Tuna Sandwiches... the Girl Technologist way

So, as a poor graduate student, I will admit that the food I put in my mouth isn't always healthy. I try to eat healthy as much as possible... as evidenced by the assortment of fruits and vegetables in my fridge. Side note - blackberries are abundant at Walmart! Rejoice!

Anyway, so I love tuna sandwiches. So much so that I actually have a favorite brand of canned tuna... cue famous Jessica Simpson quote, if you're curious. I've found that tuna is a great way to add protein to a dorm diet that is severely lacking it, since canned tuna is already cooked, and can pretty much be added to anything. I have a small bottle of Miracle Whip in the fridge reserved solely for my tuna. Well, I had an avocado I was going to make into guacamole (see my original recipe... I found a great new shortcut for that recipe, thanks to Walmart being intuitive and selling prepackaged pico de gallo mixes), and I thought to myself, "What would be a great substitute for mayo.... AVOCADO!" So I got an idea. And I took pictures. Here are the ingredients:

1 small can of tuna, drained (they now sell small cans with pull tops, that are good for a single serving... GREAT for the dorm)
Miracle Whip
Brown mustard (optional)
Avocado
Bacon bits (optional)
Lettuce (optional)
Bread (definitely not optional)


Directions:

1. Empty the tuna and bacon bits into a bowl, and mix with just a bit of mayo - enough to get the mixture wet, but don't put a lot. We want the main wet ingredient to be the avocado... it's way healthier.

2. In another bowl, mash up the avocado as finely as needed. Here I'm using only 1/4th of the avocado, but use more if you prefer your sandwich to be more moist.

3. Combine mashed avocado and tuna mixture - if you need a little more moisture, add a dab more mayo, or avocado if you're feeling up to that.


4. Once well mixed, place mixture on the bread. Here you can add lettuce, tomato, pickles, whatever you want. I had lettuce on hand, but if I had had some slices of tomato, I would have put that on too.


5. Add the mustard, if you want any, to the other piece of bread. A little brown mustard goes a long way!

6. ENJOY!

Easy & Cheap Microwave Popcorn

So I know, what's easier than buying prepackaged microwave popcorn, unwrapping the plastic and nuking it for 3.5 minutes? Well, although that's really easy, if you have an underpowered dorm microwave, you might have some problems. For example, you might end up with a bag of half-burned popcorn and a lot of unpopped kernels in the bottom. Or, if you're like me, you end up with way too much popcorn for just one person! The amount of fat and other crap in a bag of buttered microwave popcorn is not good, especially when you're eating ramen all the time - cutting back where you can is good.

This recipe enables you to pop an individual serving of popcorn, in only about 2 minutes, with few to no unpopped kernels. It also allows you to butter and season it anyway you like.

You need:
Popping corn that comes in a jar
Paper lunch bags
Tape
Spray butter if you're going for minimal butter, or melt your own regular butter
Any salt/seasonings you like.

Directions:
1. Open the bag up and unfold it so there's as much room as possible inside.

2. Pour approximately 3 tablespoons worth of corn into the bag

3. Fold the top of the bag over once, about half an inch down, then fold over again and tape closed. (Make sure the bag still has that unfolded look)

4. Place the bag on its biggest side (area-wise) in the microwave

5. Microwave on high for 1.5-2.5 minutes, and wait till the popping slows to about 4-5 sec between each pop.

6. Tear off the top of the bag, spray/pour your butter and seasonings in, give it a few tosses, and you're good to go!

Microwave Chocolate Cake

So, this is my recipe for a single serving of chocolate cake, prepared in the microwave. If you've had those Betty Crocker microwaveable cakes, you'll know what I'm talking about. But this recipe is way better!

The original recipe calls for a mug, but I've found making it in a small microwaveable bowl (like a ceramic cereal bowl) works best. The idea is to make them as a gift by combining the dry ingredients in baggies, and finding a cute microwaveable mug to put the baggies in and give as gifts. So that's why the recipe calls for a LOT of the dry ingredients... I went out and bought the dry ingredients, mixed them, and have been saving them in a ziplock bag, scooping out as I go.

Ingredients:

Dry
1 box cake mix (any flavor you like - try Dark Chocolate)
1 small box instant pudding mix (any flavor you like - try Devils Food)
These will provide about 7-8 servings of cake.

Wet
1 egg white
1 tbsp water
1 tbsp oil

Icing - optional
1/4th of a Hershey's bar (3 of those tiny little rectangles)

Directions:
1. Premix the dry ingredients first... Pour them into a gallon-sized ziploc bag and toss for a good 3-5 minutes. You'll know when it's well mixed because the jello mix particles are more granular than the cake mix. Make sure it's evenly mixed.

2. Combine the wet ingredients in a separate container (not the one you'll be zapping). I've used disposable paper bowls, and plastic cups. Mix well! This is very crucial!

3. Combine 1/2 cup of the dry mixture to the wet mixture (in the secondary container) and mix till there are very few if any lumps and it's an even consistency.

4. Spray the inside of your bowl with cooking spray and then dump your cake batter into the bowl - mixing before dumping into the bowl helps reduce the mess because you won't have to scrub your ceramic bowl out as hard when you're done.

5. Microwave on high, uncovered, between 1 and 2 minutes, depending on how powerful your microwave is. Mine is an 800 watt dorm microwave and I end up cooking about 1:40-1:45.

6. As soon as the cooking has ended, add your pieces of Hershey bar to the top and let stand for another 1.5 minutes. This will allow the chocolate to melt, and your bowl to cool a bit.

7. Spread the chocolate around on top of the cake and enjoy warm straight out of the bowl!

Variations:
- Try adding different things on top of the cake or into the batter to marble the flavor in. I've tried peanut butter, Rollos, and marshmallows. All have been yummy!
- You can use whatever flavor cake and jello mix you want. If you want to go for a white or yellow cake, use white or yellow cake mix with vanilla instant pudding, or any combination of flavors you can imagine.

Introduction

Welcome to The Frugal Dorm Life!

My name is GT - a first year graduate student who has 4 full years of dorm life behind her and another 1.5 years to look forward to!

This blog will be mostly recipes and frugal strategies for living so that you as a college student can learn get better at stretching your dollar, no matter where that dollar's coming from. We all need to buy the fun stuff once in a while (I just splurged on a new computer because the one I had when I started college was dying), so I want to pass on some of the tricks I've used over the years to save up for the fun purchases! Feel free to post recommendations or requests, and email me anything cool and new you come across.