Beyond Beans On Toast: Cheap, Modern and Modest Student Food

Monday was an incredibly unusual and surreal experience for me, as I took my younger sister to the airport. She was flying down to Cape Town for her first year of varsity. My sister has always been a "high maintenance" child and I often wondered how she would adapt to student life and cope financially. I struggle to see her settling with baked beans on toast for supper, after she'd spent all her money, partying the night before! I have also previously found myself in this exact situation before and have happily settled for beans on toast in the past. However, now fearing the boredom of having to settle for beans on toast, I search for healthy, modern and modest student food.

As a student, money is tight and Mom is no longer there to make your favourite cottage pie or roast chicken. It is now up to you, the student to get creative and make the most of your food money allowance and whatever ingredients you have in your fridge. Some recipes may require planning and this is important if you want to start budgeting properly and allocating money for certain things. Student food needs to be inexpensive, but of good quality and it must be nutritious. It should also be easy to prepare, reliable and it shouldn't have you still cleaning the kitchen way past the finishing of your degree! Although many student meals are simple variations of each other, this doesn't make them any less cheaper, interesting or nutritious. Below are some tips to help ease you into budgeting your student meals.

• There are many foods which are inexpensive, nutritious and are great as leftovers. These foods include: beans; boiled or mashed potato; bread or rolls; chicken pieces; tuna; pasta; beef cuts; lentils; bacon; pumpkin; spinach and eggs. The idea behind this is to save the money, which would have been used to buy more food, so you can use it for another dish.

• A necessary way of making your meals go further, is to bulk them up. This can be done through adding extra vegetables, meat, beans and other legumes, eggs or cheese, for example spaghetti bolognaise can go further by adding more vegetables, beans or lentils or soya mince. It could also be made into lasagne, if you use lasagne sheets and make a thick, cheesy white sauce. By adding extra ingredients, you are also improving the nutritional status of the meal.

• Fresh food is best to use and is usually preferred, especially in the case of fruit or vegetables. Often frozen vegetables lose their nutrients when frozen as compared to fresh vegetables,thus you are not getting your money's worth. With fresh vegetables, you may have the opportunity to add a different vegetables to your dish, such as broccoli florets or sliced courgettes or cabbage, and you may be getting more nutrients.

Making certain foods is often much cheaper and healthier than buying their ready-made counter-parts. A good example of this is chicken nuggets. You can easily make your own batter using beaten egg and breadcrumbs and bake the crumbed chicken pieces, rather than just buying them. This way, you can also control what goes into your nuggets as well as the fat content.

• Often "power foods" are the cheapest and healthiest foods to eat (see one of my previous blog posts "Buying Superman Food with a Mini-Me budget). Power foods include: peanut butter; legumes such as beans and lentils; sardines or tuna; oats; red, yellow and green vegetables; citrus fruits, banana and papaya; barley; brown rice and sweet poatato.

Whilst studying, many students experience an attack of the Munchies and this can often become expensive over time. Cheap, nutritious snacks include: trail mix (including dried fruit, raisins and nuts); popcorn; cheese melted on wholwheat toast and ants on a log- celery sticks smothered in fat free cottage cheese, with raisins (ants) on top.

• Dried herbs and spices are useful in making meals tasty and they last a long time and are therefore value for money. Be aware of the salt content in some spices. As a healthier alternative, you could also grow your own herbs.
  

After searching the net and coming across many blog posts with students asking for recipes for certain dishes, I decided to pick the most common ones and give links to some student-friendly recipes. Many of them have had good reports, so try them and let me know!

1.) Chicken Stir-Fry

2.) Chicken Curry

3.) Spaghetti Bolognese

4.) Bobotie

5.) Chicken Noodle Soup

6.) Tuna Fish Cakes

7.) Dahl and Pumpkin Soup

8.) Crispy Parmesan Chicken with Soft Basil Tomatoes

9.) Red Lentil Soup (vegetarian)

10.) Roast Sweet Potato Chilli Chips

11.) Spanish Omelette

12.) Pasta With Tomato Sauce

As a "HealthNut", dedicated to food, its quality and its benefits, I am also interested in helping create healthy meals which are tasty, inexpensive, filling and appealing to other students. Eating healthily on a budget requires a lot of discipline and a change in attitude regarding the types of foods you eat. Through writing this post, I too have discovered that there are so many simple and cheap meals that I could still make whilst at varsity and many of these recipes use foods that could be incorporated more, into my diet. And so I leave you with a little piece of encouragement and inspiration: lets all look beyond baked beans and allow for the exhilaration and anticipation of fantastic, money-savvy, modern and modest student meals!