f13.net

I've moved away for College and need to start making shit for myself. Since the gym is part of my tuition whether I like it or not, so I'm using it. Of course to make it work I have to actually eat REAL food. Not canned stuff or whatever I can throw in a microwave. I know people like VD are very apt at cooking, but I'm sure there are others. Especially those that went through something like what I'm doing.

I'll try anything once, so post any and all recipes you have. Just remember I'm going for relatively cheap and good.

So, to put on muscle mass at a good rate I've read that you should drink a sports drink within 5 minutes of finishing your workout and then a meal with a good mix of carbs and protein about 2 to 2.5 hours after (like, you know, a sandwich).  It's not that hard, making your workout into a chore is what keeps most people from doing it so don't make a chore out of it.

In a year or so go read up on advanced nutrition for a workout, that's when you will need it.  Not now, not when you are just getting started.

I'm still looking to eat more than canned crap. I'm 5'6" and weigh about 115. 120 on a good day.

What sort of cooking facilities do you have at your disposal?  Most of my recipes from college involve a microwave, but that's because that's the only cooking implement I had in my room.

Dude, how serious about lifting are you?  Are you just trying to be healthy or are you prepared to make the  significant lifestyle changes that are necessary to get diesel?

I'm just staying healthy and gaining a bit of muscle. Mostly for hockey, but I'm still not looking to go nuts with it. I have access to a stove and microwave.

There are some decent cookbooks out there for newbie cooks, and it may be rather useful to you to get a couple.  Most people I know that cook a lot tended to start out with recipes and then learned to modify them or make their own as a result.

Here's two books that my mom gave me when I started college -- they were both rather useful, even though I'd already been cooking for myself for a few years.  They did make the transition from shitty processed foods to real food easier, however.

The Healthy College Cookbook (http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-College-Cookbook-Quick-Cheap/dp/1580171265/sr=8-1/qid=1169177573/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-0045740-5039169?ie=UTF8&s=books)

Help!  My Apartment Has A Kitchen! (http://www.amazon.com/Help-Apartment-Has-Kitchen-Cookbook/dp/0618711759/sr=8-1/qid=1169177594/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-0045740-5039169?ie=UTF8&s=books)

The second book is great because it has a list of kitchen supply staples that you should never be without.  If you have beans, rice and spices, you have a meal in about 30 minutes.  Add some veggies into the mix and you're even eating a relatively balanced meal. 

ETA --- Just saw that you have access to a stove.  How are you on pots and pans and stuff?  I have some great recipes for easy soups and chili and stews and whatnot, but they always work out to be huge batches.  Huge batches are great if you can freeze or refrigerate your food -- cook one day, eat for three and all that.

1) Cook pasta, add 1/2 large can of crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, can of tuna in oil, green onions
2) Ground beef, egg, green peppers - mix together and fry occasionally steering with rice

Having deep fryer, rice cooker and any BBQ will save you tons of money. Get them ASAP.

Heh.

My mother gave this one to my brother when he started grad school.  Glanced at the back of the book,  and the three authors graduated from Williams about the same time I did.

I learned to cook the hard way - by assuming a role as the "guy who cooks" for a couple people when we all moved into a house together. I do not recommend this, although it does produce enduring comedy (after the fact). A cookbook, or at least an internet site with lots of recipes, is your friend. Eventually you will get a sense of what will taste good together after it's cooked, but you don't want to be eating reduced-wine-thickened-with-cornstarch sauce on top of your pasta until you get there.

If you can swing it, and your dorm allows it, consider getting an electric grill (e.g. George Foreman grill). Tossing some meat on there and boiling up some pasta/rice or microwaving a potato makes a decent meal without too much prep time/space needed. Most are nonstick too, so they're easy to keep clean (just make damn sure you clean it after each use).

One of my staples, though it's really bad for you and will eventually kill you, was to brown ground beef in a skillet, add some chopped onions (and other veggies, to taste), and then an appropriate proportion of water and rice (check the rice package for the right ratio). Bring the water to a boil, reduce heat to lowest setting, cover for 30-45 minutes or until the rice is tender. The rice sucks up all the flavor (and beef grease :( ) and it's pretty hard to fuck up (unless you burn it). Real easy to prepare (especially in large portions).

Another tip, but this depends on your local supermarket. My college supermarket would sell its butcher-counter meats at a significantly reduced prices after about 10 PM, which fit nicely with the screwed-up college circadian rhythm of going to sleep at 5 AM every day; so, we'd go there and buy a boatload of decent (85-90% lean) ground beef for excellent prices - just freeze it or cook it immediately after getting home.

