 Editor's note: this is a part of FN Dish's Back to School Communal Table. Follow #pullupachair on Twitter and see other contributions below. Sometimes, late in the night, the craving comes to me. I fight it, as I must, for the sake of decency and taste and everything I have strived for as a grown-up human being. I cannot...I will not...I must not...pour bottled Zesty Italian salad dressing over a heap of drained ramen noodles and slurp down the whole hot, harsh mess hunched over the kitchen counter in my bare feet. Even though (as I recall) it would be freaking delicious. A few of my other college favorites: - Boxed spaghetti with margarine (seriously - who could afford butter?), black pepper, curry powder and as much shake-on Parmesan cheese as I could spirit out of the pizza place in a napkin - Boxed macaroni & cheese made with either the margarine or the milk (buying both at once wasn't in the cards most weeks) and as many mustard packets as I could get my paint-stained paws on - Salad bar vegetables stir fried with peanut butter, duck sauce packets, white rice and an egg in my electric wok - Baked potatoes with globs of cheap hot sauce or barbecue sauce mashed in with a fork I'm ostensibly a grown-up lady now, one with actual metal silverware that didn't come as a supermarket giveaway, wedding china, cups not acquired at ballgames and fast food restaurants, and I swear I haven't hoarded condiment packets for at least a decade. But I can't say I'm not physically restraining myself from running down to the dollar store, nabbing the cheapest brick and bottle I can find, and shame-eating the whole concoction with the blinds down. Let me know I'm not alone - post your favorite college food concoction in the comments below and we'll share them in an upcoming post. I...have an errand to run... P.S. Yes - ramen can be extremely fantastic, artistic and artisanal. I just didn't know that in college. Here are a few ways our iReporters like to get their ramen on. Food.com: Peanut Butter and Jelly Sushi Rolls FoxNews.com: Sunflower Seed Butter and Apple Butter Pancake Sandwich Eatocracy: Broke College Student Buffet The Daily Meal: Bacon Cheesy Whole-Wheat Pita Pockets FN Dish: Double-Duty Dinners Turned Lunches Adult options: YumSugar: Fully-Loaded Turkey Club Sandwich Liquor.com: Back to (Cocktail) School Food52: Pan Bagnat: Le French Tuna Salad Sandwich Yahoo! Shine: Avocado Quinoa Salad Big Girls Small Kitchen: Swiss Chard Turnovers With Parmesan and Pistachios Healthy Eats: Mini Quinoa Rice Stuffed Mushrooms Cooking Channel: Lunch Recipes Your Coworkers Will Try to Steal Feed Me Phoebe: Deviled Egg Salad Sandwiches |
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I’m impressed, I must say. Rarely do I come across a blog that’s both educative and interesting, and without a doubt, you've hit the nail on the head. The problem is something that too few folks are speaking intelligently about. I am very happy I stumbled across this during my hunt for something regarding this.
There's definately a lot to find out about this subject. I like all the points you made.
Spot on with this write-up, I absolutely believe this website needs a lot more attention. I’ll probably be returning to see more, thanks for the advice!
Hello there! This post couldn’t be written any better! Looking through this post reminds me of my previous roommate! He continually kept preaching about this. I am going to send this post to him. Pretty sure he's going to have a great read. Thanks for sharing!
1 gallon of skim milk. 1 giant bag of Malt-o-meal rice cereal. Eat milk and cereal until milk is half gone. Fill up gallon jug back to the top with water and continue. I bag, 1 gallon, 1 week.
Im still in college and something my elementary used to serve us was the canned pork and beans with a side of cottage cheese. As a kid & to this day I still mix them together to eat. I know, sounds gross, but once I tried it I was blown away by house deliciously creamy it was. If you have a few extra bucks, slice up a hot dog and add it in.
I eat ramen noodles regularly, on account of the Obamaconomy.
I'm one of the long-term UNDERemployed. IOW, I work like a freakin' DOG but I don't get paid enough to live on.
One of my co-workers suggests mixing ramen noodles with cream of chicken soup.
I also suggest hot dogs with salsa as a source of protein.
I feel like such a noob. I've never had to do any of this. But you guys are awesome for it, I mean, living off such stuff is a feat. Hats off you all lol
These people must have absurdly-fast metabolisms.
Either that, or they're 300 lbs. O_o
I mostly subsisted in college on the cursory raw fruit or vegetable offered in the meal-plan-covered mess hall,
and still gained 50 lbs from the few times I actually allowed myself a full stomach by eating a COOKED veggie, which in mess hall terms usually involved massive amounts of butter.
Well I moved off Campus and lost my luxury mean plan, but I buy plenty good food by using coupons. But My fav el cheapo meal is Fried Bologna, cheese, bread and ramen. Yum
a fine moment in 1995, going to asu, for some reason we were stuck with ONLY a huge vat of peanut butter and a ton of nestle crunch bars (dipping nestle crunch bars in pb is amazing.) so, between that and the typical mac/cheez and ramen stuff, we had a pretty good balanced diet.
Peanut butter, banana and bacon quesadillas. Oddly, it was my Jewish roommate who invented this one. As he said, it's hard to keep kisher and resist bacon when you're searching for a late-night drunk meal.
Wtf is "kisher"?
He meant Kosher.
My Aunt graduated from Temple back in 1964, one of her "study" foods was a nice cold can of Chef Boyardee Spaghetti with meatballs. She kept them in the fridge and when she had the craving she just opened the can and ate it chilled. We both still enjoy a nice breakfast pasta with leftovers, but I cannot eat canned pasta like she did.
I lived off campus in grad school and made white pizza (Pita bread with shredded cheese and garlic powder) under the broiler. My Grandfather had no teeth liked to eat cut up Knockwurst in a bowl of mashed potatoes. I substituted frozen kosher hot dogs nuked 2 minutes in the microwave with a bowl of instant mashed potatoes and a dash of parmesan cheese.
Any kind of Campbells Soup (or generic) cold, right out of the can. Life Sustaining. Except Cream of Mushroom. Yuk!
Pasta with mayo, cheese, tuna, and black pepper.. Think tuna casserole dorm style. It was was delicious.
I spent a year of grad school with no income at all outside what I could scrape together directing a few choirs and a piano scholarship of a few hundred bucks (for a geophysics student, mind you). I ended up eating brown rice as my Christmas dinner. OK, at least more nutritious than white rice. We (impoverished grad students) learned quickly that whenever there was a department party we should show up, go immediately for the meats, cheeses and fresh fruits and veggies, and let the faculty and staff nosh on the sweets and crap (chips, fried stuff, junk food). Survival.
I worked in the Student Activities office at George Washington University 88-89 and one of the things I learned very quickly was to tip off my students about when a meeting was being catered. As soon as the meeting broke up swarms of Student Union Board, Student Government, or Yearbook students would swarm in for left over rolls, pats of butter, cookies, pastries, condiments, and coffee. If sandwiches were served whole trays would disappear and the trays were returned nice and clean to catering the next day.
Haha, that's awesome.
KD!
Generic Mac and cheese, made with butter or milk(could never scrounge both) mixed with tuna. Crave it to this day:)
Called it "white trash" food
Got thru college also eating sandwiches of cheddar cheese slice, pickles and mayo. Still like 'em.
Also good–toss a packet of Good Seasons dry salad dressing mix into rice while its cooking to make fake Rice Pilaf.
30 yrs post college we still enjoy Ramen with some frozen vegies added. Cheap eats deluxe.
Chicken ramen cooked as normal, drained. Drizzled with honey and sprinkled with red pepper flakes. Magical.
spagetti with watered down Ragu. could make a small bottle last all week. Total cost 1971 about $1.80.
also loved the $.10 cent packs of Ramen noodles with onion sliced in.
I do give in and eat ramen occasionally as a grown up. Why the heck not? (Toss an egg in near the end and it's kind of like egg drop soup.)
you are sooo right, delish
I like ramen with frozen veggies, leftover chicken and an egg. If you want to get REALLY fancy, you can make it with your own chicken broth, by boiling the chicken from raw then adding the noodles.
I survived on mac & cheese in college. I had a very large coffee mug, into which I would put the dry pasta and cover it with water. I'd microwave for 5-6 min, until it boiled over (I had to clean it every time, but it was an easy rinse), and then the leftover water was enough to make the cheese sauce. No milk needed. Now I make mac & cheese with sour cream.
Make a piece of toast. Pour on some spaghetti sauce. Top with shredded cheese. Viola, Pizza.
For some reason my roommates think this is weird? I don't know what's wrong with them.
When I was a kid our Sunday night dinner was mini pizzas made by putting pizza sauce and shredded mozz and pepperoni on English muffin halves and broiling in the oven. We loved them, and always ate them while watching the Wonderful World of Disney. It was the only time we were ever allowed to watch TV during meals. Kind of a family tradition. Your toast version is similar. In Adult Parlance it's called Bruschetta. :)
Ditto!! here as well! from the 1970's!! I still fix these for my kids..=)
Or... get a job / donate plasma and eat a little better. Not dissing any of the food choices though, just I worked full time in college and food budget was never an issue.
Many students work their butts off in college to pay tuition and have nothing left (if they're determined to study hard and take classes or do their research) for food. Being a judgmental a$$wipe is not constructive.
Cheese Whiz sandwiches on toasted white bread! Delicious!
I guess both my kids are adventurous eaters, my daughter is actually a food writer, however my son makes "shapes" macaroni and cheese and then puts bacon and eggs on top. He also serves his version of Schezuan bacon for parties.
Some of the suggestions actually sounded good. I may have tired some of them myself....
one week of college I ran out of money but I was too proud to call my parents for help. This is how I ended up living off of tap water and microwave popcorn for a solid week sophmore year.
At Illinois State University we have this italian place called Avantis. When I was in college a loaf of bread there was $.80. We'd live off that bread dipped in ranch dressing!!! To this day I still occasionally make a meal out of their bread and ranch.
I loved making grilled cheese sandwiches using my popcorn popper. We wer ento allowed toaster opvens in the dorms. The only way to regulate the temp was to unplug it and then re-plug it back in when it got too cold. I also ate enough 'cup-o-soup' to feed a small army...LOL those were the days.
One night, there was no more money in the account, and no food. Then we remembered – Coinstar to the rescue! With $20 in coins we purchased chicken, bananas, bread, cereal, ramen and milk. Enough to get buy for a month before winter break.
Bean salad: one can green beans, one can garbanzo beans. Drain both cans and let the beans dry a bit (or put them in the salad spinner). Add thousand island dressing or rice vinegar and a crapload of black pepper.
$1 boxes of PastaRoni or RiceARoni with frozen chopped broccoli or spinach mixed in for vitamins. I was a vegetarian in college when I was buying my own food. As soon as my parents would come to visit and take me out to dinner, it was burgers or steak or chicken!
Pancakes (usually Krusteez because you only need water to make them) with tub margarine and a few chocolate chips from the bulk section of the grocery store.
Since Microwaves? C'mon. We were doing the ramen thing in coffee makers and hot pots. Even tweaking the heater element on a hot pot so it could boil water to make hardboiled eggs.
Microwaves? Kids these days...
Multi-flavored ramen used to rule! I used to mix oriental and chicken or beef and chicken together. I'd divide the seasoning packet from two different ones to make my mix work. When I learned that the sodium in the "demon ramen" could eventually kill you, I opted to substitute the seasoning packet for cheese (both American slices and Pizza Hut parm) along with the pepper packets to make a zesty, slim-noodled Mac and Cheese.
Quesadilla (cheese, hot sauce and anything extra you want in a flour tortilla, sealed tight in aluminum foil) ironed hot on the ironing board. Delicious. You can do Pannini sandwiches the same way.
Taco Bell Sauce on Saltines, grilled cheese, tostino's pizzas, the really cheap sandwhich meat that was very thin and slimy and after we ran out of bread we would just roll it up. The good days were the ones that my friends that worked at restuarants would bring home food. I've eaten so much free chili's in my life I don't like to go there and actually pay.
SPAM!!!!!!
Couldn't afford Spam. Had to by Armor Treat Meat $.20 a can.
just testing to see if anything i typed would make it past the mods
How many times are you going to change the title of this "article" to get some extra "hits?!"
It's been called the same thing since it went live. Not sure what you're talking about.
Cheap won tons from the Chinese grocery store down the street. Really inexpensive, and I'm still in college so I get to eat them all the time!
Also, eggs, prepared just about any way.
Ok... grilled burgers from my family reunion a few days before chopped and tossed with spaghetti sauce and noodles. Yikes.
And I thought I was being creative! I am a 21 year old college student, and I work and go to school. I find being creative and economical immensely satisfying because it feels good to save what little extra may be left over. However, sometimes when I try to apply this philosophy to food, my adventurousness gives my boyfriend a stomachache. Oh well, we live and we learn!
I think most of these recipes come from not so much a lack of funds, but the lack of know-how and niceties like kitchen equipment. Or just laziness. My friends and I used to make our ramen in the coffeepot–just wash it out thoroughly, and send water through to a carafe full of noodles. It made the worst ramen imaginable, hard and sticky, and the mess was spectacular to clean out of the pot. It just made us feel we were clever because we didn't have to traipse all the way down to the kitchen to boil some water. For this they pay 25K a year to give us an education.
Kindly do not project your laziness and piggery on others: many here came up with inventive ways to cook cheap food. At 25K a year, many needed to be frugal and inventive. Keep your miserable bitterness to yourself; the rest of us are enjoying a laugh and memories and the inventiveness of others.
Ramen Noodles boiled til most water is soaked up and then add off brand tomato soup (let the heat of the noodles warm the soup). Stir thoroughly, it tastes near-exactly like spaghetti-o's.
http://nevereatsolo.com/2012/09/11/a-college-students-cookbook-the-choice-version/
One time I had to make a choice between alcohol and eating decent food....my friend and I instead just boiled spaghetti noodles in tequila and possibly had the meal of our life.
Pickle Sandwich. Get a giant jar of whole dill pickles (used to be about $4 at Walmart). Wrap a pickle in a a piece of bread.
I remember when Walmart sold a gallon of pickles for a dollar and drove some company to bankruptcy. Ignorance was bliss, so my friends were sitting on the floor in the middle of our dorm room just eating dills out of the jar.
Hello Eatocracy fans! I'm so happy today because yesterday night I commented on here and gave a link to my original college $8 or less home made gourmet food blog called http://simpledeliciousness.wordpress.com
It features fresh and east recipes on salads, entrees, and desserts and today I got a lot of hits thanks to you guys. So here I am posting this again. I hope you like it!
I'm a senior Case Western Reserve University undergraduate student. This is my $8 or less home made gourmet food blog! Check out my 5-55 minute recipes, entrees, desserts that I make in my apartment on campus!
http://simpledeliciousness.wordpress.com
I´ve always been aware of bad eating habits in the US, but this is really bad. Disgusting.
I'm a senior at Case Western Reserve University doing a food blog! Every week I feature $8 or less always homemade gourmet recipes on my food blog! http://simpledeliciousness.wordpress.com
Not me, but friend from Poland – we lived in a fraternity, early '70s; the cook left bread and onions (and a few other things) out, unlocked – my friend would make, and EAT, onion sandwiches! He was a VERY nice, guy, but these did little for conversation.
White bread + store brand cheese singles + taco bell sauce packets. Microwave for 45 seconds! The melted cheese sandwich when you're too cheap for the butter to make a grilled cheese!
If you have a toaster, use that. While the toast is hot, put the cheese on and microwave it open-faced for about 15-20 seconds (because the hot toast will help it melt, and you don't want to make the toast soggy).
Then slap the two pieces of toast together (or fold each one in half and have two sandwiches).
Cook the ramen, as the water is boiling, drop an egg in it with some soy sauce, let cook for a minute, and bang, instant egg drop soup.
Order a pizza to the dorm, wait out in the parking lot behind the dumpster with a ski mask on, and beat the delivery guy senseless as soon as he steps out of the car. Presto! Free pizza.
Lays Potato chips dipped in plain sour cream. Pasta with ketchup.
Chef Boyardee Ravioli. I love that meat paste they put in it.
Cheetos puffs (off brand, of course) and a huge splurge, chocolate icing! I would dip the the puffs in the icing and eat as I studied. This only happened once because I summarily vomitted halfway through the bag of cheetos. . .
"Fried Nothing" wad up a ball of flour and drop it in the deep fryer.
This was a terrible combination that I called "poor man's clam chowder": One can of off-brand tuna combined with a can of the least expensive tomato soup.
This actually sounds good. (Maybe upgrade the tomato soup)
I saw a video of a chef making a tuna recipe with tomato soup, it was that jarred tuna that comes in olive oil and some kind of premium organic tomato soup over some pasta.I found the video on google and it actually looks pretty good.
Better with a cream soup like cream of mushroom or potato with an added can of corn niblets [all available at dollar stores now].
My "posse" – OOOOHHHHHH man ... we were bad
well we had one guy who could talk "old" and would call the various Fast Food restaurants and complain that our "staff meeting" was missing several "hamburgers & fries" ..etc. .. and his secretrary would be over ijn a minute to pick it up. Then he's drive one of us theri to pick it up ... I'm sorry we're bad :(
sorry for typos .... quickly typing at work ;)
your apology rings hollow. your confession tries to minimize your selfish guilt at the expense of others. your post has now taught your 'bad' to others. think! grow up...or not
agreed. There's nothing cute or funny about theft.
white rice (hot or cold) with BBQ sauce;
mac n cheese (with water instead of milk) butter and a can of tuna fish.
I loved the Wish Sandwich...2 Slices of Bread and I wished I had something to put in it.....
best invited dinner offered by 4 school wrestlers. for table cloth the top sheet off a slept in bed, plastic forks, ramen noodles with some type of ketchup sauce. noodles drained thru a tennis racket. it was great. at clean up the table cloth ? went back on the bed!! those were the days..
I used to boil up some frozen green beans and eat them with Italian salad dressing. We also used to do a bacan and egg scramble with canned creamed corn. Yum.
Kraft Mac and Cheese, if 3 for $1 special for on, if not, generic. Then add a can of tuna fish. Carbs and protein combined, yum!
One of my favorite college recipes was "Tuna Surprise". Take one can of tuna and add one jar of spaghetti saucewith one bag of frozen vegetables. Add Italian seasoning and garlic to taste.Add American cheese to taste and let melt in. Heat the whole thing and serve over pasta or rice. This was good for guests or when I wanted lots of leftovers.
All of these bellyaching replies to people like myself who've posted that they had a job and ate normal and healthy foods, are precisely what is wrong with our economy and our population. Your standard of living is dictated by your standard of work ethic and drive. I came from nothing, put myself through school while working, and I've have enjoyed a comfortable and successful life even though I'm only 26. Despite being a musician, I chose to study accounting and then take the CPA exam. I did that because the "cause and effect" of picking a major and a career is pretty glaringly obvious. I knew choosing accounting over music would provide a much greater financial "effect" for me and my family. Call it Capitalism or Free Market or whatever you like... don't be pissed at people who've made different choices (choices you could have chosen for your own life) than you, and experienced a different outcome than you. This isn't a socialist/communist/eutopian society where everyone has the same standard of living regardless of their career choices. Get over it.
You must have been really fun at parties. Most college kids lived this way it was fun and that is really what the article was supposed to be about. There are successful people out there that ate Ramen and went to school and had fun. Learning to balance before you left was eductional as well. You were ahead of your time congrats you must have found memories of balancing your ledger.
You are absolutely right... showing up with a case of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale rather than Keystone Light was really disappointing to everyone. While I don't remember too much about "balancing the ledger" I do remember enjoying eating all natural/organic foods that were better for my health and for our earth.
D0uche
I think you've missed the point of the postings, please go away
From one CPA to another...you are giving CPAs a bad name. Get the stick out. I was lucky I didn't HAVE to live off Ramen, but to share the college experience I ate most of this crap. Thanks everyone for sharing. What a trip down memory lane. I'm afraid you missed out on some fun in college. You are young...it's not to late. Looking in my pantry to see what strange late night snack I can concoct.
and see what a happy person your choice has made you? you don't sound bitter or negative or nasty at all! and let's not kid ourselves, your future in music wasn't probably a future in any event.
and see what a happy person your choice has made you? you don't sound bitter or negative or nasty at all! and let's not kid ourselves, your future in music wasn't probably a future in any event.
and one more thing......at 26 you haven't had a life at all yet. you have no idea of what's coming your way.
1. I'm not bitter or nasty, just defending myself after being attacked by people like you on my previous post.
2. You are ignorant if you think you can tell by one post on the internet about college and food, whether or not I would be a successful professional musician.
3. Again, ignorance is spoken when you say that I haven't had a life yet and I don't know what is coming my way... Bitter? Nasty? Take a look in the mirror.
Dude he was right! If you are a male age 26, you still have not discovered your head up your butt. You do sound edgy for a child of 26, lighten up and eat a ramen bun.
Take a look at your original post: you jumped out at everyone when they were just posting about some of the cheap food they ate as students. If you got negative responses it is because your are reaping what you have sown.
And you really do sound miserable: you must be working for the Romney campaign.
