Eating on a bud­get is chal­leng­ing in col­lege, espe­cially when there are plenty of options for eat­ing out that are faster and more con­ve­nient than going gro­cery shop­ping or cooking.

Luckily for those with meal plans, food is pre­pared and wait­ing for stu­dents to come feast. But for those with­out meal plans, cook­ing a meal is not always the first priority.

Before com­ing to col­lege, I rarely cooked. I took the easy way out and let my par­ents do most of the work over the stove. As soon as my first year of liv­ing off cam­pus with­out a meal plan arrived, I regret­ted avoid­ing the kitchen.

For my first din­ner in my new apart­ment, I ate frozen pizza. The sec­ond night there I ate mac and cheese from a box.

No per­son should ever envy the for­mer white-baggers and cur­rent yellow-baggers over free lunch at the Rock Café, but when Ramen is the top choice and has been for sev­eral days, it doesn’t seem as crazy.

When I first started bud­get­ing for food, I only dealt with food that was frozen or boxed. I fig­ured I could just throw some mac and cheese in the cart and I would be set for the week.

I soon real­ized I was div­ing into a hor­ri­ble down­ward food spi­ral that appeared to have no return and lacked flavor.

I knew I hit rock bot­tom when I would chant, “I miss eat­ing at Westview…” to friends and class­mates, with hopes of maybe using one of their guest passes in the future.

I still miss eat­ing at Westview, but that is not the point. I am an adult; I should prob­a­bly start eat­ing like one, or at least learn to cook my own food instead of fol­low­ing direc­tions on the side of a box.

I needed to begin bud­get­ing bet­ter food before I began binge eat­ing fast food, hence the begin­ning of Mission Impossible: Kitchen Katastrophe.

Budgeting money for food means you have to be OK with left­overs. It also means you must plan at least a cou­ple meals and then work with the leftovers.

Leftovers are essen­tial because they can be used to cre­ate new meals. Using left­over cooked chicken or any other meat in a dish with left­over rice for a new dish means the time it takes to cook a new meal has been cut dra­mat­i­cally, which leaves you with more time to be cre­ative with your base (left­overs) and the rest of the dish.

Being cre­ative with the base of your meal does not nec­es­sar­ily mean dump­ing a ton of spices into the mix. I found this out the hard way.

Being cre­ative really means pay­ing atten­tion in the kitchen and being pre­pared to screw up. A “screw up” can usu­ally be fixed if caught quickly. Every time you screw up in the kitchen, you are des­tined to learn something.

I avoided cook­ing for so long only because I thought it would take too much time to make a meal. I want you as a reader to avoid mak­ing the same mis­take I made.

Try these quick and cheap recipes that will keep your wal­let full for expen­sive beverages.

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