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[spectacle]

Chime on the rice cooker. Add _The Ultimate Rice Cooker Bookbook_ and you are set. At this very minute I am eating leftover butternut squash risotto that I made in the rice cooker.

Oh, we basically live out of that cookbook.  It's incredible.  

And risotto!  It seems like it should be an expensive habit, but if you live near a) an Italian grocer or b) a food coop, you can get risotto in bulk and hunks of parmesan cheese for a reasonable price.  And you can throw so much different stuff in risotto... frozen peas, sausage... and yes, butternut squash is a favorite of mine.  

All of this is making me hungry.  I'm making this for dinner and while the pancetta is admittedly a splurge, the rest of the ingredients are dirt cheap.  One of the best tricks I'm learning is to eyeball a recipe and know around how much it'll cost to make.  It's a really hard thing to do at first, but it gets easier and it helps a lot!

[mended_drum]

How about potpie?  I just toss all of the fresh veggies, meat, sauces, etc that I have left over in with a bit of milk (or, more often, leftover homemade soup) and bake in a pie crust.

[mended_drum]

Oh, and squash soup is a must, especially since you can microwave the squash like a baked potato, then peel it.   Use whatever squash is on sale, make a huge batch and freeze.  Relative to what you get out of it, asparagus soup and broccoli soup also produce many meals from one batch.

[daurousseau]

You've got the right idea in wanting more beans, etc. But why cheap? Food is the worst place to cut back on expenses. Take the money wasted on takeout food, frozen glop, etc. and buy some good ingredients. If beans, then chopped up other things to make them interesting--shallots, onions, garlic, celery, etc. Mix in some kale or spinach with beans or pasta.

But why not buy local, organic really tasty vegetables? Sure they cost more, but you won't miss the convenience food once you get the fresh food habit. The better the ingredients, the less fuss in cooking.

Someone said baked sweet potatoes. OK, but what a waste of heat just to cook sweet potatoes when you can puncture them and microwave them for 6 minutes. Open them and mash in horseradish and butter or oil, salt if you eat salt.  And save that oven heat for roasting pine nuts and bite-sized cubes of eggplant, peppers, onions, mushrooms, etc., which mixed with some couscous is a great dinner.

[economizer]

Roverdé

A.1.  Open a pack of cheap pork/chicken hot dogs (Under a buck a pack)
A.2.  Take out two (2), put a soy sauce on them and nuke them for about 40 t0 55 seconds

And then,

B.3. Take a few pieces of french bread, butter them, toast them ($1.50 per loaf)

And then,

C.4.  Buy a prepackaged mixed salad ($1.50?), put as much as you want on a plate
C.5.  Put a little onion, peppers, tomato, and/or Parmesan on it
C.6.  Put a couple of TBSP of dressing on it (I like Vidalia Onion or Russian)

And finally,

Place All C. items on plate, put A. items on top of those, then, surround A./C. with B. component

Beverage - Iced Tea (Do I have to draw you a pitcher?)

Agglomerated cost should be under $1.00 [easy] per serving!

[j_source]

Stuffed Baked Potato

Huge baking potato
While baking, saute bacon, onion, garlic, green pepper, shallots, whatever is handy
Scoop potato into a bowl
Dress as you like with butter, sour cream, yogurt, cottage cheese, worchestershire sauce, salt, pepper, etc
Add any leftover meat or veggies in the frig
Top with shredded cheese - parmesan, cheddar, jack, etc
Nuke til cheese bubbles

Assuming you have anything edible in your kitchen this is fairly healthy, incredibly cheap.

 

[fizmath]

Make a pot of brown rice.  Add in canned beans, packaged salmon, and frozen veggies.  Throw in some spices like garlic, salt, onion powder, or whatever you got.