Also, learn to make soups/stews. They're also pretty easy once you get the hang of, especially once you learn the proportion of water to solid stuff, and what things dissolve in water to give The Flava. If you have access to an electric stewpot, you're golden, since you can set your next day's meals up to cook the night before. You're a northman like me, so you know how hot slurpy food is awesome in the cold. Internet/cookbook to start with on these as well.

Like this one (http://www.epicurean.com)

Great. I have access to pans and pots. Heck, I even have one of those grilled sandwich things. Also, I don't live on res. So, I'm constricted by all that crazy nonsense they go about because people are too stupid to not know when to turn something hot off. I rent a room in a house and I only have to cook for myself. I have a somewhat mini-fridge in my room. Take a normal fridge and shrink it a bit. So, I have the top freezer AND the bottom fridge without it being so damn big.

Right now I have breaded fish, ground beef, pasta, sauce, rice, canned stuff (stews, creamed corn, baby carrots, green beans), some of them sidekicks (mostly mashed potatoes, but I also have a garlic and herb pasta one), romaine salad (IN A BAG!) and that's about it for lunch/dinner style stuff. I'm told you can bulk up a bit by eating eggs on rice for breakfast. Is this good for me or would I be on the road to heart cloggery with that one?

Get a crockpot.  You can just mix all the stuff up in the morning before class and come back later to a meal ready to eat.  It helped me avoid a lot of fast food during school.

Goons with Spoons (http://"http://www.goonswithspoons.com/") has a useful collection of recipes as well, sometimes complete with photo walkthroughs.

Learn how to saute vegetables like onions and peppers. Garlic, too, but don't brown or overcook garlic because it gets bitter. With those three ingredients, italian cooking is open to you. Fry/broil/roast beef, chicken, pork, doesn't matter. Throw in some of those marinated diced tomatoes (like Del Monte with oregano, basil, garlic) and a small can of tomato paste and you've got pasta sauce. Riggies go a long way and sauce sticks to them good, don't overcook the pasta, though (Al Dente is not a mafioso).

Basically, the best thing to learn is how to make basic ingredients and then experiment with different combinations.

Like the aforementioned fried veggies...throw in a diced jalapeno. Cook up some meat, specifics don't matter. Heat up some refried beans, then melt some cheese on a torilla. Put veggies, beans, and meat on there and you've got filling burritos.

Recipes...they are just suggestions. Learn the core basics of food you like and you can make a variety of great dishes once you aren't afraid to experiment. Then you can move on to more advanced recipes like VL makes :) I'm no chef, just a cook!

1. Once you use up the canned veggies, never buy them again (except tomatoes, because they can well imo). Canned beans and corn are a sad thing. Buy frozen. Much fresher and they retain more vitamins.

2. Mash your own taters. Peel and chop the taters, put in a pot with just enough water to cover them. Boil until fork-tender, drain. Throw in some butter, salt & pepper (get a pepper grinder!) to taste. Chopped bacon and sauteed garlic are some of my favorite additions. Easy and filling, and way better than the prepared stuff.

3. I don't buy the egg hype. Everything in moderation. Mix up breakfast, don't eat the same thing every day. Cereals are great, so is milk. Oats, too. Sprinkle in the hot breakfasts when you have time to make them.

I'm a little biased against 'easy fast' supermarket food, it doesn't take much longer to make things from scratch with a few shortcuts (like the canned diced tomatoes + paste), and it tastes a lot better imo. Most importantly, have fun!

One thing that always tastes awesome and saves a lot of time during a busy week is making a good batch of italian tomato sauce. Its dead simple, as well.

1 large can of prediced uncooked, skinned canned tomatoes. Trader joes has these.
1 small can of tomato paste
1 small jar of crushed garlic
1 onion
1 shallot
balsamic vinegar
olive oil
small bag of carrots
sugar
salt
small jar of oregano
small jar of basil

Put the tomatoes, tomato paste, spices (a teaspoon of each is good), a dollop of garlic, a splash of olive oil and 1/3 cup of vinegar in a pot that'll hold the contents. Stir, bringing this to a slow simmer. Add some water if it looks too thick. About 1 cup of water works for me.

Add 1/4 cup of sugar and about 1 regular sized carrot, cut in chunks (the carrots and sugar absorb the tomato's' acidity. Kills the sour while preserving the tang.

