Maintaining a quality diet away from home can be difficult. Resorting to quesadillas and grilled cheese sandwiches is a common quick fix to the problem of student hunger for some.
“I cook for myself at least five times a week. I try to every day, but realistically having two jobs, it’s hard to cook for yourself because coming home at 8 pm, I’ll make a quesadilla, I’ll make a grilled cheese, have a bowl of soup or cereal – something simple,” said senior student Alex Bentley on his eating habits.
Even students who cook for themselves regularly struggle to reach the level of healthy meals that was once achieved when they were living at home. Nicole Castaneda says she cooks dinner for herself three to four times a week.
The UO junior described the difference between her cooking and her mom’s cooking as “definitely a health and quality difference.”
“Here I don’t eat as many vegetables as my mom cooked just because some of the vegetables are that much more expensive, or the meat grade that I’m making will not be nearly as good as what my mom would make,” she said.
Although it is difficult for cash-strapped college students to cook with the healthiest ingredients, there are short and easy recipes out there that can save you from a diet of soup and quesadillas.
Collegerecipes.com has a slew of short and easy recipes. One of those recipes is ceviche Fettuccine Alfredo. All that is needed are one box of Fettuccine Noodles, one 16-ounce jar of Alfredo sauce, and one pounce of ceviche. Ceviche can be purchased from the deli at any Safeway.
Boil the Fettuccine and heat up the ceviche and Alfredo sauce in separate pan. Once the sauce is heated and the noodles are boiled the meal is ready to be served.
Another easy recipe is stuffed bell peppers. It sounds difficult but all that is needed to make a meal for three is three bell peppers, eight ounces of any pasta sauce, nine ounces of rice, one can of black beans, and four ounces of shredded cheese.
Cook the rice and slice the bell peppers in half. Once the rice is finished, mix it together in a bowl with the beans and pasta sauce. Put that mixture inside the open bell peppers, top them with cheese, and bake them in the oven for ten minutes.
To make some tasty sandwich rolls for lunch, grab a tortilla, four pieces of any lunch meat, two to three teaspoons of sour cream and four ounces of cheese. Microwave the tortilla for five to ten seconds to soften it, spread on the sour cream, pile on the meat, roll it up and cut it into one inch rolls.
Based on prices from Walmart, the ingredients for a sandwich roll-up should not exceed $9. However, that will account for multiple batches. To make three of the stuffed bell peppers, the ingredients will hover around $11 for one batch. The Ceviche Fettuccine Alfredo is a bit more expensive. It will cost somewhere between $16 and $20 for the ingredients. Availability of ceviche is subject to location. All of the pricing for these recipes may vary by a few dollars from store to store and brand to brand.