Cooking For College Guys?

In college and cook everyday. Breakfast is either eggs, oatmeal, premade pancake batter in old ketchup bottle, fruit smoothie or banana milk peanut butter and chocolate protein powder. Many of those items are cheap - eggs, pancakes (i don't even cook on oil or eat with syrup lol), milk, bananaa, oatmeal (homemade baked cheaper or quick packets). For lunch I always bring granola bars ( again can be homemade), a pbj or pb honey, leftover dinner, and fruit cup. Dinner I usually use chicken in some form but I just make big *kitten* meals so I can have leftover for lunch. Anything can be healthy if less sugar/fat or smaller servings. I often make lasagna, potatoes and ham even, chilli is really cheap white chicken or red. Split pea soup cheap but makes everyone fart haha. Curries are so gooood. Meat ball are cheap - buy turkey in tubes and like 2 bucks a pound, mix with breadcrumb and onions and general recipee things. Buy in bulk always and freeze if needed. They only sell chicken breasts in 5s here but thighs can be cheap but have bone and harder to tell when cooked. Google easy bread recipee if you want something special - warm bread that is fresh and just yeast salt flour water, honey later when warm is sooo good. If need be - frozen yogurt by blue bunney is heavenly and like 1/4 the fat of regular. Just Google recipees, I promise you just need to be more specific and not "good recipees". Think of foods like asparagus, artichoke, sweet potatoe, squash and add other words like chicken. All recipees is okay, just always look at the comments l below! Goodluck!

A really cheap and calorie friendly dessert is a 3-2-1 cake. Have you ever heard of them? I love chocolate, too, so have made up a batch of mix to keep on hand. It makes a ton of mix, too.

1 box any flavor cake mix
1 box angel food cake mix

Mix together dry mixes. When ready to have a piece of cake:

Place in a coffee mug:
3 Tbsps cake mix
2 Tbsps water. Stir thoroughly.
Microwave 1 min. (I have to do 55 sec.) YMMV

They are about the size of a cupcake, but are light and airy. Like a flavored angel food cake. If you use a regular cake mix, they are 81 calories each.

I just had a German chocolate one with 1/2 cup strawberries and 4 Tbsp lite cool whip. Yum! Only 149 calories for a good-sized dessert.

I've been in college for 22 years, ( I just like to take a class every semester). The hardest part for me is I also work 60 hours a week and I am a single dad so time for me is the rarest of commodities. I have found that pre prep is the only thing that keeps me out of the drive through lines. I crack a dozen eggs and put them in a Rubbermaid quart bottle so I can dispense one at a time. I make huge batches of brown rice, and oatmeal, then freeze individual portions. I also bake up a couple of packages of turkey bacon at a time and wrap up three slice portions in plastic wrap and put these in a big gallon Ziploc. Fifteen seconds in the microwave, one egg and I am there. I bake a bunch of potatoes at one time and then wrap them. I always have the building blocks for hash browns, potato soup, or mashies. I get cheap 8 oz. paper take out containers at the restaurant supply and portion out everything in them from dinner entrees to sugar free gelatin. As far as traditional college food goes as your skill sets improve you will find you can make anything you like healthier and better than you can get it elsewhere. Make chips with tortillas and pam in the oven, or pizzas with turkey bacon and sausage. And who doesn't like PBR or Natural light?

If you have a restaurant supply store near you, I suggest getting to know it. For example, my local Super Market is charging a buck or more a pound for baking potatoes. The local Cash and Carry is selling those same potatoes for seven dollars a fifty pound sack. I usually buy a sack, keep half, and give the other half to my employees. I get to be nice and still save a huge amount of dough. With some cooperation and effort you might find you will be eating better and cheaper.

Look at Harbor Freight online for a cheap digital scale. Mine does grams, ounces, has a tare feature, and it was about five bucks. I think its is about five years old.

Budget Bytes has tons of cheap recipes. You can pick those that work for your calorie goals. Hearty Black Bean Quesadillas are one of my favorites for make ahead quick food.