Survivor: Bachelor's Island

About author / Josh Gunn

Bachelor chef; southern cooking; mixologist; university professor. Josh's recipes will delight (and sometimes terrify) you.

You're a single guy in college. Class is over. Summer has arrived and the only work you can find in your college town is part-time. You're absolutely broke and all you have in your fridge is old (and nasty-smelly) Chinese take-out and two beers. You're starving and need to eat. You open a drawer and only find packets of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise. What do you do?

Well, if you're a bachelor and have ever been in this situation, you've probably tried your hand at ketchup soup: take a bunch of packets of ketchup (ten or so), add water, heat, and serve. It tastes terrible, but it can fool your tummy that you're full. Hey bachelor: I've been there, I've done that. I understand. But I also know there are some cheap alternatives. If you're really in a pinch, ketchup soup will help you make it. So will eating the mayonnaise straight from the packet and drinking those beers. Carbs and fat are fuel. But if you can scrape up some change from beneath the couch cushions, here are some things you might create that are more filling:

1. Deluxe Ketchup Soup and Weenie Sandwiches: If you can scrape up enough change to buy a pack of cheap hotdogs (I won't disclose what's in them) and a little, one-dollar loaf of bread, here's a filling meal: boil the hot-dogs in water until heated through. Toast two pieces of bread, then slice the hot-dogs length-wise on the bread, dress with ketchup, and make a sandwich. You can sip the weenie water as a kind of soup, or add in your ketchup packets for a more robust ketchup soup.

2. Red Beans: For about four or five bucks you can make red beans and rice and feed yourself for a few days. The recipe is here.

3. Ramen: Okay, I must admit ramen noodles are nasty, but they are filling and super cheap. If you're going to be living on a small budget for weeks on end, sport the two dollars it takes to fill your entire pantry with this stuff. I first started eating ramen as a Boy Scout on backpacking trips (it's very light and easy to carry). All you do is boil water, pour over the noodles, and let them steep for a few minutes.

4. All-in-One Mac and Cheese boxes: Boxes of mac and cheese come cheap, and you'll appreciate the change-up from eating ramen noodles. When your local grocery is having a 75-cents-a-box sale on the generic mac and cheese box set, stock up. If you can afford it, buy a little bottle of hot sauce too. A little hot sauce on the mac and cheese is divine.

5. Grits: Grits are super cheap, easy to make, and very filling. One box of this stuff can sustain you for weeks—a little goes a long way. Moreover, there's a myriad of grits recipes to suit any budget. More info on grits is here.

6. Make Soup: If you know you're going to be in a super-cheap situation in the near future, make some soup and freeze it. The trick of soup, of course, is that it's mostly water---but it fools your body into thinking it's something else. So when you're starving, soup is (initially, at least) filling. There are lots and lots of soup recipes on this website, so peruse and plan ahead. I made my way through college by making a lot of soup and freezing what I couldn't eat, only to thaw it later.

The rites of bachelordom definitely include living on the cheap from time to time. A double-income puts you in another place altogether. But while you're single and on your own for the first time, sometimes food on the cheap is a necessity. If you find yourself reduced to ketchup soup, I promise: things do get better!