Meal Suggestions for Eating Fast, Easy to Prepare, Cheap and HEALTHY

[Barry Natchitoches]

I think the advice is different for a student living in a dorm with probably no oven or cooking equipment to a student living off campus in an apartment with a stove and refrigerator etc.

When I lived in the dorm we ate in the cafeteria. We kept a food drawer in our room for snacks such as Tang, granola, nuts, peanut butter, crackers etc. We never "cooked" in our dorm room. Cooking wasn't allowed. I assumed this thread was directed at students living off campus with cooking facilities.

I started this thread, and I see it as an aid for a number of different kinds of people:


1, College kids living in their first apartments

2, Colllege kids living in dorms (though alot of this is impractical for them, there are a few things in this thread that would even work for them)

3, Folks of any age who need to eat cheaply, fast and are concerned about eating healthy


Not every recipe posted here is practical for every person who might use this thread now or in the future.


But probably everybody can scan through this thread and find SOMETHING that they might like to try.


Thank you, everybody who has posted something here.

[joyfulheart]

This was posted on a parenting forum for cheap food (tight times) and one of the mom's posted this-- I tried it tonight for dinner and my boys went nuts over it!

(I served with eggs and fruit too)

Pumpkin pie oatcakes

Cold Cooked oatmeal
pureed pumpkin(frozen from this past fall)
pumpkin pie spice

Mix the 3 together, form into patties and fry up. easy peasy and suitably tasty.

[Barry Natchitoches]

The main problem, which applies to our preparedness community, is appetite fatigue. You can't eat too much of the same thing, because, like many others have said in this thread, I couldn't eat X for years afterwords.

That's the truth.


During the depression, my father would go down to the New Orleans wharfs (loading docks) when the big banana boats would come in from Cuba.


As they unloaded the boats, they always dropped some bananas on the wharf.


My dad -- and other poor boys living by the river -- would run out there as soon as the longshoremen finished unloading the ship, and they'd collect up all the bananas that had dropped.


My dad would bring them home, and his grandmother would mix up a simple batter of flour, a pinch of salt and a bit of sugar. She'd then mix in smashed bananas from the haul my dad brought to her, and fry them up in a bit of cooking oil.


There were several YEARS when the only three things that family had to eat (day in and day out, day after day after day) was either red beans and rice, or else day old French bread with a bit of cooking oil or butter, or else banana fritters using those bananas my dad brought home.


To this day, my dad will NOT eat banana fritters, because he ate so many of them when he was a young boy...

[Kathy in FL]

This was posted on a parenting forum for cheap food (tight times) and one of the mom's posted this-- I tried it tonight for dinner and my boys went nuts over it!

(I served with eggs and fruit too)

Pumpkin pie oatcakes

Cold Cooked oatmeal
pureed pumpkin(frozen from this past fall)
pumpkin pie spice

Mix the 3 together, form into patties and fry up. easy peasy and suitably tasty.

Sounds like flavored groat cakes. My kids lived on those things when they were toddlers.

[rolenrock]

Any kind of beans in a crock pot are good, nutritious and easy. I like them because, as far as I can tell, they haven't genetically modified them yet - except soy of course and I try to avoid any and all soy products unless they are fermented and then only sparingly.

[blueberry]

When I was in college, my crock pots got the workout of their lives. I was juggling classes (mostly night classes), home and job. The great thing about a crock pot is that the kids could help themselves and there would still be a hot dinner waiting for me when I got home.

No matter which route I drove home from campus, I would pass dozens of fast food places. I would be tired, hungry and SO tempted by all those pizza, burger and chicken drive-throughs. Knowing there was a hot meal ready at home, really helped.