So I'm not exactly rich. I live with 3 roommates and we split the rent/utilities on a house a friend of a friend of ours owns. What with living on a budget, I have to get creative sometimes. So here's something amazingly awesome and cheap.

Ingredients
==============
*One to two packets of top ramen
*Some form of cooking oil
*Your choice of sauce. I suggest teriyaki or soy, but whatever you like should work.
*Your choice of vegetables. I prefer broccoli, mushrooms and bell peppers. Fresh are best, but frozen work just fine.


1) Boil water and pour over ramen noodles.
2) Heat a pan up and put a bit of cooking oil in it.
3) When the noodles are soft, seperate and drain them, then add them to the pan.
4) Add vegetables and cook for a minute or two, then add your sauce.
5) Stir fry for 3-5 minutes, give or take depending on preference.


So what do we end up with? Something that looks and tastes like lo mein, or maybe more of a stir fry depending on what you added, all for about $5. You'll also have extra veggies, sauce and oil, and top ramen is dirt cheap, so that gets you a few servings of it. If you feel like it, you can also spring for your choice of meat and it'll be just like chow mein. Freakin delicious.


Anyone else get any creative cheap meal ideas from time to time?

Well... the only one i can really think about is when my mom was gonna come back in 3 days from Hong Kong. There wasn't much food in the fridge and i didn't want to keep calling my dad to buy stuff. It was just me and my older sister, so i made rice noodles with soy sauce and a bit of leftover chicken LOL. i told my sister "We will live!!".

It didn't taste very good. It seems that eating rice w/ soya sauce is pretty common though. o_o

Ingredients: Rice noodles/water noodles, soya sauce; hopefully some meat or vegetables/chinese mushroom
-Basically just boil the noodles and top with soya sauce. Fry the meat with garlic + ginger, boil vegetables.

You will need:

• 1 can tuna
• mayonnaise
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• rice, cooked

Method:

1. Open canned tuna and drain juices
2. Mix in 1 tbsp mayonnaise and chopped onion
3. Serve with cooked rice

All of this is off-topic and I've made the posts invisible so the topic can return to its intended purpose.

@Kaust: I understand why you responded to the original "troll post", but next time just report it and let it go so that the topic doesn't become derailed. =]

@Licentia Per Oris: This forum is not for making nonsense posts or trolling (your first post was obviously trolling and sparked a derailment of the topic). Please refrain from doing this in the future. If you want to post off-topic stuffs, then please use the Spaminator topic. Thanks! =]

I apologise X-M-O (and also for damaging your thread Rast), I knew I was crossing a line and that its doubly bad since I'm staff and all.
Why'd you hide it and then repost a more censored version? Its a shame you removed my (sort of) instructions for candy bacon.
And...this apology this is more off-topicness, give me five minutes to edit this with something yummy

Egg fried rice is pretty easy and variable. Plus its like getting cheap takeout.
As you can imagine its a rice dish so its not too hard:
-Remember to boil the rice at the very beginning, its time consuming and you're kinda gna be cooking it twice in this recipe.
-Whisk an egg or two (your preference).
-Pour the egg into a frying pan and let it start firming a bit like you would an omellette.
-Start breaking the egg into little bits, its up to you how chunky you want it.
-Add the rice to the frying pan.
-Then just stir it round for a bit.

Thats probably not how they make it in takeaways, its a little time-consuming (20-30 mins), but its edible and yeah you can add just about anything you want to it and I imagine it'll be good.

Food, the one thing that drives us all together. I'll have to try some of these out later. In any case, here's one I've come up with that is suprisingly good. My wife thought I was nuts (no pun intended, as you'll soon see) until she tried it and likes it as well.

Basically, it's a Peanut Butter, Cheddar, and Bacon sandwhich.

2 slices of bread... I prefer Italian such as Rotella, but any type of bread should work.
2 slices of bacon
1 slice of Sharp Cheddar... I find the fresh kind that you must slice on your own tastes better, but pre-sliced is also fine.
Peanut Butter... I like the chunky kind with peanuts, but creamy can also work.


1. Cook your bacon however way you prefer. For me, it's usually a preheated oven at 425 degrees, cooked for about 10 minutes.
2. Toast your bread... or not. I like it toasted as it helps to melt the peanut butter and adds an extra crunch, others may have a different opinion
3. On one slice of toasted or untoasted bread, spread your peanut butter and top with a slice of the sharp Cheddar Cheese and your bacon. I generally break my bacon in half and spread the 4 halves around.
4. Top your other slice of bread over the sandwhich.
5. Enjoy.

