College Student Budget

miss-p

Hi all,

I'm trying to kick start the whole healthy eating and lifestyle thing, lose a bit of weight as I go along too :rolleyes:. I'm in college at the minute and I don't have the largest depository of funds :rolleyes: like most students I guess. So I'm wondering if there's any pointers to cheap, healthy meals I can make - or recipies. Or if there's already a thread on this just point me forward .

Thanks

jdivision

Can you give us a weekly budget, it'll help us come up with something realistic.

Pembily

Agreed once we have a budget then meals can be planned!!!

Being a fellow college student my main pointers are

- When shopping - only buy what's on the list!!!!!!
- Shop around (being a college student you have time on your hands;))
- Go to Lidl and Aldi... Also Tesco is the best of cheap tinned beans and chick peas as Lidl and Aldi don't always have them!!!


Do you have a freezer? How are your cooking skills? How picky when it comes to food are you? Is there anything you can't / won't eat??

And what do you eat at the minute? Not everything but basics!!

miss-p

Okay well I can spend around 30euro a week on average I guess. I'm a pretty able cook (well in my opinion anyway) and have no problem trying to cook new things. The only issue with that would be time, seeing as I'm a final year now so don't want to be slaving away over a hot stove!
Also I'm not a very fussy eater, just maybe a little slow to taste new stuff but will give it a go anyway!

Um yup, have a freezer - well a share in one of them.

Um basically my average intake of food is:

Breakfast = cereal (sometimes pancakes if I'm adventurous)

Lunch = pasta/noodles/sandwiches/toasties

Dinner = meat (chicken/beef) potatoes/rice/noodles/pasta veg - I try to make my own sauces

Snacks = Depends on day,ie sometimes a lot, other times not so much, cereal bars,fruit,yogurt,crisps

Alcohol = believe or not quite rarely stupid final year

Thanks

Badger2009

Not sure if this will help you but I'm also a college student, on a budget! My typical shopping list would be:
4 chicken fillets
3 onions, 4 carrots, brocolli, spring onions, 3 peppers, 2 tins sweetcorn
2 tins beans
McCambridges brown bread
5 slices ham
Bananas
bag of apples
6 eggs
Porridge (a bag every few weeks)

I generally have porridge in the morning, brown bread and ham for lunch with a banana and apple, dinner is a chicken stir fry with all of the vegetables and some soy sauce, then for tea I will have eggs or beans.

As I said not sure if this would be right for you but I think it's healthy and it costs about €25 per week in Tesco. I think the key is to buy only what you need!

Pembily

K can't tell you much I spend a week exactly... But here is goes!!

Breakfast - porridge with soya milk and jam, scrambelled eggs / poached eggs, oat pancakes

Lunch - homemade soup (microwaved in college), smoked salmon (from lidl 3euro), ryvita, homemade hummours (water, chickpeas (50c from Tesco), garlic, tahini, sundried tomatoes (homemade ones - tomatoes, cooked at 150 for about 2 hours with oregano&olive oil), scrambelled eggs, poached eggs

Dinner -
Stirfry - small bit of oil, lots of veg, turkey and serve with small portion of brown rice

Curry - 500g turkey / beef, carrots, turnip, potato chopped small, onions, fry for a few min, add curry powder (vary to your taste), cook again, add stock (I usually use 1l chicken stock), simmer for about an hour (sometimes add coconut milk)

Chilli Con Carne - 500g mince (I spend money on mince as bad quality one is rotten and fatty), two tins kidney beans (79c in tesco), two tins of tomatoes, tin sweet corn / frozen sweet corn, chilli powder, garlic, cumin, fresh chilli (sometimes only if cheap), tomato puree, cook for about 20min and serve with small poriton of brown rice

Soup - any veg you want boiled with stock cubes, leek and potato is easy and tasty - leeks, potatoes and stock Also there is a healthy soup and stew thread sorry can't link it!!!

