Does cheap, healthy, convenient AND yummy food exist?

[bobthemole]

In a complete 180 degree turn from my last post (with its shameless consumerist bent) I want to deal with an issue that bitch-slaps me every time I try to balance my budget... how to eat on slave wages.

I've been spending $20-40 on food from on- and off- campus vendors each month, and that's money I could easily find other uses for. The logical fix is to brown bag my lunch everyday, but that hasnt been happening. For one thing, I'm lazy. For another, I crave novelty and I cannot eat peanut-butter on toast everyday. I've tried, but I end up throwing away the PB toast and buying a pizza. Other lazy options are grilled cheese, or egg or tuna sandwiches but I am sick sick SICK of them now.

So this is an open thread in which I beg everyone reading this to post about the food you eat on a daily basis. I need ideas and recipes on what to eat, and I'm also curious about what everyone else on a grad stipend/ undergrad allowance does. Do you eat breakfast? Brown bag lunch or eat out? Cook dinner from scratch or microwave a Lean Cuisine?

I'm especially interested on how much you care about these factors...

CHEAP - How much do you spend on food each month? On each meal?
HEALTHY - Are you hitting all the food groups? Do you follow a special diet? Do you care how much sodium, MSG or preservatives you eat?
CONVENIENT - How much time do you spend in the kitchen each week? Each meal? How many dishes do you end up washing?
YUMMY - YMMV, of course. Do you fuss over the taste? Do you need variety?



Post away!

Comments

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I would necessarily recommend this course, especially since your primary goals (saving money while preserving tastiness) differ from mine, but I find diet shakes to be a quick, cheap, and theoretically nutritious alternative to eating a solid lunch. But I don't know if even I could really sustain that for a long time. I think I did it the summer after frosh year, but even though it was my plan at the beginning of law school, it turns out that there are enough free lunch events that I'm not really drinking that many shakes.

But I agree with Jeff that $20-40 a month isn't really that much and might be worth it.