Hi!
I'm a college student - and nutrition has become more and more of a problem for me, both in "nutritional value" and simply in cost.
I'm quickly going to describe my resources and current habits, and then move on to ask for advice.
- Resources
Fridge/freezer capacity is not really a problem, I'm sharing a big 10cu fridge with only one other person.
My dorm has one kitchen on my floor, which needs to be reserved a day in advance, but is pretty much unused.
Kitchen supplies: I have a large frying pan, a 3L pot, a baking tray, a rice cooker, and 2-3 small bowls, one of these whisk things (lotta bent wire to beat egg and stuff), a big spoon
Money: I'm running out of cash really damn fast, partly because of my habits I'll describe below. My current goal is to spend about 70-80$ on food per week.
I eat a lot of food - constantly hungry... If I could, I would easily eat 1lb of meat a day, and proportionate carbs and veggies proportionately. Obviously that's too expensive though.
Grocery stores: honestly, I feel like they are really expensive where I live... Meat: I can get chicken and ground beef for 4-6$/lb (depending on fat % and quality in general), but beef is in the 10$/lb range so kind of too expensive, given the amount I eat. Veggies are also kind of expensive, and go bad fast, eggs are cheap, carbs are mostly cheap. Nuts and avocado and stuff like that is insanelyyyyy expensive. Even stuffike bread is kind of expensive (4bux for shitty bread) I feel like the cheapest grocery store around is trader joes, which says a lot about prices. (cheaper ones like aldi further away, but I can't access them)
Current habits:
Before the start if the semester I was hoping I would be able to mealprep, but that hasn't worked out well - I'm honestly not a bad cook but the stuff I cook just doesn't taste good after being in the fridge for longer than a day. Chicken goes dry and bland, veggies go mushy. I could make salad but I need something that sustains me for longer than a measly salad. Also every time I try to mealprep it takes me about 4h, which is quite a lot of time. Therefore in the past few weeks I've resorted to eating one better meal a day by going out (chipotle, food trucks, other chains - basically I pay between 6-10$ a meal) and a few slices of toast with turkey breast in the morning. But goddamn I'm starving, and I really miss veggies. Also whenever I tried mealprepping I'm not even sure if the cost works out... I've made chili once for example which cost me about 15-16$ to make (4tomato cans, 3bean cans, 2lb ground beef, onion), but only lasted me a max of 4 servings, so that brings down my cost from 6$ a meal to 4$, not THAT big a difference if you account for the time I spent making it, and that's the cheapest decent tasting meal that also holds for a while that I could come up with.
Sooo, basically, my question is this - what should I do to be able to stick to my budget above without starving or having a completely irregular eating schedule? I would totally be down to cook, but I just haven't managed to do it in a way that I'm not sick of the same food after 2 days, and by then it's gone really bland anyway. Carbs aren't the problem here, but veggies and meat is. I've given up on fish, goes bad even sooner than meat and is more expensive.
Any advice appreciated!
November 05, 2018 at 12:34AM
