Help tsarina cook this school year!

This year I have an apartment for the first time, and my resolution for the school year is “cook healthy meals and not just buckle and eat ramen six nights a week”. I’m looking for recipes from fellow Dopers that are cheap, quick, and easy, but they need to:

  • not have red meat (I only eat chicken and turkey). My boyfriend is a strict vegetarian, and I’d appreciate veggie recipes as well.

  • not have any weird ingredients that I can’t find at the Country Market down the street.

  • have to be healthy (nothing fried in a cupful of animal fat) and yummy, of course.

Thanks!

My suggestion is to learn to make packet meals. That is where you wrap your meal in aluminum foil, cook it at high temp for about 40 minutes. Watch out not to burn yourself unwrapping it and there is the meal. If your boyfriend was in the Boy Scouts, he knows about this. If you think the veggies need water, then include a couple of ice cubes, while wrapping it tight. The great thing is there is no cleanup, except throwing away the aluminum foil.

Also in the frozen food section they have come out with meals in a bag. Most of them are chicken dishes. Watch for sales on them and stock up. They are high on veggies and so you and boyfriend could split with you getting all the meat.[list][list][list][list][list][list][list][list][list]bon appetit
…;)…

Take a can of soup, and add a can of vegetables. Heat, stir, and eat. This is economical ($2.00), healthy (240 calories), and easy to fix (2 minutes). It’s also fun, because you get to make up names for your dishes…broccoli and cheddar soup with a can of potatoes is “make-believe baked potatoes”.

Try quesadillas. All you need is a flour torilla and some grated cheese. They can be fried or grilled. Just be careful not to burn them.

Wraps are good, and not too expensive. Just tortilla and veggies - we add chicken when we make em, but if the BF doesn’t want any…it’s a make your own meal anyways. Pasta is always good - learn to make a spaghetti sauce (with as much veggies as you want). Also, pasta flavoured with soup (Campbells has a bunch of recipes on the cans) is a good variation. Eggs are good too - omelettes or fried, etc. Salads are quick and easy, with as much veggie or meat as you’d like.

There a a ton of vegetarian cookbooks out there - buy yourself one, or a regular cookbook and change the recepies as you see fit.

Or, you can do what i did - get a boy friend who can cook and will make meals for you so you dont have to think about it :smiley:

Good Luck!

Being wrapped in a tortilla improves any type of food. And they’re cheap, too.

FYI, I’m also going to be learning to cook for myself this year, so I’m taking notes on this thread.

First, there is a series of cookbooks called *365 Ways to Cook . . * (chicken, vegetarian, pasta, soup, etc.). The reason I like these books is that most of the recipes are simple and quick–there is usually a chapter of especially fast, simple recipes–but there are also a few slightly more elegant recipes as well, so as your confidence goes up, you can pull out the stops and be a bit fancy.

Second, I’d like to recommend that you learn to make soups and or stews. They are almost endlessly creative once you get the basic proportions down, can be made very cheaply, can be light or hearty as the weather/menu/pocketbook demands, most keep very well in the fridge or freezer, so you can make a big batch, freeze it in individual portions, and have a quick meal to squeeze in between studies. Oh, and vegetable stock can be substituted for chicken stock in most cases, although the soup may need a bit more seasoning when you use vegetable stock.

Finally, don’t neglect dessert. Your basic drop cookie (think chocolate chip or oatmeal) are virtually foolproof, and the same goes for from stratch brownies–and they don’t take any longer than from some box mix! Pies can also be fairly quick–especially if you’re willing to start with a store-bought pie crust (okay, so I’m inconsistant, pie crust is just a touch more temperamental than cookies). you’ll be moving on to torts and tarts, and parfaits and puddings–drizzling chocolate and dusting with powdered sugar with the best of them–before you know it.

Tomorrow, I’ll dig out one of my best soup recipes for you, a cream of something most likely.

Okay, here’s the soup recipe–it’s very quick, just the time it takes to chop the vegetables. Cream soups don’t freeze well (in my experience at least). If you want to store this, don’t add the milk, it will keep a bit longer, then, warm up the puree mixture, almost to boiling, then add the milk and heat through.