Chop the onions and shallots and brown them in a skillet with some olive oil. Takes about 15 minutes to brown them. Don't worry about undercooking them, but don't overcook them. The goal here is simply to give them a bit of the toasted onion flavor, not to actually precook them.

Add the shallots and onions to the sauce. Keep the sauce on a slow simmer for at least 2 hours. (very low heat, with just a small amount of bubbles rising to the surface).

If you want a 'fresh' tasting sauce, 2 hours is decent. If you want a more robust, thick sauce, do it for 4-8 hours. During this time you are going to want to add water to it as it cooks, the amount depending on how thick you want the sauce to be.

You can either eat the carrots or discard them. Purists insist that one must discard them after 2 hours, but the results are awesome either way.

If you want to get fancy, add a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg to the blend, but don't bother if you're going for the 4 hour sauce, since by that time the sauce has grown chest hair and will beat up your subtler spices into oblivion.

A good pot of this can last you the whole week, kept in Tupperware. Just use it on rice, pasta, polenta, etc.

If you're a meat eater, I recommend either baking or frying some sweet italian sausage separately. Cut 'em into meatball chunks and mix them in when you're adding the sauce to the pasta, rice, whatever. Never add meat to the above sauce during its cooking stage or you will just end up with a meat-flavored sauce, instead of a tomato sauce with meat.

That even sounds nice, although I'm not a fan of carrots.  You can also freeze sauce like that so nothing needs be wasted.

Whaddya got against meat-flavored sauce?  (I always add the meat first thing.  MEAT SAUCE YUM.)

In the spirit of "take this stuff and add it to a pan and put on top of rice, pasta, etc.," I'll also add that you can make some very awesome thai/indian/other asian-ey type food with just a few extra ingredients. 

Get a garlic press if you're making pasta sauce and tons of other stuff.  Garlic presses are teh roxxor.

One thing I do is take a bunch of lentils (dry & then cooked are better, but take longer.  canned are ok, but too soft for my tastes), add carrots cut w/ a peeler (so, ribbons basically), celery, garlic, onion (red if I have it), curry powder/garam masala, cumin (not a ton), kosher salt (way better than iodized table salt), mustard powder, black pepper, and possibly a TINY bit of cayanne (like 1/8 tsp); add it all to a pot, let simmer for a good long while till stuff is soft and things have mixed well. 

I generally start with oil, garlic, then onion in a sautee pan.  I DO NOT let these veggies make a sizzling noise while I heat them, I try to sweat them instead, which seems to work better for my tastes.  I then add in the veggies to soften, then the lentils.  Sometime while the veggies are going, I will start adding spices, keeping the super powery ones for the last, after I've added the lentils.  I serve it all over rice, and it's darn good.  It lasts a while, and pretty much rules.  You can add other veggies and fungi to it if you like.

I also like to make this peanut sauce/peanut soup themed series of dishes that has several common elements.  My wife is a vegetarian, so I usually make this stuff with fake meat or cook some chicken or whatever on the side.  She does occasionally eat chicken broth (I make it myself, so I have no idea why she tolerates it in food, but she does), but not actual, solid meat.  At any rate, the basic "peanut sauce" thing is simply combining creamy peanut butter and coconut milk over heat.  I add other spices depending on what flavor I want.  Sometimes I use curry.  Sometimes I roast a sweet potato and some tomatoes, peel them, and add them to the mixture with some veggie/chicken broth and make a soup out of it.  Sometimes I use fake chicken or saitan or whatever (you could use real meat here, obviously), and make it more like a curry or even a spicy red pepper-y kind of flavor and serve it over rice or rice noodles. 

After you get the hang of recipes, experimenting rocks.  Heck, just using several recipes for a similar dish and hybridizing them into your own is a lot of fun.  Also, food network is good to watch for ideas from time to time.  Epicurean.com has a nice search function that allows you to search recipes based on an ingredient.  Want to see all the recipes that use plantains?  They can do that. 

If you're serious about getting big, you need to eat big.  But unless you're also incorporating a high volume weight training regimen, it doesn't matter how much of what you eat.  Unless you're naturally athletic (and I think there is a preumption against that on this website) then if you want to bulk up, it's going to take a ton of hours grinding it out at the gym, and you're going to definitely want to up your protein intake.  How much exactly is up for debate.  Hardcore weight trainers regularly consume up to 400 grams of protein, but even 200 should be more than sufficient for your purposes.  Getting just 200 grams of protein isn't the easiest thing in the world to do.  I reccommend http://www.t-nation.com/index.do as a free online resource.  Alternating every 3 months between varying workout plans in their database has helped me tremendously.