CPA don't get mad when people challenge statements like this "All of these bellyaching replies to people like myself who've posted that they had a job and ate normal and healthy foods, are precisely what is wrong with our economy and our population". You asked for it and if you don't like it don't post comments.
The point of the article was to share humor on what we did to make it through college, if you did not have the experiences we had, perhaps it would have been best to not share. This is a ritual and yes most of us are proud of our ingenious ways to eat and have money left over for partying.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Buzz Killington. Give him a big hand, folks.
Not sure what your point really is.
I'm doing quite well for myself out of college, but DURING college I had plenty of $0.08 meals and ate plenty of other crap. Yanno...kinda the whole point of this article.
Yay, you're a CPA and a "musician". Mmmhmm.
Ramen noodles and ketchup = a mean plate of spaghetti.
For $5 (back in early 90's) I could make 24 biscuit wrapped breakfast links. Sell 12 to dorm-mates for $1 each, Eat 3, freeze the rest for a quick breakfast as they take only 30 seconds to heat up. Then had $7 profit to pitch in for beer and pizza that night. Even better if I could bring back a pack of sausage from my parents' house. Then it only cost me for the biscuits. Now, sausage and biscuits would be about $7 to make (generic) but could have one can of biscuits left from the 4 pack to make cheapo donuts with.
Now I need ramen, the real kind.
some friends and I used to get together and each pitch in $2. With that and an illegal crock pot the one kid had, we'd have pizza pasta in the crock pot and a tube of cookie dough for dessert. Those were our Friday Nights.
Minute rice, salted, with a half a can of cream corn poured over the top.
white bread with cream cheese with doritos on it.
Or you could get a job and afford actual food... just sayin'.
Apparently you never tried to pay your way through college.
What Community College did you go to? Unless you're working as a neurosurgeon no job pays enough for tuition and food. Bet your college loans will still be unpaid 20 years from now. This is about stupid college food, stupid.
Anyone who ends a sentence with "just sayin'" loses all credibility in my book. Many DO have jobs through school. But unless Mom and Dad are paying tuition, that money doesn't always go very far after expenses.
Or you could get a job and afford actual food... just saying...
elbow macaroni with Campbells tomato soup and ground beef. Called it Train Wreck.
Haha! That's awesome!
Omg, this is def. a hambuger helper dish sans some added spices!
Treat Meat
Ketchup sandwiches
my all time favorite, ketchup soup
The kids from Beloit College would steal from Cub Foods constantly !
Zesty Italian dressing on Raman??? Who could afford both in college. My two big "home cooked meals" were grilled cheese, and eggs and toast. My other regular meal was a PB (no J) sandwhich with Rold Gold thin pretzels.
Kraft mac'n'cheese with a can of tuna mixed in...it's still a guilty pleasure to this day, but only when my wife isn't around.
Yes, we ate this too. AND it was good.
My former roommates still talk about the 'garbage' casserole I'd make with Kraft Mac 'N Cheese, tuna and whatever canned/frozen veggies were around (peas, carrots, chick peas, etc., but never broccoli).
Mac-n-cheese with tuna and peas. So yummy, it rhymes!
I dated a chef last year and one of the best things he made me was fried chicken with Ramen. Popeyes or Browns or KFC. Take the crispy skin off. Take the meat off the bone. Fry both, togther, in a skillet. Cook your Ramen noodles in a pot of water, with the spice packet. Drain the noodles, add the chicken. YUM!
PIZZA!!!!
AND not all college students live like this. When I was at the University of Georgia I gorged myself on buffet style food at the Universities dining halls (76+ medals for food service and quality and counting!) that was available 24/7 (except holidays and breaks) that included such things as fresh made omelletes (made in front of you with your choice of toppings), fresh smoothies made to order, burgers and chicken sandwiches cooked in front of you and yes.... ahh I remember it well... the midnight pizza runs to Snelling Dining Commons... Yeah.. I ate like a king.
I remember Snelling, that was such a great place to eat!
I lived in O-House my last year on campus, I would look out the window and see how bad the lines were on Sunday.
Yes , You could live pretty cheap. Ramen noodles, Cheap turkey or chicken hot dogs, eggs, pasta, Mac n Cheese, We used to stop at Roy Rogers. You could make a mean salad at their fixin's bar.
College, late 70's. "Cuse!!! Who remembers BK? Buy a whopper, get one free (on M Street) instead of ordering the meal. The fries were a hard give up. Or Wendys with the fixins bar (free salad). No dollar menu back then but still cheap And who can forget a case of "Genny Cream for under 5 bucks!
These culinary delights are a right of passage into adulthood for most Americans. One which Mitt never knew. That silver spoon deleted the taste of ramen and mac & cheese.
It's a sin when our kids have to eat bad food like this when our governments waste billions of tax payers dollars on foolishness. Wouldn't some of the money be better spent providing education for our kids????
where do you think most financial aid, scholarship and grant money comes from?
Go home! if you want to get political, hit the tab at the top of the page
I say its a sin to make me pay for your kids so they won't have to learn...
1) how to budget
2) how to be creative with limited ingredients.
I swear, some of my old college roomies and I could give those chefs on "Chopped" a run for their money
Any kind of stringy pasta (linguini worked awesomely, spaghetti, etc.)
Ketchup
Salt
Pepper
Boiled Eggs cut into small pieces
Boil the pasta then toss the other ingredients in....YUMMY (even thought it seems disgusting)!
Sometimes we even threw in a little cheese (yellow)!
Instant mashed potatoes mixed with generic Stove Top-like stuffing, then eaten as a sandwich with bread and butter. Sure it was a carb load, but it was awesome after bar. For those UW-Madison, Uncle Jim's pizza–$5 for a 16-inch one-topping pizza. And unlike similar deals from Dominoe's, Hut, etc., it was good pizza.
I went to college in the early 70s when you could get kraft macaroni & cheese 4 boxes for $1.00. About the only veggie we lived on was coleslaw from the deli which was cheap back then. We had a vending machine that had candy bars for a dime. The machine would empty of all the good ones as soon as it was filled. We had to hide our hot pots and electric cooking plates because they were not allowed. If too many people "cooked" at once the dorm would blow a fuse and they would search our rooms. Never heard of ramen noodles back then.
Ramen Noodles + Peanut Butter + Hot Sauce = Grad Student Pad Thai....
That's Bad Thai :)
macaroni with a can of stewed tomatoes, salt & pepper.
Bologna sandwiches
Kraft dinner (Canada's version of mac and cheese) with the flavour packet mixed in with margarine and a bit of water
ramen noodles of course
I'm guessing Momo Fuku is overated?
One of my Personal Favorites:
Boxed Mashed Potatoes
Canned Corn or Mixed Vegetables
"Tubed" Ground Beef
A packet of Brown Gravy Mix
Pepper
Minced Garlic
In a 10" frying pan brown Ground beef. Drain grease. Add Garlic, 1 cup of water and Gravy Packet. Heal to boiling, then reduce an simmer. In a 2 quart saucepan make 2 servings of mashed potatoes. Heat canned vegetable in whatever manner you normally would.
In a 1 qt bowl fill until roughly 1/2 full of mashed potatoes. Add drained vegetables until roughly half the remaining space is filled. In remaining space add ground beef and gravy mix until bowl is full. Add a thin layer of mashed potatoes to the top and put in a pre-heated oven (300 degrees F) for 5 minutes.
I call it "Po'Boy Shepherds Pie"
Serves: 2
Cost: ~$6
Oh yeah, I forgot. Add pepper to everything above when heating/cooking them
Actually sounds good to me. Thanks for sharing.
I knew of the mass consumption of ramen while I was in college but, I didn't partake in it. Some people even had to go to the hospital from eating so much of it! I ate pretty good at OSU though, I gained my "freshman 15" to prove it;) But now, there's a better way... MYUNLIMITEDFUNDS.COM...Say no to ramen once and for all! :)
Ramen noodles (minus the flavor packet) cooked in cream of mushroom soup piled on top of toast!!!! I still enjoy ramen noodles, I didn't realize when you "grew up" you had to spend top dollar to enjoy the taste of food....smh
I'm a chef, own a bakery, and no you don't have to "grow up"! I still use Ramen, minus the salt packet. It is a good basic pasta and can be made into a good meal for little $. Inexpensive food doesn't have to suck, Julia Childs loved mayo and lettuce sandwiches on white Wonderbread.
When I was in grad school I developed my own spaghetti sauce recipe. Every few months I made a large crockpot full, using canned tomatoes and tomato sauce from the dented can store, ground beef and onions bought from which ever of the three grocery stores nearby had them the cheapest (getting ingredients at different stores if necessary), and eaten with noodles also from the dented can store. Since I'm a small person, that gallon or so of sauce lasted me for months (frozen in small containers). Then I'd make another batch and continue the cycle. You'd think I'd be really sick of spaghetti by now, but decades later, recipe slightly tweaked over the years, it's still my staple. I don't "need" to eat so cheaply any more, but I really like it, it's fairly healthy the way I make it, and a big crockpot full still lasts me months in the freezer. Why mess with a good thing?
I enjoyed the liquid beverage diet during my 5 years of undergrad!
I'm in college right now and have been living on cup-o-noodles. You put water in them, let them "cook", dump the entire container (soupy part included) into a sauce pan and simmer the soup away. Add a tiny bit of butter/margirine and some ketchup. Sooo good even though I'm getting tired of eating them.
Lets face it, we are living in a new era and its time for us to accept the fact that this economy is NOT going to rebound easily for a long time. Sooner you accept the better off you are.
When I lived in a dorm that didn't allow microwaves or other cooking appliances in the rooms, I used my iron as a griddle (I certainly never ironed with it).
For a grilled cheese sandwich, just assemble the sandwich as normal, butter the outsides of the bread, wrap in foil, and iron it on the high setting. To reheat a slice of pizza, just upend the iron, cover it in foil, heat it, and lay on a slice of pizza - the shape of the iron clearly shows it was designed to reheat pizza by the slice.
I'll give up Ramen when America gives up fast food.
This is my college food blog! All entrees are less than $8! http://simpledeliciousness.wordpress.com
Check it out! :)
I used to know a guy who ate cereal with water. He didn't have milk so he just poured in water instead.
Huge treat when I could afford it: half a package of jello (strawberry and lime were favorites) mixed with a couple cups of ice and turned into a slushy in a blender. A staple was generic mac & cheese (yes, the white boxes with black lettering) made with milk, or water when I did not have milk, and seasoned with Ketchup. If I had some cumin to toss in that was a huge plus.
I go to college and I wouldn't eat this junk unless I was really really high.
So you eat it 5-10 times a day then?
rice and beans in bulk plus trips to the local farmers market for veggies and fruit, you will not only live cheaply but well, oh and if your near water add in doing some fishing, I went to college in FL and this worked out very well for me
now I love good noodles but the boxed ramen things ain't it and what radioactive tripe is in those packets anyway? scary! people in college are adults and should eat like it, if your eating boxed ramen then your parents forgot to teach you something before they sent you off
We can all safely assume you didn't complete college if you aren't even capable of knowing the difference between "your" and "you're" at this point.
:-)
English Comp 101
With what colleges get away with charging students nowadays, and for what little they get away with actually having to teach, I wouldn't be surprised if he's a grad. Also wouldn't be surprised if the declining skills of each year of new grads is a big reason why so many are out of work.
2008-vacationing a Cuba. No beef in Cuba. Stale fish, stale lobster. Paid $1.25 for ramen packet that had expired over 1 yr earlier. Probably donated by Red Cross or US church. Added seasoning packet to heated bottled water for beef bullion. Hungry yes. But still couldn't eat the noodles. Lived on fresh fruit. I kissed the asphalt @ DFW Airport when we returned. Seriously.
Check out the cookbook, "THE BOOK OF RAMEN". It's one of my favorites. My nearly grown kids think all stir-fry dishes come with crunchy crushed Ramen noodles...
One can strategize the value meal with 'value' food such as kale, bean salad, from soup bean, dandelion green.
Education on food is the key. Stay away from the cheap process stuff as you will pay for that later.
Repurposing leftover works great too.
For an entire year, my roommate and I lived the high life re-printing $1 Whopper or Classic Chicken sandwich coupons until the local Burger King manager decided he had enough. That was 15 years ago and I have not been to a BK since then.
LM AO! Too funny!
For those who have a slightly more indulgent budget, or is at least smart enough to save money on fast food and eating out, try this awesome college recipe for generic mac and cheese:
substitute the milk with coconut milk, original is good, but I prefer the vanilla.
Real butter is ideal but margarine is acceptable
If you like coconut the taste is out of this world. A mac and cheese delight that taste like Mounds, or Alond Joy was ground up and mixed in!.
As an adult woman, I still enjoy ramen noodles. But not as much as my husband who survived on them in college and still eats ramen to this very day as a pre-dinner snack. In fact he recently invented a product called Rapid Ramen which is a square shaped bowl that allows you to make perfect ramen noodles in the microwave. Apparently there is a huge market, because he is selling Rapid Ramen online and in Walmart stores coming this November, 2012. He loves ramen...now he's helping everyone else love them even more!
my roommate and I would spend our money at the bar and have none left for late nigh tacos. We would microwave cheese between two tortillas (35c at the mexican grocery store) and voila! quesadilla. we once overcooked it bc the "reheat" setting broke and that was a hot mess...
Ketchup, mustard or mayo on white bread !!!
Anybody ever have these???
You don't have to be a kiddo or a poor college kid to love ketchup, mustard or mayo sandwiches!
Ditto baked potatoes with ketchup.:)
I love peanut butter, ketchup and bacon sandwiches.
One of my guilty pleasure meals is a box of KD but instead of adding milk & margarine, pour a generous dollop of pasta sauce (from a jar) and mix up the cheese powder with that.
.69 bag of noodles, .35 can tomato sauce (only 1/2 of course) 1 celery stick and one bouillon cube DINNER!
If I legitimately had no time, I ate ramen noddles minus flavor packet, with snow peas and mushrooms added in. And maybe lemon.
Tuna. You can make so much stuff with tuna. Sure, not the tastiest thing ever, but consider how much protein is packed into that 50 cent can of fish.
Fruits. Lots of fruits. Mango for breakfast, banana and plum for lunch, that sort of thing. Fruits can be surprisingly cheap if you buy in season, or buy the ripe ones on sale if you plan on eating them right away.
Rice. Rice and beans are freaking cheap and filling.
The dorm building had one stove for 4 floors, and I had to buy my own cookingware from goodwill, but at least I wasn't malnourished. People make such a big deal out of being a "poor" college kid, but you know, I was once an art student too, and I too had to buy 300 dollars worth of cutting tools, paints, brushes and paper every semester, and I still treated my body decently. Any extra money I had went towards savings for next year, or food. Your food, the stuff you use to maintain your body, is the LAST thing you should cut back on.
ramen noodles and pancake syrup, awesome hot mess of cheap carbs and delicious sweet corn syrup.
later, you can use the chicken/beef ramen favoring packet for a rainy day cup of yummy hot water soup.
SPAM and crackers lifted off the soup station.
Once opened, SPAM could last a couple of weeks if kept cold; once it starts moving on its own, cube it up and put in Ramen, eggs, salads and soup cups.
Little do most readers know, the author PAINTED that huge closeup of ramen noodles! (It was easy because she eats so many, given the major of her illustrious degree.)
mean-spirited and ignorant comment
Well, I actually do work here at CNN, so I guess it all turned out okay.
10 cent wing night at Granny's Attic (in Flagstaff, AZ) with a glass of water and "lots of lemons". When the waitress left we'd mash the lemons with a spoon and add a couple of sugar packets. Voila! Lemonade!
I can't tell if most college kids (females) are broke because I see them out toting very high end bags (not Coach and not knockoffs) and spending money on the weekends like there's no tomorrow.
That's because its the beginning of the school year and they haven't maxed out their credit cards yet.. but soon!
Store-label pot pies for 25 cents, with a cracked egg on top. Either that or military tins of peanut butter and Civil Defense crackers.
Ramen Noodles with Ritz Crackers. It has enough salt in it for about 50 people , but damn did it tast good.
Sounds better than my ramen noodles over stale white bread, especially the end crusts!
The fact that this article exists disgusts me. This "food" should not be consumed and certainly should not be reminisced about.
I agree. If these children can't afford to eat they shouldn't be going to college in the first place. Just go get a job in the service industry and make my coffee and leave the college dream behind you, it won't matter anyway. Why waste your time?
Would rather starve than lower myself to eating the rubbish described in this article. Pathetic youngsters have no idea that their culinary sacrifice for an "education" will yield nothing in return. A lifetime of poverty awaits all of you poor middle class wanderers, LOL!!! I love being rich!!! HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!! It's soooooo awesome!!
youre a jerk
you are a piece of crap , grow the f up.
very funny you sum betch.
Agreed! If all these kids can't afford to eat like me, they should be scrubing my shoes! Muhahahaha
don't feed the troll
Oh for heaven's sake. Can't you learn to enjoy some nostalgia. I ate crap in college like everyone in my dorm and I'm now a CEO. Life of poverty, you say? What do you do now Bud?
Hilarious. Very Swiftian in spirit. But really, bugger off, you effete snob!
Fooey!
Ramen noodles RULE!:)
I fully agree with you!
I'm beginning to hate CNN, and what they call front page news.
This drivel should be banned from any "news" source....
BD
Then get off.
This was in the Food Section, you idiot. Perhaps we could get CNN to give you a call for permission next time they want to write an article you might consider fluff. Would that help?
one bag of store brand tortilla chips, one block of velveeta cheese (cubed), one can of store brand tomatoes with chilis. mix cheese and tomatoes in a bowl and microwave the hell out of that bad larry until melty and delicious. voila, nacho night!
Oh yeah, and I still eat that to this day. Got my nephew, who is now in college, hooked on this concoction.
Mmm... college food...
The 4.95 lunch special at Mary Lou's Diner (7 different food items on 2 plates!)
Box of generic elbows mixed with a can of tomato paste and liberal dose of sugar for dinner – (feeds 3!)
All I can afford as a grown adult with a wife and child is college food. Didn't fall out of the right vagina so I don't have enough natural intelligence (a good memory and quick mind) to get a better job and earn a better living. Sucks not being able to enjoy all the fun the rich are having. I'd kill myself if I wasn't such a pussy but I guess I'll look forward to an early death by eating crappy food. Oh well, that's life I guess. Should just be happy with the crap I do have.
LMAO
Haha...well, you dont need a good memory or a quick mind...just look at all these athletes and reality tv show people that make millions a year. But everything else you said could not be truer!
You sound like a foul mouthed version of Harvey Pekar. Your self-deprecating style of humor in these cynical times is refreshing. With your permission, I'd love to create a simple comic strip with the words you have posted. Please send me an email, it's my name at mail dot com. Thank you.
Agreed ( about Pekar-ism). The online articles about these well heeled going crazy and shooting people leads me to
believe they couldn't down shift their lifestyles as required. When you're at the lower rungs, sometimes it's an advantage, i.e., one is not upholding the high fallootin' image with all that stress behind it. Stress is the killer- the brain overloads the stress hormones and all reason is out the door ( see suicides in Italy). I speak from experience- I worked 24/7 for a decade to step into a higher lifestyle. Then came the hightech crash/glut that fried me. It was misery to
be going down the lifestyle escalator slipping on the rails. But, I had a 10 year head start before the Housing fiasco/
global meltdown. I'm so happy to have my sense of humor back, having phony, pretentious ,fake friends away from me
and life is great ( relatively). Too much continual, maximized stress was the killer.
Note: Although there's a lot of folks who worked hard and built fortunes, the game is commonly rigged ( family capital
to finance them through Ivy Leauge schools, professional schools, capital for starting businesses, etc.). So average
folks, hold your head up and stay healthy. Thanks for listening to this free form-Auto Bio- unasked for-blab.
Also chop up your favorite skillet fryable veggies cook the ramen with nomal amounts of water and add the soup packet, skillet fry the veggies and after they start to brown a little throw the noodles and soup on top in the skillet, cook till the noodles brown and it is a dish worthy of Ghengis.
Everywhere I've ever lived, fresh ingredients have been cheaper than boxed preprepared crap. Tastier too.
Really? That must be nice. Yes, if you go to a big university in a big city, you're going to have access to farmers markets and high-end grocery stores, but at a small liberal arts school in a small town, you make do.
In the small town where I went to undergrad, we only had one store: a gas station. Our nearest grocery store was two towns over, at least a twenty minute drive each way. Wal-Mart? Twenty-five minutes up the road, in the other direction. Didn't have a car? Well, your choices were either the school cafeteria or the student bookstore's gum aisle. (At least this was circa 2001 when gas was cheap.) My Junior year, they opened a Dollar General in town, which gave us access to boxed meals, ramen, and laundry detergent without requiring an hour of travel time, and we were ecstatic.
In the 80's at University of Southern California (in South Central LA) big grocery store chains were leaving and not returning. If you didn't have wheels you were stuck with what they offered. Fruit & veggies were expensive relative to crap food. On a college budget it's no wonder everyone was eating this stuff. We all survived and it's nostalgic and all ... I'm sure we all went on to high paying jobs and better food...but you have to wonder about the people that live in these communities without access to better and less expensive food options.
