and a sink. (If you don't have a stove !!! then prepare to eat a LOT of sandwiches! You also need a collander for draining noodles. Get one that doesn't have holes larger than noodle thickness.

Spaghetti should include the Triumvirate. You can't go wrong adding the Triumvirate to just about anything.
- Bell pepper
- Onion
- Celery

Buy a pack of peppers (3-4) or buy two to four loose. When you go to cook, wash em, de-core them. You can ditch the whole core, or just the stem. The fleshy core is kind of bitter, but safe and nutritrional. The seeds are great on fiber but tough to chew. I usually ditch the whole core, or occasionally I keep the seeds. Keeping all but the stem gives you more nutrition and better value on cost, but at the expense of taste. Your call. Also, if you're going to become a worshipper at the altar of the Triumvirate, you will need a proper altar to be bowing down over: it's called a wooden chopping block. Get one. It will save you time, and it will strengthen your commitment to fresh eating. You can cut veggies quickly and it cleans up quickly. You can do the work on your lap, don't need a counter, and you can watch TV (to some extent) while you work, to stave off boredom. Boredom during cooking is bad bad bad. You don't need disincentives or excuses for why not to feed yourself decently. Peppers will last a week easily in the fridge, unprepared. Onions and celery last longer, so the peppers are the item around which you must schedule. Once you have de-cored the peppers and set aside waste (cutting out any bad spots, too), slice and then dice on your chopping board.

Onions are the most flexible. Spanish (yellow) onions are the best on nutrition but the most bitter. You will have to try all the onion options to figure out which you prefer. I like white onions best. My father likes sweet onions (Vidallia, etc). My grandfather liked the yellows. Onions are straightforward. Peel them. Keep peeling until you reach the first juicy layer. Slice the onion in half vertically, NOT horizontally. This minimizes the juice emission and reduces the crying effect. Lop the top and bottom off the halves, then (on your chopping board) slice then dice. Precision not needed. Peeling will take you as long as dicing, probably, just as de-coring will take you about as long as dicing peppers.

Celery is easy. Three to five stalks, clean em, lop off the ends, split vertially into halves or thirds, then dice.

Always use the Triumvirate. You get a rich flavor and great nutrition, and since you're making spaghetti meals for an entire week, it's as time-efficient as anything else you might do involving fresh food. If this is as far as you go, you'll make it in under two hours total cooking time. There is more you can do, though.

- Mushrooms
- Black Olives
- Meat
- Garlic

Fresh mushrooms are great. Clean then slice-n-dice. Canned mushrooms are good, too. Drain and add. Olives I get in a can. I usually buy whole, pitted because they're cheaper, takes a couple of minutes to dice. Quick dicing can occur in a bowl if you're willing to scratch the bowl to heck and back: dump in olives and whack through them with a knife. Careful slicing by hand on your chopping board is more cumbersome. If you have a small food processor you're using to chop veggies, dump the olives into that and give it a whirl. Fresh garlic is great if you like it. Chopping garlic into tiny bits takes work. You can cheat and use garlic powder instead, that's what I usually do.

Meat is the problem item. Unless using fresh meat bought that day, you're dealing with frozen meat. Sausage or ground beef are the main choices, but you can use anything that floats your boat. Meat adds protein and flavor and the only reason NOT to use meat is to save (lots of) time. You have to thaw the meat, cook it first before anything else, drain, deal with the drained fat, clean your frying pan before proceeding if you want to minimize grease into the sauce. Meat alone can add up to an hour to your total effort. FORGET MEATBALLS. You're not a chef, you're a bachelor. Keep it simple. Obtain ingredient, cook ingredient, dice ingredient, mix and eat. Buying prepared meatballs is costly and you may get junky meat. Don't get fancy unless you want to waste a lot of time. Choose your meat, fry it, cut it into bits while cooking and or when done cooking.

Order of operations:
* Clean and dice fresh veggies.
* Prepare and cook meat, if using meat.
* Combine meat, triumvirate, and any other fresh ingredients in frying pan, fry.
* Divide your massive pile of fried meat-veggies into two or three large containers, depending on how much total ingredients you used. Keep one container out for today's sauce, refrigerate the rest.

You are now done with the fresh ingredients stage. Now you have veggies and perhaps meat to add to your sauce. Cooking sauce and noodles is a seperate venture, but on the first day, it will follow immedately after the veggie cooking.

