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[methylatedspirit]

How do I get a healthy amount of proteins, fiber, fats, minerals, and vitamins into my diet, given these constraints (those of you who read the WTF thread would already know most of this, I'm just jogging your memory):

• No access to fridge, so only non-perishable food. Canned food is possible, but I have yet to buy a can opener.

• No access to any cooking appliances (kettle, microwave, stove, and so on). Uni says it's too dangerous. In theory, I can use an iron to cook, but would strongly not recommend if possible.

• Budget is limited (typical college student budget), but in emergencies, parents are willing to give money. Do not abuse if possible.

• Water cooler available, connected to the local water system, supplying hot and cold water. Uses electricity to heat water and probably to power the pumps (I can see the power cord, so definitely electric). Water and electrical grids are seemingly reliable, but cannot say for sure. Comes from a brand I've heard of, so it should be reliable.

• I only have one small metal pot and 2 plastic bowls.

• Closest store out of campus (a general store) has limited selection of food; things like egg powder are completely out of the question, and I would rather not go to the big-ass supermarket to find niche things, though if given no choice, I would still go there.  Use your judgement on this one.

• A minor point, but no online shopping; my only bank account disallows online banking for minors (which I am), and it rejects online transactions automatically. Plus, I don't think the uni administration would let me deliver to the uni itself without permission.

Notice how I didn't include carbohydrates; instant ramen is basically just flavored carbs.

[delphonso]

Worse case: a bottle of multivitamins, fiber powder, and horking down uncooked ramen - or as I call it, the delphonso cocktail.

How hot is hot water? Boiling? Without any cooking equipment, you're in for a rough time as far as canned goods go. Canned fruit excluded, I suppose.

That said, peanut butter has an incredible shelf life and is pretty nutritious. Spread on cut apples or crackers once fruit runs out and that'll go a long way.

[Rolan7]

Beans tend to provide proteins when consumed with grains.  Beans and rice is a staple low-cost diet for that reason.  Canned beans are salty but affordable and nutritious, while dry beans are even cheaper but require sustained heat to properly soften.  I use a rice cooker set to "keep warm" for a couple of hours before adding rice and cooking. 
Beans also have the benefit of variety for taste and nutrition.

Bread and peanut butter keep fairly well and fill a similar role.

Limes keep fairly long without refrigeration until they're cut, and provide vitamin C that's absolutely vital in small amounts and broadly healthy in large amounts.

Blocks of "regular" cheese can last a while at room temperature, particularly sealed up, and the mold is obvious and can be cut off...  this is not medical advice, just something my dad would do, it could be dangerous.  But cheese provides calcium for long-term health and vitamin D for mental health.

Carrots also keep well and provide vitamin A along with minerals and a crunchy snack food.  Best to avoid baby carrots without a fridge.

Leafy greens probably need to come from cans in this situation.  Spinach is probably the best in order to get iron, which is important in a low-meat diet.  It's also delicious IMHO

Canned fish has like, antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids and whatnot.  It's also honestly a treat food that goes great in noodles or rice.  I like to get the kind in soybean oil for that.

That's my take.  I need to eat more carrots and greens, and I had some symptoms of scurvy last month, but by following this advice *poorly* I've been getting by.  Purely beans+rice and some canned fish can get one by for a pretty long time, but eventually you'll need some amount of the other stuff.  Probably healthier to have steady access to it when possible.

I appreciate using my rice-cooker to cook things into rice, but smell is probably a concern.  Hence why I didn't suggest onion powder ):

[delphonso]

I second the rice cooker thing - smuggle one of those bad-boys i  and you've got a ton of options and easy cooking.

[Frumple]

Well. Venue wise, if you're on a budget you're going to want to find an off day, notepad, and calculator and go scope prices at whatever grocery providing stores you have in reasonable range. Go to a bunch of places, track what prices they're providing and what they're supplying. Don't forget to include transit costs if they're relevant. Always remember the sticker price is bloody pointless -- you have the calculator to double check what the price per unit (the unit being the weight, generally) is for whatever your foods are going to be, and price per unit is the penny pincher's god.

Smaller, less big-ass food stores tend to be a luxury you're probably not going to be able to afford, though. It's rare they're actually able to compete on price with larger venues. Dollar store type things tend to actually be a trap. Small mom and pops are usually relatively inflated. General stores and/or gas stations, especially near a university, are absolutely certainly going to be price gouging the hell out of young students.

Cooking wise itself... check with the uni, other students (especially any culinary track ones), see if they know of anywhere you can actually cook, or what works for your joint so far as that kind of thing goes. There might be some kind of shared kitchen on/near campus or somethin'.