Sriracha chili sauce.
Goolash! Noodles, veggie soup, and tomatoe sauce mixed. If I had extra $$ I would buy Kraft cheese slices and throw it on top!
When i was a grad student, during the 2 semesters I didn't have research or teaching support I ate a lot of ramen. It was something like nine cents a pack when it was on sale. I have not eaten it since. Yeecccchhh.
Tortillas and anything cheap I could stuff in them. Discounted beans, pretend cheese, salsa, pickles, tuna, and an assortment of condiments from the dining hall and the taco bell down the street. Lots and lots of tortillas.
A great student meal is a top sirloin steak with all the dressings. All you need is a part time job.
And a poor crappy grasp of that whole "be smart with your money" concept.
A quickie college meal from the eighties: take a stick of butter (had we only known back then!!) and melt it. Stir in one packet of onion soup mix flavoring, mix it with your pasta, and there's enough for two!
An entire stick?! Yea...a tablespoon + water probably would have had the same taste / effect.
Our Cal Poly Engineering favorite was generic mac n cheese, chop and fry up cheap generic pork sausage until very dark, dump sausage and grease into boiled mac (who could afford butter?) and add the 'cheese' sauce packet and a bit of water, mix, top with Lawry's Seasoned Salt.....
good and filling (I take Statin drugs now..... (35 years later)
Broke students! Sure there are. Broke after buying all those electronic goodies and designer clothing I guess. Let them eat KD!
Wow you are taking me back to my college days at WV State when I would tag along with a professor who had a membership to Sams’ Club, and buy a CASE of ramen noodles, which was about $ .10 a packet. The hot water in my dorm was only a few degrees cooler than boiling, so there was no need to microwave the noodles. I’ve never had them with peanut butter but with a lot of other things such as hot sauce, alfredo sauce, spaghetti sauce, can spray cheese, Mrs. Dash, hot pepper flakes, italian dressing, ranch dressing, french dressing, pizza place shaker cheese, refried beans, salsa basically anything that was free or on sale for $1.00 or less. Even now I still get a taste for the ramen but I am in counseling, getting help for my food addiction. LONG LIVE THE RAMEN!!! I love you and miss you so much.
Hmmm.... I wonder how much they spend on cigarettes?
Get real. You buy pipe tobacco(taxed much lower) and make your own. Hopefully sometimes enhanced with some homegrown pot.
O' man, now that does require some knowledge. Sweet days...
Maruchan Yakisoba noodles! They're a little more expensive (about 70-85 cents per serving) than plain old Ramen, but they have flavor and are really more filling. Their cheddar cheese flavor is SO GOOD.
Egg sandwiches. Fry a couple of eggs and toss some cheap bologna/ham in the frying pan along with it, put them between a couple pieces of toast spread with cheap margarine, add mustard, and season salt to taste, bam, protein-packed sandwich for like $0.50.
The versatile egg is still a bargain IMO. Used to love large rolled up pancake/crepes in college with all kind of weird additions/fillings..
ha...I was an Outback and Applebees junky during college. Put it all on the card and hope I won't ever have to pay it back, lol.
Well, pay on time based on discretionary income rate and the balance could be forgiven.
so you're a thief, ...or a freeloader?
Used to go to the photocopy rooms in the libraries and the vending machine rooms in the student union, reach under the machines to retrieve dropped coins and get enough money to buy ramen noodle lunches for 2 weeks. Sometimes I found enough money to buy broth and a few canned or frozen veggies to throw in the pot as well. After really profitable trips I could get a piece of chicken, too.
I still cook up some mac and cheese plus tuna and my kids love it(now I add a little lemon pepper and dill) and I figured out early on that pork and bean soup offered up the most protein per dollar! I don't mean to be negative but I work on a college campus and now with the proliferation of unlimited student loans these kids come to campus and buy new cars and take sponsered "vacations" and crazy stuff like that. I honestly just don't think they realize what it will be to leave with $80k in debt when they are done.
fortunately the fed has provisions in place now to help you with that if you can't pay it off. Welcome to the 21st century! Mac and cheese is a thing of the past yo.
unfortunately a lot of us had to go 80,000 in debt to go through college without a new car, without vacations, unable to go home and often unable to afford ramen despite working 20 hours a week. We're not all rich kids or debt forgiven freeloaders, a lot of us have worked our asses to the bone only to realize that sallie mae and high tuition with keep us in poverty long beyond the point we get the degree we were told was so valuable
Ketchup squeezed from the little fast food packages into hot water and a sprinkle of salt and pepper also provided by fast food restaurants and a box of saltines fills you up for awhile.
Med Student Tomato Soup.
Free mug of hot water, no tea bag
At least 4 packs ketchup
Couple packs coffee creamer
salt and pepper to taste
couple packs of crackers if they are free
Tom
Hey !
A box of bisquick went a long way. Some days it was just a blob baked. Cheese whiz and saltines. just lettuce salads. Ramen Lo Mein.
Regular flour is cheaper. Just add some baking soda and/'or baking powder
The trick with ramen is to find an Asian supermarket. Almost every college town has one hidden somewhere. The flavor packets in the Chinese and Korean brands are MUCH better. I like mine with a hotdog, a poached egg, and some fresh cilantro or basil thrown in. I'm craving it just thinking about it.
Zombie is right – before I went back to college, I was in the US Army in Korea, and Korean Ramen is the best. Get the spicy kind and put a piece (or two) of American cheese on top of it (with the spicy broth still on the noodles). Stir it up, mmmmmmmmmmm......
Tasty lunch for about a buck.
I got lucky, I suppose. I lived in a dorm and meals were included in the cost of our room and board. So at least, most days, you would get 3 decent meals (if you had time) You could also get a bagged lunch in lieu of a hot lunch if your classes kept you too busy to stop. Buuut, on some days, my classes were off campus so the $1 menu was my friend!
I've done the ramen, off label mac and cheese, the dollar store shopping for food, and the \"condiment\" living, but my big splurge was the dented and rusted cans on the clearance cart hidden in the back corner of the store. Yes, I ate rusted canned beans for a long time as I scored a case of them once. It was better than starving, but made me socially unacceptable to be around for awhile.
Lol, gas heaven .If you have the time and facility to grow some vegs yourself, from seeds not already expensive young plants, rice in bulk plus your added homegrown veggies, is still a lifesaver. Easy to freeze veggies with high yield of course, like bell peppers, tomatoes, string beans, egg plants etc. Problem I have though that many of my veggies get legs lately, too expensive to erect a high fence around my veggie garden. Have not been able to grow peppers till they are red since they disappear prior to that. Guess by folks more desperate than me.
Now , this article got me thinking too. May be my home grown veggies are disappearing to college students. Anybody want to fess up?
Find something to do snookers....you seem to have way too much time on your hands this evening. A comment or two is fine, but you're just begging for attention with the numerous and less-than thought provoking comments.Sorry, but someone had to say it :)
I've done the ramen, off label mac and cheese, the dollar store shopping for food, and the "condiment" living, but my big splurge was the dented and rusted cans on the clearance cart hidden in the back corner of the store. Yes, I ate rusted canned beans for a long time as I scored a case of them once. It was better than starving, but made me socially unacceptable to be around for awhile.
Man, you can add the retired baby boomers to the college students. Each time a new batch of money is printed by the Feds pricing for food goes up. The anemic interest rates of my savings also has drastically reduced my income.
All in a gigantic scheme to transfer/erode my retirement savings to the already rich 1%. Hand outs to adult children in dire need and in the claws of debt collectors for student loans plus medical expenses because of high deductibles also does not help. That said, best buy is 10/20 lbs bags of incredible rice. Even cheaper than ramen noodles or pet food
And I refuse to budge for that predatory reverse mortgage thingy. I will starve myself first.
One Hundred One Ways to Make Ramen Noodles: Creative Cooking When You Can Only Afford Ten-For-A-Dollar Pasta [Spiral-bound] (1993) by Toni Patrick
One Hundred One Ways to Make Ramen Noodles: Creative Cooking When You Can Only Afford Ten-For-A-Dollar Pasta
101 THINGS TO DO WITH RAMEN NOODLES [Paperback] (2005) by Toni Patrick
101 THINGS TO DO WITH RAMEN NOODLES
101 More Things To Do With Ramen Noodles [Spiral-bound] (2011) by Toni Patrick
101 More Things to Do With Ramen Noodles
101 Things to Do with Mac & Cheese [Spiral-bound] (2007) by Toni Patrick
101 Things to Do with Mac & Cheese
Living on Ramen allows you to appreciate what your education affords you today.
If you are lucky. Student loans can drag you down for many years and keep you on a college student diet.
Pfft I don't even have student loans and I'm eating like this. Try being a new college grad attempting to become gainfully employed.
In college, it was rice and soy sauce, cheap mac & cheese with canned tuna, buttered bread with sugar or syrup, pbj, cheap bean burritos, ramen, ramen and more ramen. Feeding a family of 6 on a tight budget, I still eat ramen.
Rice and soy sauce I can't even count the amount of times I had that in college...Here's another one which I'm not that proud of we ate numerous times, we re-fried almost spoiled but not yet totally spoiled rice just so we could eat something that might not make us sick the next day....Those were the days=D
Musician's soup! Ketchup, hot water, and, if the money was really rolling in, dehydrated parsley and onion! Flush times would see an actual OXO cube in there instead of (or with) the ketchup.
New generation has their own 'college food' with all the fast food joints having $1 menus. Fat, cholesterol, sodium? The absolute best bang for your buck is right there at the drive-thru.
No one can beat good old beans (pinto....chili power, garlic powder, salt, a small piece of scrap bacon) over rice! On paydays, add a bit of hamburger....although these days? round steak is usually cheaper than hamburger! Makes it even better!
This will be common middle class faire if Romney is elected.
I think that already IS what a lot of the middle class eats.
Because it's delicious!
Not eating as badly as I did in college, but still cheap, trying to pay off student loans in a few years rather than 30. But I remember lots of one meal days, usually hamburger helper with cheap meat, or tuna helper. Noodles with garlic, ramen of course, lots of 99 cent whoppers when they were that cheap, in short garbage.
Well I fix the ramen but I don't like the sauce. I blend in these raw – items: chopped chives, diced tomatoe, dab of butter, small amounts of finely diced cooked cabbage (it still has a tiny crunch), some sunflower seeds to top it. To me the tomatos and onions help add a nice coolness.
You want some awesome ramen recipes, talk to someone who's been in jail.
The fact that Ramen now cost $0.25 a pack is the problem. They used to cost $0.10 a pack. Now they get more expensive and there are less noodles in a pack.
The problem as I see it is that ramen noodles come with a pack of seasoning that contains nothing but fat and salt and yet people still eat them. And either $.10 or $.25 is more than anyone should pay to eat that garbage.
I'd guess it's still better than starving..
I worked at restaurants. Nice ones, intentionally, and I ate well because of that. And I hate to admit, but dates=dinner. Yeah, sad...
and what did dinner =????
Dinner – a date.
Ramen and tins of Kippered herring, I still love this. I have graduated to higher end ramen, you know the Korean kind, so spicy it makes my room mate choke like she was pepper sprayed at a riot.
Hell I am hungry now !!!!!!
Ramen noodles, drain most of the iquid, then add a chopped up baked (microwaved) potato and a couple of eggs and you have a my contribution to society.
This a really great thread to trace college eating habits from the 60's on. When my mother and uncle went to college in the 30's, my grandmother packed a picnic basket full of home made goodies, took it to the train station at 9 in the morning, and it was in their hands around 1:00 PM– in time for lunch.
and then....
How about Ramen noodles at the age of 40 when bills cannot suffer, so you sacrifice for your kids.
You should travel to Asia? When you go to the grocery store, they have one isle with nothing but romen. I feel for you though. I lived off ramen for 5 years in college. (yes I was on the super senior plan...).
Flour tortilla with Taco Bell hot sauce rolled into a small burrito (an acquired taste).
Ramen noodles with sweet and sour sauce from McDonalds.
If I had extra money, then I'd buy store brand soda (blah!)
Mac n cheese with hot sauce packets (better than it sounds)
Bread with jelly packet
AHHH we had > mac N cheese with hotdogs sliced up in it and some nice cracked pepperr on top.
My mom made: Cabbage/Hamburge/Rice. You cook each, keep the oil from the beef and mix in and eat with soy sauce. Not had it in years. Our staple is brown rice, beans (on the rice with plenty of juice ladled on), diced tomato and onions on the beans and some nice corn bread (or wheat bread) with some nice tea.
Wegman's brand soda is actually quite good! And very cheap.
Condiment bar sandwiches – a packet of saltines with whatever other condiments are available squished between the two crackers. Places that served chili had the best condiments too – sour cream, shredded cheese, jalepenos. It was almost like real food.
Ohh I like this one! We did that with peanut butter and bananas.
I must say, if you grew up in Texas (south of Temple) the best pickens' for condiments was the Taco Cabana. They have a QUALITY condiment bar (jalapenos, salsa, chopped onions, etc). Buy some cheap tortillas from them, then raid the condiment bar...they knew me by name. Nowadays Taco Cabana is all over Texas, but it used to be more of a south Texas thang. PS: If you are paying $0.25 for ramen, you need to shop around. My personal best was $0.07 for a pack of ramen!
Ketchup sandwiches...
LOL Someone said KETCHUP SANDWICHES! I have been there man.
A-1 sandwiches too!
Ketchup sandwiches?! You folks are nuts. Mustard sandwich is the way to go.
My favorite filling meal was a pot of rice, a bag of frozen peas & carrots, another of frozen corn. When all of them were cooked, throw them together, add Durkee hot sauce and old bay seasoning. Yum!
I guess my college experience was slightly different. Our dining hall served tortuous things like London broil, crab cakes with orange remoulade, dijon crusted roast chicken, cranberry and apple glazed pork loin, and slow-cooked legs of lamb. I even had to suffer through servings of lobster, steak, and full Thanksgiving dinner spreads. It's safe to say that my best days of eating are behind me (sadly).
f u c k w a d
Did you go to Hogwarts?
haha not Hogwarts, but close enough. Went to a small school up in Maine called Bowdoin. Aside from our academics and graduates, we're famous for our food. But I'm now experiencing the joys of peanut butter/jelly sandwiches, cheap mac & cheese, and ramen that I missed out on back in college. Funny how things change.
Brunswick! Didn't go to college there but spend every summer in Maine.
Same here! We have (usually) great food! Yeah the soup is a little salty and the hamburgers a little burned sometimes, but there's some great stuff! Considering how much we pay for the meal plan, it better be good....
I dont think most of these college students have any idea how to shop. There are plenty of places to shop and find meals that will last a week for less then 20 dollars. Dollar tree, 99 cent store, and many other incarnations of 1 dollar or less stores are everywhere. With 20 dollars I could buy 1 of each of these items; speghetti & sauce/paste, frozen chicken (2 breast), bread, soda, spinach, tomatoes, potatoes, salad dressing, cereal, milk, peanut butter, fruit, canned soup, liter soda, eggs. Those items come up to 18 dollars before tax. The milk is the only exception at 99cent store (1 gallon=3 bucks). All other items were 1 dollar each. Frozen chicken can be found at dollar tree for 1 dollar. 20 dollars can buy enough food for at least 1 week or more depending on how you eat
Ok frozen chicken might feed you for one day. You have have nothing but change in your pocket trying to feed yourself for a week, less than 20 cent ramen goes a long way. You just have to have been there.
I am there... I am eating as normal as any other person. It just takes a bit of strategic shopping. Poor and non-college educated people have been doing it for years. College students should in theory be smart enough to manage a small budget. Well i guess they are managing but some of the meals just sound pretty bad. I know people who are in a much worse financial position then the average college student and they, like myself manage to eat well for less then 100 dollars a month. It is possible
I agree. I budgeted my cash and ate a pretty balanced diet in college. It may have been based on rice, bread, and flour tortillas. However seasonal veggies were cheap, chicken cutlets could be bought in bulk and frozen to last until next 2 weeks paycheck, eggs were less than two bucks. It wasn't that hard to stay within $20-30 for a week or so of food.
When we were first married, young, poor, and hit some hard times, I fed the family on a small turkey for a full week, along with other small amounts of staples I had. Sun, roast turkey, mashed potatoes (real ones...a bag goes much further than boxed), stuffing and veg. The next day, hot roast turkey sandwiches and the remainder of leftovers. Tues we had 'spaghetti o pollo', cheap sauce cooked with bits of turkey and a good helping of (dollar store) Parm mixed in, served over spaghetti. Wed I stewed what was left of the carcass, picked off all the meat and made a potpie with biscuit topping, carrots and peas and potatoes in it, just part of the broth and meat. Thurs I took cooked macaroni and little bits of leftover cooked veggis or a can or bag of this or that, put in a dish with the mac and gravy and baked it like a casserole. Friday I tool all that was left, meat, potatoes, vegs and made a shepherds pie kind of dinner, along with the leftover spa sauce mixed in with the meat and baked it. Everyone ate well, different meal every night, warm and comforting dinners. When I got my check the next day and said I was going grocery shopping, my husband begged me to please 'bring him home some red meat.' lol. But it was an interesting experience in what you could do what you had. Gifted turkey and the rest, probably $20 worth of veg, potatoes, pasta etc.
Art school? How's that working out for you, lol
obviously pretty well, nice try though
How's it working out? She's writing pieces for CNN and you're writing "soundoffs."
Good job Monkeyman! I am also an art student who hasn't received my BFA yet with a $25 an hour job. I'm 19, live alone in a 2 bedroom house, no parental support, and doing just fine. Not to mention commission art and art show $$$ :) Don't be so soon to judge one of those "pointless" majors. I do what I love.. when I WANT to for big money.
I'd buy a huge bag of white rice and dried pinto beans, and a bag of corn tortillas and steal hot sauce from taco bell, and that was it, pretty much all I ate for years.
During the 60's I lived on spaghetti cooked much longer than "al dente" tossed with margarine, dried parsley flakes, parmesan cheese packets, and lots of salt. Still cook this for myself sometimes. Also did the bread and cheese in aluminum foil crushed under a hot iron in the dormitory where we were forbidden to cook. My "ahhhhh" moment came when a huge black man who ran a small fried chicken shop explained to me how to write a check on my mother's account for less than $1. I then could buy–once a week–a piece of fried chicken with fries and a biscuit and write a check for 97 cents. Life was good!!!!
liar
I would buy one big box of American cheese, ketchup, mayonnaise, bread and flour tortillas, and then make: a grilled cheese sandwich with ketchup, an open-faced toasted cheese sandwich, a cheese and mayonnaise sandwich, or cheese crisps (melted cheese on flour tortillas). Splurges = Old Dutch Potato Chips and Top the Tater Chive and Onion Sour Cream.
Oh the early 70's at UWF...no ramen back then...
Tomato soup: "free" ketchup packet + hot water (maybe a packet of "free" crackers)
Lemonade: "free" packet of lemon juice + cold water (optional "free" sugar packet)
Mustard AND mayo (from "free" packets) on "free" crackers
White rice or elbow noodles cooked in tomato water (diluted "free" ketchup packet)
Ironed mustard and mayo ("free" packets) sandwiches on "day old" stale bread (mold was optional)
Cheapest can of baked beans mixed with chopped baloney, spam or hot dogs
In 1970 Top Ramen was sold in the U.S. by Nissan Foods.
when ramens have cooked add the seasoning packet/stir/chop up a tomato/then add whorcestershire.omg!
do not cook tomato, the heat from ramens will handle it and they will still taste fresh.
Staples in college for me were peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and kraft mac & cheese – yes, with margarine, it was true, who could afford butter!?! Sometimes I got crazy and used margarine AND milk, but usually not, because otherwise the milk just went bad and that was subway token money!
Ramen Noodles Drained with lots of parmessan cheese.
2 tins of tuna mixed with a box of elbow macaroni and some boiled potatoes. Add mayonnaise and hard boiled eggs if by some great miracle they exist in the fridge. And this crazy mix would feed (also an art school student back in the day) me for several days. Almost 20 years later and I never want to go back. Am glad for the experience; it taught me to be grateful for what you have.
Grilled velveeta sandwiches with bread from the day old bakery, ramen with butter or tomato sause with herb packets from the pizza place, chicken noodle soup mixed with ramen, fried potatoes with diced spam and scrambed egg as a hash, (lasted 3 days for one can of spam, 4 eggs and 3 potatoes, spaghetti with sauce (no meat), rice with butter, peanut butter sandwiches, peanut butter and saltines when no bread
zucchini and squash sauteed with soy sauce over rice, popcorn (not microwave) and that oatmeal, chocolate,peanut butter no-cook cookie mixture
Where did all of you go to college? It's very common for colleges and universities to have cafeterias with all-you-can-eat buffets (of burgers, pizzas, variable main entrees, desserts) at affordable rates to students.
true but many of us lived off campus and/or unable to afford those meal plans...
I couldn't afford dorm rooms with a meal plan. Staying off campus and working was the only way I went through college.