To cook noodles: about a pound at a time is good. Boil water, add salt for taste and to avoid clumping, wait for water to boil, add noodles, stir, stir again one or two more times, cook to the number of minutes it says on your noodle box/bag, drain in collander over sink.

To cook sauce: Cooking sauce can usually be done during the noodle cooking. Start the noodle water first, you'll be done with the sauce before the noodles are done. Dump one container of your fresh stuff, already cooked, into your frying pan. Add one jar of spaghetti sauce. (Ragu, Prego, whatever you like best and/or your budget likes best. I tend to favor Ragu hearty or Prego). Add canned tomatoes: diced, crushed, or even tomato sauce. One can should do, but you might need two if using chunk or even whole canned tomatoes, as you need to drain off the juice, and what's left may not match what you'd get out of a can of crushed tomatoes or sauce. If draining juice from diced/whole tomatoes, save the juice and drink it whenever.

Now you have veggies, tomatoes, and jarred sauce in your frying pan. That's your total sauce mixture, thick with tasty meat and veggies, very nutritious. You pretty much only need to heat it and stir it all together, although you can add more spices at this point if you like, and cook the sauce as long as you wish to get all those flavors intermixed more thoroughly or to have any spices you added "take" and mix their flavor through the sauce. I usually use a pinch of two of "Italian Seasoning" and a healthy sprinkle of garlic powder.

Storage: You need to store your veggie batches, so you need containers for those. You need to store your current sauce mixture (leaving it in the frying pan is optional if you don't need the pan for other things, and you have a good lid). You need a bowl with a lid for your noodles. STORE NOODLES AND SAUCE SEPARATELY, mix and nuke a plate or bowl at a time whenever you want to eat. You'll have to cook more noodles, several times, but that's a twenty minute job, tops, with almost no mess. You'll have to cook more sauce when each batch runs out. Get out the next container of veggie mixture and repeat sauce-mixing/heating directions.

That's the best "make a large batch at a time" recipe I have for you. I still use it. GREAT FOOD. Yum.


If that spaghetti process suits you, I have a couple more in that vein. They are, of course, reliant on the trusty old Triumvirate. No fancy preparation. Minimal tools needed. Just choose good ingredients, prepare them in simple, straightforward, relatively time-efficient ways, combine, cook, and eat.

Canned soups and canned veggies are good ways to get decent, cheap nutritrion, and make for good fallbacks when short on time, or as supplementals to fresh eating. Fresh fruits should be included in what you do, great for snacking. Alternating sandwiches with milk-and-cereal works. If you try to do both at once (in the same week), you won't make it unless you are feeding more than just yourself. Dried foods (raisins, prunes, nuts, etc) can also help plug leaks, function as snacks, etc.

As tempting as it may be, try to avoid buying prepackaged, preprepared foods. They sugar everything up to disgusting levels, and if "cheap" is at all a concern for you, you can't afford to pay others to feed you junk. Minimize your sugar intake as best you can to fit with other priorities. Move to skim milk if you aren't there already, or at least drop to reduced fat milk. Ditch the sugar sodas. TRUST ME. Find an alternative if you're a soda freak. If you must do a lot of soda, go diet sodas. Avoid junk food. They call it junk for a reason. Or pick one or two favorites and moderate them, while ditching the rest.

Strive to increase your ratio of fresh food consumption. You'll feel better, do better. And you can do it without a lot of money or time, if you find good suppliers, choose a few key tools, and keep it simple.


- Sirian

[T-hawk]

I'm a bachelor, have been for a few years, and hate 'real' cooking, so here's what I usually live on...

Instant rice. Not just plain old rice, but stuff like the Lipton "Rice Sides" packages, with seasoning and spices built in. Those are still pretty cheap, like 80 cents or so per meal-sized package.

Pasta. It's pretty much impossible to screw up cooking it. Canned Ragu or store-brand sauce is fine, and add some oregano or other seasoning.

Various frozen meats - burritos, chicken nuggets, fish sticks. Get big packages at your local Costco or equivalent - they keep frozen just fine.

Fruit. Much better for snacking than candy or salty chips or cookies. Bananas are 49 cents a pound.

