Here are some cooking tips to help you get through you college days on your college budget. There are tips and there are recipes you can try. They are things you can use to lower your food costs without having to cut down how much you eat.

Plan your meals

When you make your shopping list, you should plan your meals. Without a plan, you will look in the cupboards and see little to no food to eat. With a plan you will know exactly what you have and exactly how many meals are there. It is cost effective and it takes the pressure off having to buy more food.

Egg fried rice is easier and cheaper than you think

There may be times when you have something you can eat but it needs a side dish. Oven fries will go with mostly anything, and you can buy the cheap ones as per the next tip. But, if you are tired of fries, you can make your own egg fried rice and it costs you very little. Cook your rice in the microwave until it is just about ready to each. Slather some oil in a pan (a fair amount) and put in your rice. Crack an egg or two and mix it around. The rice will get that nice stodgy feel tell them and the egg will break apart into delicious parts. Cook until it is as firm as you like it but not too long because your rice will turn into Rice Krispies.

Eating those nasty oven fries

There are plenty to choose from in the store, but the cheapest frozen ones are often terrible. You can make them nicer by spreading them on the tray and cutting off the black bits. When your fries are free from black bits and marks you should let them defrost just a little. You then warm up some butter or margarine, slather it on the fries, and sprinkle them with salt. The fat in the butter/ margarine helps them cook a little better and who knows what the salt does to the cooking process, but they always taste better if you salt them before they cook rather than after.

Fast food is not your friend

You may have leftovers for the next day but there are no takeaways on this planet, and no fast food in America, that is more cost effective than buying your own food and cooking it. Stop eating fast food.

Gourmet cooking at half the price

Want something a little fancy, then buy some precooked Yorkshire puddings from the freezer section, some sausages, powered mash and gravy granules (the cheaper the better for the gravy). Cook the sausages and slice them up. Put them in the Yorkshire puddings with a little gravy, mix up the mash and put it on top of the Yorkshire puddings to make a lid for them. Bake them until cooked, and use the rest of the gravy on your plate. It is filling and it is relatively cheap.

Snack on your leftovers

Do not buy snack foods. Buy ingredients and make your own food and save the leftovers. Instead of buying snack food, you can snack on the leftovers. There is no law that says leftovers have to be added to another meal later or eaten the next day. Why pay $1.29 for a packet of chips, or $4.29 for a 10.5-ounce bag of Lays potato chips, when you have leftovers kicking around in your fridge?

The 99c store is not your friends

On a weight for weight basis, you will always find better deals on food if you shop around the brand name grocery stores. Even corner shops have better weight-for-weight value some times. Just because things are 99c does not mean you are getting a better deal. You could spend $1.50 and get twice as much as you would in a 99c store.

Sandwiches are your friends

There are plenty of spreadable sandwich things you can buy and they last up to six weeks once opened. Plus, you can make sandwiches out of leftovers, and if you really must buy potato chips then buy the big discount bags and use some of them to make potato chip sandwiches. They are also a good snack and can often hold you over if you are the sort of person that likes to miss breakfast. Also, you should eat breakfast because it makes you less likely to snack through the day.

Pasta or baked potatoes

Eat too much pasta and your love handles will stop being so lovable, so mix it up with baked potatoes now and again. Despite what carbohydrate scaremongers say, baked potatoes will not make you fat. You can add different toppings every time too. If you check prices on a weight-to-weight basis, you may see that the bigger bags of ready grated cheese are more expensive. They taste like cardboard if you eat them on their own, but taste great when melted on your baked potato.

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