It's nice to have parents with money but most of us don't have parents with money and have to budget what we earned to pay for food, lodging and tuition.
Jon, that is an interesting assumption. But there are alot more schools now that require students to live on campus for the first 1-2 years, and in addition require the student to have a meal plan as a part of the packaged deal.
you've obviously have not been hungry in college..... who could afford the food from campus cafeteria? .I lived with five other students in a house my sophomore year and after paying school expenses and rent there wasn't much left for food. We decided to grow a garden, one vegetable that was a "staple" was beets. We steam them and eat them with margarine and salt, the leafy green tops where cooked down that resembled cooked spinach. Top ramen was cooked and eaten with melt butter, salt and pepper.....boy those where the days!!!
Ramen for sure, with cheese and hot sauce as many others have mentioned. Also sh*tloads of stove top stuffing....
Quesadillas with peanut butter, you know you want one.
Ketchup Sandwiches ...
flour tortillas with butter....
Or you could do like my ex hubby and I did (early 80's): live at home with the Parental Units who feed you daily and then marry a girl (me) right before grad school who will work full time, buy your food and cook it for you too. Although his big brother used to tell us he live off of 24-can cases of Cambells tomato soup.
I kind of feel bad for you kids. But not bad enough to wish I could have walked in your shoes :)
kids? ha ha... I'm 55, started college in the late 70's, couldn't afford to finish, enlisted in the Navy for 4 years and saved up enough to finish in the 80's. I got $180/month for 2 years from VA and only had to tutor part time to make ends meet. Still ate most of the same stuff listed here. Wouldn't want to go through that "culinary" experience again, but also wouldn't trade it for the world.
My friends and I would pick whatever was in the cupboards to cook at the time. I think the worst "mixture" was cooking spaghetti and realizing we didn't have anything to top it with except for pancake syrup. Ya, try that and see what you think. We called it the Sweet Surprise (eesh). My taste buds have definitely improved since then, thank goodness.
Big Jar of Ragu or Prego (with meat) and box of noodles for spaghetti the first two nights
Add two pieces of bread for sloppy joes the 3rd night
Add can of kidney beans, cheese (sliced american of course) and hot sauce for chili on the 4th night
and the 5th night was a fast food run to stock up on silverware and condiments for the weekend ;P
Ramen noodles saved the world! I ate Ramen a lot in college and even now I still eat Ramen. Ramen with tomato sauce, Ramen with vegetables, Ramen with hotdogs, Ramen with eggs, Ramen with sausages, Ramen with cheese, Ramen with tuna, Ramen with chili. I pretty much mixed stuff with Ramen to make it taste better.
With today's bad economy, Ramen is a staple food for those having economic hardship right know. Thank God for Ramen!
Try ramen with hot milk and only half of the seasonings, delicious. Got me through many late nights of engineering school.
ghetto pizza (as we called it)
get a loaf of bread from the day old bakery, squirt a ketchup pack from macdonald's/BK/etc. on it, sprinkle some crushed red peppers (from the pizzaria) and top with a sprinkle (or packet) of the dried out parmesian/ramono cheese (also from the pizzeria). toast in a toaster oven (or under the broiler when a real oven was available). Wallah! Ghetto pizza.
extra toppings... anything (mostly) edible laying around.
Oh yea... love the college food... I swear it helped me get through a lot, even now in this fun economy I go back to my old college staples to put food on the table (family of 5!) My favorites involve rice and cheese. You can buy pounds of rice at a time pretty cheap, taco seasoning packets and cheese. YUM. Hot sauce or salsa keeps it from being dry... these days I can afford to throw in chicken thighs which makes it a meal for real! lol... In a pinch with almost any boring macncheese or ramen meal I was making, adding Petes hot sauce made it instantly better!
I had a job, no help from my parents and no grants... I ate steak, chicken bacon cheddar sandwiches, pastas with homemade sauce, basically the same stuff I do now, all from Traders Joes (much cheaper than Slaveway... I mean Safeway) and drank darn good beer like Sierra Nevada. It was totally possible to eat healthy and normal in college... of course I\'m more practical and picked Business Admin/Accounting instead of Underwater Basketweaving... So I made $21/hr at 21 years old while going to school.
Congratulations Mitt Romney supporter.
You know what they say: What is the limit as a engineering students grades approach zero? A business major. i didnt have the luxury of working during the school year. I ate the worst stuff just like everyone else. but now i make $50 an hour as a 25 year old. you sound pretty arrogant.
oh and you saying you didnt have grants just says your from a wealthy family, because they wont give them to you. Or your just too dumb to realize that free money was available, I got over 20G's of free money to become an engineer because my family was extremely poor. It helped keep my debt manageable and ultimately made it possible for me to go to college.
And I ate mac-n-cheese with bbq sauce and ketchup regularly... mmmm mmmm
21/hr? What year was this? Nowadays, people out of school are lucky if they get that.
Well, aren't you special.
I worked full time to support my husband and myself while he was in college (GI Bill paid for his tuition, but nothing else) and while we were able to eat a little better than ramen, we certainly weren't eating steak.
Arrogance anyone? You don't represent 99 percent of the college population. The rest of us eat to survive on what we can make while working through college. Eating healthy is not the priority. Eating whatever we can is the rule of the day.
Amen!!!!
Wealthy family? Ya apparently $60k a year for a family of four in CA is wealthy by you and the governments standards because I got zero grants via FAFSA. By the way it's not a luxury to work your way through school. It's a luxury to get grants and not have to work. Like you.
I agree with this guy. I came from nothing. Growing up my mom used to mow yards to get an extra $20 so she could afford to buy my reduced ($1.40) lunch at grade school. In fact, the day I turned 15 I got a full-time job on my birthday because I was finally legal working age. I haven't stopped working full-time since. In college, I double majored and piled 15-18 hours a semester on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I worked full-time, M, W, F, Sat, Sun. I started off in sales and worked my way up to working for a cellular company and eventually became a store manager at 20. I made 60k a year at that age and haven't looked back I was able to eat anything I wanted because I worked myself silly to do so. I have eaten tuna, ramen w/cheese, and most of the stuff mentioned not because of money, but usually because I would be out of groceries and too lazy to go anywhere to get something and those would be the random items I'd have laying around. And no, I'm not a Romney supporter, I hate that guy. I'm just someone who worked and took out student loans to pay through college and never made any excuses. I'm sure I'll get a lot of rude responses to this, but I had to defend this guy because he had a great point. You can have most anything you want if you try hard enough. If you have kids to support, now that's a different story, but you shouldn't be having kids if you aren't 100% financially able to support them. Hats off to everyone that says they eat these things so that they can support their kids. That's how it should be. Kids first.
This. "Tired of Blowhards" sounds like quite the blowhard himself. Not everyone with money is a Romney supporter. There are plenty of people who have money but have had times in their life when they have had nothing, and that effects their values.
Steam head of cabbage with carrot slices or rhubarb, add boned chicken thighs (preferably BBQ'd) and top portions with 1 pkg of oriental flavor ramen for each bowl. Reasonably nutritious, very filling and if you get the chicken on sale, around $3.00 a serving and would last me a week. I don't recommend using hot dogs for the meat portion, though. Use sausage instead.
Ramen noodles are still excellent. I can eat what ever I wish, but ramen is excellent. One pkg at ten in the morning and one pkg with cooked instant brown rice at night. The college days never leave.
With the current recession, all of us senior citizens on fixed incomes are returning to those ramen college day meals...
I agree with the folks who said nothing new about college cuisine... cheapest food available and trying to be innovative for speed, ease of preparation and taste. In the 80's for me it was lots of ramen noodles, red beans and rice, tortillas, peanut butter sandwiches, spaghetti – some things made on the weekend and eaten over several days. Funny, worked and was in the reserves while going full time, had very little money after paying for school and rent and food but most all of us were all in the same boat and it was one of the best times of my life.
LOL, I hate to say it but i still love ramen noodles, with cut up hot dogs / butter & garlic/ 2 eggs & pepper/ hamburger/ any left-over meat broken up/ can of mixed veggies/ BBQ sauce / pork-N-beans, there were just so many ways to modify it. Haven't had Mac & Cheese in over a decade. Still i would bet that Ramen no matter how you made it was probly healthier for you that a Mc'D's $1 menu lunch/ dinner.
Dhakadhak Daal, Rice and a big bag of chips on top..
Beer ramen, beer fried spam, and hot dogs cooked in a Sunbeam Coney Island Steamer! MMMMWAH! GOURMET!
small boxed cereals for dinner
Ramen (preferably chicken flavor), mounds of shredded cheese, tons of hot sauce and a piece of white bread to soak up the juices.
I usually cook the ramen, melt cheese on top of it, cover it in hot sauce and then stir it up nice and good.
30 years later, I am still eating ramen noodles for lunch every day at work. Habit.
Discount baked beans and cheese doused in hot sauce and wrapped in tortillas and then nuked. Cheap and actually provided some much needed protein.
A friend of mine had a Sam's club card in college, so I used to get boxes of ramen, stacks of tuna, and bags of shredded cheese. Save the seasoning for other recipes, just stir in a can of tuna and some shredded cheese. That was by far my favorite college meal.
4/$1 mac & cheese, whatever can of tuna was on sale ($0.39 in my day), and a can of generic peas (0.25(?)). splash of milk, 1 tblsp generic margarine. Fed two male college students for less than $2 total. And it actually had a little nutritional value to go with the calories. Other good thing about it was, because it was so filling, the really bad cheap beer at the bar stayed down and didn't create nasty hangovers. LIfe was good.
Also liked making ramen noodle "spaghetti" – 10/$1 generic ramen and a jar of the cheapest spaghetti sauce available. Lots of quick, delicious meals.
Baked crinkle cut fries added to frying pan and add an egg, frozen mixed vegetables, and cheap fake deli meat. An awesome hash!
My secret? Grilled cheese sandwiches, or tortillas, or whatever, sprinkled liberally with black pepper on the cheese before you nuke them.
Cheap, takes under 5 minutes, I can always find the ingredients laying around in the messy kitchen....
Meh, not exactly original, but it works for me. I'll make sure to try some of the suggestions above sometime to diversify. I'm sure that it will come in handy during graduate school.
Oh yeah, I forgot. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS take advantage of free food. Part of the reason I love SPS(society of physics students) so much is that it's a free Monday dinner of pizza!
Boiled potatoes with cream of mushroom soup!
Nothing new about college cuisine. I use to do this 40 years ago. Tomato ketchup made with packets from burger joints. Sauerkraut sandwiches, crashing weddings for the buffet eats. And it goes on.
any kind of off-brand creamy soup (cream of chicken, celery, mushroom, or even clam chowder when I could find it on sale) mixed into a box of off-brand rice or pasta (ramen noodles work) with pepper or other spices or grated parm that I had on hand... tasty, cheap, and provided leftovers for at least a couple of days
Ramen noodles mixed with Instant Mashed Potatoes and shredded cheese. Also, English muffin pizzas(using pasta sauce and shredded cheddar cheese), Microwaved of course.
if you want to get "gourmet" with your ramen...add milk while it's boiling to get an "alfredo" style. works best with the chicken flavor. also goes great with a couple of italian sausages, a 6pack of which can be bought for under $4 to pair with your 4/$1 ramen.
4 for a dollar black-and-white brand mac and cheese. Who could afford butter or milk? Macaroni with cheese powder sprinkled on top got me through college.
I'd go down to the convenient store at 2 am when they were going to throw out the hot dogs... they'd be all dried up from spending the day on the heat lamp rollers, and the bread would be hard as a rock. But hey, FREE HOT DOGS. My buddies were smarter. They knew all the places with free buffets during happy hour, and they'd nurse one beer while they'd eat the place out of business.
-Cook a packet of ramen, juse the noodles, save the seasoning for step two.
-Beat together two eggs and the seasoning packet
-mix cooked noodles with egg mixture
-fry it like a huge pancake/omlette
-melt cheddar cheese on top
SO DANG GOOD.
Pro Tip : Use a non-stick pan for the egg/noodle/cheese mixture to avoid a clean-up hassle.
blue box of mac and cheese, can of cream of mushroom and can of tuna.
I bet Mitt Romney had escargot and caviar....
whine whine whine whine. there always has to be a village idiot to bring politics into some kid's diet discussion.
People need to stop getting their panties in a bunch at the very mention of a political figure. It's a joke, get over it!
Then 'some" people shouldn't mention it.....
Awhahahaha....so true engineerfla....talking about how we survived college and the village idiot has to rear up its ugly head..... :(
Pabst Blue Ribbon and Hot Pockets.
.. good times ..
Lucky dog...who could afford Past Blue Ribbon?
We used to get $1.00 cans of Campbells cream of chicken soup, heat it up and pour it over 2 pieces of tore up bread and some white rice. So fillling!. Total cost about $1.55. Even though I can finally afford to eat where I please now, you will always find cans of Campbells cream of chicken soup in my cupboards.
All these years I've thought I was the only person alive who ate noodles with butter and black pepper and Parm. I considered it a dirty culinary secret. Now I feel vindicated. I also feel the urge to try adding curry powder–never thought of that before. My other favorite budget dinner is what my family calls sticky beans, basically beans and rice mixed with cheese. I mix it up by using different kinds of beans (pintos, black beans, black-eyed peas, whatever's on sale) and different shredded cheeses (Monterey Jack is my favorite though). For flavor I'll add salsa or picante sauce or hot sauce, whichever is on hand. It's fast, filling, economical, and not completely lacking in nutrition like most of my favorite cheap eats. A friend of mine used to mix mashed-up hardboiled eggs with ranch dressing, but I could never bring myself to try that.
If we ate any meat in college, it was always turkey legs. You could buy them for next to nothing, cook them and strip the meat, and mix it into your casserole or whatever. It was a lot of bang for the buck.
Beef Ramen soup with mozzarella cheese and hot sauce.
In 1966, hot plates weren't allowed in the dorms. A loaf of bread, american cheese, aluminum foil, and an iron. You didn't have to say Presto. Grilled cheese sandwiches!. I could feed myself, sell the rest, and have enough money to buy more bread and cheese.
i hope awl yuu calidge stoodenz lerned to spel better thin youre posts
I hate you, and I don't even know you! Please get a life. You deserve one.
I AGREE!!
Ditto....the village idiot reared its ugly head again....
mustard sandwiches. it is what it sounds like.
we had mayo sandwiches
Delicious?
mustard sandwiches are definitely a classic. i'm surprised no one mentioned ranch dressing sandwiches though.
Sadly all the cheap foods that are not organic are destroying human health and brain functionality on a mass scale. And yes the FDA knows it, and loves every moment of it.
Dumbed down public = easy to control herd of non-thinkers who will do as they are told.
wow, Debbie Downer
Truth hurts, huh?
It's only like a full days worth of sodium per pack. It's cool in college because you're young, and able to last through it til you can afford safe food.
Go away......your such a wet blanket.....
"don't be square maaaaaann"
Somebody is stuck on the organic wagon with the rest of the idiots that don't do their own research...
"Organic food" spoils in half the time or less. There are no adverse health effects from eating non "organic" food with the exception of a lack of paranoia and not possessing a feeling of smug undeserved superiority.
Yes.. there is.
Read before you open your mouth.
There is no RECORD of adverse effects. That's not the same as "There ARE no adverse effects."
Read. With a totally open mind. You'll be shocked at what nobody's telling you about your health, just to make a buck.
And you'd be surprised what people will make up and tell you, to get you to spend more money.
There are records, though. Medical reports, dietitian analysis, chemical toxicology reports, etc.
Sodium in large doses is deadly. News at 11. Haven't even reached the organic vs non-organic bit.
As far as that It's a given, if chemicals are in something it's not as healthy as being without said chemical. It's not even something that can be discussed, it's like trying to argue that cigarettes don't cause cancer it's just the oxygen included when inhaled...
Frozen broccoli nuked with some tomato sauce out of a jar + shredded cheese.
I used to buy tubs of hummus, make my own tzatziki (yogurt + olive oil + herbs), and eat that with pita bread. I'd spend $8, and that would be enough for 3-4 dinners. The olive oil and herbs were extra, but the olive oil lasted a couple of years, and the herbs for a good 6 months.
Also would 2 soups from Panera using their "you pick 2 options" – $5 for 2 meals.
This sounds high-end.
Anything frozen requires a freezer, and many of us had only dorm friges (2×2 refrigerator). Pasta sauce? Nice, and a big step up from canned tomato sauce. Shredded cheese?? Who could afford that? Unless you mean the parmesan cheese packets from Pizza Hut.....
Sounds like you had money during your college days.
It is definitely possible to buy those cheap simple things... say... if you had two jobs while attending college like I did.
My dorm had a mini fridge + freezer, and a microwave. A JAR of tomato sauce is a step up from a can? Yes in taste, and sure the price is higher, but you also get more in the jar.
Didn't know $14 for 2 weeks worth of dinners meant I had alot of money. Though I had academic scholarships and chose a practical 4 year degree.
I'm sure others did the same, but:
- Generic Mac-n-Cheese
- Canned peas
- Can of tuna (not Albacore).
It would last all year in the pantry, and you could buy a lot of each very cheaply.
On the good days, I'd finish it off with a Cherry Coke (but those were expensive!).
toast
ketchup
grated cheese
Oh yeah, after I graduated, had a real job and was "rich", I lived alot on baked potatoes with a can of Chunky soup poured over it.
Oh, i remember those days, make a huge batch of spaghetti and sauce packs from the dollar store and day old french bread. Spaghetti for dinner and spaghetti sandwiches for lunch the next day! and yes, any place with condiments in a packet were fair game for "Procurement".
Fried ramen....look it up on Youtube.
Ramen Noodles? um EVERYONE college student eats these so they can afford beer....
I remember I had eaten so much mac n cheese and pasta before coming to new york, that I would go without if it was the only thing in the house. I can remember though that when I absolutely couldn't go to sleep, I would have ramen noodles with ketchup.
This of course was before microwaves were invented. I remember having to boil water in a sauce pan because when I tried to use my tea pot with whistle, a cockroach would somehow find a way to clog the whistle hole. auuckk.
Just the same, it nice to know I wasn't the only one living in this misery. LOL.
Best to all the survivors and the new kids discovering the savory flavor of Ramen noodles. Peace...
This is gross, but in college we made a lot of potato chip soup casseroles. Take a bag of chips (the 25 cent ones), half a pack of ramen seasoning, and mix it with a little bit of water. Put it in the microwave until it's hot and chow down. If you were blessed, you could add an egg to the mix and then you REALLY had a meal :D.
If you were blessed enough to have sugared cereal, I remember it being worth its weight in pure gold. Want your homework done? Offer up half a box of Captain Crunch; it's better than cigarettes in prison, lol.
Actually it sounds like a cheap way to make au gratin. Great idea!
The dad of a college friend of mine used to work at a cereal factory, where employees got to keep the "mistake" batches of cereal. She'd get dozens of boxes of irregular cereal (usually generic peanut butter Cap'n Crunch) and pass them around to all of us. I probably ate my weight in generic cereal during the last couple of years of college.
Oriental flavor Ramen with chopped celery. Yummmmmm
The past due tour:
There was as Reser's distributor nearby and Fridays they would sell all there outdated stuff. You could get a 12 pack of bean burritos for a dollar. Their half gallon salads for a similar price. Throw in some taquitos for next to nothing and then wash it done with expired beers from the local distributor's dock sales. Fridays after payday were the best!
My college roommate and I would get canned refried beans on sale, a big block of medium cheddar on sale and tortillas. That was dinner many, many nights. No microwave, so we'd heat up the beans on the stove top, slap on the cheese, let the cheese melt. Then splat it onto a tortilla...salsa once in awhile to enhance the flavor...another 'meal' was popcorn popped in a popcorn popper...nothing like it....
I spent a particularly broke summer eating dinners of pasta mixed with homemade cheapo sauce – 1 can of tomato sauce, a few teaspoons of Italian seasoning, and a few dashes of garlic salt. It wasn't bad, but I got tired of it really fast.
The local cheap Asian takeout place also had unlimited free kim chee. My friends and I would order lo mein or even plain rice and load up on free kim chee.
Living in a can redemption state, I was able to pay for these gourmet meals after scrounging campus for cans and bottles. Only about a dozen or so fit in my back pack, but hey – that was 60 cents!
Jailhouse casserole – 2 boxes mac & cheese, 1 can of tuna, 1 can of cream of mushroom. Back in my day, cost around $1.50. and you'd get four meals.
I still occasionally go "slumming" in the dollar section of my local store and if I'm lucky I see canned corned beef hash or potted meat food product priced at 2 cans for $1.00. Heat it up with a couple of fried eggs and you have a cheap breakfast that can't be beat!
Dont forget crappy tv dinners too. I just got out of college but would get 10 crappy swanson or banquet tv dinners for $1.00 each when you buy ten. Its better than ramen noodles every night but not the best food for you.
