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What about a big batch of spaghetti sauce? You can portion and freeze it, giving you several meals.

Beans are your best friend. Spicy pinto beans with tortillas, white beans in herb broth, black bean soup, chickpea salad, and on and on. Beans are a budget's best friends!

And you can do more with eggs (cheap protein!) than just scramble - make a fritatta, experiment with omelettes, etc.

And freezing is a great way to save money. When you find yourself with a bit of extra cash (say, right after that student loan is deposited), make a big pot of soup, a lasagna, or your favorite casserole and freeze it. Way more cost effective than a Lean Cuisine!

I second LIzNYC on the beans! Esp. chick peas. Also soups and pasta. I know meat can be expensive, so I don't eat it much for that reason, but I really love the seasoned chicken sausage you can get at a lot of places - they can be frozen until you use them, and added to so many dishes to add flavor and protein. I love to slice them up in rice pilaf with peas and mustard, it's the perfect meal for under $5

you know that mango and peach salsa at costco? makes fantastic beans and rice.

noodles with butter and parm. with a fried egg on top.

--OR
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*prepare yourself...*

rice, with some ketchup and a bit of onion powder. with a fried egg on top.

Usually make the lentil soup at New Year's - hence the name:

Good Luck Lentil Soup
1 tbsp. olive oil
2 lbs. Mild or Hot Italian Sausage (try chicken sausage!), casings removed
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
1 lb. Carrots, peeled and sliced on the bias into 1/4" circles
2 Quarts Chicken Stock (home-made preferred but Pacific and Kitchen Basics are both great)
(1 or 2 peeled diced waxy potatoes - not Idaho - OPTIONAL)
1 lb. Green lentils, (picked over to remove small stones; rinsed)
1/2 cup Flat Leaf Italian Parsley, chopped
S&P to taste

In a stock pot or dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add sausage meat and break it up with a wooden spoon while you brown it. When it's nearly browned lower heat and add the garlic, onion and carrot and cook about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the chicken stock and optional potato. Add the lentils and stir. Increase heat to high and let the soup come to a boil. As soon as it begins to boil, lower the heat to a simmer.

Simmer the soup about 30 minutes or until the lentils are soft. Green lentils do not require any presoaking and you can have this soup assembled in no time!

When ready to serve, stir in parsley and season to taste. Serve with crusty bread and think lucky thoughts!

This should be in every college kid's arsenal:

Basic Tomato Sauce
(Can be easily doubled, tripled, or even more)
1 Tbsp. Olive Oil
1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped
1-3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 28 Oz. Can Whole Peeled Tomatoes
1 7. Oz. Can Tomato Paste
1 tsp. dry basil or 3-4 leaves fresh basil, shredded
Salt
Pepper
(Optional: 1/4 cup White or Red Wine)

In a saucepan large enough to hold all ingredients, heat the olive oil. Add the onions, sauté for 2-3 minutes over medium heat. Add the garlic and sauté another minute. (If using the optional wine, add at this point and cook until wine is almost evaporated. This will concentrate the flavor but remove excess water.)

Place the tomatoes in a blender (reserve a few if you like, to chop roughly for a chunky sauce). Blend the tomatoes until liquefied. Pour into saucepan with oil & aromatics. Place the tomato paste in the blender with 3 tomato paste cans of water. Blend, then add to the saucepan. Stir in the basil, salt and pepper to taste.

Simmer sauce about 20 minutes. It does not need to cook past the point where the sauce changes color. (This will make sense when you make it.)

If you like, you can add slices of pepperoni but you'd have to cook the sauce about 1 hour. If you like pepperoni pizza, you'll love this. If you add the pepperoni, add some oregano too.

Any baked pasta dish can be cheap, especially if you're cooking for a crowd or are willing to package and freeze leftovers in individual servings. (Of course, non-baked pasta dishes are also cheap, but I usually end up throwing away most of the leftovers, diminishing the cost savings.) Lasagna, baked ziti, and mac & cheese are my go-to choices, and provide me with almost a week's worth of lunches even after my husband and I stuff ourselves.

If you want to get a bit more complex, tackle some homemade pasta. Flour and eggs are more expensive than they used to be, but still can make a pretty great cheap meal.

