Enjoying food on a budget

1. Thrown in Cold Water
2. Cooking For Yourself
3. Money
4. A Cooking Strategy
1. More General Tips
2. Inspiration and Recipes

After graduating the German equivalent of high school at the beginning of summer 2020, I immediately made plans to start studying computer science that same year, far away from home. Up to this point, I had spent my entire life living with my parents in one city. Now, all of a sudden, I would have to figure out how to live on my own, in a city I did not know, all at the height of the COVID pandemic. I'm sure many people can relate when I talk about how overwhelming this step can be and how the uncertainty of it all can cause a lot of anxiety.

One of the topics that have dominated my daily life ever since I moved is food. After the arrival in my new apartment, I realised rather quickly that I practically knew nothing about cooking. That was not surprising - back home, there was no need for me to learn as my parents had always provided me with a meal. The only thing I knew how to do was how to throw prepared or frozen food in the oven, reheat leftovers and cook pasta. And then, from one day to another, I had to start asking myself the food question every day.

Thrown in Cold Water

Most people know exactly what I mean when I talk about the food question: "What do I eat?"

The question "What do I want to eat?" is much easier to answer. But knowing what you want is not enough. No, you also have to balance time, cost and availability if you don't want to starve. Ugh. When I was in this situation for the first time, my fridge was empty and I did not even know how to cut vegetables, peel garlic, sauté onions or let alone use the correct amount of seasoning. From this lack of knowledge emerged my first lesson: look up as much as you want, but be prepared to try things on your own (and fail). Don't know how to dice an onion? No problem, there are a thousand good videos about it on the internet. Don't know the optimal way to work with the exact ingredients, equipment and time you have? Well, there probably won't be a tutorial tailored to your needs. You've looked up how to dice an onion and mince garlic, maybe you should just try and see what happens when you throw them in a pan together with other stuff?

In the beginning, this kind of thinking does not come naturally. Or if it does, it's hard to actually follow up on it. But it gets better with time. For me, it took quite a bit of time until I felt confident enough to step out of my comfort zone and stop making the same handful of dishes over and over again.

Cooking For Yourself

Cooking on its own can already be exhausting, but cooking just for yourself is even harder. For one, it's easier for most people – including myself – to motivate themselves to do something if they can share the result with others. But this is certainly not the biggest problem when cooking for just a single person. It sucks in other ways too.

Portion sizes are usually not set according to the needs of a busy individual, but rather for multiple people or at least home cooks who know what they're doing. Want to do something with condiment X or sauce Y for one meal? Well, you'll have to buy the whole bottle and figure out how to use the rest afterwards. Since you don't cook 3 meals a day and what you cook is not in large quantities, this will be difficult.
A result of this problem is yet another problem. You typically can't just fill up your shopping cart with all the ingredients you'd like to have available over the week, because some of them will probably expire. This is especially the case with meats, mushrooms and certain vegetables. I often find myself wanting to restock multiple kinds of fresh produce but then realising I can't, because I won't be able to use everything before it spoils. If you have a freezer, that is a great way to preserve things, but I'm sure you don't want to buy fresh ingredients all the time just to freeze them immediately after.

Money

I'm in a relatively privileged position: I have a job, some savings and generous support from my parents. Fortunately I've never had to seriously struggle to get by. Still, I try to save money where I can and, of course, the effects of inflation have been very noticeable nonetheless.

In recent months, my awareness of grocery expenses has increased because I moved to Paris for a semester abroad, where everything is more expensive than what I'm used to. Eating out all the time is not a financially viable option here, so I am forced to do more home cooking. The main aspect that changed for me in the kitchen, however, was the fact that I had to start completely from scratch. I had no kitchen equipment or staple ingredients. I was lacking all the things I had just taken for granted in my shared apartment at home. Especially for a 6-month stay like this, it would simply be a waste of money to buy things without waging their usefulness against the time remaining. Money that I do not really have because I currently don't have enough time to work.