For you I would reccommend doing basic workouts at the gym with light cardio until you have researched enough to forumulate or handpick a workout plan/diet that is right for you.

Be careful, though.  Gyms are full of nasty germs and icky diseases.  Make sure you scrub yourself with bleach after you get home.  We wouldn't want our little Nixel to fester!

Don't listen to her, the germs will only make you stronger.

No way, Jose! It's all about the knife skills. Just place the garlic under the flat of the knife and crush it, then dice it. For me it's about as fast as using a press...without a unitasker taking up space in my tiny tiny kitchen :) Peeling garlic will always be crappy, though. I've worked in enough Italian restaurants doing food prep to really hate peeling garlic. Or calimari or shrimp or...

I agree, knife > press.  In the time it takes to scrape a clove of garlic out of a press you could have hacked up the entire bulb using a good knife.

I'd say a clove of garlic is easier to peel than almost any other vegetable - just squeeze and pull.  The small size of each clove is what makes it annoying if you have to do a lot of it.   :-P

(http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f264/K012T3/cartman_beefcake.jpg)

Beer.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v231/lonestar627/Misc/Orly2nm.gif)

Dammit, I hate when I misspell a word and then everyone quotes it, regardless of the reason they happen to be quoting it.

Dude, I partially disagree.  I also use a knife, but it depends on the nature of the use of the garlic.  I use a press when I really want the garlic oil to get super-worked into the sauce and I'm not going to sautee the garilc before it goes in.  I use a knife when I want to sautee the garlic.  I also use thin slices of garlic (without much crushing, if any) for some dishes.  It all depends on what you're doing.  There is certainly no single way to prep garlic.  Also, a garlic press hardly takes up space.  It's about as big as a set of kitchen shears or a veggie peeler.  ETA -- Unless you have a mega-tiny kitchen with one of those narrow, yet somehow 4-burner stoves.

EDIT 2 -- Here's a quick and dirty way to make BBQ sauce.  There are other, better ways, but this one is easy if you don't have the time or desire to do it the "right" way....

Ketchup (I am serious)
mustard powder
cayanne to taste (or scald as the case may be)
brown sugar or regular gran. sugar, but brown is way better, IMO
possibly other adjuncts like A1 sauce (adds good smoky tones and stuff -- also a good seekrit additive for split pea soup)(Instead of A1, I have used soy sauce before...mostly for the color)
black pepper
MAYBE salt, but the ketchup should really have enough
You can get all fancy at this point and add stuff like cumin, curry powder, wasabi, etc. to make various kinds of new bbq flavors.  Jerk spice would work too.  Or cajun spice.  Really, any spice blend.  Perhaps a 5 spice or 7 spice.

At any rate, mix that crap together in a bowl.  I use a wisk or a fork.  Put it on food.  Enjoy your fast and dirty ghetto BBQ sauce.

Dude why would anyone make "ghetto" barbecue sauce?  I mean, I'd rather just buy a bottle of Sweet baby Ray's if I wasn't going to do it right.

Hey douchebag, go drink Drano.

Nix, honey. The most important thing for a college student to perfect is ramen. I know it sounds trite, but 10c meals count! Just add some frozen veggies when you're cooking the noods and put a dash of sesame oil and cayenne pepper on it at the end.

But real food, cheap and easy:

penne putanesca

to a saucepan or shallow pot, add a can of crushed tomatoes, 2 or 3 cloves minced garlic, fat pinch of chili flake, 2 chopped anchovy fillets (or a tsp of anchovy paste) and some chopped green olive and/or capers. Simmer until sauce starts to thicken, like 10 minutes. Boil some penne. While pasta is boiling, add a little olive oil and a splash of wine to the sauce. I like to also add a little Italian sausage, but that's not necessary. Add basil and thyme (earlier if using dried, later if using fresh), and salt and pepper to taste. Since you have olives, capers and anchovies in there you prolly won't even need salt. Pour sauce over cooked pasta and yumz!

First of all, use molasses and a drop of liquid smoke instead of brown sugar to make awesome bbq sauce.

Second of all, you're not helping anyone here, douchematic. This is Nix's "Gimme Recipes" thread, not the "Gimme Unsolicited Bulk-Up Advice and Dis People's Recipes" thread.