Not working at a restaurant while in college is mistake #1. I worked at a Romano's Macaroni Grill. There I co-opted the bent silverware which was going to be thrown out, and was given 1 free huge pasta meal a day, which made for dinner for myself and roommate 5 days a week, while she was able to bring home appetizer foods from the sports bar she worked at which made for many of our lunches. For those meals I had to eat, the college-style specialty was...(get your recipe cards out)
Pasta (Spaghetti or Angel Hair), with olive oil, salt, pepper, and the "leftover" Reggiano parmesean chunks the restaurant would dispose of after they got too small for use shredding at the table. Total cost per meal, about $0.40.
Lucky for me, I was active enough that I was able to metabolize a week's worth of carbs every day, and took vitamins to supplement the fruits and veggies I was definitely NOT getting.
I worked at 5 different restaurants throughout my college career and was only able to get food from 1 of them – was a sandwich place and the (not so honest) manager let me have all the sandwiches I could walk out with. I made them with bacon to take home for breakfast and lived on them for lunch and dinner that year.
When my wife and I first married we had $25 to feed us both for a week. We bought a whole chicken fried half and broiled the rest, made chicken soup with the leftover pieces. With the grease from the fried chicken I would make snicker doodle cookies with flour, cinnamon, sugar, egg and cream of tartar, With a cheap water injected hickory flavored ham shank we had breakfast meat and dinner plus ham salad and potato soup for an entire year.
To this day I refuse to eat Ramen, Kool-aid and soup. I cannot and will not, no matter how broke I get (hopefully never). College SUCKED! I also hated those pampered silver spoon kids who would bring food to class. Like break out a sub sandwich or value meal in class. The rest of us starving, knowing all we had to look forward to for the week was Ramen. My worst meal in college was a drained can of tuna with ketchup on top. No drink, just tap water. I had to steal the ketchup from the Student Union. It wasn't even Heinz packets, it was generic ketchup (the absolute worst).
Living on $20 a week in groceries. Only Caveat being you need to shop in China town(Toronto) for cheap fresh stuff.
Breakfast: Soya Milk + Cereal
Lunch: Pickled Tofu+ Rice
Dinner: Steam chinese broccoli with soya sauce + egg fried rice
Oh man, all that soy...talk about skyrocketing estrogen levels! Too much soy = not good!
In the final years of college, I had a tad more cash and Applebees ran promotions for half off beer and wings after 10. For 2.99 you could walk away with a 22 oz beer and a half dozen chicken wings. Done son!
Lets all sit around and tell disgusting stories...
Or, you could go stroke your high horse.
You must need a good BM or something. Jeez, what a buzzkill!
Thanks, Kat, this piece is great! I don't want to go back, but I'm having fun reliving my poor, starving college student days, and wishing I had been as creative as some of the other posters ;-)
I made it through 4 years school on $.29 sliders and 10 cent cans of manderian oranges. Later I scored a job at a local pizza place and was allowed to take home one pie per shift. I thought I'd hit a lottery.................
LOL, I too worked in a pizza joint doing deliveries. We got fed every night, plain pizza. When I quit 10 months later I didn't eat pizza for about 2 years. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.
I still eat ramen noodles to this day sometimes just cause. I kind of enjoy that plain taste at times.
I ate the free saltine crackers on top of the vending machines and drank a .25 cent coke, no ice, for dinner most Thursday nights (payday)while working at UPS on the night shift. The crackers were in a big box above the vending machines and were intended for those who purchased soup, chili, etc from the vending machine. I had no money for those "delicacies" and usually didn't have much to eat by the time Thursday came around, so the saltine crackers and the Coke had to do for dinner. This was not my favorite dinner but one that I'll always remember.
Also used to buy the basic frozen pizza with room-mates and add whatever toppings we wanted/had (ground beef, cheese, olives....).
Rice-a-Roni and frozen burritos got me through many a night in my college days, as well as mac and cheese and ramen. Add in a few taco sauce packets from Taco Bell and you had a great meal!
You'll be eating those kind of things again once you are an empty nester, and if single. Talking on phone to my daughter the other day and was talling her what I bought to eat from the dollar store and she noted that I eat like a college student; box mac and cheese; spaghetti os; ramen; etc. These kind of things ,while not healthy eating, are easy for the single person to throw together. I try to add a lot of salad for lunches to make up for it,
I used to slice up hot dogs or Vienna sausage and add to pork & beans, noodles, or mac & cheese. I always like carrots or fruit when I could.
OMG!!! I love hot dogs and mac & cheese. Just a sprinkle of chili powder on top makes it better:)
You college kids of today are such n00bs. Back in my day we read obituaries and cried like we knew the stiff in the box, then went to the buffet after the service.
Stupid kids today don't know how to live.
cold cream of mushroom soup (from the can) scooped out with saltines.
2 Staples mentioned there! Ramen and Mac&Cheese. Every 2nd or 3rd portion of either during the week I used to make the Mac with just marg and milk and swaped the "cheese" package with the seasoning from the Ramen to make Asian Macaroni and Cheesy Ramen to add a bit of variety to it all. Meat once a week (either ground beef as a base for noodles or a steak I got off my Dad) but there was strangely always money for a burrito at the Mexican on campus and for beer/martinis at night (martinis with lots of olives to make up for lack of funds for real food!. Of course Eric the Barman provided enough pretzels and peanuts to feed us! Now I can afford to get drunk on more expensive alcohols and awesome food (I became a chef)
Ramen noodles with anything – diced hot dogs [protein!]; egg [dairy!]; anything green [vegetable!]; Stocked up on $.25 tacos from taco bell [freeze and thaw in microwave] for a month; Hamburger/ Tuna Helper specials – just add meat or tuna.
1 egg
mayonaise
2 slices of bread, or a bagel, or english muffin ( whatever is around)
toast the bread and spread mayo on it. Lightly grease a bowl or storage bag and break egg into it and crush the yolk but don't whip air into it, microwave for 35-50 minutes. Dump egg onto bread and put other slice on top. If it is in the budget add sandwich meats, or cheese slice and tomato.
Ooop not minutes, seconds. lol the eggs would be rubber.
This is still one of my favorites... Throw a potato in the microwave, when cooked cut in half and drown in cheap ranch dressing, if its bacon ranch it's even better.
You know, at first this grossed me out, but then I remembered having to do the same thing when I was first working and had my first apartment. (I didn't attend much college, I was lucky and landed a good tech job and ended up leaving college to work full time). I was always low on money towards pay day, and sometimes would even drive home for the weekends. But when at home, I would end up eating ramen. I remember having it for 3 days straight, lunch and dinner, until payday finally arrived. That was 25 years ago, and to this day, I still consider that the lowest point in my life.
Seriously, the article is a fun write up of what most of us went through when young, broke, and getting through school. Yes, there are healthier options, and yes you can probably find them within budget if it was important to you. The deal here is that College is a strange mix of play and study. When you were not studying, you wanted to be playing. And, when not playing or studying you were likely sleeping. So being able to whip up a culinary masterpiece with random ingredients and shoddy cookware was actually a well respected talent in college. Seriously, at two am there is nothing better than a guilty pleasure. That's true today as it was then. Taco bell anyone? Single slice pizza? Philly Cheese steaks? All of that food that is bad for you and you only eat it when 1) you're jones'n for a guilty pleasure, or 2) it's 2 am. So stick with the spirit of this article or go write you health food on a budget book but leave the rest of us to our fun.
Now to add mine: Costco at lunch. Back in the day Cosco would serve sampler's of all their frozen foods during the lunch hour. We would borrow our friends mom's card and viola! Lunch for free.
Well said.
We used to go down to the school cafeteria and get as many of the hard boiled eggs from the salad bar as we could. We'd take them back up to our dorm room and buy a .69 cent loaf of bread and mash the eggs together with some left over packets of mayonnaise and mustard, salt and pepper to make egg salad sandwiches. Delicious! Sometimes we were even able to get some onions off the salad bar to go in with it as well.
Ramen noodles (drained) + sour cream + flavor packet = heaven.
You people make me sick.
I went to college before microwaves. All we had were toasters and hot cups. I had so much peanut butter on toast and tomato soup that I can't even look at it any more.
Talking to my mom, she was in the same boat, but hers was sardines and tomato paste, cause it was the cheapest stuff.
bologne "quesadillas" ...flour tortillas, american singles, bologne..microwave. Delicious especially if the bologne got crispy.
I come from a time where there was no such thing as Ramen in upstate New York – but we did have 25 cent mac and cheese (sometimes 6 for $1.00 if we were luck) – make that and if we were rich we'd add some frozen peas – if we were really rich – a can of tuna. Also remember eating the boxed stuffing (can't remember the name) or Rice a Roni – yes it was carb overload but it's all we could afford. I didn't go out drinking much or partying – no cash. Such I could have cooked better, I'm a great cook (say I) but cash flow was always limited. I can serve (and have) 120 people for $3.00 per person – and we had enough leftovers to give to the shelter on the other side of the church.
Favorite meal (after we all pitch in for the ingredents) Tuna Casserole. l whole bag of pasta, boiled. Mixed with one can of tuna (water packed) and one can Cream of Mushroom soup. Fishy Pasta Glue. Sunday Dinner
1/2 packet of ramen (your favored flavor)
2 slices of american cheese ( or the same amount of your favorite 'melt friendly' cheese
2 slices of bread.
Boil noodles until el dente, drain except for about 1tsp or so. Return to the pan & mix in the flavor packet.
Start grilling the bread ( as if you were making a grilled cheese )
Put a slice of cheese on each slice of bread & melt.
put as much of the ramen on one slice as you can.
place the second slice of bread on top & carefully push down to stick them together.
Grilled Ramen & Cheese sandwiches!
It's better if there are 2 of you – make the whole package of ramen & you're good to go. The first time I heard about this, it sounded disgusting, but it's soooo good. I've actually added small amounts of finely diced sharp cheese to the noodles to glue them together & had it with tomato soup.
You can also get some freeze-dried vegetables and rehydrate them while cooking the noodles & mix them in. When I get the chance, I will add some rough cut kimchi to the mix for a bit of a change-up in flavor.
I am reading this and wishing that I could still eat this food and not get fat! Now in my 30's if I even look at Mac and Cheese or Ramen Noodles I gain weight!
Roomy and I existed on baked potatoes with NuMasca Margerine (and the bonus was a brightly colored bowl to keep when empty), Pot pies (four for a dollar) and large cans of Campbell's vegetable beef soup with saltine crackers broken up in it to make it like mush. That's what we lived on in 1968. No Ramen noodles yet. Wish there had been.
Not a cook it yourself menu item, but I am so old that when we were really hungry on a cold day on campus in Colo. we would go to Round the Corner restaurant and get a massive plate of fries for 35 cents and a hot tea. They gave us free refills on the hot tea, pretty sure they were not supposed to. Even in those days a buck for a full meal was super cheap.
When I was in school, late 60's, I couldn't have a hot plate and microwaves weren't around. I made everything in a purke type coffee pot. It boild water for pasta and hardboiled eggs, mussels were cheap and I could steam them. also. ...I'd set an open can of what-ever in the water to heat it up and I could always make coffee.
Instant mashed potatoes, supplemented with half and half, lots of pepper and garlic powder, and as much shredded cheddar as I could afford. My mouth still waters thinking about that gooey deliciousness!
Lo-Mein Style Ramen
Take 1-2 packets of Ramen Noodles (I like "Oriental" flavor best but any will work)
Boil noodles until aldente then drain
Heat oil (I think olive or peanut work best) in a frying pan or Wok
Add drained noodles and dry soup packets
Toss until thoroughly mixed and you get a little variety to your ramen eating regimine using exactly the same ingredients.
It's also really good topped with a sunnyside-up egg and/or Thai Sriracha Hot Sauce.
It's not just a money thing, sometimes it's a lack of knowledge of nutritional eating, sometimes it's irresponsible time management and needing something quick and easy, sometimes it's just the thrill of being on your own and being able to eat things you've never been allowed to before. I ate better in college than I ever had in my life just because I had signed up for the on-campus meal plan, but I still ate ramen any time I could get away with it just because my mom couldn't tell me not to anymore!
Old English 40oz! and a $1 bag of noodle chips from a Chinese restaurant.
Might as well be full and drunk instead of just full!
Saltine crackers with tuna and mustard.
NO, NO, NO! Sardines and mustard! Not Tuna!
Don't forget a baked potatoe. Bake or microwave it. Cover that bad boy with noodles and brown gravy. And boxed wine for .90. I had that for a solid 6 months while living in Europe. The friends I went with never knew I only arrived with $800. If they did, I would not have been invited! I came home with $7, managed to move into my old apartment, and found $30 in change.
In my younger days, my mom would boil potatoes, cook some ground beef, and we would cover that with ranch dressing! Best meal ever!
Last time I checked Margarine was at least as expensive as butter.
Butter in Washington state is about $2.78 for the cheapest, while margarine can be bought for $0.78 at the cheapest.
Early 90s Baltimore, butter was a luxury I couldn't even dream of. Margarine was sometimes on sale for $.59/lb. Butter was probably 4x that, if not more. I remember when I moved to NYC in 1996 and butter at a fancy grocery store on the Upper West Side where I was house sitting was almost $6/lb. I think I actually cried.
American Cheese between two slices of bread. Put margarine on outside of each slice of bread. Wrap in foil. Preheat your clothes iron to the high setting. Hold iron on the sandwich wrapped in foil for a few minutes on each side. Unwrap.
VOILA! Dorm room Grilled Cheese.
Variation: Sell to others in the dorm for $2/each. Then take yourself out for pizza.
Fabulous!!
awesome
Hamburger/Tuna Helper: Friday and Saturday 'special meals' for me back in college. Otherwise, cheap fast food, ramen, poor mans nachos (tostitos shredded cheese and salsa), and 1/2 box of speghetti with butter & parmesan cheese (sauce if I'm lucky)
I used to microwave chicken nuggets that I'd pick up at Costco and paired them with some spaghetti & cheese for a quick and cheap version of Chicken Parmesan while in college. Very filling.
Mac and Cheese; 1/2 cup of leftover taco beef; spoon of salsa and sour cream; tabasco. Mix it all up in the same pot. AWESOME! – I still make it once in a while when my wife isn't looking.
I can of Cambell's chunky soup plus 1 egg. Stir in egg while heating soup in sauce pan. Net – chunky egg-drop soup. Sustained me through graduate school while training for marathons.
Flour and water mixed, then baked til golden. With jelly on top. Or as my sister called them after hearing that I'd made them, "Glue Biscuits".
now that's funny...
hamburger helper...i couldn't always splurge for the hamburger, so it was typically just the 'helper!'
Been know to put mushrooms in place of the beef since sometimes the canned mushrooms can be .40 cents a can.
My college boyfriend and his roommates and their girlfriends (6-8 people in total) used to share 1 box of hamburger helper everynight (made with the cheap 70/30 burger-logs you can buy at Walmart).
a 6 pack of ramen 1 dollar. a log of ground turkey 1 dollar. brown the turkey make cook ramen noodles drain water add ramen seasoning and turkey. 1 log should be enough for all 6 packs. you feel rich splurge for a can of mushrooms. 2 bucks is enough to keep you going for a good 3 days or so. supplement with crunchy peanut butter and if you're rich enough jelly sandwiches. you could live forever. although half of that life will be spent trying to figure out what's going on with your colon.
The colon issue can easily be fixed by leading with $0.69 head of leaf lettuce. Trust me, having a full belly and then emptying it out are two of the three greatest reliefs known to man.
spaghetti with butter (because i don't know where you're from, but butter was always cheaper) and frozen peas and carrots tossed into the water after you cooked the spaghetti.
Cans of yellow label "genereic" spaghetti and meatballs
Lettuce sandwiches with mayo.
I'd REALLY like to know where the heck you live. Because I've lived in the Deep South, Midwest, and Far West of this country and family members have lived in the East/Northeast, and in all of those areas, going back to 1970, real butter(which is made from milk/cream from a cow) has always and forever been 3-4 times the cost of margarine(which is made from vegetable oil, flavorings, and food coloring). ALWAYS. WHERE have you been living where butter is cheaper than margarine – or have you confused the two items? Back when store brand margarine could be had for about 33 cents, butter was about $1.50/lb. Twenty years ago when an average sale of moderate name brand margarine was 2 for a dollar, butter was between $1.79-$1.99. Right now, margarine is 92cents at Wal Mart while the cheapest butter I can find is $2.48.
These days, the only things I use margarine for are boxed mac&cheese and my spouse's rice and baked potato, because he prefers it over butter. Oh, and on the outside of HIS grilled cheese sammies. I vastly prefer the flavor and texture of real butter, so much so that I'd rather do without, find something else to cook. I am very fortunate that because I was taught how to cook well and how to maximize the nutritional value of my grocery dollars, I can afford to indulge that preference even though we are not all that well off; I know where I can economize to save enough to indulge certain tastes, like butter, cream for my coffee, good quality coffee beans, and a vast supply of spices/herbs/condiments.
Almost all those recipes are full of carbo's, add all that alcohol drinking college kids do, and you're setting yourself for some very bad health problems that may catch up with you later.
There are things you can prepare that don't have to be so bad for you. I should make a book.
You're a freakin' killjoy. Get off you high horse. We're going down memory lane, you twit. A college student generally doesn't have access to large pantries of stores or a huge refrigerator. Most of this stuff was made with illeagal immersion heaters or hot plates in the middle of the night when you had a few minutes to actually make the effort to eat something.
Jerk.
Thank you!
Hey, BFD, it's YOU who is a jerk... Everyone is entitled to an opinion. There is no need to get nasty.
You really should
There sure is an excuse. It is "Because I wanted to."
umm...yeah there is. Money.
6 packs ramen = 1 dollar = 6 meals!
1/2 lb lettuce, 1 tomatoes, 1 onion, 1 cucumber = around 5 bucks = 2 meals if you're lucky!
When you're living on the cheap, fresh produce is about the most expensive thing around.
In terms of price per calorie, cheap unhealthy carbs always wins.
when you are a very broke college student, $1 for a huge package of french fries goes a lot further than $1 for a couple of heads of lettuce. You don't need to write a book, just hand out all that extra cash you obviously have to some broke college students.
Almost all those recipes are full of carbo's, add all that alcohol drinking college kids do, and you're setting yourself for some very bad health problems that may catch up with you later.
The point.... you missed it.
Oh Lord. For once I came on to this site and found people having a good time...no politics....no arguing...just fun remembering the nutty stuff we did in school to stretch our pennies. And then there is you. Live a little, you sad little person, and stop lecturing for a few minutes.
What a buzzkill. STFU and beer me.
chop and onion, put it in a coffee cup with the margerine for the cheapest powdered "chese" mac and cheese. microwave until the margerine melts and is HOT. Warm the milk in the microwave, add the cheese powder to the milk and mix well, then add the onion butter, then mix with the drained noodles.
(Or slice 2-3 onions, sautee in margarine and make a sandwich
I worked Part Time for a hotel and they served hot breakfast in the morning, I used to take a few of the single serving cream cheese packets, and hot sauce packets. Mix one packet of hot sauce and one packet of cream cheese with some chicken ramen and VOILA! Buffalo Chicken Ramen! Its prettty darn good to this day!
Masher-tater-tuna-flakes! Sounds great, right? LOL On the weekend, we'd make a great big vat of that mess and then we'd eat on it all week between school and work and stupid crazy busy schedules. It was two boxes of off brand Mac n Cheese, two cans of tuna, and enough mashed potato flakes to make it all sorta stick together. We made it with extra liquid in order to stretch it. If we were rich that week, we'd crumble potto chips on top. But usually, not so much. Ugh. I can't say I ever crave that glop, though it WAS a nice, gooey, comforting meal on cold nights!
I was only ever a college student for a semester or so, but I spent plenty of time pretty broke. My favorite easy and cheap meal:
1 Ramen block, broken into quarters
1 Large Egg
Put the noodles in your bowl. Empty the seasoning packet into the bowl. Crack the egg on top of the noodles and stir it up a bit to break the yolk. Pour in boiling water until the bowl is full. Then stir frequently until the noodles are no longer crunchy and eat. The best part of this method is that you only end up needing to wash the bowl and your spoon.
5 years since graduation and still eating this way... Thanks high unemployment & student loans!!!
Judging from the Ads and TV, if things are so tough, why are kids still partying away on Spring break?
If the Ads and TV are your reality, you need to get out more.
Spring break...what's that?
Those are the kids that have their parents paying for everything school wise so they can go and party it up. REAL college people go by choice OR they are in high debt.
pan fry pork steaks with grilled onions and green peppers in butter then mix everything together with soy sauce soo good this is my 13 y/o son idea.
I ate the faces of people I met in the street after a nice feast of bath salts.
Who can afford bath salts nowadays? I just go with cheap Soylent Green (the generic brand, made from Peepu.l)
You know there are a plethora of sites that teach college kids how to cook HEALTHY things that are still affordable – even for those who are allergic to the cheap stuff (like me) such as ramen and spaghetti and bread.
realfoodonastudentbudget.wordpress.com
and
freebies2deals are both good ones
Try cooking when you are poor and hungry and see how much effort you want to give it.
Four for a dollar mac-n-cheese, made with butter pats and ketchup taken from the corner KFC. Milk was a luxury I had to skip.
