Moving out (food help)

optical

I am moving out in a few weeks and came to the stunning realization that for the first time I am going to have to make pretty much all my meals, since previously I have either lived at home or in the dorms and only cooked occasionally with little regards to cost. I was looking to see if I could get some advice on some more cost conscious meals, eating habits, and grocery shopping. Man can only eat so much ramen :P

Rook

The most effective money saver you can have is making your own lunch instead of buying it at work/school etc. Sammich, Fruit, and a bottle of tap water or whatever is good for you.

Creepy

Gonna go a little off topic here and suggest cleaning supplies. When I moved out I really had no idea what all I was going to need. It was cleaning supplies & tools. And a vacuum.

Food I figured out pretty quickly.

Jasconius

Campbells Chunky Soup, Marrie Collender (spelling) frozen meals, are what I prefer when I find myself at home and hungry.

The Marie Collender ones are suprisingly good compared to most frozen food, and reasonably filling.

If you really want to cook, Spaghetti, Macarroni, Taco Salad, and other ground beef based dishes are easy to make.

STATE OF THE ART ROBOT

If you are living alone, make a little extra for dinner and use that as tommorow's lunch. Keeps you from wasting food and saves on lunchtime costs. It's what I did when I worked & lived alone during last summer. Saved at least $30 a week doing this.

supabeast

Get a rice cooker/steamer and you can just cook chicken in pre-made sauces and toss it over rice. Pasta is another cheap meal to learn to love; cook red meat and add it to a red sauce, or cook chicken and then toss that and the pasta with basil and olive oil. Cheap dried pasta is the same as the expensive italian dried pasta, so stick with the store brand. Trader Joe’s has tons of great frozen dinners that are cheap and much more healthy than what you get at most grocery stores. Bananas are dirt cheap and very healthy. Warehouse stores sell the same damned meats they sell fresh at lower prices frozen, pre-cut and sealed in individual packages. Peanut butter is cheap, and a great source of protein.

Unless you want to turn into a big fat freak, watch out for junk food. Unhealthy food costs less, but you’re better off eating rice and frozen veggies than you are pigging out on subsidized bean, cheese and corn burritos topped off with Mountain Dew.

Glaeal

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=737

Low Budget cooking for the average geek. Your friend.

Lewisham

Buy jars of sauce, and then follow the recipes on the back.

Buy lower quality food items, they are usually made by the same companies as the brand names. Don't buy lower quality meat though, it's not a good idea at all (particuarly when it comes to mince or meat you can't see in the packet).

Pasta bake is the dish that keeps on giving, you can eat three meals after cooking just once!

Buy a rice cooker. Cooking rice is a pain in the ass, but many rice dishes are very simple, such as chilli or curry. If you remove the pain of cooking rice, then you have a lot of easy meals.

Dalboz

Brown rice and whole wheat pastas are reasonably cheap and filling. A better word of advice would be to invest in some good tupperware and exercise portion control, storing the rest for later. You'll make your food last longer that way.

optical

Thanks for the advice everyone, especially the heads up on that thread. I'm going to look into the good tupperware for leftovers since I normally eat a lot of smaller meals throughout the day rather than a few big ones.

Aaron Lee

Get a rice cooker. Rice is cheap, healthy, and you can do a lot with it. Spaghetti fits in that boat too. Hell, there's a lot you can do with ramen as well. Ramen stir fry, ramen vegetable soup. Tortilla wraps are inexpensive and make a healthy alternative to bread. I make multiple wraps at a time that serve me for lunch for a couple days. Throw some green veggies on there (broccoli, spinach) rice, cheese, whatever you like. Also, ground turkey is another inexpensive healthy alternative to ground beef.

Mostly it comes down to scouring your local grocery stores to find the ones that give you the best deals for your tastes. I live about a mile from a grocery outlet that sells stuff at dirt cheap prices, so for less perishable foods it's a godsend. The rest I pick up at the big chain, and generally take advantage of whatever "buy one get one free" deal that have every week.

Lastly, invest in some decent cookwear. I bought cheap crap when I first struck out on my own, and it's not worth the trouble when all the food start sticking and cleaning becomes tiresome. Some good teflon pans will last a lifetime if you treat it well.

Al_wat

You can make decent pasta for cheap. You don't even have to use sauce if you don't want to. Sometimes I'll just boil some pasta, add olive oil, some parmesan cheese, hot pepper flakes, and maybe parsley.

Or just get boil pasta and heat some store bought sauce. simple.