How To Cheaply Eat At University

My kitchen last year.

TO UNIVERSITY
So it's getting to about that time where people are starting to go back to school, and for some of you that might mean starting university. I'm in my second year of uni and so I've gained a little bit of uni knowledge during this past year, that I thought I would pass onto y'all.

It's a known fact that students are generally poor and so it can be hard to eat well when you're living on such a budget. However, I ate pretty well whilst living in halls last year, and for pretty cheaply too. And I'm gunna tell you how so you can all go to university and eat like the little hobbits you are.

PORTION
You can use this trick with most food things, but it's particularly effective when it comes to meat. Firstly, when you're in the supermarket look for the offers. I always used to buy my meat in sainsburys where they had the rad offer of 3 of $10 (the dollar sign should be a pound sign but I can't find that on my keyboard so just pretend). That meant I could but chicken, minced beef and salmon all for just $10. YAY. Then I'd make it last for ages by portioning it. So for example, the mince: I would split it into four, put each portion into separate containers and freeze it. That way I got four dinners out of one thing and I wasn't wasting anything. Heck yeah.

BUY OUT OF DATE STUFF
Okay don't actually buy out of date stuff, but look for the food that is going out of date in the next couple of days and is freezable, like bread. I used to buy bread for like 50p because it was going out of date the next day, chuck it in my freezer and boom cheap bread that isn't actually going to go mouldy because it's now frozen. (Please don't buy out of date stuff and then eat mouldy things because you will be very ill.)

BULK BUY
Places like Costco and Makro are the best for when you need cheap food. Bulk buying food that you know you eat a lot (for me that was pasta... I eat pasta so freaking much) will help keep the cost down, because you won't have to keep buying it every day. Same goes for everyday things like toilet rolls, bulk buy them, it's cheaper.

FRUIT AND VEGETABLES
They're cheap yo, so eat them. Plus your mum will be proud.

ACTUALLY COOK
Buy cookery books, take cookery classes, get your chef friend to show you simple recipes, I don't know, but actually cook things. When you're cooking your own food it's probably going to be slightly healthier (well depends what you're cooking really but it's probably better than takeaway pizza), and you won't be spending your money on takeaways every day. Plus, if you just learn to make really simple things that smell amazing, your housemates that can't cook will be hella impressed, which is a bonus.

GOOD LUCK
Some of these tips might be obvious, but if you're student going to uni for the first time then hopefully this helped you out a little bit. Uni is pretty rad, don't worry.

Thanks for reading! If you have any other tips for surviving in the kitchen then leave them in the comments.

Love Chloe x


BONUS TIP
Be careful with knives. I stabbed myself in the hand whilst cutting an avocado and had to get it glued up in hospital. It was disgusting and hurt like hell. Also v. embarrassing because I was wearing stupid socks and had a lot of medical people in my room trying to help. So yeah, don't do that.