Mine isn’t really a “Meal”, I used to put margarine spread on white bread and sprinkle a tiny bit of cinnamon and sugar on it as a sweet treat growing up.
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Lentils. They’re a superfood. Cook them with correct technique (hardly any technique needed, honestly) and season them properly
Egg noodles butter and worcestershire sauce
Savory oatmeal.
Rolled oats with cold soy milk. Microwave 2-3 mins. Add chilli oil, spice paste, or ramen seasoning.
Tasty and not unhealthy. The plan is to prevent unhealthy food leading to a negative feedback loop.
Mine was to grab a big bag of the cheapest rice at the Asian supermarket and a bulk bag of black beans. Cook rice and beans then mix with soy sauce/black pepper. If I had eggs I would add a fried egg for breakfast or hard boiled for lunch / dinner.
While the stove was broken I would poke holes in potatoes with a fork and microwave them until soft. Salt & pepper or whatever seasoning you had. Butter was a great addition to this if it was around.
For a side dish or snack I would often do ramen coleslaw. Smash up the ramen noodles and pour over a whole bag of Cole slaw. Pour the seasoning packet on top of that. Toast almond slivers then at the end add some sesame oil to warm up the oil. Pour the almonds and oil into the slaw and mix.
I once made “Povery rolls”
I took every last scrap of leftover food, all the half bags of frozen veggies and so on from the freezer. Defrosted it all, put it in a stock pot and cooked it till it was a thick stew moved it to a giant bowl and went buck wild with the electric mixer then threw in about 4kg of self raising flour and water. The dough tasted ok, but then I did the same thing with the spice rack… stock cubes, french soup mix… the works. They tasted odd. But I rested the dough, divided them up and baked them anyways.
Fuuuuuuuck they were amazing. They tasted like a family sunday roast dinner flavored heavy doughy roll. It made about 50 of them. I scoured the house for change and found enough to go grab a decent sized packet of powdered gravy mix.
I was genuinely sad when I used the last ones.
Toast two slices. Slice of cheese between. Microwave 12 seconds to melt cheese a little. Hate waiting for toasters though,
I once ate nothing but eggs and rice for 3 months. Rice too slow. Another time I bought a 9-pound sack of roasted, unsalted cashews at wholesale, and ate only that until it was gone. Interesting pale results in the bathroom on that one.
I made the first one for my mom when I was like 7-8 years old and it blew my moms mind that I figured it out before her, lol I called it a “ghetto grilled cheese” and it’s legit a staple of her diet still 20 years later. I only “discovered” it because I wasn’t allowed to use the stove.
Cup of steamed rice. Small tin of tuna - I like the lemon and cracked pepper ones. Splash of soy sauce. 30 seconds in the microwave.
I dry nori sheets out, crush them up and put them in an old pepper mill. Few grinds into a bowl of tuna and rice with a splash of soy and its a ghetto sushi bowl.
Not foodie, so I just eat whatever takes the least time and mess to make. The toaster takes too long for me. Fold a slice of cheese in a piece of bread in under one minute!
I once ate nothing but eggs and rice all day for 3 months. (Took too long to cook rice.) Another time I bought a 9-pound sack of unsalted but roasted cashews and ate nothing else until it was gone in a couple weeks. (Interesting, pale results in the bathroom from that one.)
If you live near or attend a large university, the real struggle meal is just food from free events on campus.
When I was a grad student I’d show up to every event on campus where I knew there’d be food and fill up a Tupperware or two. Didn’t matter if it was connected to my department or not.
The rule was if you wanted the grad students to come to a talk you had to put out little cubes of cheese.
Seminar and BEvERages provided
Unrelated: I used to go to tech meetups in my city fairly often. There was one guy who always seemed to be there just for the food. I only knew him by his username (‘Lex R’ - a programming pun) and never talked to him. Tall skinny dude; if I had to guess, I’d say he was around 50ish.
Every meetup without fail, this guy ate so much pizza. One time I counted 11 slices. He also drank at least a 2L of soda - didn’t matter if it was diet or regular, he drank it. About 10 minutes before the meetup ended, he’d put a bunch of leftover slices in a pizza box to take with him. And he had a bottle of some kind in his bag that he’d pour the dregs of all the soda bottles into, and would take that with him too. It was weird because it was a tech meetup, presumably most people were making at least 6 figures.
Until today I had never considered that this might be his only source of food.
Great M.O. that. Why waste time cooking instead of learning? Bet he took that pizza home to watch History Channel.
Scramble some eggs plain and mix into rice and some canned corn. Butter + Sriracha + soy/tamari . We call it “bachelor stir-fry” and it’s especially good if you can get your paws on some sesame oil!
A former partner taught me that a drop or two of sesame oil in most things give a nice umami kick.
Cook 2 bags of ramen and strain it. Add a can of tomato soup and some cheddar. I like to call them regrettios.
2nd up is ghetto pizzas. Make some toast put on tomato sauce and cheese also pepperoni if you can afford it
Tortillas. Just tortillas. Warmed over a gas burner. It’s a comfort food to me now, but there was a time when all I had was tortillas, and it tastes better than my other struggle meal, which was a single cup of rice with whatever spices I had on hand and hadn’t put on the previous day. I lost a lot of weight around then. Still haven’t fully gained it back ten plus years later, and still struggle eating regularly more than once or twice a day.
Once or twice a day is plenty imo, as long as you’re getting enough caloric/nutritional value at those meals and aren’t underweight like you said. I’m the same way. Just don’t be too hard on yourself.
“stuggle” ?
damn its been like that all day and you’re the first person to point it out.
One might say it was quite a stuggle.
Fried chick peas (I use cans since they’re more convenient, but even cheaper dried beans are fine too but you have to soak for 24h and then boil them first). But either way, seriously cheap, loaded with protein and fiber, and delicious:
Rinse beans and dump into a large dry pan on high heat. Move them around until they have mostly dried up and just barely start sticking to the pan. Then add oil - just once or twice around the pan is plenty - and some salt. Then let them fry in that little bit of oil. Move them with a spoon every so often to keep from sticking too much.
After about 15 min you have these golden brown crunchy and slightly salty little things. They’re great, and go with everything as a side dish.
Rice and black eyed peas, cooked with some millet leaves for color. Fry slices of onion in about 1 T of oil and pour it over the top. Then sprinkle a mix of fine crushed red pepper, bullion, and salt over it.
Most of West Africa has this in one form or another on the regular.
