Hey, I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm trying to open up the variety of food I'm eating, while staying on a college budget, of course. Anyone have recipes that would fit this need?

Thanks!

This is an old family favorite and I ate this a lot when I was living in my apartment, and we still eat it a lot now.

Taco Salad:

Fry up 1-2 lbs of ground beef (this is a lot but it also gives you tons of leftovers, you can use more or less)
Chop up a head of lettuce (more or less as desired)
Buy two bags of the regular Doritos and mash them!! (more or less as desired)
Buy a bag or two of shredded mild cheddar cheese (or whichever you prefer)
Cut up 1-2 tomatoes into little pieces

Wait for the meat to cool off, combine all the other ingredients into a big bowl, then add the meat. It takes 15 minutes to make, and personally, I keep the tomatoes separate since not everyone likes it. Everyone else adds taco sauce to it. I think it tastes better the day after, when it's been sitting in the fridge.

This recipe sounds a bit weird and it looks a bit weird, but it tastes great and it's cheap!! I'm not sure what it's called. I call it:

Hot Dogs and Rice:

It works best if you have a rice cooker and some authentic sticky rice, we used Japanese rice all the time since my roommate was Japanese himself.

So anyways, put the rice in the rice cooker and let it cook. While that's being done, buy your favorite brand of hotdogs, as many as you want. Cut them all up into slices and then combine them in a pan with some sort of sweet sauce, whichever you prefer. I think we used Yoshida's Sweet Teriyaki Sauce. You can also use soy sauce and a bit of brown sugar for sweetening. Let the hotdogs cook in the sauce, make sure you have some sauce leftover for putting on your rice.

Then get a plate, pile it with rice, put the hotdogs on top and add some sauce from the pan to the rice or use soy sauce. It's quite good actually.

Thought I'd make a little contribution to this community and yeah I do eat some strange foods or modify/butcher classic dishes, but it tastes good and it's fast. I hate cooking and I prefer one dish meals or stuff that you can cook by just throwing it in the oven or a rice cooker or whatever.

Maybe the only good thing about finals weeks..... MIDNIGHT BREAKFAST. (Which you actually have to get to by 11:30pm or there's no food left).

Ours was surprisingly decent - extra points for the chocolate croissants, negative points for bringing out the fruit late. All in all much better food then our normal beakfast/brunch... makes you wonder why Aramark can't cook this way ALL the time (oh wait, that's right, the school won't pay for it).

Anyone else's school have one of these?

Goodluck on finals everyone :-P

Not that bacon is PARTICULARLY expensive, but it's expensive enough (being meat) that I am wondering if anyone has ever done anything with the "bacon odds and ends" you can get at grocery stores. They're sold in a cardboard box and are apparently the weirdly-shaped bits that didn't make it into the regular bacon packages. They're cheaper even than the cheapest bacon, per oz. Now, I make fried rice and put crumpled bacon in it, so I guess this could work for that, but does anyone know how hard this is to cook, how small the pieces are, etc.?

Also, Costco memberships. Awesome things. I just got signed onto my mom's card and it's awesome there. My suggestion is to go with some friends and split some of the things there (unless you have a really big freezer) by dividing it into freezer-safe plastic bags and labeling them. Minus the freezering for things that don't need to be frozen. I haven't tried this yet but I'm going to - I'll report later, if anyone cares.

My house (12 people) had a house potluck for the holidays where we were all supposed to make a dish to serve the house for less then $10 (I cheated a little because I already had the chicken but since my total cost was about $8 I suppose I could have figured out a way to buy chicken for $2) Anyway here's an easy (if slightly time consuming) recipe for when you cook for a group (hint I make the batter the night before, stick it in the fridge, and then bake right before dinner). I doubled it when I cooked for 12 - the usual serving serves about 4-6.

World's Best Chicken Pot Pie
Ingredients:
1-2 chicken breasts (depends on how much chicken you like)
1/2 of an onion, chopped.
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 can carrots
1 can french cut greenbeans
1 small can corn (you can obviously add or sub veggies)
1/2 cup flour (approx.)
chicken boullion mix
1 cup hot water
1 package pie crusts, pre made.

Cook chicken either by boiling or microwaving until fully cooked. Chop into bit sized pieces.
In frying pan, saute onion and celery in oil.
In liquid measuring cup combine hot water and boullion mix to make broth.
Add broth to frying pan, and stir in flour gradually until there is a paste-like texture coating the vegetables.
Add canned vegetables, stirring and adding flour as needed to keep texture.
Add chicken. Stir well and cook until vegetables are warmed through.

Pour mixture into oven safe pan or baking dish(pyrex or else aluminum disposable ones). Either cover and put in fridge (if baking next day) OR cover with crust (depending on shape of pan you might need to use both crusts - obviously a circle pan is ideal, but I've worked with rectangles, ust use both crusts and rearrange.