1. Make a box of cheap macaroni-&-cheese per the box instructions.
2. Add one can of Hormel chili to the mix. :-)
Actually that sounds really good – I'm making that for dinner tonight! :) Though I'm happy to say I can afford the good mac n cheese, but Hormel Chili is good stuff!
Jessica
Ramen noodles, hot sauce and a hot dog sliced to 1/4" pieces, microwave the entire lot, enjoy. I do it today even.
Take turkey franks (the cheapest in the store), slice pepperoni thin, fry with acquired seasonings, spread on bisquick crust with generic tomato soup - from the dented about to be discarded bin if possible (more scavenged seasonings if available) and some shredded block o' gov't cheese, bake and enjoy pizza! Well, eat pizza-like substance.
I forgot about those. We used the off brand pop and serve biscuits and would grill them over the weekend and heat them in the microwave the following week.
Shoot,
I remember when I was in school (2007) we were in the dorms heating hot water on an iron for our noodles.. geesh.. You think about those times and how far you have come indeed.
Microwaved baked potato crushed up whole, peel and all, with BBQ sauce...mmmmmmm
Oh.... and I drew the line at SPAM... would rather drink water.... SPAM is not fit for human consumption, I don't care how you truss or dress it up.... GAG!!!!
It's okay... not every palate can appreciate the fine points of spam
You have to fry it! Put it on some bread with mayo (or something that called itself mayo) – OH! DELICIOUS!
I remember those days vividly! I have been out of college 10 years and thought those days were over! Thanks to my student loan debt I'm reliving those days. Even with 2 jobs.
David, have you tried applying for Income Based Repayment plan? I was struggling to pay almost $250 a month while trying to find a job, and once I found a job, paying it while raising a family. I applied and now I pay much lower, based on my income (only $11/month) Its not the best solution (the best would be to make enough income to pay the $250/month, but I can't seem to find a job that will pay enough) but it certainly removed that weight on my shoulders. You can apply through whoever your lender is, or search the http://www.ed.gov website for the info. Hope you find a solution.
Thanks for the tip. My school loans are coming up in less than a year. I am told my payment will run about $650 a month. :-(
I hate how they are cute-sifying this, when in reality, this shouldn't be at all. People should be able to buy nutritious food to live on. It's really pathetic that we are called a first world country with people living on this type of food.
Easiest ways to deal with a bad times is with a laugh.
The spirit of the article reflects the means by which we, as students, subsisted during tight times (usually caused by our own lack of financial foresight). These foods, for me, were a lesson in financial planning. Blow your monthly budget on booze, concert tickets and the like, and pay the price in creative dime-store cuisine later.
I bet you are just the life of the party.
LOL, what moronic comments "people should be able to...." No $#$% Sherlock, however this article is not about Darfur, it's about the USA and college kids who make the most of what they have, and in most cases (at least mine I know!) setting their priorities around how many 12-paks they could get out of a $20 monthly stash. I ate ketchup sandwiches, or mustard, whatever there was. For a feast, I would buy the cheapest generic gravy mix packet and make that. Served up on bakery outlet .50 bread (some flattened out for texture) and it was like eating an open face roast beef (with no meat or even meat by products of course). Geez, lighten up. Go work at a soup kitchen if you wanna go that route, but lighten up!!!
Ramen noodles, with stir fried veggies is tasty, cheap and filling! Shell pasta with a can of tuna and a dollop (Or couple condiment packages) of mayo makes a nice little "salad" thats pretty ok. Mac N Cheese with chunks of lunchmeat is tasty too....and the list goes on and on. :)
Ramen noodles with a handful of frozen veggies dropped in at the last minute. It not only added a bit of percieved nutrition, but it also cooled the soup so you could slurp it down right away.
79 cent pizzas.....three at a time
I find this amusing; hey you had to survive, and you did. Thank God!
Baked potato with butter-flavor Pam (specifically the Wal-Mart broad) with a ton of seasoned salt. Healthy1
Generic triscuits with generic shredded cheese melted in the microwave for 40 seconds. Had that for most of my meals in college.
I hate the cutesy writing style of this article. But for some reason, popular news outlets find that style "super-fab." Those all-too-clever made-up dramatized adjectives make me puke. And what the heck does this mean: "...nabbing the cheapest brick and bottle..." Does this alleged writer each bricks?
You're almost as fun as an IRS audit.
This isn't really a news story. This is more like a commentary so the style of writing can be a bit more free style. I would agree with you if this was actual news but it's not. I like the fact than CNN has contributing columnists who can relate things to specific populations in this style.
Yes, I realize this is not "news" but I presume CNN chose this article or whatever -you-want-to-call it because they liked the content and the style. Sure, mix it up. But I don't find myself caring a twit about what the writer did or didn't eat or care that she doesn't eat it anymore or her "paint-stained paws" (whatever that refers to) etc. etc. Writing can be fun and witty w/o being 'oh-so-clever' and food can be made to sound 'oooh-so-Scarlett-O'Hara delish' in much more creative ways. And okay, I admit it, I'm a writer myself who just hasn't had the time create my own popularized blog...
My fix was one box of spaghetti, one onion, 1 pack of the cheapest hot dogs (had the most flavor anyway) and a jar of spaghetti sauce. Slice hotdogs, fry with onions, mix with sauce and a full belly for dinner for a week. Gee, maybe I'll do it again for old times!
mash a slice of bread flat. Put it between two unsmashed slices of bread. Put arbys sauce on it. The smashed bread tasts and feels like real meat.
Those were the days.
10 ramen packs for a dollar. 8 franks for 1 dollar. 8 cans, 8oz each, of mixed veggies for a quarter each. Made 8 dinners for $4.00.
1 loaf white bread for a dollar, 1 bottle of thousand island dressing another dollar, a couple of pounds of bean sprouts for a dollar made 15 sandwiches for $3.00.
HUGE bags of malt-O-meal fake cap'n crunch cereal for $2.00.
Less than 10 bucks a week for food.
My prized possession was a white ceramic coffee cup sold by McDonald's in the 70's that gave the user unlimited free coffee for LIFE. I did all my home work in a corner booth at McDonald's and they hated seeing that cup. I didn't pay for coffee for years. I wonder where that cups got to now that it's 25 years later.
Definitely would split the "Party Tray" of General tso's chicken which included broccoli and white rice with as many of the 8 roommates who could go in on it, if i remember correctly it cost roughly $15 and fed about 8 people.
When I met my husband in college, he frequently made whole boxes of stuffing and ate it for dinner. Unfortunately, he didn't have measuring cups, so usually it was closer to damp croutons or bread soup.
stuffing with hot sauce and a little ranch is delish!
2 for $1 Safeway frozen pot pies (mostly gravy) with $1/very large bag of french fries to sop up all the gravy. And of course, lots of ramen noodles.
And to the snobs poo pooing that kind of diet – you obviously received more than $200/month to cover rent, utilities,gas, sundries (supplemented by my minimum wage income earned at pizza and sandwich joints).
Broke college students? Heck I still eat noodle bowls on work lunches and I work in the public sector as a developer.. they taste great and save $$$$$ lol
Stove Top stuffing with sunny-side-up eggs on top. Not only filling, but. . . uhhh. . .filling!
peanut butter and jelly sandwich!! the most delicious and easiest sweet and salty combination
Or peanut butter and honey. Living off some of this stuff now since only working pt. Well over half my meals come from work since its a restaurant, but limited in what I can get from there due to medical issues. SO, at home living off "mock tuna casserole" (mc and cheese with a small can of peas and tuna), same setup with chicken and corn instead of the tuna/peas, pb&j, pb&h, cup noodles, and grilled cheese. Just sort of splurged by making mini quiches, egg sub, half and half, cheese and turkey bacon (got 3 for price of 1 :) )....yummy. And freezes really well
Spagetti noodles with ketchup and parmesan cheese!!!!! Oh so good to this day but it makes my husband gag!
Miracle whip and sugar sandwiches....... cold, canned bean dip on saltines with tabasco......bouillon cube with hot water and a green onion........(WISHING I had some Raman).........celery sticks with peanut butter or miracle whip.... rice with cream of chicken soup.....diced corn dog with noodles..... stewed figs from the fig tree growing in the middle of campus........ tortillas with margarine and honey packet from the student center......god.... thinking of this I want to retch.....
Malt-o-meal! Who needs stuff that requires cooking?
Our local convenience store had a huge hard cookie that could be a whole meal for only 25 cents. I later found out it was made from expired donuts that were compressed and re baked. I no longer live in the area, but I still have cravings for them. I wonder if they ship?
This reminds me of how we used to take those 99 cent just-add-water cookie mix bags and bake the whole thing up at once in a bread pan.
With this economy down turn, I might have to go back to 25 cents demon ramen and hoarding condiment packets when I retire.
The best was taking a "Cup A Soup", pour in boiling water, crack an egg on the top then sprinkle with Shake-on Parmesan Cheese. Then you simply cover for a few minutes. This would pouch the egg and then you can stir it together and eat! YUM.
I meant cup noodles not cup a soup, though probably that would work too.
Tuna fish from the can, cream cheese (if I was lucky) and crackers. Breakfast/lunch/dinner of champions!! Also, tuna and mac 'n cheese or hot dog and mac 'n cheese. Still do the hot dog thing but fancier mac 'n cheese and sausage.
As if cannabis has nothing to do with these recipes!
Laughed out loud on this one!!!!! yeah.... I think you're right.
hahahaha, made me LOL also and you are most likely correct!!
Pork and Beans can be spiced up a bit with Spaghetti or chili sauce mix- not too much.
CNN is acting like this is new news. Didn't any of their writers go to college? And this diet continues long after college for those of us not lucky enough to become a 1%er immediately, thanks to outrageous student loans and increasing costs of living.
Seeing as how school just started for the folks persuing their higher edumacation, I think this is an extremely relevant post. Especially since times are so tough right now. I think encouraging college kids to think outside the box makes a great story.
So there.
Fair enough I suppose.
I think you may have just broken the internet...
Because I listened and didn't argue? hahaha, probably!
If only times were really that hard.
Aren't they though? I remember my first job after college. It paid 18K. I only took it because nothing else was available. Things got better and I survived because I had 4 roomates, but Ramen nudles were a staple.
I just graduated from college and started my new job 3 months ago. I already got promoted into a upper level management position. Its called working hard. Something the 99% freaks no nothing about. Success isn't handed to you... you need to work and get it.
I work for non-profit agencies. I have been promoted many times and only now am I making about 50K. It depends on your field.
I liked to eat my Ramen with a little Filet thrown in for protein, with shaved white truffles on top....mmm mmm mmm!
Saffron.....don't forget the saffron
Who could live without the San Francisco treat? Back when Chicken Wings and gizzards were around 10 cents a pound.
My mouth still waters at the thought of a huge can of Chef Boyardee Ravioli with as much sawdust (fake parmesan) you could steal from the pizza joint down the street.
Chop up half an onion, mix it with a bit of butter and put in the microwave for a minute. Chop up sandwich meat or boil an egg with the ramen water and set aside. While that's going on heat up a can of corn. Cook the noodles for just a minute in the boiling water, remove from heat, add the powder packet, onions, meat/egg, and corn to the noodles and viola, it's no longer demon ramen. You can get creative for cheap and eat better at the same time.
Boil some rice noodles in water flavored with a Maggi Cube. A good alternative to Ramen Soup and the rice noodles are tastier.
my friends and I had to scrape together money for a combo meal of day old chicken, chinese broccoli, and white rice back in college on multiple occasions. That was the good stuff. And yeah the place was known for pesky bugs you can imagine. Thus the price was so low, but we still had to scrape together money for a meal. Oh the good 'ol days.
sliced spam + 2 fried eggs + sticky asian rice + soy sauce (low sodium to be healthy)
lived on it my freshman year in college
gained 15 lbs but not sure if that was this dish or the beer
For a treat, I would eat the 99 cent Buddig lunch meat packs on wonderbread!! They had processed turkey, processed beef, and any other meat that you could process.
Totinio's pizza. My roommates and I used to fill our freezer up. Then we labeled them so we could tell them apart.
Potatoes! Are you kidding? The cheapest food you can buy when in college is potatoes! $3 for a 10lb bag, and you can eat for a month!. Baked, mashed, fried. The only accessories you'd need would be some milk (for the mashed), margarine (or splurge on butter), oil or shortening, and salt and pepper. I can recall going months on just potatoes; maybe throwing in some chicken or pork chops when I could afford it.
You are University of Belfast alumni?
Yup. Potatoes and cabbage. I could list 100 ways to eat potatoes and cabbage.
A friend of mine at college used to eat white rice with peanut butter. He swore by it.
In college, if I was feeling bourgeois, I would add a cut up hot dog to my Ramen noodles cooked in a hot pot.
Enemy of the proletariat. You are probably a nationalist too.
Sometimes Cheez Its and $3 wine made me feel like royalty!
Shameless extravagance.
But didn't Cheez its and $3 wine make you feel like royalty? Let the rest of the peasants eat cake!
50 cent cans of Campbells chicken noodle soup with 1 egg dropped in occassionally with rice ;)
for a healthy alternative, steamed rice with soy sauce and furikake
Ramen mostly drained with the flavor packet, canned chicken and Jack Daniel's mustard stirred in.
Restaurant two pack of crackers and Tobacco sauce, still do it at restaurants.
I really hope you meant "tobasco sauce"... although I had roommates who always had a wad of chew in their mouth, so anything is possible I suppose.
If you wanna play "spelling cop", know how to spell the word before you "correct" others!
It's "TABASCO"! :D
A super fancy meal was chicken, broccoli and pasta. That was living
Calling Ramen Demonic is a sign of intolerance.
blessed be his noodly appendage.
/R amen
FSM!! :-)
Grits, with margarine and a lot of salt a pepper. If I was lucky and had cheese on hand, I would melt a half of slice into them. I ate a good deal of grits, but I did like them. I still do, they must be the right consistency though. This southerner disputes the theory that you should be able to eat them with a fork. They should be runny enough to require a spoon, but thick enough that they will sit on a mound in said spoon without running off the edge like broth – and that is the extent of my culinary expertise.
Cereal, no one has mentioned cereal, the generic of the generic corn flakes with about 2 tbs of powdered milked mixed 3 to 1 with water, sugar in the form of packets borrowed from, well anywhere you could find it
Chicken Ramen mixed w/ generic tomato soup
I suggest that you retract this article as soon as possible. Ramen or "Instant Noodle" should not be a suggestion to college kids. I was born in Asia and since I was young, my parents always tell me never eat "instant noodle" too much. It is not meant to substitute a real meal. For one, it has no nutritional value and it is made using MSG. If you search the news hard enough, some kids actually die from eating ramen. My aunt's son actually died from it because he lived alone at school and had limited funds. He ate too much ramen that he was found dead from mal-nutrition.
It's college, people join clubs for the free food (pizza), nutrition isn't high on their list.
i lived off of mac & cheese with a can of tuna and water chestnuts for a hot dish. And rotini pasta with a can of tuna, water chestnuts and ranch dressing or mayo for a cold salad.
My college roommate and I would cook the ramen noodle packets in my (illegal) hotpot, make rice in her (illegal) rice cooker, then eat the noodles and when they were gone, keep adding rice to the leftover noodle broth until it was all gone too. We usually ate like that for breakfast and dinner the last week of each month until we got our next month's allowances.
Bologna fried in an electric skillet.
Wacky cake, most of the recipe for which I've forgotten but it had vinegar in it, mixed with a kitchen whisk mounted in an electric drill, and baked in the same electric skillet with the lid on it.
Rice-cooker rice (my room-mate was Japanese...) with butter, Parmasan cheese, and bacon bits or diced hot dogs.
Hamburgers sautéed in a butter-and-cheap-red-wine sauce.
Home made pinto beans on white bread topped with a slice of the government cheese. My dad gave my room mates and I a 40lb bag from Sams. Beans and Ramen goes without saying. I was a an art student as well. We were so obsessed with Ramen that we started a competition to see who could make the best sculptures out of the stuff. It was a cheap art material.
Ramen noodles plus parmesan cheese, basil and pepper. Aaaallllmost tasted like pesto.
cold ravioli or bake beans & franks from a pop open can during late nights studying in the library.
Apparently you people don't care about sodium.....
If they're anything like me, they don't use the flavor packet (or a very small portion of it) or rinse off the seasoning in the cup o soup. I don't do salt, so I rinse off the majority of the seasoning in the cup o soup, or barely sprinkle a touch of the seasoning if eating ramen. Just enough to flavor it. Not everyone can afford to be picky
live and let live
Agreed. No flavor packet. The noodles still have sodium but it is the flavor packet that packs a whammy. Anyway, I was young and it was the 1980's. What did I know back then? I was just a starving student trying to make ends meet by working two jobs and going to school full time. I do remember food shopping with a roommate one time though. We discussed what it would be like to actually be able to afford a name brand food and some kind of meat once in awhile. I also longed for the day when I could afford macadamia nuts and asparagus once in awhile.
we do now!!!
how many people, after reading the article and comments, are planning a ramen noodle run after work? I am!!!
me too! i crave it occasionally. :)
wow – this article reads like some amateur audition for poet laureate or something. Step down from your grammatical high horse and write like a human being!!
Am I the only one who is nauseated by the descriptions of this dreck?
I'm a current college student.
Last Saturday, I cooked, in the dorms, and had lobster and NY strip steak.
That's college food.
good for you. Some of us were very poor. I'm a doctor now, but remember so days oh so well.
are you serious??? you spoiled brat. i am laughing at you Ha ha
If mommy and daddy were neatly depositing heaps of money into my account, I'd eat that everyday, too. Not everyone can be a trust fund baby. If that's your own money, I'd like to see a post about what you're eating a few months from now when all of your funds are dried up.
Well, I went from eating that dreck to being the editor of a national food website, so I suppose it turned out okay. Food isn't just the haute - it's the high, low, and everything in between.
And it was all I could afford.
Touche' – well played Ms. Kat
I would never eat like that again, but I remember those days fondly and am craving Ramen and mac & cheese.
Yeah, but cafeteria food has gone up in quality since many were in college so caf was not an option years ago. So you made it yourself.
I put myself through college on my own. I worked two part time jobs and went to school full time. After tuition, books, rent etc. there was very little left over for food. I had to make every dollar stretch. Now, I have a good paying job and can afford to eat any way I want but I still watch my budget. Just because I can afford to eat lobster and steak everyday doesn't mean I should. I put my money into savings for retirement or in case I lose my job like some many others have.
Cost of living increases in this country are nonlinear. Not everything escalates the same.
My first year in college away from home was 1986. Back then, ramen sold at six packets for a dollar.
Fast-forward to 2012. It is not unusual to find places that *still* sell ramen packets at six for a dollar.
Yep....the safeway by me has the bundles of 10 or 12 for $2.00. Although I prefer the cup o soup because it has the veggies :)
- 2 cups of day-old white rice
- 1 leftover instant noodle seasoning packet
- 1 egg
Put it all together in a bowl and mix well, then pan fry it to your desired done-ness (I actually prefer leaving the egg a little bit wet). Enjoy; it should keep you full for 2 consecutive meals.
I was a powdered mac & cheese guy. Still have the pot I cooked it in. 'Tis the way it is in college.
Amazing we all ate these terrible meals while we were in college while others are on food stamps eating nice proteins other pleasantries
It's funny, I was about to say, this diet is not just that of broke college students, just the broke in general. Workin hard, eatin pb&js for lunch at work every day, so the lazy can go get lobster with the food stamps that I help fund. Totally fair. Ugh.
Wasn't quite *that* broke in college, but the diet stayed for quite some time after hitting the workforce.
2 bags bread – 3.98
2 packs chicken hot dogs – 1.98
1 jar knock off cheeze whiz – 2.19 (when I was feeling exotic)
20 packs Mr. Noodles – 4.50
For about $11, I could eat most of a month.
Man, knockoff Cheez Whiz is getting desperate. That's like knockoff Spam.
none of this matters when a new poll shows that 54% of Americans believe a college education is "worth the investment" or"valuable" Aside from the medical / law / science and several other professions a college degree is something you can easily master, believe it or not, from the internet. iTunesU allows you to take FULL Harvard, Standford, Yale level 100-400 classes w/ lectures for the whopping price of free.
Did you go to Standford? Because you seem awfully smart.
Or maybe Stanford...
Ok. Goodwill Hunting
There was a week where the only food I had left before I could afford groceries again was a loaf of bread and some random condiments and spices.
Thus was born what is still to this day one of favorite snacks (though at the time it was a meal): mustard and garlic salt sandwiches.
"mustard and garlic salt sandwiches" that's pretty hungry (and pretty resourceful!)
I had a box full of military MRE's from eBay in my dorm. They taste great (most of them at least) and no need to cook, you can eat them cold. They're especially great after you stumble home drunk from a frat party.
Spaghetti O's, canned Chef Boyardee Ravioli, hot dogs.....and I was at Culinary School! lol
I lived on 3 bags of oreos and a gallon of milk a week. if my money came in then there was usually a girl on the hall frying chicken wings and fries and selling by the plate! or would walk to bk or checkers for eating out. (was not allowed to have a car freshman year)
Stove Top stuffing with a fried egg on top. That and a lot of tuna straight from the can with crackers.