Cream of Broccoli Soup
1 tablespoon olive or vegetable oil
2 medium-size yellow onions, coarsely chopped (about 2 cups)
3 cloves garlic, slivered
1 bunch broccoli (a little over a pound), heads cut into florets, stalks trimmed, peeled, and thinly sliced
3 medium-size all-purpose potatoes (about a pound), peeled and cut into cubes
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg (optional, but it really adds a nice flavor)
5 cups chicken or vegetable stock
2 cups lowfat milk (1 or 2% works fine, you can use whole milk, or even cream, for a richer soup)
Salt and pepper

In a large saucepan, heat the oil over low heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring frequently, until softened (about 5 minutes). Add the garlic and stir it around for aobut 30 seconds to a minute–don’t burn the garlic–you just want to start releasing the garlic flavor.

Add the broccoli, potatoes, nutmeg, and stock and bring to a boil over moderate heat. Adjust the heat so that the mixture simmers gently, cover, and cook for 20 minutes or until the broccoli and potatoes are very tender.

In a food processor or blender, a little at a time, process the mixture until pureed. Return the puree to thesaucepan, stir in the milk, salt, and pepper, and set over moderate heat for 4 minutes or just until heated through on a medium heat.

I sometimes don’t puree all of the mixture, then I have chuncky cream of broccoli soup. Cauliflower also works well instead of broccoli, or use both. If I’m feeling fancy, I use leeks instead of onions. Pair this up with a grilled cheese sandwich and chocolate milk and life is good.

buy ground turkey when it goes on sale for turkey burgers (freeze in 1/4 lb patties). Where I live its about 1.50/lb. Turkey doesn’t hold together like ground beef does so add: 1 egg (beaten) and some bread crumbs (italian flavor) plus a little soy sauce or worcstershire sauce for flavor to every 1/2 lb of meat. Fry in a non-stick pan and mmmm… protein.

my extra-cheapo College Pasta Sauce (costs maybe 40 cents before the optional veggies or meat):
1 small can “italian seasonings” tomato paste
1 cube chicken or vegetable bouillion
1/2 onion, chopped
3 cloves finely chopped garlic (or to taste)
optional: veggies like carots and green peppers, 1/4 lb ground turkey, or 1 chicken breast cut into chunks.

dissolve bouliion cube in 1 cup water and have ready.

  1. Sautee onions overmedium heat in a tablespoon or so of oil until the start to look translucent
  2. add garlic and sautee until sightly brown
  3. add 1 small can tomato paste.
  4. add 1/2 cup boullion and stir paste into broth until it attains a sauce consistency. Keep adding a little mre liquid until your desired texture is reached.
  5. add any desired optional ingredients and simmer 20 minutes stirring occaisionally.
  6. adjust seasonings with salt, black pepper and serve over pasta.

you can fancy it up with a splash of leftover wine, some red pepper flakes, etc. endless variations are possible.

My last piece of cooking advice – hunt yard sales for old cast iron frying pans. Besides being a superior cookware to anything short of the fanciest brand-name pans, using cast-iron is a dietary source of iron. Iron deficiency makes you tired.

My personal favorite is some kind of pasta with Buitoni Marinara sauce. It’s really good. It’s an elusive little product; Price Chopper keeps it in the Kosher Korner (O.U. Pareve in case you were curious) and Wegmans hides it in the International Foods section. The latter to me is strange, since the label says it comes from California.

Also omlettes. I only learned how to make an omlette after I moved into my college apartment. Just a pan, Pam and two eggs. Then add cheese (or whatever). And you’re set.

Sandwiches are pretty easy to make too.

-Daniel, the uncreative college cook

Here’s a thread I started for easy cooking. It links to a thread by Fenris for easy cooking. Some of the recipes are decidedly unhealthy and the threads are skewed towards the carnivore, but some might help. And some of the other college-bound Dopers riding the coattails of your thread might benefit.
-Rue.

Pasta is good and cheap, I never get bored of this one:

Boil as much as you want of the pasta (penne is good for this sort of recipe) in salted water, while that’s cooking, finely chop an onion, a couple of cloves of garlic and a chilli, then cut some courgettes(zucchini) into four lengthways and slice away the seedy, pithy middle, then cut into pieces that are about the same size as the pasta pieces, cut a red (bell) pepper into pieces the same size.

Gently fry the vegetables in olive oil (start with the onion, then add the other ingredients after about a minute) the aim is to get the vegetables cooked, but not browned at all - they should still be nice and firm when you’re done, probably no more than 10 minutes on medium heat.

Season the vegetables to taste with salt and black pepper while they cook, keep everything on the move so that it doesn’t burn.

At the last minute, turn the heat right up and squeeze half a lemon into the pan with the vegetables, add a spoonful of sugar or honey, stir until coated and mix in with the drained pasta, mix it up well.

