Cooking/Food Shopping I Learned as a College Student

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Cooking:

1. It's okay to be adventurous, but have at least one cooking experience (grilled-cheese and scrambled eggs count), or have a somewhat-knowledgeable-friend/chef there with you 
2. Don't always make the same food every night for more than 3 days. You're going to end up really despising that food. 
3. Easy food recipe:
1. Beef/pork pot roast with potatoes, carrots, portobello mushrooms (mushrooms general)
• Heat up some oil (olive, canola, etc), when heat is hot, put in the pork or beef and onions! (High Heat)
• Let that warm up for 5-10 minutes, depending how soft you like the meat
• Put in potatoes - add however much water you want - let it boil
• When the potatoes is slightly harder than you want it (probably another 15 min time on Medium heat), put in carrots, and portobello mushrooms (beef only), white mushrooms for pork
• Put salt, pepper, seasoning, let it boil/cook for another 15-20 minutes then serve!
2. Chicken Soups with potatoes, carrots, celery, tomatoes (Italian style) - This is the college student style. Don't get fancy on me!
1. *HINT HINT* As a personal suggestion, if you want noodle style, boil the noodle separately whenever you want to eat it. The noodle can get super soft and goopy depending how often you microwave it/leave it in the fridge
• Heat up oil
• Add chicken and onions when oil is warm - cook for about 5 - 10 minutes, make sure you flip/stir the chicken around so it's evenly cooked (high heat) 
• Throw in chicken broth, I'll usually throw in a (1 quart) box and then if I want more soup, I'll just pour in more water
• I like my potatoes soft so right when the water starts heating up, I put in a LOT of potatoes
• Let that cook for another 10-15 minutes, then I add carrots and celery 
• At this point I will also add tomatoes, it tastes GREAT! It's like an Italian style (or maybe I think that) - trust me, SO good, you'll thank me later
• Add seasoning, just adding salt is good enough, but basil, oregano, pepper makes it taste absolutely heavenly 
• Cook for another 20-30 minutes (depending if you want the meat and potatoes softer, or if you just happen to forget)
• EAT.
• Do NOT add: green peppers
• If you don't like chicken meat, but the flavor, just don't bother on the chicken meat and go straight with chicken stock (saves you money too!)
• It should look something like this (if you add tomatoes, it'll be more red)

1. How to make ramen delicious and fancy 
1. Make ramen like you always do... Let water boil in a pot
2. When the water is boiling, put in noodle
3. Pour in the spice, crack 1-2 eggs in it, cut up some mushrooms (throw them in ramen pot), add cabbage (or kimchi!), let cook for 3-7 min
4. DONE
2. Normal food to make it seem like you know how to cook
1. Choose a side of meat (ground meat works best) and chopped veggies 
1. (use common sense here on what WOULD taste good together, beef & celery, beef & onion, pork & cabbage, etc)
2. Heat up oil, throw meat in, stir it around, wait a few minutes until it's cooked (5-8 min on medium - high heat should do it)
3. Then throw in chopped veggies, stir it around and let it cook for 5 minutes
4. Add seasoning (salt, soy sauce, pepper, etc), stir for 2 minutes
5. Put it on a nice plate (not paper plate) and serve!!
6. It'll def look better (and healthier) than that cup ramen you were about to make

Food Shopping:

1. Don't go food shopping unless you have finished off 75% of the fridge, this will result to more rotting food (Yuck!) 
• You'll also end up forgetting half the items you have in your fridge 
2. Give yourself a shopping limit, even though you most likely will not follow it...
3. Make yourself a shopping list and try as hard as you can to follow it
4. Buy BIG bags of food (potatoes/carrots/onions/oranges/broccoli/etc) but only if you're actually going to cook them... my roommates did this, and since they cook once a week, it resulted to a lot of rotting food.
1. True story. We all came back from break and fruit flies took over the kitchen. We would shift a bowl and it felt like watching Sparta 360, except with tiny little fruit flies. 
5. Frozen veggies are affordable veggies! For easy cooking, just stick in pot and boil (This should be achievable for even the most amateur cookers) 
6. I recently discovered Amazon Fresh - you need a minimum of $50 purchase (that's easy for me cause I cook every day). It's great for Winter (or every season) so you don't have to carry all those heavy bags from the store and back!! They also have some amazing prices so I've been super happy. I make a large order of groceries/meat every week and half to two weeks. Also they have these recyclable bags which you return the next time you make a purchase. Make sure you leave a nice tip!

Reminder:

1. Eating ramen frequently can give you kidney stones
2. Not eating enough veggies or fruit can lead to malnutrition, drink a Boost once in a while if you're feeling a little weak or tired (or just get enough sleep) 
3. Cooking for yourself is a GREAT way to eat healthy and maintain/lose weight (this does not include making mac-n-cheese, ramen, hamburgers, pizza, or fries)
1. WHY? You won't make gigantic portions (I always do by mistake, that just means easy left over meal for the next day)
2. It's great to be moving around, chopping veggies! Standing is good for you! Cooking is also stimulating for your brain
4. If I can cook, you can prob too. :)