Can you live cheaply by microwavable/prepackaged food in uni?

Are you aiming to get scurvy by any chance?

Why don't you just learn to cook? Get a recipe book, it's really not that hard and doesn't have to be a lot of work. Plus most recipes are for 4 people so you can just cook once or twice a week if you want and either eat the same thing a few days in a row or freeze portions. I recommend BBC Good Food's Cheap Eats book, and Nosh for Students. The BBC Good Food series also does a soups and sides book (soups are great-they're really filling, cheap, and there's endless variety, and there's only one pan to wash up at the end) and a great one-pot meals book as well.

There's nothing wrong with occasionally having a quick ready meal, it's handy when you're busy and I'd agree there's some things hardly worth cooking (I always buy cauliflower cheese as a ready meal, because I only ever want it for one meal, and it's not worth the fuss to make it from scratch), but they tend not to be very healthy (and the ones that actually are-rather than claim to be-will be expensive) and it's certainly not cheaper than cooking yourself.

It's cheaper to buy potatoes, boil them and make mash that way?

You only really need to learn how to make basic foods, imo. You don't need to make anything that fancy.

Are you aiming to get scurvy by any chance?

Hmm, I see your point. But now is really not the time to learn to cook. I would if I had a studio kitchen, but I'm sharing a kitchen so it'd be a bit awkward if I make a huge mess. But I plan on taking multivitamins supplements too, so health shouldn't be that much of a problem.

Let's see:

£1 Pizza for lunch.
£1 pre-packaged mashed potatoes for dinner

For breakfast, cereal/toast is pretty easy to make. So £2 cereal and £1 milk for an entire week.

So that's about £14 per week for lunch and dinner, providing I stick to those items.

I am an amateur cook and I'm sharing a kitchen (so I don't want to make something new at the risk of failing/making a mess). I have limited utensils and I don't want to use the cooker and fry/cook food as that usually means difficult washing up and quite a lot of prep.

Other foods that I can try are:

- Bowl full of heated baked beans for lunch/dinner (I think £1 per can)
- Jacket potatoes are pretty easy to make too.
- Canned soup
- Any more suggestions?

Do you think is an okay-ish cooking plan or have any more suggestions regarding cheap, microwavable food I can buy?

Main suggestion: you need more than one item to make a meal - if you eat 'meals' like a pizza or a dish of mash or a dish of beans, you will not only possibly be still hungry, but also bored of eating the same food, and your health will suffer.

Cooking is not so hard! Buy frozen food - vegetables you can microwave in a dish of water (or boil in a pan) and various fish, chicken in breadcrumbs etc can be cooked in the oven - which is just as easy as cooking in the microwave except you have to time it for yourself.

I agree that frying can make a mess, but boiling stuff in a saucepan e.g. vegetables, pasta, eggs etc doesn't make a mess!

Also if you're worried about cooking, make meals that don't need a lot of cooking, e.g. if you can do pasta, get some tuna or sweetcorn or cheese or sliced meat to add to it straight from the tin/packet.

Ooo. Very useful suggestions. Thanks, I'll try cooking frozen food and also the pasta suggestions. I don't mind about being bored of the same food; I just need something to eat. It seems like I can't eat anything cheaply at the moment. I made stir-fry but man, that needs so many ingredients. You have to chop things, fry them, boil the rice, wait for a long time and then fry again. Granted, it tastes good. But the time & effort is SO not worth it. Plus there's the effort of cleaning the pan.