If your DC have been in halls with a small shared kitchen, what sorts of meals did they make?

[StartingAgainFGS]

DC is away to halls in September..I want to give them a list of some meal ideas that they can fall back on and not waste their very limited budget on take out!
They have access to the bog standard electric hob, fridge freezer and microwave.
What have been cheap and hopefully healthy staples for your dc?

Thank you all! So helpful

Yes, my mistake,,electric oven as well. No mention of a toaster though, so I will definitely check and buy one, as well as an air fryer, if they're allowed.

Its a small flat, 4 people only, within halls. But I know the level of mess depends on what the other 3 are like!

Seconding this. Great book! But an oven would be needed for a lot of the recipes.

My two at Uni seem to live on pasta , pesto and cheese or noodles. My dd has constantly had food stolen on a daily basis by one of her flat mates as have the other flatmates. It's a shame they can't have individual fridges with locks.

Might be worth seeing if anyone else turns up with a toaster and/or air fryer first. 4 toasters and 4 air fryers is going to take up a lot of work surface space in the kitchen (and they won't be allowed them in their own room). They really don't need one each.

Wow does rhat still exist? I remember it well

If there's an oven, then it'll be pizza pizza pizza pizza! Shop-bought way cheaper than the endless stream of Domino's deliveries turning up the halls near me 😆Buy some of those round pizza baking trays: no-one is >ever< going to clean the oven. Because it's something DCs have never actually done, they genuinely don't know it's A Thing. Ditto loos: do show them how this summer 😉

There's an old book from 1961 that my parents gave me a copy of in the 90s called Cooking In A Bedsitter

Its meant to be funny and practical but it does have recipes for cooking in small spaces

Son lived on alcohol, turkey dinosaurs, and McDonald's for the first term, to the extent his gums bled. I got a phone call to ask if he should be eating vegetables!

Daughter's flatmates were so disgusting that she couldn't cook in the kitchen, and they stole her food. One evening she came home to find the pizza she'd planned to eat stuck to the ceiling.

Both teturned home with all the food supplies we'd got them except for the pot noodles.

I guess it's a rite of passage 😂

@HelenaTranscart that sounds like what i remember
Our only saving grace was a cheap and cheerful baked potato place nearby.
Definitely a rite of passage!

One of my dc’s flatmates was diagnosed with scurvy this year (no fruit or veg and copious amounts of alcohol)
My dd cooks at home but struggled in the filth of the uni kitchen - 12 in flat. They have such limited fridge space often with rotting food and mould from others. Limited cupboard space. She kept as much as she could in a tub under bed not communal Kitchen.
She ate a lot of Greek yoghurt, frozen berries and granola.
Salad with chicken.
Bagels with toppings like avocado or poached eggs or peanut butter.
Pasta/pesto
itsu noodle pots when kitchen was truly awful
Gyoza/quorn nuggets/fries in freezer.
Not keen on using oven or microwave as were disgusting. They had an air fryer and toaster.
The students union used to do cheap meals, she didn’t eat there but it looked good. There was also an eco hub that did cheap meals sometimes and plant based low cost cooking classes in freshers, something to check if they offer similar at their uni.

DS took a Breville sandwich toaster - it was very popular after the pub and it’s how he made most of his friends 🤣

This Morphy Richard’s one is good for toasties (goes in microwave and in sink to wash)
currently on offer on prime

When my DD was in her first year at uni (Cambridge) all they had in their shared kitchen were a fridge and a microwave. No freezer or hob either.

When she came home for her first Christmas holidays I remember asking her what she would like to eat and she said "anything at all that hasn't been cooked in the microwave," as she was so fed up of things like that. 🤣 She had sometimes resorted to eating in the on-site café, which was very reasonably priced, just for variety. It was during Covid lockdowns so often the café did takeaway, or delivered to their rooms.

She was in halls in subsequent years too, but different ones with fridges, freezers hobs and ovens available. The difference was stark.

I made dd a recipe book based on meals I cook at home for her to take to uni!

Does your dc have no oven?!

Please don’t buy / take ANY electrical item for the kitchen before a) finding out if they are allowed and b) considering the reality that they are likely to be misused / broken by drunken people late at night. I can guarantee there will not be enough surface space in a bedroom for these items.

In my experience (2 students) meals will be either ready meals or pesto pasta with cheese or something ordered on Deliveroo . Fridge and freezer space is typically pitiful, and theft rife such that the purchase of anything remotely like “ingredients” for properly cooked meals is futile.

Depends how confident/ experienced they already are I suppose. DS is pretty good but has lived off a rotation of macaroni cheese, southern fried chicken, and chilli con carne. Cheese sauce and chilli homemade because he likes to do them, and he batch cooks (eats the same thing for 4 days straight 😅).