I have a friend who makes some good BBQ sauce (and Long Island Ice Tea as well). Not quite as perfected as the Tea, but pretty good nonetheless.

However, my Dad has an old friend on the "real ghetto" side of this town, who runs a BBQ place (he's originally from Kansas City, so it's that kind of goodness). If I need BBQ sauce, it's from there (I don't tell my friend that though).

Quite simply, owning a wide array of spices is just a smart move, IMO.  If he had a well-stocked kitchen, he'd have most of that crap.  It takes all of five seconds to make my easy non-involved BBQ sauce.  I used the descriptors "ghetto" and "quick and dirty" because I was trying to be hip and down with the youth culture. 

It's something I picked up in college.  It's rather realistic because every guy I know owns ketchup.  Not as many own BBQ sauce.  The steps to "the traditional way" are not too many more, but way more fuss than one dude should worry about when simply learning to cook, a large part of which is learning to mix stuff together by taste/eyeballing. 

So, where's your recipes to share?

Cook up a box of spaghetti.  Heat a couple of tablespoons or so of olive oil in a skillet or wok.  Throw in a couple of fresh garlic cloves, chopped or smushed, however you like.  Turn off the heat. Throw in the pasta and some fresh cooked broccoli rabe or rapini.  One or two shakes of dried red pepper flakes.  Toss.  Have some crusty Italian bread and a nice glass of wine.  If you have to have meat, bite your girlfriend.

Instead of A1,  use Worcestshire (however that thing is spelled...) Sauce.  And I load in alot of crushed garlic (uncooked).

But then I baste the hell out of anything I'm barbequeing.  Slather it up before it goes in,  turn frequently, and slather each time you turn it.  The garlic pretty much cooks itself on the chicken.

I'm also a big fan of brown sugar.  Throw some in your barbeque sauce,  throw some in your spaghetti sauce, it's all good!

About one of the best easy things I know of in the kitchen is asparagus.  Put some asparagus in a pyrex container, drop some butter over the top, cover with saran wrap, and microwave for about a minute. There are better ways to prepare asparagus, but you can't fuck this up, and it's still decent.  Salt to taste.

If you're trying to impress a girl, wrap some prosciutto around the asparagus.



Edit:  By the way, for what it's worth I wasn't trying to come down so hard on your bbq.  Obviously things got out of hand when I was told to drink drano, and the rest was self-justification.

Not to fuel this fire, but I put that in there because I wanted to give people an idea of what kind of food I'm looking for (Carbs and what not.) I wasn't looking for meal plans or "BULK UP NOW!" stuff. Just food that would fuel such tasks that need lots of energy.

Also, I have ground beef and the will to try something new and out of the norm. Suggestions?

Anyone know how to make GOOD vermicelli Vietnamese style? I go to this vietnamese place all the time and get vermicellis with diced lettuce, carrots, grilled pork balls and (REAL) spring rolls. Trying to recreate this cause it's so good and doesn't kill my body.

If you're into Vietnamese style food (or any asian stuff), then I reccomend that you get the following spices/sauces:

Fish Sauce
Hoi Sin Sauce
5-Spice Powder
Sweet Chilli Sauce
an Asian Chicken Stock (for genericness)
Soy Sauce
A jar of crushed Lemongrass
Rice Wine Vinegar
Green/Red curry paste
Chilli Powder
Curry Powder

all of these should come from a proper Asian grocery store, and be asian-branded stuff. (just find an asian grocery and ask for these things, because they should have original asian labels) Do NOT buy this stuff from a regular supermarket, or you'll get the watered-down softcock flavourless/filled with sugar versions. Even the Soy.

Armed with these sauces and spices (it's actually pretty cheap to buy all this stuff, especially from an Asian grocery, and it lasts for ages) you can manufacture any number of really tasty meals from cheap stables like rice and vermicelli and even ramen. And it's much tastier than bullshit packet ramen, too.

Does your dad's old friend bottle the sauce? And/or have a cookbook of any sort?

Probably has a cookbook, but yeah he bottles it (not labeled or advertised or anything like that. It's just something he'll sell if you ask).

A year ago I weighed 135. I'm 6 feet tall.

I started training in about August.  I'm up to 160 now, only slightly more body fat.

My diet consists of egg whites in the morning with oatmeal, protein powder in milk or water for a snack between breakfast and lunch, a turkey sandwich for lunch, another protein powder in liquid dose between lunch and dinner, then red meat and a potato with ranch dressing for dinner.

I work out about 3 times a week for an hour each.

