What do Uni students eat?

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Kit Kat and Doritos. I'm living at home.

I come home so exhausted so I've only been getting about 800-1000 calories a day, each day for the last week because I really just can't be arsed to get off my arse because I'm so exhausted! The most I've done with food this week was stick chicken (which my sister cooked and brought over!) in a chopper to make a chicken/mayo sandwich. I didn't even finish the damn sandwich. Sad times... I also feel quite depressed seeing my sweet tooth's gone because I just don't have the energy or the appetite. :frown:

For the record, I've been eating the Kit Kat because it's almost in arm's reach, I just have to stretch a bit. :redface:

"Kit Kat" looks weird when typed.

Reply 61

Sunflower1919

If you don't know how to cook at all then a student cookbook might help. I bought one for my first year and I never made a single recipe - the recipes were actually more expensive to buy due to only having a small tesco in walking distance so I would have had to buy tesco finest instead of tesco value for example.

I would have a cooking day every other week or every 3 weeks or so (usually Sunday when nothing else was going on) and make 4 or 5 different meals, portion them up and then put them all in the freezer ready to eat on the day I decided to have that particular meal so I wouldn't get bored of eating the same one over and over.

Some examples of recipes I made and are in the first year -

Chicken casserole
Bought a sachet mix of herbs and just threw some chicken and vegetables in and it turned out fine

Shepherds pie and cottage pie
Again sachet mix, mince, vegetables - peas, carrots, mushrooms, onions, and baked beans to make it all go furthest

Spaghetti bolognese
750g ish of mince, large dolmio {not sure how to spell it haha} sauce jar, onion, carrots, can of chopped tomatoes. Cost about £6-7 but would do me about 8 portions so it being £1 a meal you can imagine I ate a lot of it towards the end of term!

Beef Bourginon
Another sachet mix, cheap beef cuts, also made dumplings to go with it as it made it go so much further

Chicken korma
Jar of Sharwood's every time it came on offer for a pound! Added 50p cans of coconut milk to it as well as boiled potatoes to offset the cost of chicken

Creamy chicken
Country French chicken sauce when it came on offer, chicken and sweet corn (probably my most expensive meal but so yummy I didn't care)

Chicken rice and gravy
Cheap to make if you buy value diced chicken, and frozen or canned vegetables

Sausage and mash
Buy a big pack of frozen vegetables, a big bag of potatoes and made the mash potato on the day and it keeps really well in the freezer, just put it in the fridge the day before you want to eat it and it's good. Either had it with baked beans or frozen veg and gravy if I was feeling healthy

Lasagne
Easy to make, use spaghetti bolognese sauce instead of the lasagne sauce it tends to be cheaper and tastes almost identical. Again filled out with more vegetables whatever I had in the freezer really

All this time I never used more than my one shelf of the freezer! I just bought loads of plastic food boxes from pound land (I had two sets of ten which was obviously £2) as they stacked neatly on top and next to each other. I also got a baking/lasagne dish also from pound land and a £3 casserole pot from argos!

It really was not hard to eat well on a student budget. Just don't be afraid of the value supermarket own brand food! Especially for vegetables, even more so for frozen ones. With the mince, I could buy frozen mince but it taste quite odd, so the value mince was fine as long as you drained the fat off before adding sauces. For breakfast stick to cereal, and if you don't drink much milk buy cravendale or the supermarket version of it as it lasts for up to 20 days instead of 4 or 5.

If possible, buy big bags of rice/pasta it will save you money in the long run.

My flat mates could not believe how well I ate for under £25 a week! It's especially helpful in exam period as all you have to do is defrost and heat your food rather than cooking.

Sorry if this has been a bit long but I hope it's helped! :smile:

Posted from my microwave.

Reply 62

Sunflower1919

Sorry for all the typos in that post, it's late, my eyes aren't functioning properly but it makes me mad when I see other eating rubbish and wondering why they're putting on weight, or why they don't like their meals and can't afford enough/good food.

Posted from my microwave.

Reply 63

Badshah

I don't even know how to cook. I'm gonna literally starve at uni.

Undergrad Vag.

Rice 'n' beanz

I don't get why eating noodles and soup is synonymous with being a student, cooking decent food isn't expensive the only reason students eat noodles etc is because they're too lazy or don't know how to cook because mummy and daddy have always done it for them...

Reply 67

CosmicVengeance

Many asians i know and myself go back home every few weeks for the weekend by train/coach and restock from home food, do the washing etc,
Its only £12 for return by coach which takes 1 hour 30 mins not bad.

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Reply 68

FranticMind

I have always just eaten what I like? Obviously most freshers are pretty shocking in the kitchen - hence endless packet noodles / pasta / stir-fry. But my flat-mate will cook prime steak and a rack of lamb on a weekly occasion...

Reply 69

RVNmax

On Thursday I bought a packet couple of packets of microwave Falafels(17 in a pack) and a pot of humous(with added pine seeds and chick peas).

Thursday lunch and dinner I ate Falafels with humous and the same for Friday breakfast and Lunch. For dinner on Friday I finished off the falafels with a tin of ambrosia rice pudding. This was after having mum's rice and chick peas for dinner on Wednesday. I'll be laying off the chick peas for the while I think...