Living by yourself cooking

Cooking really is not very hard or time-consuming. You should try different things to see where you're good at.

Pasta is always an easy option. About 100-125g (fourth of those standard size pasta packs) is one portion. Making a sauce is really easy. All kinds of tomato-based sauces are amongst the easiest. You can buy ready-made sauce and add stuff in it, or buy a can chopped tomatoes (will probably work out cheaper) and add some herbs. Mixed herbs and basil go well with all kinds of tomato dishes. You can brown mince in a pan with some oil, and then add the tomato sauce and herbs. You can also use fish (tuna in a can works) or mixed vegetables.

Potatoes are cheap. In my country they cost about 1 euro per 2 kilos or whatever. If you don't like boiled potatoes, potatoes are very versatile. Try mash, jacket potatoes, fried potatoes, garlic potatoes, chips (french fries)...

Chicken and fish are cheaper than red meat, but with no less nutritional value. Turkey is sometimes cheaper than chicken and be used in pretty much the same way. If you have a freezer, it can be very cheap to buy a whole fish and skin it yourself, put into little pieces and save for later use.

Depending on what kind of kitchen appliences you have, milk shakes and smoothies are really easy to make depending on your taste. You can make them more or less healthy and they are really quick too. Add ice cream/milk/yoghurt/juice, berries, banana, fruit, chocolate sauce... However you like it.

If you don't feel like you are really that good at cooking yet, ready-made sauces can help a lot. If you like indian food, you can buy a pot of curry sauce, fry some chicken, add the sauce, stir a bit, boil some rice to go with it, and you're done.

Pizza is really easy to make yourself! Try it! It's hard to mess up. You can get it just like you like it, though getting all the ingredients can be surprisingly expensive.

Few other tips

Many people have mentioned a 'rice boiler'. I don't think I have ever seen one, but if you have a normal water boiler (for making tea or whatever), it's much faster to boil the water in that and then add it to the pan on the hub.

Frozen is usually cheaper than refridgerated stuff in the supermarket. Frozen pizzas, cod fillets, pot pies... Seem to be cheaper as frozen goods. Frozen goods are usually better as well!

Don't be fooled by 'seemingly' low prices. Look for the price per 100g or whatever unit they use in your country. Noodles, for example, can be really expensive, as well as tuna, if you really compare how much of other stuff you could get for that price if you were to buy 100g.

Buying bulk is cheaper, if you have anywhere to store it. Stuff like rice and pasta stays good for a long time, as well as canned food. Exploit special offers.

Vegetables and fruits are cheaper if you pick them individually rather than buy a bag of them. The price difference is often double!

Store chains usually have their own private labels that are significantly cheaper than the brand name products. However, don't think that the brand names are always automatically better. A lot of the time there is little or no difference. A supermaket's own ketchup will probably taste much the same as genuine bottle of Heinz for just a third of the price.

Jam it back in, in the dark.