[j_source]

Spaghetti Carbonara
Serves 4 - 6

1 lb dry spaghetti, linguine, etc.
6-10 slices bacon fried crisp and crumbled
1/4 - 1/2 c grated parmesan cheese
2 eggs beaten
pepper

Cook spaghetti, drain, and put in a large bowl.  Immediately add beaten eggs to the hot pasta and toss until spaghetti is coated and egg is cooked.  Add hot bacon grease - start with 1/4 cup and add to taste.  Toss.  Add cheese and crumbled bacon.  Toss.  Add pepper to taste - it should be a lot.

4 servings for less than $3.  Kids adore this.

[goldenapple]

Megadarrah, from Turkey. It's lentils and rice with fried onions in lots of olive oil. Accompanied by yogurt and garlic sauce.

Look it up. It is very good and very cheap.

This is one of the best foods in the world. I would not have made it through grad school were it not for megadarrah.

[ck_dexter]

1 bowl of rice
1 hardboiled egg, sliced or chopped
soy sauce
stir

[systeme_d_]

This one got me through grad school:

3 tbsp olive oil
1 c chopped onion
2 c chopped bell peppers
1/2 c chopped celery
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 orange (2 if small), peeled and chopped
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano
3 c cooked black beans
1 tbsp molasses
4 tbsp orange juice (I regularly substituted 3 tbsp frozen o.j. concentrate without adding water)
1 tbsp lemon or lime juice
3 tsp hot pepper sauce
2 cups chopped tomato
1 finely chopped jalapeno or serrano pepper
4 c cooked rice

Saute (2-3 mins) the onion, garlic, oregano and cumin in olive oil.  Add celery, all peppers, and saute (3 mins).  Stir in lemon or lime and orange juices, chopped orange, tomato, hot sauce and most of the beans.  Cover, and simmer for 5 minutes.  While simmering, mash the rest of the beans to a paste, then add to the pan.  Cover and simmer for 15 more minutes, until the flavors blend. 

[sciencephd]

food discussion surely makes me hungry. i try and cook one of this meals.

are you try cook are spam do ?

[mended_drum]

You've got the right idea in wanting more beans, etc. But why cheap? Food is the worst place to cut back on expenses. Take the money wasted on takeout food, frozen glop, etc. and buy some good ingredients. If beans, then chopped up other things to make them interesting--shallots, onions, garlic, celery, etc. Mix in some kale or spinach with beans or pasta.

But why not buy local, organic really tasty vegetables? Sure they cost more, but you won't miss the convenience food once you get the fresh food habit. The better the ingredients, the less fuss in cooking.

You're making the assumption that the OP eats packaged food now, spending money on that and/or that he or she has not already cut as much from the budget as possible.  I don't know the OP, but I do know people who have done as much cutting as they can and *still* can't afford organic food.  Lecturing them about it doesn't really help.

[notaprof]

For a cheap and delicious meals on campus - go to the openings of senior or grad student art shows.  They have to do a show to graduate and they often have a nice spread of appetizers and nibbles at their openings.  Every Tuesday night here on our campus you could have a nice meal for free, often with alcohol.

In college I lived one semester almost entirely on popcorn.  I was very inventive with the flavorings to prevent boredom and it was a good source of fiber.  I still love popcorn despite that year.

[corny]

Put some minced garlic and hot pepper flakes and salt (and maybe chopped onion) into a skillet with oil; start to fry it up. Add chopped spinach/kale/chard/zucchini/broccoli/mushrooms and cook for a while. When the vegetables are beginning to get bright/wilted/cooked-looking, add some beans (chickpeas, cannelini, black-eyed peas) and cook long enough to heat them up. You can also pour a little balsamic vinegar or hot pepper sesame oil into the skillet right at the end and mix it up with the rest of the stuff. Salt & pepper as needed. Eat with rice. Mmm, good.

I eat a lot of variations on this - it's easy, cheap, and you can vary the veg and beans enough to not get bored. Cheap with canned beans; even cheaper with some advanced planning and dry beans (you can freeze extra cooked beans, though then you still have to remember to defrost them, which as it turns out is too much of a challenge for me). Kale has the advantage of being more sturdy than spinach in terms of how long it will last in your produce drawer without getting all sad and limp. Not that I ever abandon my vegetables like that.