Reddit reviews Microplane Professional Series Ribbon Grater, 18/8, Stainless Steel

First off, Pchops is the best overall price grocery. Hannaford is your nicer but still affordable grocery. Save-A-Lot is dirt cheap but sketchy as hell. Save the farmers market for when you'd like to treat yourself. Farmers market food is delicious but you do pay for the quality. I would advise mixing all of the above to fit with your budget. I dunno if Pchops still does it but when I was still in school they had this deal where every X dollars of groceries you bought and used your AdvantEdge card for, you got 10 cents of per gallon of gas at Sunoco. I didn't drive much further than Pchops usually so I ended up racking up over a dollar between fill ups sometimes which really was awesome. Also one of the Sunocos is always cheaper but I have a terrible sense of direction so you are going to have to figure out which one it is on your own.

Here are some of my easy/solid/quick recipes:

• Pasta with sauce: Put a pot of water on to boil and brown some ground beef in a frying pan. When the water boils, add the spaghetti (or whatever pasta). When the meat is cooked, dump in a jar of sauce. When the pasta is done to your preference, drain it. You can either mix them together or spoon out some pasta and then spoon some sauce on top. If you go with option 2, be sure to add a bit of olive oil on top of the pasta and cover it, otherwise when you come back for seconds you are going to have a giant glob of sticky spaghetti.
  
  
• mac and cheese: boil some pasta, when it's done, drain it and add some shredded cheese (cheddar typically, but whatever strikes your fancy), stir until melted (it will be really stringy looking) then add a glug of milk and stir to smooth it out to a nice creamy consistency. I advise stirring with the fork you will eat it with because you get a delicious cheesy glob. (mac and cheese is awesome because you can put leftover vegetables, sausage, chicken, hot sauce, cajun seasoning, etc. in it to make it more interesting/nutritional)
  
  
• lasagna: yeah I know this is kind of a pasta trend. Lasagna is a good weekend project because it does take some time to assemble. Look up a recipe if you want specifics but the main thing to remember is to make sure the noodles are all surrounded by sauce so you don't get any rubbery crap. You can by no-boil noodles at almost any grocery store too. The cool part about lasagna is that making two doesn't take much more time than making one and you can freeze the second one for easy dinner during finals week.
  
  
• Quiche: Fancy name for an egg pie. Grab a frozen pie crust, cream of something soup (mushroom and broccoli are my favorites), cheese (cheddar is good if you don't know what you want) and meat/veggies (sausage and bacon are good meats, mushrooms, olives, broccoli, asparagus, and spinach are standard vegetables). Mix everything together and dump it in the pie crust (seriously). Then bake it. Then try not to eat it all at once.
  
  
• oatmeal: oatmeal with various additions makes a very versatile breakfast. People are used to sweet versions (raisin, apple cinnamon, etc.) but they are also delicious with savory things (marinara and mozzarella (pizza-oats), egg cheese and salsa (nach-oats), etc.) You are going to have to trust me on this one. Oats are not sweet on their own. Also a big plus to oatmeal besides it being pretty healthy is that it is super cheap.
  
  
• Crockpot whole chicken: You can cook a whole chicken in the crockpot. Take the giblets out (if it came with them) and season it (whatever seasoning you like) stuff it with a cut in half lemon (if you want it lemony) and cook it breast side down for about 7 hours. It's super simple and the meat literally falls off the bone. If you want to stretch it even further, put the bones back in the crock pot when they're de-chickened and fill the crock pot most of the way up with water. Cook that overnight (or all day) and then strain the bones and junk out and save the chicken broth for making soup.
  
  
• Chili: You can look up chili recipes yourself but basically meat + beans + tomatoes + onions + spicy. Increase bean to meat ratio to lower cost.
  
  
• Fiesta Rice: cook some rice (medium or long grain white rice has worked best for me). Dump the rice in a frying pan with a can of beans (black or pinto), a can of tomatoes (with chilies if you have them), and a can-sized amount of cheese (cheddar or a mexican blend or pepper jack or whatever) and then stir it until everything is gooey. Add hot sauce if you like. This is one of those cool vegetarian dishes that doesn't taste like it's pretending to be chicken but failing.
  
  That's probably way more than you needed and perhaps too simple. I don't know your skill level so my apologies if they were too easy/hard. Feel free to message me if you got any questions on anything. I strongly encourage you to try recipes you find online. Foodgawker has a pinterest-like interface but the recipes are generally good. Pinterest itself I would advise against, people put all kinds of crap up there and you can't really trust it. Some foodgawker recipes are pretty intense, so don't feel bad if you think they are way too complicated because some of them are.
  
  Also one thing I do advise you spend money on is a nice cheese grater. I have a microplane that cuts in both directions (well now I have two different ones, one for hard cheeses and one for stuff like cheddar). Mine was a little under $20 and it was so worth it. I got it my senior year at RPI after the $2 walmart version broke badly enough that it didn't work. Shredding cheese yourself is cheaper than buying the pre-shredded kind and spending the money on the decent cheese grater will save you from a lot of swearing and bleeding. I am serious. It is worth it. (Mine is almost exactly like this one but it has a plastic handle.)
  
  Other miscellaneous tips for cost effectiveness:
  
  
• I generally advise Saran or Glad brand for plastic wrap.
  
• Save takeout containers and jars and reuse them as free tupperware.
  
• Buy the giant thing of olive oil and then fill an empty wine bottle with it and buy one of those pour-y tops like for booze. They are only like $1
  
• The cheap ass silverware set from walmart will be fine
  
• Buy a couple decent knives (steak knives, a paring knife, and a big chef knife) You can get the KitchenAid brand somewhere around $20 I think. An inexpensive knife sharpener might be a good idea to go along with that or to purchase later when it seems like it's dulling.
  
• box mix cakes and brownies are just fine and often go on sale after the season (valentine funfetti at the end of February etc.)
  
• You can make all sorts of stuff with bisquik (pancakes, shortcakes, waffles, etc) and you can even make your own bisquick for probably cheaper.
  
• You can buy a lot of your spices at the Indian or Asian stores in Albany for a lot cheaper
  
• It's cheaper to make your own coffee. Depending on what you're used to, the breakfast blend price chopper brand coffee is not bad. I've gotten to a point where I no longer like it but you may still find it palatable.
  
• Freeze your leftover coffee into ice cubes and in the summer you can pour regular coffee over them and have iced but not watery gross coffee. I would advise sweetening the hot coffee before adding the ice, otherwise it's all grainy from undissolved sugar.
  
  Sorry for the super long post.