Cooking in college can be tough for multiple reasons. There's planning to consider, money to buy the ingredients and, of course, time to actually cook. But it turns out finding cheap, easy-to-make meals for just more than $8 is possible and can be fun.
I started with the notion that I wanted to make two meals for the price of one.
There are multiple directions you could take with this idea, depending on what type of food you like the best. While oatmeal works for most breakfast meals, if you wanted to make lunch and dinner foods, then what I've found is extremely useful.
At Outtakes in the Student Center, I found most of the ingredients I needed for spaghetti and soy-and-vegetable pasta.
There is a pasta section complete with different types of sauces.
The box of noodles itself is only a couple dollars, and the sauce is even cheaper. Wal-mart sells a 15-ounce bottle of soy sauce for $2.08 you can reuse.
The rest of the ingredients depend on personal preference, but if you want vegetarian stir-fry, the stores in the Village and Terrell both sell raw produce, or you can buy a bag of frozen veggies from Wal-Mart for $1.50.
As for the cooking, I started by boiling the pasta and heating up the sauce to pour on the noodles for some delicious spaghetti. I made sure to only use half of the noodles and save the rest for the next day.
The second night, I sauteed some vegetables in the soy sauce, poured them over the leftover noodles and voila! I created two delicious meals for just more than $8.
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