Studying for the future, living rough, it can be tough to get through. Everyone else may be complaining about how much less they have to play with, but you never had to start with, right? Here are some light-hearted tips that may help you get through the week.
1. Mooch off your family
Do this as often as possible. It is expected, and it is part of your parent’s responsibility to make sure you still survive. They may have kicked you out but now they better pay for it. Aim for at least two dinners a week at the old homestead, more if you can stand it. Make sure to go on evenings where there is plenty, and take home a good sized doggy-bag that will do for lunch the next day.
2. Mooch off your friends
Now you can’t get away with this one quite as much. If you over do it you may find yourself having to change friends, and room-mates, more often than your underwear. The trick is not so much to mooch as to just every third time around, not happen to have the gas money in your pocket to pay your share.
3. Similar to tips one and two
Make friends with your friends’ Moms. Compliment them, and especially their cooking, at every opportunity. This way you may score another 2 evenings a week where you get fed for free.
4. Get your hands on a slow cooker
These are brilliant little machines. You can cook up a soup or stew that will last for a good few days. Just remember, for safety’s sake to freeze anything you haven’t eaten on the nights you got to eat out. Beg, borrow or steal one. At the worst buy one second hand, they are worth their weight in gold!
5. Grow your own veggies
Yes you do need them to stay moderately healthy. If you have the time, inclination and space you can go the whole hog and dig a really impressive garden. If not, just throw a few lettuce seeds in pots. Think about sprouting cress too, very easy and nutritious too. Put a few herbs in pots on the window sills. Herbs can make the simplest of meals taste, well, interesting.
6. Get cheap meat
Make friends with a farmer if you live near enough one. If you have a decent sized freezer you can put together with others to raise and kill a beast. Expensive to start with but will last. For meat eaters who are less squeamish you could also learn to hunt and check out the local neighborhood wildlife. In desperate times a drive at night may also prove to be productive. Some of this meat may be a little tough and suspect, but that is where the slow cooker and herbs do their thing.
7. Keep chickens
You have to check out the local laws on this one, many places don’t permit them. Chickens produce eggs. With eggs you have a meal. Also see tip 6.
8. Go vegetarian
If you can’t get cheap meat vegetarian is definitely the way to go. Lentils are great. So is rice or pasta. Just make sure you are getting all those proteins and vitamins.
9. Move back home
If you find you really can’t cook and study at the same time, move back home.