You could add a little tomato paste if you wanted, but it doesn’t need it. or you could improvise with whatever vegetables you have, the key ingredients are the lemon, sugar/honey and the black pepper. You can make it as simple or exotic as you like; you could add something like little chunks of fresh mango (at the last minute when you add the lemon juice).

Quicker to cook than this was to type and costs (in the UK) about 25 pence per (generous) serving.

The other thing that’s very cheap and satisfying is to make your own bread; ignore (at least to start with) all the fancy advice in the baking books and try this one:

1 pound plain white flour (just ordinary flour, not ‘bread’ flour or anything fancy
2 teaspoons dried active yeast
1 teaspoon sugar or honey
half teaspoon salt
warm water

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl, then start adding the warm water gradually, stirring with a knife until you have the beginnings of a ball of dough (softish, but not sticky) - it should be about 1 and a half cups of the water, but the amount will vary a bit depending on your flour.

turn out the dough onto a floured board and knead it by hand until you notice the texture change to ‘silky’ (if at any stage you find it keeps sticking to the board or your hands, add a little bit more flour)

put the dough into a lightly-oiled bowl, cover it and leave in a warm place for an hour (by which time it should have doubled in size)

Preheat the oven to 200[sup]o[/sup]C (sorry don’t know that in F or gas mark, but it’s quite hot. Lightly oil a cookie sheet and put it in the oven to heat up

Turn it out onto the board again and knead for another minute or two (don’t worry that this knocks all of the air out, that’s what you want)

Divide the dough into pieces about the size of your fist, using a rolling pin, roll one of the pieces out until it’s about a quarter inch thick, it can be any shape, but oval is easiest to handle. roll out as many pieces as will fit on the cookie sheet, save the rest for a while.

Carefully place the rolled out dough onto the cookie sheet in the oven and bake for about 5 minutes (keep an eye on it because it cooks fast) the loaves should swell up like balloons, take them out when they just start to go brown. Repeat the rolling and baking until you’re done.

You should end up with something like a pitta bread that you can split and fill with whatever you want or tear up and dip into something; eat them while they are still warm.

I’m trying to learn how to cook too. I recently got a great cookbook-- it’s called How to Cook Everything, the author is Mark Bittman. As the title indicates, the book covers, well, everything. I’ve tried a bunch of recipes that turned out really well, it gives you tons of practical advice and vegetarian alternatives are offered for many of the recipes. I was sort of pathologically afraid of cooking, but I’m going back to school next year and needed to learn how to cook to cut back on expenses. I’ve learned that cooking your own food is actually a lot of fun, especially once you’ve mastered a few techniques and can branch out and improvise.

Brown 1 pound ground beef and drain the grease. To the ground beef add one can of Ranch Style Beans and one can of
Old El Paso Spanish Rice (not shown on their website), then heat until warm enough to serve.

The stuff can be eaten as-is in a bowl (also good with some Rotel Dip stirred in) or as a base for other things. I like to roll some up in tortillas and top with Enchilada Sauce or use as a filling for a sandwich using my ‘sandwich maker’ (those things you see on the infomercials). The best part is that it freezes / microwaves very well, make 30 pounds or so then spoon individual servings into plastic bags and freeze and you have a quick meal whenever you want one.

:sticks head in door:

Sorry, I was walking by and thought I heard my name.

Carry on.

Something I cooked up often my senior year of college, while living on a very tight food budget.

Curried Sweet Potatoes with Black Beans

Prep time 10 minutes
Cooking time 15-20 minutes if you use Boil in Bag rice. 35 minutes if you’re making regular rice.

For two generous servings:

1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 (14 oz?) can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 large sweet potato or yam, peeled and diced
1 Tb curry powder
salt
oil
cooked rice

Put the sweet potatoes in a sauce pan with some water and bring to a boil. Boil until sweet potatoes are tender - approx 10 minutes. Drain sweet potatoes and set aside.

In a skillet, heat a little oil over medium heat, add the chopped onion and saute until onion begins to turn translucent - approx 5 minutes. Add the garlic and saute another 3 to 5 minutes. Add the curry powder and stir well. Add the black beans and sweet potatoes, salt to taste (usually I add about 1/4 - 1/2 tsp) and about 1/3 cup water. Simmer, stirring often, until water is mostly evaporated and the mixture gets a little sticky.

Serve over rice.

Usually I get fancier with the spices, and use a combination of cumin, coriander, ginger, cayenne and cinnamon, but commercial curry powder works great, too.