I am final year too but still I prep the night before!!! Or I do all my cooking in one day and freeze!!!!

jdivision

I'm slightly drunk but honestly, buy a whole chicken rather than fillets, cheaper, you can make stock for soup, it's more filling and it's same price (in Dunnes). Dunnes's free range chicken range is ridiculously ( and I mean that) cheap at the moment. Fillets are a waste imo
Cans of tomatoes are a god send, buy the kidney/chickpea/butter beans you have to soak yourself. Take advantage of the veg for 69c in the discounters, M&S can be good for a treat but only when it pays for you. Don't do "just cos"

Kitty-kitty

Aldi's super 6 (special offer veggies) changes every week so you won't get sick of their choice easily. They also offer some really good muesli that is down to the last grain the exact same thing as Alpen, and cheap semi-skimmed milk.

Both Lidl and Aldi have their own version of Weight Watchers', Lidl's being Linessa and Aldi's being Be Light. You can also get ready-chopped fresh vegetables for stir fries in both supermarket's fridge sections and the newer/refurbished Aldi's have a broad selection of lean meat. I agree with the person above, I have a friend in your position who buys chicken fillets and fajita kits and can't understand why my food bill is half hers. If you don't know HOW to dismember a chicken, most supermarkets do have boxes of legs and breasts in the fridges at FAR more reasonable prices.

Aldi also have tins in their fridge section of ready-to-bake bread rolls. Sounds dreadful and to be honest, they're not fantastic. But flatten them one against tin foil, bake for ten minutes, turn it over and heap tomato puree, mushrooms and bell peppers on it and they make a delicious and very filling mini pizza.

Tesco have also 400g layered salads for €1 if you're in a rush. Go for the prawn salad rather than layered cheese, since about 200g of the cheese one is pure mayonnaise. If you don't like prawns sure you can dump them out easily.

spaceylou

+1 on the cooking enough for a few days and freezing so you don't have to eat the same thing every day for a week.

Remember it is perfectly healthy not to have meat everyday and meat is expensive - not just saying that cause I a veggie.

Figure out what time your local tesco starts discounting fresh stuff and do your groceries then. I've often picked up stuff for half nothing. Okay so you need to cook them quickly, you cook something that is freezable its all good.

Snacks will be necessary, especially if you have a long day with the books. I found last year that nuts and dried apricots would really fill me up, and they are good for ya. Much cheaper to buy the big bags though and bring a small amount each day in a little plastic container.

Another huge money saver is a flask. Within the space of about 10 days myself and my friend had both saved the price of our flasks and coffee plungers by bringing coffee everyday rather than always buying it in college. Now that may point more towards our coffee addictions than anything else but worth doing the maths and seeing if it would work for you.

For those days when there is nothing of substance in the fridge an omlette is great for using up wee bits and pieces of veg that might not amount to much on their own, and they are fairly quick, easy and filling and fairly healthy.

Try to plan so that you only buy what you need, and don't end up having things go off cause you didn't get a chance to eat them.

Think most other ideas for cheap healthy eating have been covered already - good luck!

Bottle_of_Smoke

I find a good thing to do is do a group shop with flatmates and take it in turns to cook meals. YOu save through buying in bulk and you don't wast as much because you use entire portions of veg/sauces/meat cuts

Khannie

Stuff in lidls that I think is total win for the cost and healthy:

Anything with a * is a good source of protein.

Tinned red kidney beans*
Tinned baked beans*
passata (this is like blended tomatoes. Good for sauce)
tinned tomatoes
Cottage cheese*
Low fat natural yoghurt*
Nearly all of their frozen veg. Really good value to be had here.
Pasta (incredibly cheap, but not very nutritious)
Chicken drumsticks*
Onions
Whatever fruit they have on offer
Olive oil
Low fat mature cheese*

Outside lidls I would buy a lot of oats. Great for a cheap, healthy breakfast. Also, I'd generally avoid buying meat there. It's nasty gear in my experience compared to the butchers (and for the same / similar cost).

BraziliaNZ

Canned fish all the way. And it's LIDL not LIDLs!!!