Canned soups - nothing wrong with 'em. Store "chunky" brands are good enough and are a buck or less for a meal-sized can. There's tons of different flavors, you don't have to get chicken noodle. Canned veggies and beans are good too.

Ramen, of course. I actually like the stuff, sometimes I just eat a block of it without even cooking.

Cereal is always a favorite. Although for breakfast, I usually grab a bagel for 50 cents from this one sidewalk cart outside my office. (Real New York bagels, can't get 'em anywhere else.)

Fast food is okay too. Don't go nuts getting an entire pizza or super-size fries every day, but treat yourself to modest stuff like dollar-menu burgers or takeout Chinese lunch specials.

For lunch at work, I grab modest fast-food like that about half the time, and take a sandwich with cold-cuts for the rest. Trying to cook and clean up afterwards in an office microwave doesn't really work very well.

And take a regular multivitamin. You can get a year's supply for like 10 bucks off the shelf. Much easier than worrying about whether you ate enough corn this week to get vitamin A, or whatever.


Edit: I posted along with Sirian. My suggestions are more along the lines of fire-and-forget cooking; if you do want to put some effort into the preparation, Sirian's suggestions sound great and I may try some of it.

A great alternative to regular milk is soy milk. I have a dairy intolerance so I've been forced down that path, but the stuff is just as good as cow milk and goes 2-3 months before spoiling. Soy milk is more expensive, to be sure, but at least around here it goes on sale for half-price often enough to stock up at those opportunities. And half the times I buy it, the register spits out a coupon for more soy milk next time I go.

And I second Sirian's suggestion to get yourself off soda. That's one of the worst products ever foisted on the grocery-buying public. The best thing you can drink is plain tap water - I almost always have a full cup by the computer. (Getting up to use the 'facilities' every hour or two helps to alleviate eyestrain, too. )

[barron of ideas]

A college age bachelor COOK???

eat pizza. If any is left over, it is ok cold for breakfast. If you have a microwave you can heat it, if you feel necessary. There are large numbers of places that will deliver pizza, even in the middle of the night.

Drink soda. That is why there are so many advertisements for it. Diet soda is likely better for you, but has no sugar, so you can't get a sugar high from it.

candy. What can I say, its sweet and generally available. I like junior mints (why are there no senior mints?) Butterfinger bars (stop where you are, buy a butterfinger bar) just plain chocolate bars (generic is fine)

coffee The traditional way to stay awake. If you don't have the coffee habit, you just aren't going to the right school.

Cake if you think ahead, most supermarkets and even bakeries (what a concept, a place that sells bread and other baked goods exclusively) will sell you an already frosted cake. You will need either a knife or a fork or ideally both to make use of a whole cake, Or tear it apart with your hands and lick them.

Brownies, can be obtained individually and are finger food, so you don't need utencils. Otherwise interchangeable with cake.

Beer aka ale, porter, stout. The primary food group for college students. usually in a can or bottle. Kegs are for serious drinkers, or a party. I understand civilization started so the important people (leaders who make these decisions to stop being a nomad herder hunter gatherer) could have beer, which requires agriculture to raise grain. They chose wisely.

(Edit) CHIPS any salted snack food like potato chips, nachos, doritos, etc. Come in either small or large bags. Usually bag of any size is eaten in one sitting either with beer or soda. rarely with both.

Hard Liquor Probably outside your price range. Also a grain product (exception Tequila, perhaps vodka if made from potatos.) Other alcoholic beverages include wine, (Thunderbird or other reinforced beverages are not recommended, you go to college and are not a street person) Home brew is a possibility, but as I am not of appalachian ancestry I have no special expertise in this area.

Dorm food This is a specialized topic. If you paid for it, likely you will want to eat some, when desparately hungry.

Mom's home cooking. Why you visit the folks, along with getting a loan and having you washing done.

Hamburgers. When I went to college they were 15 cents. Of course in state tuition was $100 per quarter. I understand things have changed, but as far as I know, hamburgers are still very popular, if considerably more expensive. Generally speaking a burger is about half the price of a real meal anywhere else. These days they come with a lot of ground beef substitutes. They may have one made with ham, but they have a problem deciding what to call it.

Fruit I don't recall ever seeing a male college student eat any. Some of the Ag students may not have had a choice. Apples were available, seldom eaten.