Shrimp flavored ramen with jenny-o hot dogs chopped up and a sprinkle of mixed frozen veggies for 5years.
Going to MC-D's and getting the kids box was a step up. Sounds to me like most of us punished ourselves to get edgycated! We're not that different after all.
A-1 sauce on Saltines
Ramen plus "acquired" catchup packets. Instant spaghetti!
Used a plate pop corn popper as a skillet, a burner and occasionally as a pop corn popper.
They use to make something called "Stir and Frost" cake mixes, the box was the pan. All you needed was
water. I was the life of the party, I had a stash and a toaster oven. Cure (or cause) of the munchies.
Tube Steaks (hot dogs) and pork n beans!
When I was in college, I could make the following meals for $0.33 or less. I would guess you can still make them for less than $0.50 with only the sandwich possibly costing more.
Elbow macaroni, tomato juice, and black pepper.
Can of pork 'n beans with a hot dog and a pinch of brown sugar.
Ramen with an egg.
Potted meat with crackers.
Peanut butter and honey sandwich.
Tube steaks(hot dogs) with Pork and Beans
Nothing beats good old PB&J. If I'm feeling fancy, sometimes it grilled PB&J.
I think I ate more co-eds than anything else...
Great "on the cheap" recipes, guys! Kudos to all!
Creamy Chicken Ramen or Oriental Ramen..
honestly when Im sick I like it more than my moms homemade chicken noodel soup
My 4 housemates and I would occasionally feast on heaping platters of spaghetti, whose sauce was made with 1 quart can of tomato juice, simmered with 1 pound of cheap ground beef, seasoned liberally with garlic salt and oregano. As you might guess, the pasta wa not cooked al dente. Wash it down with a couple cans of Old Milwaukee and we had ouselves a meal!
I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could all be in that room once again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I'd give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.
(Thanks for being with us, Bob!)
Who else came here to see the recipes? Hehe
Umm, hehe....I did Derrick. I know, sad! lol
Chicken ramen noodles cup with spoon of peanut butter, packet of soy sauce and packet of red pepper flakes (from Pizza place) and presto, spicy peanut asian noodles.
I was fortunate to have two roomates with rice cookers so we nearly always had steamed rice handy. As far as i remember – and mind you that's a small sample size – college life boiled itself into a wicked strong collection of condiments on rice or noodles. One roomate had a savant like ability to mix and match various bottled ingredients to culinary delight. But i shouldn't kid myself, my taste buds and brain cells were so addled by cheap vodka and gin that i would have eaten soylent green without as much as a batted eye lash.
You win for most amusing post... lol!
Get a box of barely out of date banana's from grocery store + some milk and ice cubes = breakfast/handover smoothies
(brown bananas dont sell, but taste fine)
The easiest for me were the $1 (you can usually find them like 10 or 12 for $10) or less packets of rice/pasta. Either eat it as is or dump stuff (meat, veggies, beans, whatever) in. It's fancy Ramen. If you added anything it was easily 2 meals.
in Russia, ramen was the one food we were actually able to cook in our rooms. fortunately, they have way more flavors than we do here. Ramen with a bit of tomato paste stirred in to it is amazing. Almost tastes like real food.
1 can of chilli and 1 can of cream of mushroom soup. Mix together, heat and enjoy!
mayonaisse sandwiches, spaghetti noodles with just margerine, instant mashed potatoes. Wendy's dollar menu when I was feeling rich.
1 can of baked beans and a package of cheap hot dogs cut up. Or the hot dogs in the generic mac n cheese.
Remove and reserve flavor packet from ramen noodle soup. Cook and drain noodles. Mix flavor packet with two eggs. Combine with noodles and fry in non-stick skillet. Like egg foo yung. Yum!
Ramen is good because you can throw other things into it and it's great. It takes 3 mins to microwave so at the 1:45 mark I throw an egg in there and scramble it. Mix it and let the remaining time go down and boom. You have beef soup with an egg.
ramen noodles with an egg added to it...yuuuummmmmmm!!!
my husband mixed canned tuna with white rice and bbq sauce and lots of black pepper.
Cheap box of macaroni and cheese cooked in microwave add can of tuna.
Generic boxed mac and cheese made with water (too poor for butter and/or milk), frozen pirogies ($1- a box of 12) with fried onions, baked potato with hot sauce and lots of rice and beans. Ramen and generic canned soup was also a staple. I seem to remember using cream of mushroom soup over rice, noodles, broccoli, potatoes–almost everything. I don't think I have eaten it since then. I still eat the pirogies but they are more like $3+ a box now.
cooked instant potatos mixed with sour cream, garlic powder, and s&p, baked in the oven until crispy on top. Sort of twice baked potatos without the skin. (I lived off campus for a while and so actually had an oven).
Once in a while I would find a deal on almost expired boneless pork ribs and make a bbq sauce with ketchup, vinegar and brown sugar. I still make that sometimes, actually.
Hot delicious and free! Ketchup packets and hot water make for a delicious tomato soup...add crackers from condiment area ate the nearby salad bar.
Oh, the essential Chili Mac....A box of the cheapest generic brand(white & black label) Mac & Cheese and a can of similarly cheap Generic Brand Chili. Cooked and mixed could provide a meal for 4 people or 4 meals for under $1. I haven't eaten it in 20 + years.
Seen the price of chili lately..... Ain't happening.
mac n cheese with salsa pkts "acquired" wherever cheap mexi food is sold.
Beef ramen with white rice, ground beef and onion.
A can of campbells pork and beans warmed by inmmersing the whole can in hot water for a while, then open and eat with a spoon.
"artisANAL" " I just didn't know that in college."
Interesting. I thought everyone experimented in college.
Noodles with anything. Pan fried in butter was the best.
Ramen but start by boiling frozen vegetables with about 1/2 the packet. Then add an egg and finally the noodles. I still eat it today.
Ooooo, good thinking about adding veggies! I used to do the egg and ramen, too. Tastes kind of like egg drop soup.
I will never forget when I went shopping and bought some canned corn, I was so excited it eat it – it was giant corn and I was sooo ready for something other than mac & cheese. I warmed it up on the hotplate (before microwaves) and ate a big spoonful and thought I would hurl – it wasn't giant corn it was hominy. Probaby one of the nastiest things I ever ate.
I lived on $5.00 a day for about 2 years and if you look for discount items, bulk items, free items and budget, you can eat pretty well. $2.64 for a day old steak, $.40 for mushrooms, $.60 for a baked potato and $1.00 for mixed frozen veggies and you got a really nice dinner and left overs for lunch the next day for $4.64.
Ramen noodles and cheese- its the best thing in the world
Microwaved scrambled eggs and bacon, easy mac with a italian seasoned crushed tortilla-chip topping. Tofu ended up being a ton cheaper than meat, at about $2/ pack. We also had an Asian market nearby that sold ramen for cheaper than the grocery store (like $.13/ pack!) They had aisles of the stuff. Pork-mushroom flavored ramen with sriracha and dried onion flakes is one of the best things I've ever eaten.
Generic pasta mixed with squeeze cheese mixed in. Mac & cheese at $.20 per serving!
Ghetto Pad Thai: Ramen noodles (any flavour) and add peanut butter and hot sauce! OMG so good. I still do that every now and then.
You have to find the nearest bar that has 'free happy hour munchies" and go eat there. If it is packed enough you don't even need to buy the dollar beer. I ate about three dinners a week like that for 4 years.
You can also walk into a Five Guys Burger joint and leave with a pocket full of peanuts to add to your peanut butter, ramen, hot sauce mix.
Dried yellow peas, one chopped yellow onion, one can chopped tomatoes [dollar store brand], spoonful margarine and curry powder [dollarstore brand] all in one pot on a low, slow simmer makes a cheap version of dal [curried lentils] that I ate 3 times a week while I grad student. I also cooked generic mac'n'cheese with a 99 cent pack of no-name brand frozen spinach for nutrition though it tasted more like lawnmower grass clippings.. Powdered skim milk was another staple as was the big cheap plastic bag of puffed wheat cereal.
I also took the 'never gain' pledge after I stopped working my student-days bookstore job and joined the real world, though I sometimes think, especially with the current economic and employment crises, that those days were more like the real world.
Sorry, that was the 'never again' pledge...though you never gain on this diet; I was anemic for years.
Buy some iron pills. Take them ONLY with food.
Just wait. When you start drawing Social Security, you can pull out all your old tricks, plus steal napkins from McDonald's.
1 can of tuna drained, 1 tart apple chooped finely, plenty of curry powder, a little water, heat in a skillet, serve over white rice. Yummmm! Out of college for decades, but still eat it to this day.
Canned tuna or flaked chicken, canned mushroom soup, canned pineapple bits and some chopped red pepper and green onion [optional due to expense of fresh veg] heated and poured over rice fed 3 in our student apartment. It was called skillet lao, recipe off the soup can [though it called for chicken breasts and slivered almonds on top].
Actually, if you got a bag of flour, and mixed a tablespoon or so of it into the ramen, you got a nice stew-like consistency to the soup. Throw in a bit of ground beef and veggies and it was fine-dining on-the-cheap.
(You could also throw whatever cold-cuts you needed to use up before they went bad, or peas/corn in the freezer. The flour and the seasoning (read: SALT) hid a lot of sins.)
1/2 can refried beans + tortilla = burrito
Ate that once a day for 4 years.
Boiled dry oats and honey
Ramen w/ egg, fried sandwich turkey....
Box Pasta w/meat sauce and chicken (3 times a weeks, sick of it)
I always went to the spanish bodega to buy plantains, yuca and other cheao filling vegetables
At times nice big steaks on the taxpayers dime (foodstamps)!
When I was in college, it was staple foods. I would hitch a ride to Costco with my roommate who had a membership, and buy a 10lb bag of rice, two 3lb jars of peanut butter, 4 or so loaves of bread, an 8-pack of 1lb boxes of pasta, a couple of 12-packs of tuna, a couple of large bags of frozen vegetables, and condiments on sale at the grocery store.
No ramen for me, ever.
I remember my Kroger favorites from 20 years ago. Kroger Pizza (articfical cheese and some flavored meat like substance put over tomatoe sauce and a bread base more consistent with cardboard than anything .. but man they were cheap!), Kroger Hoki Stew (One large can generic potatoe soup, one can mixed vegatables, 1/2 pound of Hoki (a fish from New Zealand) .. cook fish, mix fish and veggies into potatoe soup .. creates a nice chowder like fish stew, easily covers both lunch and dinner that day for only a few dollars). And of course Ramen noodles.
1) Cook Ramen
2) Pour out half the water
3) Add spoonful of peanut butter, splash of soy sauce, sambal or sriracha hot sauce
4) Optional add ons chicken, scallions, bean sprouts, etc...
5) Toasted sesame seeds and sesame oil on top
My favorite after Thursday Night Penny Draft was a Perogie sandwich. I would warm up (2) perogies in the microwave put them in a sandwich with a piece of american cheese with Taco Bell hot sauce, salsa, or sour cream...sometimes all of the above. Mmmmm Goood!
Hot Sauce Sandwiches! Siracha + "Enriched white bread"
Does anyone else notice that "enriched" bread never really goes bad?
I feel bad for those that eat Ramen! I can't even eat Ramen anymore because it's just too disgusting. I have to go to Chinatown in Center City Philadephia and get my Tum Yum flavored Mama noodles, which are so much better. I;ll use a mini rice cooker and cook the noddles in there. I'll heat up some Campbell's Chicken Noodle soup in the rice cooker too. You can add any kind of meat or seafood you want and it'll make it even better.
My husband and I lived on mac and cheese and grilled bologna and cheese sandwiches after we moved off campus. There were times when we had to feed our animals first and only had enough left over for cans of soup. Those were the days.
Stove Top stuffing in taco shells with tabasco sauce. Best stoner food ever! Try it before you criticize.
(1) loaf of Italian bread.
(1) jar of cheap pizza sauce
(1) package of cheap imitation mozzarella
That's four small pizza's right there.
Grew up in India....here are the most frequent meals..
Lunch : Hot rice in buttermilk with salt + raw onions and Chillies.
Dinner : Scrambled egg (with onion and chilies, cooked with the egg) sandwich made over an illegal electiric stove in the dorm room.
chicken, chicken, chicken. My roommate and I can eat a chicken dinner with Iceberg salad and canned fruit for about a dollar each. Which I can easily pick up in recycling while running in the morning.
Spaghetti with butter, honey and parmesean. No, I wasn't pregnant.
Protein shakes with bulk, uncooked oatmeal, glob of peanut butter, and the cheapest milk i could find. Each meal was about 40 cents and had around 800 calories. One of those in the morning and I was good through afternoon classes. Top the evening off with pasta or beer.
ramen, boiled/drained; any 'meat' or 'meat like' substance i could find (normally really cheap hamburger i had sectioned into single servings in sandwhich bags and tossed into the freezer or hotdogs i had found on sale); and 1/2cup of ONE frozen vege... pan-fried, toss in the ramen at the end with the seasoning packet, and normally eat it for next 2 meals LOL – another cheat was buying rice-a-roni on sale, prepare it per directions (except with margarine, not butter), and make that into 2-3 meals – i too was also a huge fan of mock-tuna casserole LOL (ie box of generic mac/cheese, milk, can of tuna, and if i was lucky, a spoon of mayo – with a dash of chili powder – because i could buy a big bottle of chili powder for 50cents, whereas paprika was a couple of $$) – and i'm sorry, 20years ago students could NOT get food stamps... you either got money from your parents, worked, got really good at pocketing items at the cafeteria, or starved
I can't believe no one has mentioned potted meat or Vienna sausages. You could eat both either on a sandwich or crackers with mustard. What about pork and beans? Make your own beanie weenies with hot dogs and pork and beans. Or you could just eat the pork and beans out of the can too. My favorite is the pasta with just butter and salt. I still love it. Make your own pizza. Toast piece of bread with Prego and cheese on top. Cheese burrito or just a can of re-fried beans.
WOW! Your story sounds something like my college days but, we made it. I remember bringing port chop from the cafeteria that was not completely cooked and cooking them. In my day we had to use a hot plate. We brought pots, pan and whatever we needed from home to cook with. We had it. I remember eating vienna sausages and potted meat on crackers. Sardins with mustard, onions, and pepper with crackers. You are right again. I had pork and beans sometimes heated and most of the time right out of the can. I (We) made sure to go to the cafeteria on Sunday, Why? We got only two meals and a grab bag for supper. The grab bag did not have much but, we made it until Monday. Monday though Saturday we got three meals a day. We ate just in case they had something we liked. Our breakfast was good most of the time. We could drink milk until there wasn't any. The milk was fresh from the cows. WOW! Great days then. So you see, the college students have it easier than un. I am sure I didn't list all we ate that just had to share my good days.
WOW! Your story sounds something like my college days but, we made it. I remember bringing port chop from the cafeteria that was not completely cooked and cooking them. In my day we had to use a hot plate. We brought pots, pan and whatever We ate sardins with mustard, onions, and pepper with crackers. I (We) made sure to go to the cafeteria on Sunday, Why? We got only two meals and a grab bag for supper. The grab bag did not have much but, we made it until Monday. Monday though Saturday we got three meals a day. We ate just in case they had something we liked. Our breakfast was good most of the time. We could drink milk until there wasn't any. The milk was fresh from the cows. WOW! Great days then. Today things are much better. Although I wouldn't change what I had to do to get where I am today.
Oh, potted meat and vienna sausages! Vienna sausages went into Ramen, or was sauteed w/ frozen &/or fresh veggies in soy sauce and "duck sauce" condiment packets from chinese restaurant, then served over rice (sometimes leftover boiled rice from the same retaurant – all my friends knew that I'd take any uneaten cartons of white rice sent w/ their delivery chinese meals off their hands; I hated to see it go to waste when I could get 2-3 meals from it and they were just going to throw it out.). Or just heat Vienna sausage in microwave and serve w/dipping sauce of mayo mixed w/ketchup or honey mustard, or oriental 'sweet chili' sauce. (sometimes cut up into the 'dipping sauce' and then put between 2 slices white bread to get some carbs along with the fat!
Potted meat – when my parents were newly married and just finishing med school, they apparently ate so much potted meat (mostly as sandwiches w/mayo and sweet pickle relish) that my dad refused point blank ever to eat it again. I reached that point after a month where I was unusually broke for some reason – can't remember why – and after a week all I had left in the house was regular (long cooking) oat meal and instant mashed potatoes (a HUGE can of dried potato flakes) and for some reason about a dozen cans of potted meat (I think they had been on sale for 8/dollar). No bread or any way to make any. I mixed the potted meat right into the instant mashed potatoes ( made with ultra cheap margarine and water) and used up a couple of nearly empty packets of frozen vegs, After second week, it was just oatmeal in the morning (with stolen packets of sugar)(cooked with water), and in the evening, mashed potatoes cooked with water and seasoned w/ a cheap "chef shake" mixed spice blend, with the potted meat mixed in. 1 can at firs then 1/2 a can towards the end of the month. After 2 weeks of this diet, the month was over and my parents sent me my next month's 75 dollar "allowance" (out of which I paid my phone bill and bought all other necessities of life, ie food, toilet paper, soap, etc (it was 1982)). Just before my allowance arrived a student who I barely knew from my computer lab took pity on me and took me on a "date" to a local cafeteria style restaurant. I had warned him ahead of time that I was really hungry, but he just waved his hand and said "Get what you want". I found out later that he had overheard me describing to a girlfriend of mine exactly WHY I couldn't go out to the movies with her even though "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was playing for a dollar – if I'd had a dollar I'd have spent it on food.(probably ramen!) Apparently he heard me telling her about my 'recipe' for pink mashed potatoes and was truly upset to think any one he knew was reduced to such extremities. I was amused by that but really grateful for that date. I NEVER touched potted meat again after that month, though. After a few days of mixing the potted meat into the instant mash, I'd have given a lot for a dozen eggs and a can of Vienna sausage! ;)
stovetop stuffing with canned chicken and can of cream of chicken soup, all generic brans, in the microwave. lived on that and popcorn sophmore year.
We used to eat Stove Top with yellow mustard, sometimes that was all there was.
Sneak as many packets of ketchup out of a fast food joint as you can without getting caught, mix with hot water – voila! Tomato soup.
Cook ramen, drain, add walmart oil and balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, italian seasoning = fantastic italian "pasta" salad. Every now and then i would add little bits of diced chicken and boiled it with ramen so it cooked through. Used to eat that at least 3-5 times a week. And always had Totino's cheese pizzas for my drunk nights, They used to only be $0.75 a pop. My junior and senior years of college I ate good as I worked at a fine dining steakhouse in Orlando and regularly made myself ahi, filets, ribeyes, and lamb chops.
My favorites were ramen noodles, drained, add margarine and the flavor pack. Also, liked frozen bean burritos (4 for $1.00), with american cheese melted on top and sour cream. Made lots of mac and cheese (.25/box) without milk, only a little margarine.
Those industrial looking cans of Hunts pasta sauce aren't actually that bad. Spaghetti with that on it is passable. My aunt and uncle always sent me $100 Whole Foods gift cards for christmas, so we figured out how to stretch hose and my now-husband and I would eat like kings for a few weeks in january. I do on occasion still get ramen cravings though, it's nice in the winter.
Unfortunately, in my retirement I'm back eating ramen several days a week.
beef flavored ramen and chicken flavor ramen... surf & turf
correction beef or chicken mixed with shrimp
Nah, Beef and Shrimp are Surf n Turf. Not sure what Beef and Chicken would be (Turf n Coop?)
Mac and Cheese with twice the butter and no milk
Also, uncooked chicken ramen noodles. Break them up then shake on the flavor packet, eat from package. YUM!
the generic breakfast bar for dessert. Pop it in the microwave for ONLY a couple of seconds and you have a warm (sometimes burnt) pie!
Ramen cooked with egg (and veggies if available)and ketchup
Cheese quesadillas. Supermarket brand cheese on BOGO, tortillas, a skillet and you've got yourself a meal. I do still make this sometimes but now I can afford some sour cream to go with it.
Though a variation on a standard burrito, I often subsisted on bean and cheese quesadillas as well ( cheap source of filling protein, plus ways to entertain drunk buddies later )
I was in a college club. They ordered Pizza Hut for ea meeting. Every week I'd take one or 2 of those left over pizzas and eat it every day for dinner until it was all gone. Loved it.
Totino's pizza cooked in the microwave (assuming you had a freezer). You could get them for about 50 cents on sale.
My roommates used to live off of McDonald's $.29 hamburgers. They would buy 30 at a time and microwave them all week long.
Noodles or rice mixed with tuna. If I had a little extra $$, then tomato soup (I still crave it). I lived for a year by eating one corn dog and a 7up a day. How did I survive??? I once lived for several weeks on nothing but brown rice. ahhh college days.