I'm not OMGRIPPED, but I've got a decent body now.  Still not where I want to be, but progress has definitely been made.

These are all easy things to make.  Good luck on your way there.

Friend of mine was like you, same height/same weight. Now he's my weight (200), but several inches shorter. I don't even know the guy anymore.


Also, for those who don't want to get too elaborate:

Ramen, milk/milkshakes, and red meat.

Or....Pasta, milk/shakes, and red meat.

Two dumb bells (there's a lot you can do with that), and walk/ride a bike for 5/10 miles every day. :)

You can go back to eating something more sane afterwards.

Make your own soups instead of buying canned. It helps cut down on the sodium intake and it's relatively cheap to do. Here's a favorite of mine:

1 Carrot (peeled and chopped)
3 ribs of celery (chopped)
1 Medium Onion (diced)

Put all those in a large pot with about 2 Tablespoons of Olive Oil and saute them for about 7-10 minutes. Then add:

1 - 28oz can of diced tomatoes
1 - 10oz box of frozen cut green beans
1 - 32 oz Box of low Sodium Beef Stock
1/2 - of that Box filled up with Water and added

Cook that covered on the stove for about 2 hours on low, stirring it every 30 minutes. Then, boil some pasta and add:

2 cups of cooked corkscrew pasta

Cook for another 20 minutes. I typically seperate the recipe into about 7-8 Gladware containers and freeze them for the week.

EDIT: I forgot to mention seasonings. Soups are very individual and that's a base recipe. You can add any kinds of spices to them to make them your own. I personally like to add about a cap-ful of dried Italian seasoning, and a few shots of Tabasco sauce for heat.

Oh dude I make hell of soups.

Easiest corn chowder:

1/2 c diced celery
1/2 c diced onion
1 tbsp butter
1 fist-sized potato, 1/2" dice (if you use a waxy potato like Yukon gold you don't hafta peel, it tastes better and it doesn't disintegrate in the soup)
1 can creamed corn (yes, I use this shit sometimes - it has amazing thickening powers!)
1 c frozen corn
2 c chicken stock (make your own! it's free if you roast a chicken)
1 c milk (or sometimes I do 1/2 c half 'n half to 1/2 c water)
S&P to taste, maybe a pinch of thyme or sommat

In a soup pot, melt butter over med-high heat and saute celery and onion. Meanwhile, get a pot of water boiling to cook the potatoes (you can cook 'em in the soup but the soup gets all foamy with denatured proteins if you do). Spread frozen corn out on a baking sheet and roast it at 350 for like 20 minutes or until it starts to get golden-er (you can skip the roasting if you're lazy, the soup is fine without it). When celery and onion are becoming translucent, add stock, milk and creamed corn. If you like, you can also throw in some chopped chicken breast or sometimes I use a little smoked salmon or crab (I have a career and can afford these things). Add roasted corn and potatoes. Simmer for a few minutes until the flavors meld. Add lots of pepper and a pinch of salt. Serve with cheese-herb bicuits for best effect.

This can be made even better if you have corn on the cob. Cut the corn off and roast as above, and roast the cob too. Simmer the corn cobs in chicken stock for 15 minutes before using the stock in the soup (discard cobs before using - duh). Corn cob stock also makes excellent chicken tortilla soup.

Real cooking is hard. I avoid the hassle by eating only once or twice a day.

Ramen (without the seasoning packet) with scrambled eggs mixed in, mushrooms if I have them, and this kickass soy sauce my mom found...somewhere.

That, PB&J sandwiches, and oatmeal is pretty much my diet. That, and whatever my mom cooks when she feels like it.


I hate real cooking.

College food, heh.  Ramen, microwaveable bean burritos, and Milwaukee's Best.  Bulk up in no time.  It seems that I must have eaten something else during those years, but I can't remember doing so.  Unless you mean Taco Bell or all-you-can-eat pizza for $2.99 at CiCi's Pizza.

In college I ate a lot of black beans and rice with cumin and plain yogurt. And spaghetti w/stir-fried tofu, garbanzos and hoisin sauce. And curried potatoes. I was a vegetarian then and could get a bag of groceries for under $10 by buying bulk. Beans take a couple hours to cook and hafta be soaked overnight, but they're very versatile and economic. Veggie chili is really easy and nutritious. And with most of that stuff you can just make a pot on the weekend and not cook for a few days after.

