edit: Let's shoot for $10/week, guys. I'll have some help from my mom to start off with as she is always offering to give me food.

I live on campus and like most, have a meal plan with the college. This costs me $1070 per quarter. $465 of that is some bullshit service fee that everyone must pay, whether or not they have a meal plan. The remaining $605 is my meal plan cost, which entitles me to a paltry 100 meals over 10 weeks.

So if I can feed myself for less than $605 over the 10 weeks, I can save some money! Now yeah, I'm sure I could do it if I ate nothing but ramen noodles, but I'm not going to be able to do that realistically. So I need some more ideas.

I have just a small minifridge/freezer thing, so I can't buy many groceries at one time.

I'd like minimal cooking.

I hate all things pasta. (although guess I could occasionally stomach chef boyardee shit)

Keep in mind that fast food restaurants with their $1 menu and cheap ass tacos abound here. Might be a good auxilary option.

For this to really be worth it...haha, if I could save $300, that would make me happy. So can I spend $300 on 10 weeks of food and survive? My mom would likely give me a head start, buying me some groceries before I move back to school after Christmas break, so..yeah.

I would suggest becoming vegan, because fruits and vegetables are super cheap. That's the only healthy way to eat cheap, but I know that's not gonna happen.

Dollar menus are pretty cheap and so are canned goods. Buy a huge ass bag of rice and a huge ass bag of beans and make beans and rice for dinner. Get some canned tomato paste or broth to throw in there for added flavor. Buy a bunch of apples and eat those for breakfast. Buy a tub of mixed nuts and eat those for lunch/snack. The fiber in the nuts and apples will make you feel fuller and help you live on less.

Buy some cheap bread and bologna and eat alot of (repulsive) bologna sandwiches.

Find a way to get free food. I read somewhere that you can often go to college get togethers (club meetings, event, blah blah etc) and often they'll have pizza and shit like that. Go to frat parties and eat/steal their food. Just don't get caught leaving the place with a duffel bag full of their hot pockets and canned corn. Try to eat at your parent's house or at a friend's house alot. Get a girlfriend who knows how to cook. Steal your roomate's food. Fuck, I've been spending too much time in Bad Ideas.

*Grins* Try going to food closets and tell them a sob story. Go to costco when they're doing all the free samples and chow down. Start killing local wildlife/domesticated animals and dress them in your bath tub.

Check with Bad Ideas... they have many suggestions for getting free food from restaurants (I think there is an active thread covering that subject right now.) Also, check with the oral indulgences forum. They might have some suggestions for cheap and tasty food.

Hope this unorganized mass of text was of some assistance.

-Vispilio

PS: Here is a thread from Bad Ideas which covers boiling your own feces for consumption. (I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Fuck that dood.... 10 weeks what.. equates to 2 1/2 months??? meh, thats not sooooooooooo bad. But damn! To save up for my parachute I lived on tuna (seriously) for like 1 month. It was hell. Came up with the illest recipes. good luck.

Eat less..seriously. I'm in college now, but in a family of 4 who can easily get by on $100/week on groceries. You have more than $50 a week to spend...that should be more than enough for a single person.

Buy some:
Rice
Ramen
A rotisserie chicken from the grocery store (can last several meals and cost between 5 and 7 dollars)
a box of generic cereal
Milk
a package of frozen bagels
Orange Juice
Mac and Cheese
Bagged salad for a few dollars (you can buy other veggies to add in, or buy small amounts off a grocery salad bar)
Bottle of salad dressing
A loaf of bread
some kind of deli meat and cheese
and you should still have plenty left over

Just make burritos every day.
George foreman grill: $30
Pack of large flour tortillas
large bag of rice
bag of beans
cheese
whatever creams you want to add
and a pack of lean chicken breast is like 7 bucks.

shred the chicken and marinate it, prepare the beans and the rice and have it all ready in bowls. Whenever you want to eat just pop whatever ingredients you're in the mood for on the tortilla, roll it, and grill it. It's very good, easy to prepare, and costs much much less than 50 bucks a week.

It's also a lot healthier than hot pockets or the dollar menu.