Will second the bottle of multivitamins, though. They're often not real necessary if your diet isn't super restricted, but they can help cover gaps and free you up to go super skinflint without worrying about much except strict starvation.

What your actual menu foodwise would be, though, I'unno. It'll depend on the prices and availability in your area and what you can stomach eating. Do your price check circuit and then make yourself a list of whatever turns out to be cheapest that you're able to cook and, well, there's your menu ha.

e: Oh, and you might look around for free food/food assistance stuff in your area. Especially with the plague it seems like there's a fair amount of that kind of charity going on, and there might be something around specifically trying to feed students. Can't hurt much to ask around, at least.

[methylatedspirit]

How hot is hot water? Boiling? Without any cooking equipment, you're in for a rough time as far as canned goods go. Canned fruit excluded, I suppose.

It's so hot that it's literally steaming when I collect it. It's not actively boiling, but it's definitely hot enough to burn my hand in seconds if I tried touching the bottom of a metal pot containing this hot water.

[wierd]

Again--

Hook or crook-- get some powedered eggs, powdered milk, and a wide-mouth vacuum thermos. 

The thermos is able to keep high temperatures going inside it for hours at a time, which would allow you to bastardize it as a makeshift slowcooker.


See for instance, this thing.


Or a model actually designed to be used this way.

(Instead of boiling the water on the stove, you would fill it with the scalding water from the commercial coffee machine, then proceed as directed.)

You could use that, along with dry instant rice, those absurd silicone boiled egg things (with reconstituted egg from the egg powder) and various canned goods.

[methylatedspirit]

Now, what about off-brands and brands I've never heard of? How readily should I go for those? I realize that's a difficult question with many possible answers.

[wierd]

The magic is just having a vacuum lined insulation wall for the main body of the device.

That Ozark Trail food jar is a knockoff. (walmart store brand, actually.)

I don't think they make it in large "Actually, you can really and for true cook with it" sizes, like Thermos does--  but for 20$, and being able to pick it up right in store at walmart, the 16oz widemouth food jars would probably work.

You will just get real sick of slow cooker cuisine. 


That said-- here's some ideas to get started.


Horrible knockoff potato soup (from shelf-stable dry goods):

Instant mashed potatoes
real bacon bits
onion powder
salt
black pepper
powdered milk
vegetable oil
hot water

Add hot water, vegetable oil (about a tablespoon), and instant mashed potatoes to the slowcooker vessel. Stir in a small amount of the real bacon bits, and black pepper. Combine powdered milk and more of the hot water, then pour into the potatoes. Cover, and let slow cook for about 2 hours. Stir, then add onion powder. Taste, then add salt if needed. (You can add other things as well.)

-------------

Slowcooker mac&cheese

Powdered milk
Powdered cheese
powdered butter
dry elbow macaroni
salt
pepper
vegetable oil

Slowcook noodles until desired done-ness. Drain. Add more scalding water from coffee machine. Add powdered ingredients, salt, and pepper. Stir.
(Enjoy your 'meal') (Or, just load up on some mac&cheese boxes, and abuse the slow cooker creatively.)


-----------

Meatless chicken and vegetable soup

Dry egg noodle
Knorr brand chicken bullion (It contains chicken fat, but is shelf stable. You can get it in a huge plastic bottle.)
canned veg (suggest potatoes, peas & carrots, mushrooms)
celery salt
black pepper
curry powder

Drain the canned vegetables (because you cannot heat the liquid), put in slow cooker vessel, then top with hot water. Add dry noodle, celery salt, bullion, pepper, and curry powder. Let sit for 2 hours.


etc..




--------------

[methylatedspirit]

I, uh... that's not what I meant. What I meant to ask was off-brands of food, and whether I should consider buying them. Sorry about the confusion.

[wierd]

Always-save vs Libby canned goods:  You wont tell the difference. Really.  One is like, a third the price of the other.


You might notice a difference with things like instant mashed potatoes.  I would personally go for generics on anything but canned mushrooms, or canned meat products.


If you have something sturdy you can hang stuff on, (eg, can hold up a bunch of weight), you could probably abuse a "hang up closet shoe organizer" to function as a kitchen pantry.

[Frumple]

I, uh... that's not what I meant. What I meant to ask was off-brands of food, and whether I should consider buying them. Sorry about the confusion.