If you decide to go the bulk route, please learn from my roommates' mistakes and for the love of god put your grains in an air-proof container! One roommate used to keep rice and oatmeal and such in paper bags in the cupboards, and we ended up with a gnarly moth infestation that forced me to get over my fear of maggots. Little yellow moth larvae were writhing around and pupating all over our ceiliings and completely filled all of the food bags. I had to go through the apartment with a chopstick and a paper plate and knock them all off the ceiling onto the plate and put them in the garbage. Those little tiny brown moths are the worst. And weevils can get in your food too. I keep all that shit in washed-out pickle jars and it makes for neat storage.

I'm not hungry anymore.   :|

This is, hands down, the best BBQ sauce that you can buy.  Period.

I give you Dreamland (http://www.dreamlandbbq.com/).

You know your BBQ.

Maggot stories are fun! One buffet/dinner theater I worked for had a dumpster. This dumpster would have about a six-inch layer of maggot soup in the bottom in the summertime. Same place that once cut the mold off a ham and served it. Seriously people, eat at home.

...WRONG!! ;)

http://www.dinosaurbarbque.com/browseProducts.php?cat=1

I recommend the Wango Tango. Amazing stuff. I use all the Dinostuff, it's a solid product line from rubs and marinades to finish sauces.

To quote those old Picante commercials: "NEW YORK CITY?!"


Seriously guys. The guy I know is the real deal. Old, big, black dude from KC. Has a restaurant in the ghetto. His bottles have no name.

Sorry, anything from NYC, and anything from a franchise is not going to top it.

HOWEVER, most BBQ is good. I wouldn't really complain.  :wink:

Firstly, it's a biker bbq from syracuse, a great blues joint. It's only franchised because it's so damned good they had to build more.

Secondly, obscurity doesn't necessitate quality. Try some Wango Tango before passing judgement.

I like to not put things in my mouth that have "wang" associations.  Besides, got to go with the home territory and side with Cmdr Slack.  Plus I am pretty sure I like Dreamland a lot.

If you are in a strange place and you want to know where to find the good food, look for cop cars in the parking lot.

Lighten up. It's just barbeque sauce. What part of that post made me sound like I wanted a serious argument here? I quoted a Pace commercial for crissakes. I'm shooting you down with the same amount of "seriousness" that you did to CmdrSlack with "WRONG!!"

I already said I wouldn't complain about most of the stuff out there (barring a Sam's Club brand or something).

...

To be serious though, I'm not pushing "obscurity". Where did you get obscurity from?

If anything, Syracuse Biker Barbeque is obscure. 70 year old guys from Kansas City who cook barbeque are not "obscure". They are the real deal.

SERIOUS BUSINESS!

I'm not being serious. Sorry if I sounded that way. But I do take DinoBBQ seriously. It's a great place and it's a 'real deal' whatever that means. Fuck tradition, I just want good sauce. If anything, the 70yr old guy probably forgot how he used to make it 50 years ago :P

My wife went there last summer when she was in NY for a wedding. She was raving about it a couple of weeks ago, so I found their website and bought her 3 bottles of sauce (including Wango Tango, which was more for me  :evil: ) and the cookbook for her birthday. Wango Tango has fantastic flavor, but is just a bit runnier than I like my BBQ sauce. Their menu and cookbook looks absolutely fantastic, however.

Reality check time.

BBQ is highly individualistic. Put all the great places from the great regions together and it's like trying to define the best looking model in a Victoria's secret catalogue. Personal taste rules all. There is no best, simply many awesome types.

Actually, I'm a big fan of North Carolina style vinegar based BBQ.  My subjective inclination is that it is the superioer BBQ.

Says the guy who'd convert everyone to Guiness and Irish Whiskey if he could ;).


Disclaimer: No really. I AGREE. This is not serious business.

I like to make my own BBQ sauce so I can get that perfect combo of sticky-sweet, spicy hot and smoky all in one. Molasses, garlic, pineapple salsa, liquid smoke, chipotles in adobo and a little tomato paste (for thickness) all blitzed up in the MagiMix really does the trick. Also, I made some really good blackberry glaze the other night from stewed blackberries (that I picked in October during fieldwork), apple cider vinegar, honey and a drop of smoke that really did amazing things to lamb ribs.

btw, lamb ribs are not worth the trouble. The meat-to-fat ratio blows - you end up sucking all the glaze off, chewing a tiny shred of meat and spitting out huge wads of fat, and then you end up with the pimp skitters the next day. Not worth it. I got them for free, so I'm not really complaining, but if I had paid cash money for 'em I'da been pissed.

