As a first year student you might be overflowing in meal swipes. You didn’t figure out how the meal plan worked until halfway through first semester or didn’t ever bother going to TDR, and now you’re trying to swipe in as many people as possible to avoid telling your parents how many meal swipes you didn’t use. As a second year student, you wanted to make sure you didn’t make that mistake again. You bought the smallest meal plan, used as many swipes a day as you could, but now, with a month left, of school you find yourself out of swipes. Instead of begging freshmen to swipe you in, here a few quick and cheap meals that you can easily make in your dorm without worrying about going broke.
1. Quesadillas
Quesadillas a quick and easy way to get a good meal in. All you need is a pan, tortillas and cheese. I recommend buying sprinkled cheese and tortillas from Giant. The cheese and tortillas are less than $5, and if you want to add more protein you could also add sliced turkey to your quesadillas. This easy meal is simple to make and requires very little set up or clean up.
2. Yogurt and Granola
Yogurt is high in protein and nutrients such as calcium and potassium. At Giant, there is a wide variety of yogurts ranging from plain to strawberry to vanilla. They’re less than $3 each and are perfect breakfast food or even lunch. I also recommend buying granola and fruit, such as bananas, to put inside you yogurt to give it more flavor. A few good granola brands include Nature Valley or Giant brand Granola. Make sure you don’t buy too many yogurts because it doesn’t have a very long shelf life and nothing taste worse than expired yogurt.
3. $1.99 Soups
Giant sells packages of multiple different soups ranging from Chicken Noodle to Split Pea to Tomato Basil. The soups comes in small rectangular containers and is the perfect meal to feed one person. One of the difficult things about shopping for food in college is that it is hard to buy food for only one person; therefore, these soups are a perfect solution to this issue.
4. Peanut Butter, Rice Cakes and Honey
Peanut butter is a great source of protein, and it has a long shelf life so you can keep it in your dorm for months on end. I recommend putting peanut butter on rice cake crackers instead of bread because they do not expire as quickly; therefore, you don’t not have to worry about eating them as quickly. To add more flavor, I put a little bit of honey on top of the peanut butter, and you can cut up and add pieces of banana as well. This is one of my favorite meals either for breakfast, lunch or even a quick snack.