I'll be the 100th person to say that beans are the way to go. Another idea is to experiment with different pasta sauces. Sure, tomato or pesto is always great, but there are hundreds and hundreds of different things you can do with it. Plus, pasta is super cheap (a serving is what, 25 cents?), so I've always kept a bunch of different shapes in the cupboard for whenever.
Some of my favorites (serve two, or save half for dinner tomorrow!):

Lemon pasta

½ pound spaghetti
a few tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced very finely (or crushed through a garlic press)
the zest of one lemon (if you don’t have one already, get a good microplane grater! They cost like $10 and are perfect for grating cheese and zesting citrus! I use mine all the time…)
lots of freshly ground black pepper
grated parmesan cheese

Heat lots of water in a pot with lots of salt added to season the pasta. Add pasta. While the pasta’s cooking, heat olive oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add garlic and sauté for a minute or so, until it is very light brown. Turn off the heat. When the pasta’s done, ladle out a cup or so of the hot pasta water. Then, drain the pasta and add it to the pan with the garlic. Turn that pan on low heat again, add the pasta water about a half cup at a time until it makes a sauce consistency, , and add the lemon zest, black pepper (and salt to taste), and parmesan cheese. Toss everything together and serve right away!

Tomato and zucchini pasta

½ pound spaghetti, orechiette, shells, campanelle, or another shape that’ll hold on to the bits of sauce
1 medium-large zucchini, cut in a small dice (about 2 cups)
a few tomatoes, cut the same size as the zucchini (about 2 cups)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced finely
1-2 tablespoons butter
grated parm
fresh basil (optional, but recommended)

Heat lots of water in a pot with lots of salt added to season the pasta. Add pasta. While the pasta’s cooking, heat olive oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add garlic, and the diced zucchini and tomato, and some salt. Cook until the zucchini is soft and golden brown. Reserve a cup or so of pasta water, drain pasta, and add the drained pasta to the vegetables. Toss everything together with the butter (and a bit of pasta water if you need to thin out the sauce a bit, which you might not need), then add the parmesan and the basil if you have it. Serve right away.

Butternut squash pasta (great for cold winter nights)

½ butternut squash, peeled, cleaned, and cut into a small dice (or you can just buy frozen cooked butternut squash or butternut squash puree…you need to end up with about 1 cup of puree)
½ pound campanelle, farfalle, shells, etc
1 clove garlic, minced
pinch red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon olive oil
½-1 cup 2% milk
salt and black pepper
grated parmesan

If you need to cook the squash: Heat olive oil in a large pan, add minced garlic, red pepper flakes, and diced butternut squash. Saute for 5 min or so, until the vegetables are light golden. Add a little water and put a lid on the pot. The squash is done when it is very soft. Add the whole mixture to a blender or food processor, add ½ cup milk, and process until very smooth, adding more milk if necessary, until it reaches the consistency of a thick cream sauce. Add back to the pan.
If you don’t need to cook the squash: Heat garlic and red pepper in the olive oil, and add the squash puree. Stir in the milk.
Then, cook pasta in salted water until it’s not quite done (not yet al dente), and add to the sauce. Cook in the sauce until it’s fully cooked (so it absorbs the sauce quite a bit in the end of cooking). Add grated parmesan and serve!

When I was in school I kept my eyes open to weekly ads in the paper at supermarket specials. Buy seasonal produce and fruits. Found places that had day old specials. Got very creative with Ramen noodles and pasta. My Univ. has this book called the survival book that has tons of discounts for anything from tanning to restaurants. Most of the places in the U Dist. are really inexpensive, nutritious, tasty and the portions are huge so you have another dinner the next night.

Canned tuna and salmon can sometimes be a bargain if you watch the ads. I used to make tuna casseroles with noodles and tuna and a can of the evil "cream of" soup. Had a veggie friend who lived on beans and any veggies she could scrounge from the reduced bin at her local store. Watch for markdowns - my grocery store has tons of them first thing when they open - half price meat (which should be used immediately or frozen), bread, pies, veggies. Depending on your schedule that might work too. Another idea is to club together with other students and make large batches of things like lasagne or chicken pot pie and divide the cost - meat in particular is often cheaper when bought it bulk.

cheap and easy... that's my thing. Hope you like some of these ideas:

