Food Mar's cookbook

[marorda]

Introduction
So... as a student (or any other person) living on their own, you need to get your own food, right? And being on a budget doesn't always make things easier. I've lived on instant noodles several times at the end of the months because I just couldn't afford proper food. Now I'm doing better, and I'm experimenting with food when I have the time to cook (which is not always, but enough to live a healthy enough diet). When not experimenting with throwing random ingredients into a pan and hoping it turns out edible, I look online for recipes that seem easy, not too time consuming, and tasty. If I deem a recipe successful and I won't completely forget about it, I will post them in this thread to share them with you~
Enjoy your meals!

NOTICE: if ever the amount of spices I recommend are deemed to spicy, this is because I have anosmia (total lack of smell). My taste is off, so I might use a little more spices/sugar/salt than normal people may need. Which is why I'll write down what the original recipe recommends, and what I use

Overview of recipes

• Stir Fry with leak, tomatoes, egg, and cashew
• Salad /w avocado, cottage cheese, and apple

 

[marorda]

Stir Fry with leak, tomatoes, egg, and cashewI tried this fully vegetarian meal today, and it was absolutely delicious.

Ingredients (for one person)

1. One or two eggs
2. 2 leeks
3. 1 tomato
4. 1/2 tablespoon of oil
5. 1 teaspoon of curry powder
6. 1/2 teaspoon of ginger powder
7. 1 teaspoon of lemon juice
8. 1 tablespoon of cashew nuts

(these are the recommended ingredients. You can vary for taste. Ex. I used 2 tomatoes, did the curry powder and lemon juice at random, skipped the ginger powder ('cause I had none) and grabbed a hand of cashews at random instead of measuring a tablespoon)

Preparation

1. Boil the egg for about ten minutes (hard boiled), peel it and cut it into parts
2. Wash the leek and cut it into rings of approx. 2 cm
3. Wash the tomato(es) and cut them into parts
4. Heat the oil in a (stir)frying pan and stir fry the leek with curry- and ginger powder
5. Add the lemon juice, keep stir frying it for a few minutes
6. In the last minutes, add the egg and heat them with the veggies
7. Chop the cashews and add them to the pan

Optional
Cook rice to serve with the dish.
If you wish to do so, you could also add a meat replacement of your choice. I picked a cheese shell.
You could probably do both, but I just stuck with the cheese shell and no rice.

All in all this meal should take you about 20 minutes to prepare. It's healthy, delicious, really quite filling, high in protein, and low in calories.

Original source: Actify, a Dutch smart-phone app listing cheap and healthy meals, including grocery lists. The recipe has been translated, tested, and approved of by yours truly.

Picture of the meal:

 

[RitualDeadlyf]

That looks delicious. I love cooking. (Mostly baking as that's my job too but cooking is fun.) Have you ever heard of cloud eggs? Pretty simple and yummy. Out of curiosity; could you end my hunt for a non tomato base chili? I'm allergic to tomato but I fu@$\& love chili. Can't find one that taste decent enough to the original. Also if you'd like to share recipes I got a few up my sleeve.

 

[marorda]

Thanks That's what I thought as well when I saw the recipe on the app. And it sure was delicious! If you're allergic to tomatoes I'm sure you could replace it in this recipe with something else that tastes good when stir fried (I assume bell peppers could work). Haven't experimented with it though, since this was the first time I made this recipe. I'm teaching myself how to cook, since my mom never did. She doesn't like cooking, so eating there means "here's a pan with veggies. Here's a potato. Here's a piece of meat". So that's all I've know for the longest of time. Which is why I started to hunt for simple and cheap recipes lately I can't help you out with the tomato free chili, but I'll keep my eyes open for you
I enjoy cooking, but due to having little time, I stick with recipes that won't take too long to prepare.

cloud eggs... I've heard of it, and believe I've seen the passing by on facebook pages such as Tasty. But haven't tried to make them myself. Mostly because I don't eat a lot of eggs XDD

And please do share your recipes (through PM or something)

 

[Caffeine Freak]

If you don't eat ramen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner - you're not a real student.

 

[marorda]

You can be a real student without doing that. You just gotta be a non-American, not entirely and always broke student
Seriously, American students seem to be insanely broke compared to some students over 'ere.

 

[marorda]

Salad /w cottage cheese, apple, and avocadoIf your housemates are three #fitgirls and one guy who admits he only eats vegetables once or twice per week (9/10 times you see him in the kitchen he made pancakes), it's inevitable that at some point this moment's hype/health food would find its way to my house. I resisted for a while, but by the end of last week I caved at last and bought that strange fruit. Since I had no clue if I would like it or not, I decided to try it out together with some food I know I actually like: lettuce. Another thing I had never tried was cottage cheese. When buying my groceries earlier today, I decided to give both a try in the following recipe.

Ingredients:

1. One egg
2. 1 packet of cottage cheese (mine had 200 grams but feel free to vary) (my "packet" was a plastic cup, by the way)
3. Lettuce, any kind you like
4. One avocado
5. One apple (I used Pink Lady because they have a somewhat sweet taste and I like sweet food)
6. Honey to taste (optional)

(I bought mixed lettuce at the supermarket. Maybe not exactly the freshest, but to me it doesn't matter in the taste and I like how it's... well... mixed)
(My mom taught me, once upon a time, to prepare lettuce with dressing and honey. I decided I'd only use honey for now. You can easily leave this out if you don't want the salad to have a slightly sweet touch)

Preparation:

1. Boil the egg (hard boiled)
2. Cut the avocado in cubes
3. Cut the apple in cubes
4. Put the lettuce in a bowl or on a plate
5. Add cottage cheese to the lettuce
6. Add honey to taste
7. Add avocado cubes and apple cubes
8. Peel the egg, but in cubes, add to the plate
9. Mix the whole bunch until satisfied

Optional
Add whatever you like with the salad. Fried potatoes, fries, cooked potatoes, meat, vegetarian alternatives... This dish can serve as a side meal or, if you're not particularly hungry or looking for a light meal, a dish on its own.

Notes
I think this meal was a success. The combined flavors (slightly sweet due to honey, salty due to the cottage cheese, fresh due to the apple and lettuce) was great! I do know that fairly tasteless me (due to being born without the sense of smell) wouldn't like an avocado on it's own. To me it tastes like nothing and it's just a strange slippery thing.

Original source: Me! Improvising with/wanting to try avocado with food I like!

Picture of meal:
Coming soon since I had largely eaten the food by the time I remembered to take a picture. The food is now in a container to save for another day. Whoops '