I'm not a fan of BBQ when it is overly-charred - Sorry, I don't like to eat charcoal.

[EDIT] Oh, nevermind.

I'm sure it's good.  Dreamland is only franchised now.  The original restaurant in Tuscaloosa still has sawdust/peanut shells on the floor if what I've heard is true.  Dreamland is also originally made by an old, big, black dude.  But from Alabama.  I'd have linked this place called Archibald's but they don't have a website.  This is largely because Archibald's is literally in the dude's backyard.  The restaurant has barely enough space for 4 dudes to sit at the counter.  You must call the house to call the restaurant.  Fortunately, it's the family name, so it's easy enough to find the number. 

Besides, KC ain't got shit on Southern BBQ.  And those Texans?  Fucking pussies.

SERIOUS BUSINESS!!   :-D

ETA -- emoticon for proper nonseriousbusinessness

College BBQ sauce: ketchup, worcesterchire, brown sugar, other shit (garlic powder?) as you feel.  All the flavor-masking of ketchup, but you feel more like you are eating something good.

ZOMG! Why waste someone's time with "ghetto" BBQ???

Just. Shut. Up.

Dude, must everything be in green text for you?

ETA -- Wow, I've never seen just sets of posts put into their own thread and denned.  That's some mod-fu right there. :)

As for super easy and carbs for bulk, you can't beat a rice bowl. You can put endless stuff on it, from wok'd strips of meat to veggies. Quick, simple, (kind of) nutritious. If you have a rice cooker, you can be in and out in about 10m of actual work. I'm looking forward to my new roommate showing me new recipes.

I am an instrument of the will of the people.

I thank you kindly. Now I can go back to getting fat :heart:

QFT, if you are living cheaply to save money for b33r (if you aren't then you are doing something wrong) then perfecting Ramen is crucial.

I recommend experimenting with oyster sauce and/or ketchup as well as what VD mentioned.  Find what combinations you like best and enjoy.  When it comes to being healthy though, the veggies are key, keep some frozen ones on hand and try to add them to every dinner.

Now that I am at the end of the thread, I have to say, nobody has mentioned stir fry?  Seriously this is the EASIEST way in the world to seem like a l33t cook without actually doing anything difficult.

Also frozen chicken breasts are your friend, for me at least the problem in college was taking the time to get what I needed.  If I didn't have everything in the fridge I would end up eating or ordering out.  This is bad.  Therefore one of those bags of frozen chicken breasts that can be converted into hella different meals is a must imo.

Also on the subject of pasta's, everyone is suggesting complex (but very good) red sauces.  The great benefit is that you can freeze the fuck out of red sauce for like, ever and it pwns the store stuff in price and taste.  I approve of that but here is a really easy one-shot meal involving pasta:

Chicken (in the perfect world this is just leftover chicken from a previous meal that you aren't letting go to waste).

Ideally you just take your chicken leftovers and shred them, warm them up with a thin layer of oilve oil in a pan.  Take your cooked pasta, toss the chicken in and add some pesto or if you want to be cheaper just some parmesan and butter.  Simple easy, full of carbs and calories and good.

Also I'm a huge fan of oatmeal in terms of its price point and ease of use.  As well as eating tons of eggs.  I am just under six feet but only 140 while fully clothed and soaking wet.  Two hard boiled eggs make a no hassle breakfast while your doing homework for your first class.  Fried egg sandwiches are just the fucking bomb, dont forget the cheese though, every time you dont put cheese on a sandwich got kills a kitten by clubbing it to death with a baby.

I turned college student again a couple of months back. I often make just burgers with 2 pieces of somewhat healthy full grain dark bread and egg. Fried eggs owns in a burger, it's cheap, it tastes terrific on burgers and it's great for making you feel full. They're also fairly healthy. Another bonus with making burgers is that it's fast as hell and you can slap a little bit of everything in the mix from the vegetable family. I don't know exactly how healthy they are but I've heard the most unhealthy component really is the bread, which I replace with something healthier. When you add all the components up it's a fairly cheap meal.

Ketchup, worcesterchire, brown sugar, vinegar, garlic powder, white peppper, liquid smoke, and a lil ground mustard get you a BBQ sauce that tastes just like the one that comes with McDonald's chicken nuggets.  Sure, it's not the best BBQ sauce on earth, but it can be made with stuff commonly found in a college student's pantry.  An ingredient or two can be substituted, or omitted, and still come pretty close.