Mac & Cheese with healthy choice turkey sausage and frozen peas all mixed in a bowl – yummy!
white rice with cheese
mac and cheese with sausages
saltines and peanut butter (or just butter)
Campbell's Beef & Barley Soup poured over a cup of cooked rice. I called it goulash.
I made cheapo "chilli" (that tasted nothing like chilli)... can of pork and beans, chilli powder, pepper, cubes of fried spam, and melted in processed cheese slices.
Shouldn't we be yelling about liberals or talking smack about Romney's hair or something?
Well, now that you mention it, it could be interesting to compare the college meals: Obama vs. Romney. I'm betting that Romney never had to subsist on Velveeta and stale bread, much less ramen noodles.
....and this is something to be upset at? Envy is a deadly sin ( according to Christians, or so I am told )
Generic mac & cheese 3 / $1, ham (cheap thin slices)...yummy! If I'm feeling rich, add a slice of imitation cheese for gourmet texture.
Also $.79 Totino's pizza with imitation cheese slices for the extra cheesyness!
Can't beat the $.20 Ramens for sho!
Now in my late-30's I've upgraded from the 25 cents a pack ramen to the gourmet 75 cents a pack ramen from the Asian grocery stores. They're even more delicious!
lolol!!!
LMAO.
Im in my late thirties as well and STILL eat the 25ct Ramen! haha.
Shin Raymun Black FTW! lol
Seriously though, some of the ones imported from Asia are actually very good. Doctor up w/ fresh veggies cut up very small, some green onion &/or cilantro, and poach an egg in the cooking broth. Yummy. Or, if Shin Raymun isn't quite your speed, try Indomie Mi Goreng w/ a fried over easy egg. Not more than once a week if you are over thirty though, or the salt will kill ya – can you say hypertension? Many of the import brands have several seasoning packs, including things like fried shallots, 'sweet' soy sauce (kecap manis), or sweet chili sauce, which helps improve their flavor a lot. I usually add nearly a cup of various fresh/frozen veggies and a little extra water, so that the sodium & fat are diluted and the meal is a lot healthier.
I just drank my way through hunger. Beer was cheaper than food.
last bit of nacho doritos? not a problem crunch up into crumbs almost fine,leave in bag,boil ramen any flavor you like drain add season packet mix with ramen,then slice up cheap lunch meat or any kind of left over meat substance i preferd summer sausage...cut dorrito bag down both sides spread out crumbs lay ramen and meat at one end of crumbs roll up and let sit for a couple min unwrap bam! its a dorrito ramen tamle add hot sauce prefer taco bell and enjoy
Peanut butter and sliced banana sandwich
Are you the Mark Kurtz formerly of NJ, now living in Delaware?
I like all the comments -funny stuff for a change, and nobody is getting bashed. Now that's rare.
Reading through the comments, I find that I'm probably not the only one who would raise an eyebrow at anyone who actually eats ramen like soup. It's always best with the water drained. What I liked to do is get the chili flavor ramen, drained of course, and put the pile between bread with a slice of cheese. I'm convinced ramen secretly wants to be a sandwich.
Agreed! I drain mine as well!
Loads of BOGO generic cereal and rice.
For a person who was self concience and a fitness weight lifting buff, I had to have my protein. I ate lots of tuna and crackers. I remember some of the cheaper tuna was 33 cents a can. Also, of course lots of Ramen and HEB cooked but frozen chicken. All I had was a microwave.
All you need to do is mix some fresh veggies, shrimp or meat and you have got yourself a meal.
Must be a republican. You expect broke college kids to have SHRIMP and FRESH VEGGIES on hand?
Wish I grew up with a diamond covered golden spoon up my @$$ like you obviously did.
LMAOOO Buck...I was thinking the same thing!! I can barely afford the noodles, how in the world do you expect people like me to buy SHRIMP??? *smh*
Yes, my middle class parents sent me off to school with three appleseeds, a drop of water, and a spoonful of manure and wished me luck.
Oh wait, no, they taught me how to budget, rather then feel better about ourselves by insulting (poorly and unintelligently, mind you) people who we perceive to be better off financially.
I must've been eating all the Progresso Tomato Basil with mac and cheese with my middle class silver spoon. And by the way, frozen shrimp is not that expensive. Its about the same price as the bags of frozen chicken.
My specialty was a slice of American cheese melted over plain pasta with frozen California mixed vegetables. Sometimes I would add some salt and pepper on top.
I had ramen for dinner last night. I'm 30. It was still horribly delicious.
I'm having it for lunch today. The article and all of you made me hungry.
Ramen (beef or chicken) w/ sour cream. Must admit, I still crave it from time to time.
My ramen ended up drained, and mixed with 1-2 slices american cheese, 2 tablespoons of mustard, and about 4 scoops (1/4 cup) nutritional yeast. Loved it.
Caviar served over roasted duck with a side of truffle potatoes. Drank it down with some French red wine.
Life was tough. I had to sell some of my daddy's stock to get by and because I was so busy at school, I had no time to work. Just ask my wife.
Cute! Very cute!
LOL.
Good ol' Mitt.
That was awesome... ...I'm pissed, cause it's probably true, but it's funny. My mind doesn't know what to do.
You made my day. Great comment!
lmao so true!
Your envy belies your attempt at humor. Not a Romney supporter, but take your hatred of families who had a "richer daddy" then yours to the political forum.
I want to hear more about Ramen and the like, not ill-conceived jokes that pander to the Anti-Romney crowd
Cheap chow was Miracle Whip and bologna sammies, GENERIC Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee, or Lipton Cup-a Soup. I still like ramen noodles once in a while, but I also found a recipe that uses them to make a main dish casserole that is quite good. You use chicken ramen noodles, monterey jack cheese, small can of green chiles, sour cream and diced chicken breast. Top it with crushed tostitos chips and bake. Really good!
Cottage cheese with ketsup. Apple with peanut butter (out of the jar, with a knife or finger). Pot pies (they were REALLY cheap back in the dark ages when I was in college).
Ramen noodles mixed with inexpensive tuna and mayonnaise. Flavour with pepper and salt.
Poor Guy's Stroganoff: ground beef, condensed mushroom soup, sour cream, a dash of garlic and nutmeg, over egg noodles.
Actually, that sounds really good!
Actually, the ghosts in my hall of memories are telling me the same. Even with such rudimentary recipes, I had more success dating by cooking meals for my dates than my roommate had plying with alcohol.
It appears you have class, Chris. Your roommate – not so much.
that is good. my dad used to make that for dinner all the time when I was growing up
bulk spaghetti with parmesan cheese and garlic salt or canned tomato sauce. I even learned exactly how much water to put in the bowl so I didn't have to drain it into the water fountain in the hallway.
Well I did not eat any of that crap. I worked as a cook while I was in Art school and ate well. I majored in FINE ARTS and dabbled in Illustration and Computer design (back in the stone age on mac quadras!) Now i'm a graphic designer and make more money than I can shake a stick at.
Oh, I also paid for my entire school bill (5 year plan – had to take 1 year off to do it) myself... got some loans and some scholarship cash to help.
Oh yeah? Well I didn't even have to pay back any money for my degree, so go pump yourself, showoff.
I didn't know working as a fluffer could be so lucrative. Did you get major medical and dental with that?
The Army paid for my school...
Good for you-ex cook. It was the common utterance: You artist- you'll starve, you'll starve. you'll starve.
That was worse pre computer era. Sometimes, pushing on with what you love may mean a long, satisfying career.
Don't always listen to the masses.
students dont eat like that anymore.
students qualify for foodstamps if they dont have an income and can eat quite well.
even students from wealthy familys can get food stamps if they dont work while going to school.
most kids know where i live, as soon as they turn 18 they can apply for food stamps if they dont have a job that pays very good or just dont have a job.
i know 2 18 year old kids who are still in high school and live at home and get food stamps. they spend it on soda and chips and stuff for their friends.
Dude... You live in a very nice bubble. I am a college student now and I don't qualify for food stamps because a) I live out of state, and b) I apparently make "too much" (I get board expenses and very little living expenses–and I live on-campus because it's cheaper than living with roommates off-campus). Therefore, I eat stuff like ramen and soup all the freaking time.
Paul, every party has a pooper. Congratulations, you win today.
I will actually defend Paul. When I was in school, my rich kid friend and roomy went and got food stamps. But don't generalize too much. Later on, when I lost my minimum wage job trying to get through school by myself and was dead broke, the lady at the county didn't like the way I looked and refused to give me food stamps although I was on my last few dollars.
Split hotdogs in half lengthwise, cut balogna in half, fry up w/ onion slices and eat w/ ketchup (or mustard I suppose). Boil potatoes, mash with fork and add margarine, S & P. Pretty damn good.
Sorry folks, I ate good regardless of being poor. Watched my spending at the grocery store, planned ALL meals, Shared dinners with roommates, ate meat – just less of it & lots of fruits and veggies.
I remember making hamburgers in the popcorn popper ( old style ) in the dorm room. Delicious.
Add canned tuna to the boxed mac & cheeze with chopped carrots, celery & onions = "Tuna Delight"
Lots of stir fry with a little flank steak.
Baked potatoes with all the fixins.
Beef Stew, with not a lot of beef.
And best of all, Lamb chops one a month, buy the shoulder cut not the good ones.
Good eats often requires some smart thinking, not a big budget.
Learned a lot back then on how to make the most of what I have available, carry that lesson learned on to this day with my own family & kids.
A lesson worth learning, we would all be better off as a country maybe.
Not everyone focused on the food they ate quite that much. I could have bought more elaborate food as well. But sitting in a dorm with only a microwave makes it a hassle to do much in the way of cooking. No sink, no stove, no hot plate. Just my microwave and the water fountain in the hallway.
True, dorm room was quite limiting for me as well. Moved into a house for the last 2 yrs, mostly so I could stop starving and cook for myself when and as needed. You need a real kitchen to ramp it up a bit.
Sardines, crackers, and hot sauce. Delish!!!
Cooked spaghetti dumped into a frying pan with an egg, a chopped up onion, and soy sauce. My 'college' version of a frittata. I still make it every now and again.
ramen + hot sauce + 1 egg + 2 slices American cheese = stick to your gut for hours meal
Ramen noodles, peanut butter, sriracha, soy sauce, a bit of margarine, little splash of sesame oil if you got it.
A bag of frozen veggies to dump in your ramen makes a big diff.
Beer
Ive been on my own (not my choice) since i was 18, so I chose to attend a 4 year community college and worked full time. I got my bachelors degree and never starved. Had no loans, my own place, my own car, work experience and a diploma.
This is related how? Or do you just cavort around the internet all day tooting your own horn?
damn right
well its kinda obvious by your post why you are on your own.... no room for anyone else with your ego.
But we praise students who go to universities they can't afford so they are forced to eat ramen noodles? How does that work?
Seriously dude. Who cares? Christ, I work with a guy just like you. Absolute tool and a self-centered schmuck.
Here let us prepare your meal for you. Another plate of "dormant insecurity", a side of "narcissism" nad a AT ALL GLASS OF STFU.
Oh and some vinegar and water because you're a douche.
so u afforded liquor how?
ah u had no friends
Most community colleges don't offer 4 year degrees......
Baked potatoe, margerine, thousand island dressing, sprinkled with artificial bacon bits (the last three items lifted from the school salad bar. Still get cravings, something about the flavor and crunch. Try it – you will be surprised. Also, oyster sauce on baked potatoe wtih butter. Oyster sauce on eggs, mashed potatoes, hamburger helper – well anything. Don't knock it until you try it – everyone tells me it sounds gross but when I made if for ALL of them and did not tell them what it was, they wanted more. Go figure.
Please ignore my Dan Quale moment .....
Nice Save.
Grilled cheese on the iron...we weren't allowed to have hot plates. I have to say, I not craved this since.
No Nola, you can't do that.
How about pickle sandwiches......or pasta ketchep sandwiches.
Cup 'o Pizza.....the best pizza in a cup ever. This guy is unbelievable. He ran the old Cup 'o Pizza guy out of business. People come from all over to eat this!
Thin spaghetti topped with cut up chicken nuggets and srirachi/peanut sauce. (Still eaten in secrecy even though I'm an 'adult'!)
I still can't stomach Iceberg Lettuce- I made lots of salads with that during my college days. Plus any fruit I could grab from the student dining hall- I didn't have a meal plan but the workers there were nice to me and let me in anyway. I had access to the salad bar there and would take some home. They told me there was so much they had to throw out, so I never felt bad.
I still make a cabbage soup that was a staple for me back then- it's still delicious to me, and I may use some more decadent ingredients in it like leeks, artichoke hearts, etc...
I remember lookingin the dented can section of the supermarket a lot- a habit I still have, lol! And looking through the circular and only buying things I had coupons for. When I picked out the coupon items, my shopping was done. Thinking back, it streamilined my shopping trips!
Also, lots of scallions, kiwis, and bananas as they tended to be low cost.
I forgot potatoes! I used to bake them or microwave them and season them simply with salt, pepper and chives. I'd steam up some broccoli to go with it- or whatever veggies from the school salad bar. Sometimes with a little butter. I did not gain the freshmen 15- I used the college gym and got in the best shape ever. More college students should focus on defying the dreaded 15- treat it like it's a challenge!
Raw hotdogs (on sale of course) was a go to favorite. The other was the cheapest bread I could find dunked in italian salad dressing.
I lived on these REALLY cheap off-brand frozen pizzas. I think they were about 70 cents each (circa 2003-2004). I'm sure they had more sodium than I needed in a week and more calories than should be consumed in one sitting, and I'm not entirely sure the "pepperoni" was real, but I was broke. Whatcha gonna do.
Ramen Noodles with the seasoning packet, soy sauce, hot sauce, 1 egg, frozen peas and/or corn, and pepper
Cheap chicken legs or thighs with a ketchup/mustard/garlic powder/onion powder paste smeared all over and backed. The paste flavors would bake into the chicken and it rocked!
Staples are important. When you have some money make sure to get olive oil and a few spices.
Rice + Curry powder + Frozen soybeans (or other cheap frozen vegetable) (about a 1$ or less a meal)
Frozen soybeans (or green beans) + an avocado + garlic + lemon juice & cilantro if you have it
Canned chicken + cilantro + garlic + cherry peppers if you have them (or crushed red pepper, sometimes free with a pizza) mix and put on toast.
Cream of mushroom soup + tuna on toast.
Mixed frozen vegetables + ramen noodles.
Canned chicken or tuna + garlic or salt and pepper to taste (curry works well too) folded in lettuce leaf (stores for a day or two, to get multiple meals in)
Invest in cheap tupperware and store left overs. Dump them in a big pot every couple of days and make soup. Drop in everything you have including the bread crumbs and cracker crumbs and chip crumbs for flavor and extra calories. Freeze left over soup for another day.
Rice topped with a sauteed mix of canned veggies from Costco (usually tomatoes, asparagus, mushrooms, and garlic). Dash of salt and pepper!
Fancy Chips: Tortilla chips with cheese melted on them in microwave- known as nachos to most, but then you add anything else in the fridge that is about to expire or just because you grabbed it, namely Bacos and jalapenos
I'm pushing 30 and living just fine, but this is still my favorite late night go-to (secret) snack. :p
Always money for beer though!!!
Never ate a salad until college. Student Union had a plate of salad for two bucks–I learned to eat salad. We used knives and full size club crackers to concoct a scaffolding that would create a plate o' salad that was almost two feet across! That lasted a month until the Union went to "pay by weight" salad and I went back to Ramen.
REAL rice - not that fancy boil-in-the-bag kind - cooked with a can of chunky chicken & vegetable soup.
Spaghetti with "clam sauce" - I mean, a can of chunky clam chowder soup.
When I didn't have a dollar for a can of soup, it was just rice or spaghetti, maybe with some Parmesan cheese.
Hamburger helper.
No...just "helper" Can't afford hamburger
Fried rice with spam, egg and ketchup!
i thought i was the only one that ate spam fried rice.
but i did it after college. i has a job – why?
Store brand bread, store brand deli meat (low-sodium of course), pickles, mayo, cokes, store brand ruffles and french onion dip. Add some decent baby spinach to the sandwich (you can get a cheap bag of it for like 4-5$).
I'm not a college student anymore but I still love and eat ramen noodles. I usually stir fry vegetables with a little bit of meat or any left over you have in the fridge then add the boild ramen noodles. Oh,,,it's so good.
Man I was never that broke in school. Ramen noodles. May as well eat canned cat food. yuck.
I highly recommend ramen with 1/2 a can of Fancy Feast....
Dude, happy for you that you were never that broke. Maybe you ought to post in a thread that caters to those that "were never that broke". And uhmm,is there something you're trying to prove by mentioning your an American as well?
LOL, I'm sure you've eaten / done worse.
What does financial standing have to do with anything? I never was broke ( not bragging, just my family was always steady middle class, and with the exception of the first few months after college of working at Del Taco, I have been too ). However, my sister and I always loved making Ramen, whether it was straight from the package, or simply adding veggies and chicken. Good stuff.
Same here. However, I've upgraded from $0.25 packets of Maruchan to the fancier offerings like Shin Ramyun Black from Asian supermarkets. I add some fresh bok choy, chicken breast and an egg to make a pretty decent meal out of it.
boil in a bag rice with butter (who am I kidding, margarine) with salt and pepper. Me and my two roommates would sit down on the couch and pass it around. If we were lucky and we had some extra cash (not spent at the bar that night) we would also share a bottle of cherry 7-up (Yuck). Those were the days. I don't see how anyone can gain the freshman 15 when you can't afford to eat. I lost the freshman 15.
Extra money "not spent at the bar that night".
You were never too poor to eat well. You just didn't have your priorities straight. 2 beers at a typical bar (conservative quantity) is about $3 these days. If you do that every night, that's $21 a week. My typical grocery bill, without being to careful, is $30.
Dog meat stew. Stray dogs are free if you can find them.
Good to see you here Ron Mexico.
Ramen noodles has too much MSG and has no protein at all. The best college food has to be dog meat stew. No MSG and rich in protein. Dog liver contains tons of vitamin B complex and that's like food for your brain.
Watching people attempt comedy is usually more funny then the "joke" itself
Beef Ramen with a small can of mixed vegetables or fried and diced up luncheon meat. 12 and a half years later out of college and I -still- find myself craving that now and then.
There is nothing wrong with ramen noodles. They can turn a few spoonfuls of leftover stew into a filling meal.
Fried bologna sandwiches with cheese & mustard.
That actually sounds kinda delicious.
Depends on the brand of bologna, but yeah, good stuff.
The best is if you have them slice it double thick at the deli.
Mix all of that with your weekend allotment of MD 20/20, Thunderbird, and Fighting Cock, and you've got a gut full of pain come Sunday.
instant potatoes with cream of mushroom soup gravy- OMG good!
Ramen cooked with frozen veggies, drained, cook a beaten egg in a little water and the seasoning packet. Pour over ramen. Yum.
Cheeto Burritos.
Art school huh? Surprised you're not still in poverty! (not a jab, just know how hard it is to make $ with art!)
Ha! I even went on to grad school and got an MFA in metalsmithing. I...don't do that anymore.
I had a meal plan, and they made the BEST Egg and Cheese buiscuts I have E V E R had. Boy's I suppose just got the meal plan and ate the food, the Z grade meat I remember tasted great it doesn't have to look good to taste good. Go figure.
But for those times when I was hungery and missed the meal for whatever reason... Ketchup sandwiches and noodles.
Bread + ketchup (and anything else edible). Spagetti with ketchup was for when I had people over, I also used to make a mean tuna salad for those special occasions (no ketchup involved).
Oh college. I remember those food lacking days vividly. I went to school earning a whopping 50 bucks a month and a meal plan. We would do our best to steal as much food from the cafeteria during scheduled meals as possible but transitioning from a practical buffet in the parents house to the starvation that was college was tough. I totally agree (although your meals were much much fancier) with buying noodles, peanut butter, and margarine if you were lucky. We would often just put cajun seasoning on cooked noodles and call it a meal daily. I remember a few extreme moments of just eating raw peanut butter with a spoon to increase calorie intake when funds had dried up and we missed school meals. We all had those friends that went and donated plasma to multiple places just to increase the monthly funds. Thank goodness those days are over. I
Macaroni and cheddar cheese soup.
Canned tuna and blue cheese dressing tacos
Saltines w/peanut butter
Cook a boil-in-the bag rice packet. Strain some canned beans. Microwave a handful of frozen corn. Mix it all together with a packet of "taco seasoning". It's actually fairly decent, and healthy.
Ramen with one egg & soy sauce– egg drop soup!
If I was flush with some cash to spend (went to college in the city of Chicago, no car so the only grocery store was the neighborhood one, NOT as cheap as mega marts) it was a jar of Prego (the mushroom one) and a loaf of french bread for dinner. Hit sauce, tear off bread, dip and eat.
If I was not a flush with cash and there was a sale, it was a container of French onion dip and a box of breadsticks.
French fries and mayo.
Instant potatoes; instant stuffing... anything that was, well... instant & horribly cheap.
Ramen, 1/2 the flavor packet, turkey ham, parm cheese
French fries with sour cream.