__________________

Abso-fucking-lutely go for the rice. You could practically live off of bulk rice. Just cook with it- you would be surprised at the different ways you can make rice taste good for cheap.

dear god, you cant figure out how to eat for $2.84 per meal?
you could do mc donalds all day if you really wanted,

I've walked out of grocery stores like Ralphs with baskets full of shit I need. Just load up your cart/basket, check for security devices (being at a grocery store, these are often rare) and exit when you feel safe. People are in/out every 30 seconds anyway, and a friend that used to work there told me they had a no-chase no-stop policy.

$2.84 per meal is the limit. I said for all this to be worth it, I would want to save about $300, so cut that in half and make it $1.42 per meal.

Fuck that. Why not a dollar a day?

http://hungryforamonth.blogspot.com/...h_archive.html

buy food in bulk

Sandwiches; not those big monstrosities that some people call a sandwich, but something small.

Get a casual job at a hotel that provides meals to their staff; it's not uncommon. The hotel I work at offers two meals a day to their employees, free of charge. Most schools have an abundance of nearby hotels.

Eating cheap is very doable, but...you don't have to suffer either. You should, btw, learn to love pasta, because it's cheap, filling, and the biggest food group. Off the top of my head, I'd recommend things like Sloppy Joes (easy, tastes good, and lasts a long time in the freezer), red beans and rice (probably the cheapest thing you can eat while still getting lots of nutrients), pasta dishes, and potato salads as some key meals to have in rotation.

At the beginning of the month you want to stock up on pasta, rice, beans, onions, garlic cloves, cans of tomatoes (diced and whole), a couple cans of tomato sauce, potatoes, butter, and a bag of apples. You'll probably spend around 25, possibly 30 bucks on that, but that alone would be enough to last you the month. (You'd generally be alternating between pasta with basic tomato sauce and plain red beans and rice every night, with potato salad, mashed potatoes, or a baked potato as a side. You might have a potato salad sandwich or an apple for lunch)

(Now, you can improve this a lot by stocking up on spices and seasonings. IMO, the essentials would be: salt, pepper, sugar, cumin, basil, oregano, curry powder, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, and ketchup. Most of this stuff will last for several months, so it's a good investment. [Probably 20 bucks again, but it allows you to cook diverse foods])

So, you keep all of this shit as your base-line, and then every week you can go out and spend some money on fresh products as needed. Your best bet for meat is to find something on sale and in bulk. Like, if you find a big thing of ground beef or chicken breasts, you could easily space it out for a couple of weeks. Then all you have to buy is a loaf of bread every week, some milk, and stuff like celery or bell peppers (well, those will last you about 2 weeks sitting the fridge).

So... if I'm not underestimating anything too much, I'd say you could eat well and cheaply for around 60/month.

EDIT: I forgot: Pizza is REALLY cheap if you make it on your own. A 2.50 dollar bag of flour and 2 packets of yeast (1.50 for 3 packets) will give you around 4-5 large pizza crusts, or around 10 calzones. You can make sauce with a large can of diced tomatoes, and then you can top it with vegetables, meat, whatever to make it more filling. Cheese is good, but you only need a sprinkling of it...too much is unhealthy and it's expensive. Pizza dough will last a long time when frozen, 2-3 days when put in the fridge. You'd need a table to knead it on, a measuring cup, a big bowl to mix it in, and a pan or pizza pan to cook it on.

I live on about $25 a month on food for the same reason.
How?

Rice and beans. As long as you shower, no one will know you're a hobo.

You must eat something else. Not all nutrients your body needs is provided in rice and beans. Heh, you'd get scurvy if that's all you ate.

My new target is $10/week for this program. That would save me $1000 this year. This will take effect in January, and I'm going to do all I can to prepare for it. Keep the ideas coming.

And that reminds me...I'm concerned about protein intake. Zay mentioned to me it might be a good idea to get some protein powder, cause otherwise I don't know where my protein would be coming from. I can't eat a shit load of beans EVERY day, you know?

I'm personally very much into eating healthy and I don't recommend skimping on your food budget as you intend to do, just for the kind of reason you mentioned regarding the protein. If you do want to eat like a bum, though, and come through it without organ failure, a nutrient deficiency, or some other shit like that, I recommend taking a daily multivitamin and getting some protein powder. I think a month's supply of protein powder would be somewheres about $20-$40 bucks. Make shakes with it and blend it with fruit, especially bananas (go fiber!).

If you don't want to make the protein shakes then I'd say your only other sources for significant amounts of protein are beans and meat. You could buy a bulk bag of chicken breasts and alternate between that and the beans. *Shrugs* Eat tuna as well and you should be getting some protein daily.

