What did you eat when you were a student?

[Sunnytoday01]

I’m going back to the ‘80s but my diet was rubbish and I couldn’t cook. I used to eat a lot of toast and a hot meal would be Richmond sausages, smash potato and mushy peas or baked beans. My housemates and I would eat a cheese and tomato oven pizza occasionally. I even liked a pot noodle 🤣

I eat completely differently now but I can’t believe how awful my diet was and I didn’t seem to mind!

Not a student diet but a skint party animal in my late teens (all my money went on cigarettes and booze ) my skint go to was a tin of soup with rice in it to bulk it out.

Pasta and sauce
Bean feast
Tesco vegetable burgers but on / in bread not buns
Chelsea buns in the uni refectory
Flapjack

Lots of cereal. Hot meals were jacket potatoes with grated cheese, bacon sandwich or cheese and ham toasties.

wierd mixes of oats, ad other grain flakes with powdered milk and dried or tinned fruit.
Tinned potatoes, with either pasta sauce or veg, tuna and cheese.
Would blend up big things of humus which would eat on potatoes bread or pasta
Rice and lentils sometimes with dried vegg
Something from a urger van often cheesy chips
pizza toasties
apples
tinned chicken and whitesauce with sweetcorn
spag bol
then would go to a friends halls a couple of times a week and load up on soup and salad and fruit, lots of steeling apples and bananas.fy @

Beanfeast - only the bolognaise one, which with pasta would last 2 meals.
A box of 6 apple pies and packet custard
pasta with quorn chunks, stir fried veg with grated cheese
jacket potatoes, frozen fish, sweetcorn
home made lasagna
veggie risotto

main issue was severe lack of fridge and freezer space. So veggies didn’t last long and could not freeze much.

I had the equipment and ingredients to make 2 home made cakes

If I was in uni, then an egg and onion roll for brunch, they were fab and subsidised!
Otherwise, cheese on toast, maybe with tomatoes, fruit, tins of tomato soup, occasionally spag bol, yogurts, more cheese on toast, maybe a homemade muesli mix or Shreddies. Also coffee and and fags. I was way lighter than I am now.

fray bentos pies with oven chips and sweetcorn were a favourite

A lot of pizza, pasta and ready meals.
I used to have a large tupperware box of biscuits next to me for long essay writing sessions.

Here you go... the recipe from my 90s Sainbury's vegetarian cookbook 😂

(Credit Rosamond Richardson)

First and second times I went (and dropped out for different reasons) then it was chips and cheese for lunch in the Union games room then home for whatever my mum was cooking.

The third time when I actually completed my degree it was a mixture of whatever I cooked for the family at home and takeaways/easy oven things if I was close to an assignment deadline.

Jacket potatoes cooked in Baby Belling with cheese/beans
Rice and tinned tomatoes
Pasta and packet sauce
Packet soup
Toasties made in Breville sandwich toaster, with cheese, egg, tuna or just margarine
Very stripy toast done by wedging it with a fork into the front of the electric bar fire
Cereal, usually own brand bran flakes
A concoction made with mashed potatoes and tinned chicken in sauce
Digestive biscuits

Occasional splashed out on a curry, kabab or Chinese takeaway.

Despite this carb heavy diet I was extremely thin at university!

Bucket loads of super noodles. And things on toast.

Until embarrassingly late actually- although in my 20s I used to make heavy use of our subsidised work canteen (this was abroad)

I met DH when I was 30 and wanted to learn how to cook for him. I bow down to Queen Delia and thank her for teaching me. I'm a good cook now.

Loads of things from The Pauper's Cookbook ( Jocasta Innes)
Ate pretty healthily and very frugally, looking back.

hello @merryhouse . I was in Langwith but self catered throughout ( Lawrence Court in first year, digs for rest)

Toast
Cereal
Cider (fruit, for health)
Friday night lamb burger with a fried egg on top from the lamb van on the pier (Aber, early 90s, iykyk)

one of the students in our house had five siblings and was used to cooking and planning. She took charge and got us all organised with a meal plan and a weekly shop. She used to do a stock take what we had in the cupboards and write a list. We ate well - we had meat free days, curry days and then some sort of roast. There was always fruit and veg and usually a dessert. I’m not sure how she stretched the cash but she did and it never felt like a student house in that regard.

1990’s - Beans, pasta, pizza, chips pies/pasties,fray bentos pies, any pudding/custard

We are a lot of pasta with tinned tuna and tinned tomatoes. And jacket potatoes with cheese and beans. At the beginning of term my mum used to send me back with a load of Bolognese sauce, soups etc that she had batch cooked and frozen into portions for 2. And dh's mum would send us back with a load of tins of beans, tomatoes, spaghetti hoops, peaches and pineapple chunks. I got a sandwich toaster for Christmas in my 2nd year so we are loads of toasties after that. I have fond memories of our 2nd Christmas as a couple, cooking roast beef together, presents and then cheese and leftover beef toasties for tea with tinned peaches for pudding. Good times.

I went to university in the late 90s; ate super noodles, jacket potatoes, pasta surprise and drank too much alcohol.

1990s - I remember the black and white Kwik save packets and the Sainsbury's 'Value' ones.

I ate things based on bread, marmite, pitta bread, cheese, pasta, tinned tomatoes. Also that God awful VTP (vegetable textured protein) that you could get - looked and tasted like sawdust. Branched out to include oats for porridge, tinned tuna, bulgar wheat and the like by third year. Upgraded to tomatoes, lettuce and cucumber rather than grated carrots for salad. Definitely apples and satsumas/oranges.

Not too bad and cheap and easy.

Mid 90s. I spent about £25 a week on food.
Stir fry but with carrot, onion and noodles. Maybe soy sauce and garlic.
Toasties - junior common room did 3 for £1 on a Sunday! Mars bar and cheese a favourite.
Chicken thighs baked in oven.
Lots of Bolognese
Pasta and stock cubes and sunflower oil

Very poor - early 00s. Eternally grateful to my povvo mum and nan for teaching me how to cook on a budget though. I was very slim - cereal in the morning and then a tea time meal only.
I ate a lot of stir fry, potato waffles, beans, pasta bake, frozen sausages, Fray Bentos pies and frozen mixed veg. Sometimes just crisps though. And lager.

Late 2000s student. Frozen pizza, frozen oven chips, those Pasta n Sauce sachets, pot noodles, breakfast would have just been toast. Towards the end of uni I started to make (slightly) more of an effort and remember having crusty baguette with cheese and tomato for lunch, or making chicken curry with a jar of curry sauce.

Sandwiches, pasta, Burger King and beer.

I remember cooking noodles & having them with tinned tomatoes & grated cheese. And I used to mix prawn coleslaw with cottage cheese & have it with toasted pitta breads. Really good.