As a side note, I am a big bacon fan and find that (much like peanut butter) bacon can go with anything sweet or salty. Try cooked, crumbled bacon over a bowl of vanilla ice cream for something different!

Edit: Repost the candied bacon recipe, Kaust! I need more bacon!!!!

There's the bacon, lol.

Carbonara - very easy
very tasty
actually a proper adult meal

contains bacon.

1. starting the making of sauce first before pasta is always

2. The bacon will be chopped - it will be put in pan and fried

3. shortly once bacon is cooked cream is added to bacon.

4. now is time to start cooking pasta

5. let sauce simmer

6. this is opertune moment to wipe dirt off mushrooms with tissue
(mushrooms should NEVER be washed. that would be silly)

7. slicing of mushroom will now commence. adding to the pan of bacon and cream when ready

8. some add egg. this is optional. if adding there must be ample stiring.

9 if sauce get too thick adding of milk or more cream to thin.

10. though sauce should be quite thick.

11. Drain pasta. add sauce. consume

For additional seasoning just add tears. The best kind for bacon containing dish is to first consider / remember that your life is empty and meaningless. You have not nor will you ever atain your potential because life is not fair and won't let you.
All your potential are belong to someone else

. note. empty life tears not to be confused with empty soul tears.
(these are normally produced directly after lonely self gratification of the physical sexual stimulus. dirty. sticky. pathetic. wondering "why did i do that?". These tears work best with toast, chicken, or any ready made microwave meal)

You have already been told about derailing the topic and as to this drivel about tears=teenage angst much.
Suspended for a month ,

Something that people might not know, but frozen vegetables can be better than fresh ones, and here's why.

In order to get vegetables into a supermarket, they need to be picked, but you can't pick them when they're ripe, otherwise they'll go off by the time they hit the supermarkets, so they have to be picked before they're fully ripe. This shows you that there's no guarantee you'll get vegetables at their "optimal ripeness".

Conversely, frozen vegetables are picked when they are at their ripest, and they have to be frozen within a certain amount of time of being picked, guaranteeing their quality.

Birds Eyes peas fresh as the moment when the pod went pop!!

I love frozen peas,

True, but it isn't just about taste in my case. It's not that easy finding everything you want frozen. I've only seen mushrooms in small amounts in frozen blends, for example, usually with a ton of other random vegetables and noodles in a stir fry mix, and I can't say I've had frozen bell peppers that I actually liked. I also find it's a lot easier to get crisp veggies when you prepare them from fresh ones.

As it happens, though, I work in retail and often help in produce, so I'll usually know ahead of time if it's a good day to buy a specific type of produce.

Well, yeah, where only fresh exists, buy fresh. The major factor is probably price though, I tend to look at everything as £ per kilogram to make my decisions.

Cheap $4-5 meal, buy a whole roasted chicken from the supermarket (Woolworths for me, about $3-4 when it gets late) and a few packets of migoreng.
Make the migoreng, get a bowl, rip the chicken off and add it to the bowl, then put all the chicken in the frying pan, add salt and fry it until it's crispy.
Add the fried chicken to your migoreng and enjoy ;D

Me and fiance are frequently without food with uni, rent and paying the bills so a really easy and tasty dish to make is curried rice. If you go into any Asian grocery store you can buy spices pretty cheap. Fennugreek, Curry Powder and Garam Masala etc. Anyway all you need for this recipe is:

1 Cup of dried rice (I use long grain)
1 Cup of Beef or Chicken Stock
3 Tablespoons of Butter or any substitute
1 teaspoon of curry powder (We have Malaysian Curry powder so we just use half a teaspoon)
1 onion finely chopped
Some veggies if you wish (Peas, Corn and carrots are probably the best)
Some diced ham if you have any, but don't sweat if you don't it still taste good

First off add a teaspoon of curry powder to the pot, I usually throw in some garam masala and Fennugreek as well, then add the three tablespoons of butter and throw in the diced onions and diced ham. You should have the pot just simmering always for this dish just keep it on a low heat. After the onion have softened pour in the cup of beef stock (Or Chicken), the cup of dried rice and the veggies and let that simmer stirring occasionally. I keep the lid on the pot so all the heat and moisture stays in the pot. Keep tasting the rice until its nice and soft and then it should be ready to serve in 15-20 minutes usually serves four people. It's quite tasty and if you have any spare eggs, crack and egg into a bowl and add some Worcester Sauce and Soy Sauce into the bowl with the egg and whisk it together. Then just mix in the egg with the rice while still simmering and until the egg is cooked and you've got yourself some tasty fried rice! Oh and don't forget to enjoy! Next time I'll tell you guys how to cook a mean Shepards pie!