I’ll tell you, it’s worse when you’re out of college and you have to do the same things.
Ramen, check.
Tuna, check. With a bit of mayo, wonderbread, and tuna, you can make a pretty filling sandwich.
Also, you can buy really really really cheap hotdogs that come in like 30 packs (around a dollar a pound, on sale). Again, put it on wonderbread with some catchup.
Yeah, these three things were my diet for a good portion of last year.
I always managed somehow, but I lived right near a great fruit/veggie and bulk market and could always find nutrients for dinner. Rice and beans and a little know-how can take you far when you don’t have money, and you do have the luxury of a stove.
But my friend who never learned to cook had more trouble. She ate ice cubes for dinner one night, Baco-Bits another. Once she fried up some bran flakes with curry because that was all she had.
(I still love ramen noodles, but I’m quite fussy about the brand.)
Finding out two bites in that you’re allergic to the chinese takeout you splurged on. My face was all flushed and itchy and a little swollen, but I finished it anyway, because A) I was hungry and had skipped dinner and B) I paid for it.
I can’t beat paper and shoe laces. But I was playing in a band in 1976 and staying with the guitar player. We were so broke that all he had in the house was a few potatoes and various Caribbean spices, so that’s what we ate. Boiled potatoes, with LOTS of spices. I think my taste buds were numb for a week.
Once in college I was so broke that I went to Nathan’s with my girlfriend and we made a meal out of a couple of knishes plus the free sauerkraut and pickles from the condiments bar.
There was a time when I’d go shopping once a week, and live on a loaf of bread, a stick of pepperoni, a block of cheese and a bag of oranges. Other times, every day was rice and beans and if I could afford it, a dollar’s worth of beef cut up into it. Oh, and once I lived on a bag of potatoes and a pound of butter for a month. Yeah, that’s probably the winner.
Three days without eating, then a can of French Onion soup.
While my wife was in the hospital, and I couldn’t work because of it. And yet couldn’t get welfare for reasons that still are not clear to me. My son, I could not allow to go hungry so he ate all of the spagetti, ramen noodles and potatoes.
Me I ate nothing but drank the leftover ramen broth, for two days. And then I broke down and ate a potato like an apple as I was so hungry I couldn’t even wait until it was cooked. Then after that I felt so bad, just in case that potato I ate would of been the last of the food available and force my son to go hungry.
This lasted a good week, my son eating and never even realizing that food was scarce, and me losing (literally) 15 pounds and barely able to move around. I sucked out ketchup packets, mayonaise packets, drank syrup straight from the container.
Bad days, sad days. They will never happen again.*
*Some have accused me of being a tinfoil hat, as I pack food away to last for months. 50 pounds of rice in airlocked container, got it, MRE’s got 4 cases, evaporated milk got it, 10 tins of Treo powdered mashed potatos, got them. Now since my daughter is on a specialized diet, I am in the process of hoar… erm saving her foods. Plus more rotated on occasion. Its not that I fear the end of the world or anything such as that, its that I fear losing everything and my kids starving.
Over the summer, my life was saved by a timely gift of Omaha Steaks hamburgers. For a goodly period, I was subsisting on two eggs ($.29 a dozen with 500 GreenPoints at D’Agostinos), two hamburgers and several cups of coffee a day.
I think my most broke meal was no-butter generic macaroni and cheese with ketchup (to prevent scurvy).
Once When stuck in a town with Zero money, I was in an Alley and scored with a 40 pound bag of pop corn a movie theater was about to put in a dumpster, I ate that for 4 days.
Another time in college I found enough money for one can of Tuna, which I mixed with about 40 packs of tartar sauce stolen from Arthur treacher’s, and about 40 pairs of saltines stolen from a food court salad bar. Lasted about 5 days.
There was this time when I could only afford the 6oz filet when I really wanted the 9oz filet…
OK, now that I got that smartassery out of my system, I have to say that no matter how bad things got for us, and there were a few dicey times, we always had enough food. Lots was generic, but I never looked in my pantry in dispair, thankfully. I realize now how truly fortunate I’ve been all my life.
Fried rice: chopped green cabbage, cooked and chilled white rice, soy sauce, and vegetable oil.
Well, it was close enough to fried rice, and enough of a change from ramen that it tasted like gold at the time.
All I know is, it takes a lot of those little creamers to get enough milk for decent bowl of supermarket brand cereal.
The nice thing about self-serve coffee places is that you can put a lot of half & half, CoffeeMate and sugar into a cup and top it off with a itty bitty bit of coffee. Lots of calories for a itty bitty price.
Pepperoni soup. There was one week where the pantry was empty but for a package of pepperoni, a couple of potatoes and a package of dried soup greens. Ate on that for several days, then made sure to mooch off friends for the rest. Then the check arrived, and I took all my benefactors to dinner.
Now, I’m like Abbie. There must be a month or two of food in the house at any given time. I just call it “earthquake supplies.”
Next time add random spices.
That’s how i finally got rid of my ten year old bottle of paprika.
20lb bag of rice = $5
Good Times!! Good Times!!
In our house it’s “hurricane supplies”.
??
That’s a common meal here in Hawaii!? 
My niece, living in the college dorm, lives off spam musubis.