My strategy has long been "buy whatever is cheapest, then see if it's edible/makes me sick or not."  Usually, the cheapest per unit is going to be offbrand. In the last decade+ of being my own primary grocery shopper, there's been precious few cases where the offbrand/generic has been bad enough to be inedible to me, or consistently made me sick (the latter's happened exactly once, I think with Banquet brand frozen chicken nuggets, if I'm not misremembering -- it's basically one of the few frozen chicken brands that regularly undercut the Wal-Mart brand at their stores, iirc). So buying offbrand food, yes. If it turns out you really dislike the cheapest that much, you just try the next cheapest. Eventually you'll find your minimum quality point.

... and it probably won't be a major brand name. Most of the time the brand names aren't really much of an improvement, if at all, over cheaper stuff. I'll take about a dozen different knockoffs over velveeta mac and cheese, or even just velveeta cheese, ferex. Velveeta's stuff is legit kinda' nasty to me. Walmart's thick and creamy is more or less the best M&C I've had out of a box, even. Offbrand canned stuff is generally fine, even meat. So on, so forth.

[Egan_BW]

I've never really thought too hard about it, but I think my stance is that a brand alone isn't really worth anything to you. They can charge more because people grabby at the things they recognize, but what they're actually selling inside the box is no different.

Though for most of my life I've been shopping at ALDI, where there's only one brand of each thing, so that's not really a class of decision you have to make there. Also the difference between brands probably matters even less if you're buying raw ingredients rather than processed stuff. For the most part a bell pepper is a bell pepper regardless of what company the person who picked it was working for.

[wierd]

Store brands tend to be just fine, more often than not.  I've had hit and miss experiences with instant potatoes.  I find the namebrand potatobuds just taste better. Dunno why.

Canned meats I sometimes question if the meat is processed properly, given the low price.  (and how sometimes it smells or tastes a little off on the discount brands)  I haven't been sickened or anything, I just question the quality of the product. 

Vegetables?  Generic store brand all the way, except again-- for things where processing is real important, like mushrooms.



Given then "Limited to slow cooker food only, must be dry goods only, limited shelf space, try to have healthy diet" nature of this conundrum, I would obtain:

Dry goods:
Powdered milk (Useful for a number of milk based soups, and provides a decent amount of animal protein and calcium. Normally you would need leafy greens for calcium in good quantity, and those dont store.)
Powdered egg (If you get those silicone boiled egg mold things, you can make knock-off boiled eggs, which make a good texture addition to things like ramen. It's also a naturally balanced protein, so don't knock it.)
Powdered butter & cheese (Mostly for the flavor function; you are gonna suffer large not having refrigerated food products on the menu, flavor wise.)
White and brown rice
Dry beans (several varieties)
Dry peanut flour
Pasta (whatever floats your boat, but I would go for whole wheat for the fiber.)
dry barley pearls
cornstarch (You will want a thickener to go with the cheese powder, for many of the cheesy soup types, should you attempt them in the makeshift slow cooker. For example, you could use powdered milk, powdered cheese, cornstarch, and canned spinach.)
Instant potatoes
quickoats
sugar
salt
Dry fruit (for the oatmeal; try to get it with reduced sugar)

Canned vegetables:
Whole kernel corn
Peas&carrots
Potatoes
Mushrooms
Asparagus
Green Beans
Black Olives (sliced)
Tomatoes
Tomato paste
spinach (You will need the vitamins in them. Honest.)


Canned meat products:
Spam (cheap and effective)
canned ham (Useful for vegetable soups)
canned chicken (also useful for soup, but don't expect amazing flavor.)
Canned tuna

other bottled/canned items:
Vegetable oil (I'd go with avocado, despite the price)
sesame oil (don't knock what it can do for some kinds of ramen, or other pasta. A little goes a long way-- its a flavoring, not a nutrition source.)
Spices (Parsley, Curry, celery salt, etc..)
Tahini (again, it adds so much to many kinds of soup. Another flavoring; shelf stable)
Bullion (I suggest knorr, and discourage getting a knockoff here. Not if you want food you actually want to eat.)
A quality multivitamin (because you really WONT be able to have a fully and completely balanced diet with dry goods only.)

That should give you quite a wide palette to paint with, despite your restrictions. 

Some tricks can be done to heat the canned vegetables, such as heating them in their cans. (Peel the label off the can, put the whole damn can into the wide-mouth thermos, pour the hot water over the top, put the lid on. Let sit for awhile, then pour off the water, and open the can while wearing an oven mitt-- Do whatever with the heated veg. It might take more than one shot in the thermos to get the temperature you want.)

[Rolan7]

My mom pointed out that dehydrated vegetables, sold as packets for adding to soup, are nutritious and keep extremely well.
(Same stuff as in the cup noodles, just need warm water, but you can add a meaningful amount rather than a garnish)