No-Boil Ahead Pasta - delicious and simple...
Hummus Sandwich - you can buy the hummus or even cheaper, make it yourself.
Embellish a boxed risotto - this might be sacrilegious to the purists, but it works and tastes great... I make it a thousand different ways here are a few of my favorites...
A dressed-up mac & cheese - with butternut squash or even with pumpkin
Pastas - this one you don't need to cook the sauce and this one is simple and different with goat cheese and almonds
And Potatoes are your friend - i like them stewed over rice, mashed in a casserole, or even inside a corn tortilla

Madelyn
KarmaFreeCooking

turkey burgers -- at trader joe's i got 1.4 lbs for $3.41, which made 6 patties. a bag of 8 buns is $2.99 -- so that's 6 meals (plus 2 extra buns for grilled cheese, sandwiches, etc) for about $6.50. can't beat it! i just formed the patties and froze the extras, using them one-by-one. the only downside is the repetition!

i concur with the pasta dishes, carbonara, pomodoro, etc -- very affordable and filling.

@jmfors this sounds like a great pasta dish, I can't wait to try it, thanks.

Last night I ate something that would absolutely fall into this category!!

Boil one serving of pasta. (I was by myself.) In another bowl, beat one whole egg. Add about 2 tbsp. and up to 1/4 cup of grated cheese of your choice (locatelli or parm or romano). Add a couple of turns of the pepper mill and a pinch of salt. I had roasted hubbard squash in the house so I threw that in with the egg mixture but this would totally work without it.

Drain the pasta, then immediately (even if there's a little water left in it), dump it into the bowl with the egg and cheese. Using a rubber spatula, stir this mixture vigorously. The heat from the pasta cooks the egg and the resulting dish is creamy and delicious.

another vote for beans! also the noodle ideas are great but dont fall for the trap of easy Ramen, i looked at a pkg and those things have 190 calories per serving and serving is 1/2 a pkg. at least the cheap ones most of us buy at the mega marts. find an oriental grocery or other ethnic grocery the prices are usually very reasonable and much better quality. I used to buy cheapie ramen and found i can buy a pound of buckwheat udon at the international grocery for 1.98 better calorie count much better nutrition. not to mention they arent fried!

buy chicken cheap in bulk and freeze each piece in a separate plastic bag. this way you can throw it into the fridge in the morning to thaw while you're in class. try cooking with beer! it's something every single college student has (probably). frozen veggies like peas and broccoli and carrots and corn are great because they are cheap and last long. one of my biggest problems with buying fresh fruits and veggies is that i don't use them up fast enough and they go bad.

one more thing: try adding cream cheese to sauces to make them creamier without having to buy real cream that you probably won't use. cream cheese has a million uses and you can add herbs to make it savory or jelly or chocolate or cinnamon to make it sweet. same goes with butter!

as a college student myself, I found all of this extremely helpeful and thanks to all of you!!
from one poor student to another, or to a single mom, or someone just trying to cut costs, I leared A LOT of tricks from my mom.

*things that you can cook in one pan without dirtying too many dishes usually mean its something cheap.
a personal favorite of mine is a dish where you cook those spiral pastas, i believe they are rotini? in a large pot, drain and set aside. then brown some sausage with onions in the same pot, drain your meat and add the noddles along with some half and half, shredded mozerella cheese and raw spinach. stir and and s&p to taste, along with any seasonings you enjoy, i like cayanne :] oh and top with parmisan.
makes a lot of food, so you can save the rest and it heats up great the next day!

another good one is just as simple. you can substitute the shrimp with chicken though as I know sometimes if you don't buy shrimp on sale, its pretty pricy.
but in a large pot cook shrimp, and then in the same water, cook your pasta, drain and set aside. (of course if you use chicken you'd want to cook your pasta first, drain the pasta and then cook the chicken with the veggies in the pot)
then cook some chopped bell peppers and onions in the pot add your meat and pasta along with a little packet of 4 cheese sauce (this involves adding milk but the packet itself is only like $2), or something comprable ie ragu alfredo sauce from a jar, ect. stir until your sauce is warm.
again, makes alot and reheats great!

i noticed that grilled cheese was only mentioned once!
get creative with it :] i like wheat bread and swiss cheese with spinach. YUM. and its always good with a bowl of soup