to think most of these "student" cookbooks are nothing of the sort

[5Foot5]

DD is in her last year at school so, all being well, she will be going to Uni next autumn. This means at some point she is going to have to start cooking for herself regularly.

Now she is by no means useless in the kitchen. She has to get her own evening meal at least one night a week when she goes out early to her PT job and she is well used to getting her own lunches in the school holidays. However, I think her repertoire is fairly limited and I thought it might be nice to get her a good practical cookbook as a stocking filler this Christmas.

I noticed that there seem to be quite a lot of cookbooks now that claim to be for students. However, I just spent several minutes leafing through them and nearly all the main meals are to serve more than one. Many say they serve 4 or more. Now I suppose in some student kitchens they do all co-operate and cook together but that certainly wasn't my experience at Uni. Maybe once a week we would cook a meal together but the rest of the time we did our own thing. Bearing this in mind I would have expected a proper student cookbook to have lots of easy, economical main meals to serve one.

Does anyone know if such a thing exists?

(NB I do own a copy of Delia's "One is Fun" that I could give her but I imagine she might be put off by the title and I thought something with "Student" in the title would be more encouraging to her)

I had a student cookbook that talked about the importance of setting the table, and how even an economical meal could be enhanced by eating at a table with a tablecloth Two and a half degrees later, and I still don't own a tablecloth. Right now, I don't even own a table.

I also has everything stolen/"borrowed" when I was in halls, including an entire veggie curry that was to be my dinner for the next three days, and the pan too. No luck with freezers - we had a tiny one to share between 12, and it was always either jam-packed with ready-meals or just iced over.

Can't specifically recommend any books, but I've found Nigel Slater's 30 minute meals to be pretty sensible. TBH, my biggest issue in learning to cook solely for myself was learning portion control!

I had grub on a grant too, but someone also bought me this one how to boil an egg which was great as it included all the very basic stuff like how long to boil potatoes as well as some simple recipes. A great beginners book.

Ds1 and ds2 are both at university now, and both had plenty of fridge and freezer space in their student accomodation - 2 big fridge freezers between 8 in ds1's flat last year, and 2 between 5 in ds2's flat this year. Tbh, I think student accomodation is worlds away from how it was when I was at university in the 90s!

I have bought student cookbooks for each of them , but ds1 was very scathing indeed about he one we bought him - he thought it used a lot of ingredients that were not realistic on a student budget - he said that that was the general opinion of student cookbooks amongst his student colleagues. It didn't stop me buying one for ds2, though! I suspect it was as much for my benefit as for his - so I could tell myself that I had done all I could to ensure he didn't get beriberi or scurvy or rickets during his first year!

Some student houses will share the cooking but when I was at uni everyone did their own thing with the odd group sunday roast thrown in. Student social lives are so hectic it is difficult to get everyone in the same place at the same time to have a dinner and there is always one tight sod who thinks a tin of economy beans on stale bread constitutes a meal. I was lucky enough to have a big freezer in my student house so I used to cook up an enormous curry or bolognaise sauce which would provide enough portions for several days. Most students are not too fussed about eating something different every night of the week, they want something cheap and vageuly nutritious. Best thing I did was to go down to Costco at the beginning of the term and buy a couple of 24 packs of tinned tomatoes, huge sack of rice and a huge bag of pasta, that would last me months!

My DCs all eat a fairly unimaginitive diet when they are at Uni, spag Bol, curries, stews, stir fries etc. They all bulk cook the sauces and cook the pasta, rice or potato on the day. None of them use cook books even the lovely ones I bought for them but they do look up recipes online.

They use EPICURIOUS. It's good for finding recipes when you have limited ingredients.

I lived off pasta and jars of ragu (no meat) or pasta and Worcester sauce, when I was at uni, hmmm, I wonder how I was so skinny?

Another vote for How to boil an egg - I lived off it during my Uni years and after when I was living alone and wanted to try something different! In fact, I've still got it lying around somewhere as I still cook the stuffed pepper recipe occasionally...

Thank you everyone for lots of good ideas and recipe book suggestions.

I will definitely follow the links provided and hope the wonderful internet will help me track down even some of the out of print ones.

I found the main problem particularly in first year was storage and facilities. We had a kettle, a toaster and a two-ring portable electric hob thing in first year, between eight. Then each of us had one cupboard for food, crockery and pans combined. Most people ended up with a box of stuff in their rooms. One small fridge (half a shelf each) and no freezer.

Anything like a sandwich toaster or slow cooker would have been confiscated for fire/electrical safety reasons unless well hidden, ahem.

Cooking together, at least occasionally, meant you could use more than your fair share of appliances without guilt.

This book (Nigel Slater quick meals) isn't specifically for students but is excellent. Lots of single meals and ideas.