Don't skimp on the multivitamin though. You'll regret it. (Tell your mom that you're too poor for vitamins and play on her heart strings.)

Cheese.

And yes, a multivitamin is a must.

You don't really need that much protein. You need grain products more.

Just buy shitloads of canned food and fruit and vegetables, and try and look for sales at grocery stores etc good luck bro.

$60 a week, I can feed a family on that.

You do however need to learn to cook properly if you cant already. At university I had to live on about £15/$30 per week (and the UK is much more expensive than USA). Get the basics in like flour, sugar, eggs, oils and spices, these will last you for a while and will provide you with the basics that will form the base of meals that you bake from scratch (get your mum to stack you up with basics). Lots of tinned meats and vegetables will provide you with the flavour and bulk of the meals to put in stews or a pie (i think in America pie is sweet but in UK its savoury).

For desserts, bake cakes

For alcohol, (which is very important at university) I suggest you buy the cheapest nastiest bottles of spirits and a water filter than you put in the fridge. If you then filter the alcohol through several times then you get rid of the impurities which gives cheap spirits the nasty taste and it tastes more expensive. Or for flavoured gin/vodka/white rum-buy bags of skittles-separate them into colours and drop all of one colour into a bottle of your spirit. leave it for a couple of days and shake occasionally.

In UK, if you go in to supermarkets just before closing you get a large amount of fresh produce being reduced in price so it gets sold otherwise it gets thrown out. If they have this where you live then I suggest you hang round and pick up some bargains.

Seriously you'll be fine and you'll save a fortune by cooking for yourself. Plus, us girls always like lads who can cook differnet meals for us-not just one speciality meal that they always tend to cook on special occasions

This would be better in OI, btw.

And like the guy above me said: make an effort to develop actual cooking skills. If you know how to cook to some degree, then you can make a lot of good-tasting stuff with only modest supplies. In fact, I'm sure they have cookbooks out there geared toward students and people on tight budgets.

Well, ok, as far as real meals that require more than a microwave, and fit into my budget plan...off the top of my head:

macaroni and cheese (with some cut up hot dogs for protein!)

grilled cheese

rice and beans (probably numerous ways to change the flavor and style of this...this is where spices and sauces would likely come into play, possibly could add different vegetables for different times)

hamburger/tuna helper

burritos, no meat

pasta with cheap cheap sauce that i might like

you know chicken and dumplings? well i could make that without chicken. or splurge and include chicken. or substitute tuna for chicken.

bacon could be a good thing to add to some stuff to get some meat and protein. the crappy bottom shelf generic cuts of bacon i've seen can be pretty cheap...$1.50 a package. could definitely stretch that out over a week or two. then i could make cabbage and noodles!

Hamburger/Tuna helper is a waste of money. It's just uh...pasta with some sauce mix, right? Yeah, fuck that. You can buy a big bag of pasta for the same price and make your own sauce to last for the entire bag.

Bacon is unhealthy, so I wouldn't go crazy on that.

Red Beans and Rice recipes usually have green peppers, celery, and onions in it, as well as some sausage. It's pretty dense, and you could easily spread a medium-sized pot of it out for the entire week. Go to allrecipes.com and you can find some recipes there, or just google it.

Once again I'll mention potato salad. The main thing that just about all of them need is potatoes, some mayonnaise, some mustard, and then you can add celery, olives, pickles, eggs, apples, and even chicken to make it more interesting. Should last a couple days, and you can have it as as side dish or put it on a sandwich.

f o o d s t a m p s

Heh, I'd be surprised to actually qualify for those, since as a college student the government expects your parents to contribute a lot to your income...even though they don't.

Do you have access to a kitchen? pots? pans? prep space?

To a limited degree. My hall has a kitchen and is supposed to have utensils and whatnot, but is usually lacking. I don't want to be cooking in the kitchen too often.

Tunafish, peas, and macaroni and cheese. This shit is cheap but awesome, and not junk food.

Oh my God, I didn't know anyone else ate ghetto tuna pea macaroni salad!

Eating cheaply requires that you either cook or eat a disgustingly low quality of food.

Run out aldis with all you want they can't chase you and they don't have camras and they have no security devices i worked at one.

I wish New Arrivals and Acolytes could be banned instantly for posting something stupid.