Eggs. If you get up before noon (sorry about that bummer of a class schedule,) you may be tempted by a concept called breakfast. Many people like to each the unborn children of chickens, boilled or scrambled. You may want to put sour cream or salsa or some other distinct flavoring on the mixture to avoid thinking about where the eggs came from.

Frozen food. Will melt. Icecream on a stick is a good idea in the summertime, if you can get one from a Good Humor man, or any vendor of any mood who has one for sale.

Movie Theater food. You are here on a date, right? Popcorn is obligatory, if you aren't a total tightwad. Soda, candy, sometimes hot dogs (these could be available in specalty restaurants or at on street food carts also) nachos with cheez (not cheese in my opinion) sauce. Whatever your date wants you should buy her (or him if you take woody allens advice that bisexuality doubles your chances for a date) and share.

I probably left something out, it has been a long time since I was a college student.

[Smegged]

go diet sodas

Diet drinks are pretty much the worst possible things you can feed your body. Not only are they full of carbon dioxide (like all soda drinks), but they are full of artificial sweetner, which is far worse than sugar for your body. Instead, if you really like the fizzy drinks, try this. Go out and buy one of the big two litre bottles of juice (whichever one takes your fancy). Buy some cheap plain noname brand carbonated mineral water. Mix 50/50 for optimal taste. Varients: Squeeze a lime into a full glass of cold mineral water and have a nice homemade lemonade (that tastes pretty good too!

Oh, and if grapefruit are available and in season, buy them and juice them. You only need the juice of one grapefruit. Dilute about 7/8 parts water to 1 part grapefruit juice and drink cold. Grapefruit juice is extremely good for you, and once you develop a taste for it the juice becomes quite addictive.

Sugar is one of the biggest evils when it comes to food. The other big evils are MSG, salt and chocolate. All of which should not be consumed in large quantities. Salt should not be used as a blanket covering for every meal made (spoils the taste if used too much anyway). MSG should be avoided altogether if at all possible. Chocolate, while providing a great sugar rush, and other temporary hormonal and chemical boosts, is extremely fatty, blocks calcium absorbtion in the body and can really mess with your health. Eat only in extreme moderation.

Also, no matter what you get, try to vary your diet continuously. Avoid eating great doses of milk products, wheat, soy, rye or basically any other grain. Too much of these can lead to an intolerance to them. The exceptions to this rule: rice and buckwheat. Both are extremely healthy and nourishing (brown rice only, white rice has had all of its nutrients washed out of it).

While I'm here, I might as well contribute to the quick and easy recipe part of the discussion . One of my favourites is to cut up a few slices of cheese into biscuit sized chunks, and have biscuits and cheese. A very quick and easy snack, which always tastes very nice, and is generally very good for you. Also, I'm a huge fan of tinned tuna. Get those small tins which have different flavours and use them as snacks. Fish is brain food remember (great for when exams are coming up ). Fresh fruit and veges make for great, quick and easy snacks. Especially in summer. Most people balk at the cost of fruit, which generally doesn't cost more than $7-8 per kilo (AU$, whereas they will purchase a 250 gram pack of chocolate biscuits for around $4-5. Never made any sense to me. Potato chips are another alright snack, when used in moderation. Just beware of MSG.

Now for the alltime quickest and easiest meal that tastes great, has nutritional value and can be made by anyone: Nachos! Just make sure you either make your own salsa, or buy a decent salsa from the supermarket. None of this frozen crap that some places sell. Lay out your cornchips (again, watch for MSG), spread salsa over liberally, and then finally add a layer of cheese (pretend you're making a pizza and you'll get a good idea of how much cheese to apply). Microwave for 2 mins (or use the oven if you so wish) and evoila :chef: . The only problem with this recipe is the expense of cornchips and salsa. Use leftover spagetti sauce (from Sirian's recipe), or make your own and it'll come in at a reasonable price.

Oh, and one more thing. It seems like I use a microwave a fair bit from what I've said. However, I tend to use the microwave as little as possible to cook things like vegetables. Microwaving is the worst thing that you can do to fresh food, and will strip them of nutrients and vital minerals. If you are going to cook vegetables (salads are much healthier), steam them. Boiling them is ok, but strips more goodness away than steaming. Microwaving is evil and should be avoided at all costs.

-Smegged