You Don't Have to Be a Starving Student

I Love Food.

Or rather...

I Love GOOD Food.

Have you ever heard people talk about going to college and be a starving student. It's just one of those things people say (poor college kid, etc). Well, I have learned something about food and grocery shopping. 

Buying junk food is not cheaper than buying healthy in the long run.

Think about it. If you develop the habits now of eating junk all the time, you're going to have to pay the price of poor health and bad habits in the long run. 

But fear not! This is not a scolding post. Rather this is a tutorial on how I am eating fresh, delicious, home-cooking on a strict budget of time and money.

Welcome to my kitchen. :)

~~~

I got a crock pot for Christmas, and may I just say...that is the best thing to give a college student. The whole premise is that you make delicious food by throwing stuff in a pot and forgetting about it. All you have to do is throw the food in the pot in the morning before classes, it cooks all day, and then you just come home and scarf!

This is my tutorial on making a delicious pot roast!

Here's your grocery list:

~~ A bag of potatoes

~~ A bundle of fresh celery

~~ A bag of baby carrots or 2 or 3 large carrots

~~ An onion or a container of chopped onion

~~ A rump roast

~~ Lawry's Seasoned Salt

Just to quickly touch on the ingredients (some of my tips and tricks). Have you recently looked at the price of a 10 pound bag of potatoes? They are insanely cheap. I mean dirt cheap (pun intended)! And so versatile, you can cook billions of things with potatoes. For things like chopped onion or seasoned salt, it seems like such a rip off to buy a whole container from the seasonings section of the grocery store, but you have a few things to keep in mind. First, how often are you going to use it? They are my go-to seasonings for chicken breasts, hamburger patties, etc. So weigh those things. If you really only need enough for this one recipe, most grocery stores sell these products in little envelopes. It just takes a little searching to find where they are in the store. Now for the roast, I bought a 4 pound rump roast for between 11 and 12 dollars. It seemed really pricey for a college food budget, but there are other things to consider. When I bought mine, I went home and immediately cut the roast into four smaller roasts. Then I put them in plastic bags to store in the freezer. In this recipe coming up, I pulled one roast out and used that. The recipe produced three and a half servings for me. Meaning I had a meal and two meals in leftovers. Meaning that purchase of the roast has yielded 14 meals. Meaning, I'm okay with that purchase.

Next up, the actual recipe! Keep in mind, through this process, you really can't mess it up.

The first thing I did was take my roast from the freezer and put it in the crock pot. No, I did not thaw it, I did not put it in the refrigerator the night before, I literally opened my freezer, grabbed the roast, ripped open the bag, and dropped it in the crock pot.

Next, I washed and chopped one full celery stalk and threw it in the crock pot.

I didn't buy whole carrots, I bought baby carrots. So, I didn't measure out how many carrots I wanted. I just reached in and pulled out a handful of carrots and tossed them in too.

Next, I pulled out two potatoes, washed, peeled, and chopped them and then...you guessed it! Threw them in the crock pot.

Once I threw the potatoes in, I added a quarter cup of water to the mix.

The final step is seasoning. The first thing I sprinkled in was 2 tablespoons of chopped onions. I sprinkled it around all through the veggies. The other seasoning I used was Lawry's Seasoned Salt and just sprinkled that generously over my veggies and roast.

Once the lid is on and the dial is set to low, you pretty much just walk away and forget about it for 10 hours. It's that easy!

Now, just for your information there are a couple little variations you can try that also work well. First, if you choose to thaw the meat before hand, make sure you shave between an hour and an hour and a half off your total cook time. Second, you can also set the dial to cook the meat on high for the first hour of cooking. Also remember that if you're cooking for your entire apartment/guests and you want to cook a bigger pot roast, don't forget to increase the recipe accordingly (half a roast will have twice as much as this recipe calls for, full roast is four times as much, etc).

Once the time is up you have a succulent, moist, fall-apart, melt-in-your-mouth dinner.

Definitely disregard the chips (I had a craving) and also, I totally did not need to use that knife. I was cutting the meat with my fork. 

And you have the most delicious leftover lunch ever!! 

Try it. Critique it. Tweak it. It's so easy, even a monkey could make it. Enjoy!!