Bake at 350 degrees until crust is cooked through and brown (atleast 25 minutes... I've found the time varies WIDELY depending on the oven and the shape of the dish - at my parents' its 40 minutes, at one friend's house it's 25 and at school in my house it's almost an hour).

Enjoy!

So, ramen is the college student's staple, right? I find I get bored of it really quickly, so I've spiced it up to make it better. I usually cook with the chicken flavored ramen, but you can use creamy chicken if you want your broth thinner. Anyway, suggested add-ins: chopped onions (green is more "authentic" but I find that white or yellow works just fine, in small chunks), hard-boiled eggs, boiled chunks of chicken, garlic powder. I like to put all of this in if I have it around. You can also fry the chicken in soy sauce, seasoned salt and garlic powder if you have time, but it's faster to do it all in one pot. Boil the egg, then take it out, boil the chicken, add the noodles while the chicken's still in there (nothing wrong with a little authentic chicken flavoring), then add the garlic and seasoning packet from the ramen. Chop up the egg and add it last. You can also get an "egg drop" effect if you boil the raw egg innards, but that tends to lead to less broth and a stickier ramen (the egg sticks to the noodles and cooks onto them). I know this is probably very straightforward and you all know it, but I wouldn't have thought to add things to ramen until my friend made a huge batch of something very similar to that at a get-together.

You can make it with as many packs of ramen as you want. It's great for something interesting to feed a large group of people without breaking the bank (you can do it with a single breast of chicken, or two if it's a really big group) and with minimal work. The cheapest route is just to put in egg, since eggs are cheap, and garlic powder. I put garlic in everything. Actual garlic is a MUCH stronger flavor, but I'm too lazy for all that work so I use the powder. Peas do not go well in this ramen; they get very soggy and bog down the taste. Peapods are okay. The contents of a frozen "stir fry veggie" bag works just fine. Water chestnuts are a very good addition, but kind of pricey as canned veggies go. Put the veggies in after everything else and cook for a little while longer, so you don't risk soggy veggies.

Stick it in your fridge and it makes tasty leftovers, too. It's so much better than plain ramen.

Another delicious and easy recipe.

9 oz package cheese tortalini
15 oz jar of sauce marinara
16 oz package mixed frozen vegetables
1 can (14.5 oz) chicken broth

In a large sauce pan, mix broth and marinara on Medium-High until boils. Stir in vegetables. Turn down to low, cover and let cook for 10-12 minutes or until veges are tender. stir in tortalini and heat through.

Serves 4
Time: about 20 min total.

Here's a really easy recipe for leftover cooked chicken, cheddar cheese and tortilla wraps, plus any other yummy food you might want with it.

Take a single wrap and cover it with shredded cheese and small pieces of chicken (at last half of bite size, shredded is best).
Add any other ingrediants that you might want.
Place another wrap on top of that one.
Microwave for about 45 seconds or until cheese is melted.
It's great with salsa on top of it as well.

This is really easy and gets minimum dishes dirty!

I know many people don't like beans, but really it's not bad. I don't like beans but I love this recipe. I've also replaced sweet/hot italian sausage with smoked turkey and it worked fine. Enjoy!!

SAUSAGE AND RED BEAN STEW
1 PACKAGE OF SWEET OR HOT ITALIAN TURKEY SAUSAGE, 1 TSP. PEPPER, 1/4 ONION MINCED, 2 (15OZ.) CANS KIDNEY BEANS, 1 (15OZ.) CAN PINTO BEANS, 1 (11OZ.) CAN DICED TOMATOES, 1 (15OZ. ) CAN MINESTRONE SOUP

CUT SAUSAGES INTO 1 " SLICES. PLACE IN A 6 QT. STOCKPOT. COOK OVER MEDIUM-HIGH HEAT FOR 5 MINUTES, OR UNTIL BROWN. sEASON WITH CAYENNE PEPPER TO TASTE. rEDUCE HEAT TO LOW, ADD ONIONS, SAUTE 5 MORE MINUTES OR UNTIL COOKED THROUGH AND SAUSAGE REACHES AN INTERNAL TEMPERATURE OF 170 DEGREES. DRAIN WELL AND ADD KIDNEY BEANS, PINTO BEANS, TOMATOES AND MINESTRONE SOUP. STIR AND SIMMER APPROXIMATELY 10 - 15 MINUTES. MAKES 6 SERVINGS.

I am coming home at 5:30 pm and need to make dinner out of the following. Help me create a meal!

I have:
-chicken tenderloins (boneless skinless white meat)
-one piece of bread
-saltines
-white rice
-frozen broccoli
-sliced mozzarella cheese
-a can of corn
-a can of black beans
-diced tomatoes in italian seasonings

Seasonings I have are ketchup, soysauce, A1, and barbeque sauce.

Ok, have fun!