A Cooking Strategy

One positive side of the problems I mentioned – especially my current restrictions as an exchange student – is that they have forced me to be more creative, spontaneous and efficient in my cooking. Despite the difficulties, I feel like I've been able to improve my skills and expand my culinary horizon, all while staying within a fairly tight budget. I'd like to share with you my overall "strategy" and some tips along the way, in hopes that someone else can use them to be more comfortable preparing and cooking food.

The most essential part of the strategy is this:
Every week, before getting groceries, think of at least 2 or 3 dishes that you want to make that week. If you want to learn new things as well, pick dishes you've never made before. When shopping, focus on the ingredients for these dishes.

I've found that this simple idea changes a lot about one's attitude towards cooking. It solves some of the problems I brought up:

• you are not left wondering what to cook – you already have some ideas
• because your grocery shopping is directed, you will buy less things that end up being useless
  • plus, you have a starting point of ingredients that may serve as an inspiration for other dishes
• you get some motivation to actually try out something new

This strategy requires a bit of discipline and of course some initial motivation from your side. But in combination with some other tips it really improved my situation.

More General Tips

• Buy long-lasting ingredients where possible. This includes:
  • Canned food, for instance vegetables or fish. While they don't have the best reputation, they are perfectly fine cooking ingredients and can get you a very nice meal for cheap. One of the most powerful canned foods, in my opinion, is canned tomatoes. Typically, they give you better flavour than the cheap fresh tomatoes.
  • Eggs. Depending on where you live, you may or may not have to store them in the fridge, but if you do, they can last many weeks, usually significantly longer than their expiry date states. When in doubt, there is an easy way to check.
  • Tofu or paneer as protein source alternatives to meat. Not everybody is into tofu but if you're one of those people, chances are you've only tried it as a bland "meat replacement", which it totally isn't! Give it a chance.
  • Sauces, pastes and condiments. These things can make your life much easier because they give you some great base flavour for very little effort. I especially recommend looking into asian products, as they are often made to last quite long or practically forever. Different kinds of chili bean paste, soybean paste, soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, and condiments like the Laoganma products are great.
  • Pasta and rice. You should always have these in your home.
• Always look at what's on sale and inform yourself what's in season in your area. Buying seasonal food is a game changer.
• Even though I told you earlier to focus on specific things when shopping, that doesn't mean you can't buy other things. Always make sure to pick up something that looks interesting to you, whether you've tried it before or not. This helps with the discovery of new things.
• Build a catalogue of cheap and simple dishes you know really well and that you can always make as a fallback. This takes away pressure. For me, this includes these things:
  • Tomato sauce base – onions, garlic, tomato paste, tomatoes, herbs. This can be used for a lot of things
  • Carbonara
  • A variation of mac and cheese
  • Indian-style curry base with a pre-made paste or a home made garlic-ginger paste
  • Peanut sauce noodles
  • Egg fried rice

Inspiration and Recipes

Finally, here are some YouTube channels whose cooking content I like to watch.

• KWOOWK focuses on pragmatic, cheap meals and makes a lot of the stuff I also like to make.
• Chinese Cooking Demystified is possibly the best channel out there about authentic Chinese cuisine.
• Sip and Feast
• Ethan Chlebowski
• SenyaiGrubs makes mostly short videos that are often about experimentation and serve as inspiration for me sometimes.

I like watching video recipes but I also tend to write them down for a better overview. Written recipes can be great as well if you find some blogs/websites that you like. Cook books are not necessary but have the advantage of being consistent in style and theme.

The most difficult thing about getting recipes from around the world is how different things can be where you live. Ingredients may not be as readily available as in the creator's environment, or they may be more expensive. Sometimes, certain ingredients exist but are slightly different from what's used in a recipe or they are called something else. This is unfortunately just something you have to get used to. Since I don't know your place of residence, I can't give you any tips about this either, except that it may help to find creators who live in the same area as you.