I just made rice-a-roni without butter. And I mixed corn in. Grocery store brand corn. The thought of adding katsup for flavor crossed my mind, but then I had to go flog myself for thinking sultry food-splurge thoughts. But then I remembered I boiled the flog for soup last week.
I have enough rice-o-corny left over for tomorrow’s lunch. A victory, on the whole.
I’ve reached a new level in broke college studentness.
Share yours.
10 for a $1 ramen noodles. With butter if I had it. And I’d make the full soup because I didn’t have money for soda or juice, so artificially chicken flavored water was welcome.
4 for a $1 cans of tuna. Mixed with the 5 for a $1 canned tomatoes on spaghetti or said ramen.
Raiding mom’s fridge when she was out of town.
Yeah, broke college student days were not fun.
-Tcat
A packet of no-brand tomatosoup with a lot of cheap spaghetti thrown in to make it filling.
:: shudder::
Rice-a-roni? An extravagance.
White rice (2/3 cup dry). Three mushrooms growing under the sink (I have a shiitake log down there, inherited from a friend who graduated last year, but they’re still the mushrooms from under the sink).
Plain white rice. No butter. Sprinkled with paprika so I could fool myself into thinking it was special.
We used to put sultanas in ours when we got too sick of the plain rice flavour. I can no longer eat rice, and this is nearly 10 years ago.
Some slightly dried-up spam I found in the fridge, stir-fried in soy sauce, served with plain noodles. Eaten at 0700 after coming home from a 12-hour nightshift guarding an empty (as in, bare concrete) office building. I don’t really miss my student days that much.
Flog soup?
Is that like Stone Soup?
Jeez, my student days weren’t as depressing as these. Even at my lowest ebb I found places giving all-you-can-eat specials at outrageously low prices, or got free samples of Life Cereal, or something.
Most broke meal?
A few rashers of bacon or smoked ham thrown in with mushrooms and chopped onion and garlic, tossed around with diced tomatoes and a little bit of chicken stock, and maybe some sour cream…then droozled over a packet of cheap fettucine.
What?
No matter how broke I am, I always have decent food to eat.
Mine was freshman year in college- I walked around the dorm, mooching any foodstuffs I could get my hands on. Ended up making a pizza-like concoction of Saltine’s crackers, ketchup, and parmesan cheese. They were absolutely disgusting, but I made it until breakfast the next day at the dining hall.
Back in the day when you could work full-time and still not make enough to buy lunch, saltines, ketchup, and lemon wedges used to be free at cafeterias. You’d pay 5c for a cup of tea (cup and bag – hot water free too), make a couple cupfuls of ersatz tomato soup out of ketchup, saltines and hot water, then tea with lemon for after.
Generally in college I did the ramen thing (we’d buy frozen veg 5 pounds at a time so those got mixed in) and we had a huge 30 pounds of turkey bologna we got on super sale in the freezer.
During feast times I’d cook a roast and then turn the left overs into tamales for famine or yummy times.
When I was homeless in NYC, I found pick up change till I got 50 cents, go into a cafeteria and get a cup of coffee, then take leftover food off plates and leave.
I still won’t eat ramen to this day, memories of eating it and trying to pretend it was yummy and good, while sitting in our pathetic little apartment in downtown Albany…yuck.
4 of us went to Atlantic City and came back completely broke. So broke that we didn’t have change for the Parkway tolls, which are 35 cents at each toll. We had to run all of the tolls without paying (6 of them all the way up the Parkway).
Anyway, we also hadn’t eaten in about 12 hours. So we stopped at the Roy Rogers on the Parkway, where we helped ourselves to the Fixins bar. Basically, we found paper plates and loaded them with lettuce, tomatoes, onions and pickles. We then mixed ketchup and mayo to form our own Russian dressing. Voila, 4 free salads!. And pretty damn satisfying at that time of night.
We didn’t feel to bad, because we ate (and paid) at the same place on our way down to Atlantic City.
I used to work next to a Publix grocery store, and every day I’d go buy one banana to eat for my lunch. They were around 15-20c each. It became something of a joke between the cashiers and me.
I worked in a Hallmark, and when I got too hungry I’d dip into the self-serve Jelly Belly bins. I was pretty happy that I had that option.
i’ve been doing the white rice thing right now this entire semester…i think i’ve gone through close to 50 pounds of it this year so far…
yeah, being poor sucks…but after school, i’ve got a couple things lined up…so let’s hope things don’t stay this way.
When I was living in my car, I ate paper, and one time shoe laces. And LOTS of waterhose water from the park. In college, the Baptist Student Ministry and also the Wesylian Student Union used to hold soup dinners and stuff. I was there.
Small tin of Heinz beans and 3 fish fingers mixed into a bowl of rice. I paid £150 in rent and £100 to the bank each month to pay off an overdraft and my pay (on my year out from the course) was about £650 a month. I have no idea where it all went :smack:
Ah yes, the ramen. Brings back the smelly dorm room scent in my mind. Me too, won’t touch the stuff now.
Being first married, and poor and living on frozen Swanson Pot Pies and mac & cheese.
These days, a broke meal is either a hot dog and handful of chips, or my famous faux quesadillas: Warm a few corn tortillas, sprinkle some cheddar inside and fold them in half like a taco, then drop them in the broiler so they get all crispy and dripping with melted cheesy goodness.