meals when you're a homeless bum !! <3

This is going to be UK-specific because I know that a lot of Americans can't afford fresh vegetables as easy as us. But I'm sure you can find canned alternatives to whatever I'm about to say. My credentials are that I live paycheck-to-paycheck in a crashpad and have done so for a month & a half, having almost never ordered out, so I relied on my own cooking abilities. I earn atrociously-low money due to only working part-time and 0 hours, usually under £200pm, and I've applied for UC. I do shoplift, which has enabled me to get things like meat, eggs, seafood, and spices more regularly, but do this at your own risk.

For cooking gear, I'm crashing at somebody else's place so this isn't gonna be very applicable to those who are sleeping rough or have otherwise very limited access to a kitchen. I suggest looking in your local area for cooking clubs or programmes, or a Local Crisis and Prevention Fund from your council (I know mine does). This will be a one-off voucher of £50 for a company that you'll have no restrictions on using. 

General ingredients to grab:

• Seasonings

1. While at first, you're gonna be intimidated by how many you'd want to get and the prices adding up, it's important to note that you'll only be replenishing these a few times a year altogether, and you can stretch them out by cooking foods that don't require loads of seasoning, like omelettes on toast, or pasta recipes. 
2. Paprika, garlic/onion powder, pepper, salt, cumin, coriander, aromatics like ginger, spring onions are good ones to have, and if you're cooking with a region-specific flavour profile in mind, it's good to research beforehand what you're most likely to be using all the time. Korean food for example demands a lot of gochujang, a lot of sweet bean paste, garlic, honey and sesame oil - and you can apply it to other countries close by like China due to overlapping culinary tastes, such as the use of sesame oil in their cooking as well.

• Meats

1. Meat is very expensive, and I completely understand not wanting to purchase much. I'm not vegan, but the truth is a lot of "student-friendly" meals are like vegan or vegetarian by default, because vegetables are much cheaper than meat. 
2. I offset this by looking for the yellow-label in shops (don't be grossed out - unless it pongs it's good to eat but obviously make your own judgements), such as Aldi and Lidl, and chucking them in the freezer. I let it thaw by exposing it to hot water - like running the package under the tap. Don't waste water by washing your chicken. It doesn't fucking "clean" bacteria, any better than putting it in incredibly hot oil will.
3. Minced stuff! Please. Consider it an investment to buy it, don't make it a regular thing. 
4. If you're up for it, looking for offcuts or leftovers from the butchers' will also help, and you can learn more about cooking when you come across cuts or offal that you're not used to preparing.
5. Lumping this in with seafood as well, as freshly-caught fish or whole fish can get expensive quickly - I try to buy canned of various types, as it prevents me from having to use loads of my own pantry to make a meal. Mackerel in tomato sauce, infused tuna, whatever. If you're worried about a bad taste, you can go fancy with it, but for me, I just eat to fuel myself sometimes and that means me sticking tomato mackerel on top of freshly-cooked pasta. A tin can go for 50p depending on where you shop - avoid branded tins, obviously.

• Fruits and vegetables

1. Shop in-season for a lot of these, or otherwise get preservatives like jam or canned goods, because it'll save you money. If you want to get more exotic foods but struggle to get it often, this will be a lifesaver. I'm happy that mangoes are slightly more affordable with this, because if not, I'd die. 
2. I don't have much to say here because vegetables as a whole are very cheap, supermarkets will have "Naturally finest" or whatever the fuck labels to make the prices higher - go for the dodgiest-looking vegetable boxes as a result. Potatoes are your BEST FRIEND. You can prepare them in so many ways. It's so amazing.
3. As a ground rule - carrots, onions, potatoes. If you don't have anything else, you have them. You can be helped by them when making certain cuisines - to make mirepoix, the French flavour base, you need 2 parts onions, 1 part carrots and 1 part celery cooked in butter until soft. For soffrito, the Italian one, you can swap out butter for olive oil. To make the Cajun Holy Trinity, swap out carrots for bell peppers.

Olive oil is great for pasta and other dishes, but the mafia have made it ludicrously expensive. You're gonna wanna consider this another investment. I'm probably gonna get Canaan olive oil on my next paycheck, since I think the flavour and quality of Palestinian olive oil is worth it. A bottle is roughly £30- 20 depending on what flavour or type you're getting, and if you go Zaytoun they're currently doing a sale of 1L for 23.60,  but otherwise you're gonna have to be careful about what you're getting if you use olive oil regularly. Vegetable oil is relatively inexpensive, so you can always opt for that. 

Butter is amazing for richer taste, but it also has a crazy low smoke point! That means the alarm gets set off fast and you're better off cooking whatever it is low & slow. Butter is also mad expensive, but given how long it can last when you're just using it for toast, I think it's worth it. 

Stock up on instant noodles - they are your saving grace, since they're a very inexpensive food and you therefore have a lot of room to play around with new recipes, and "levelling up" your ramen is an easy way to learn more cooking skills. Don't solely rely on them however - your gut will curse you. You will learn very fast which combos agree or not agree with you. On a similar note, eat grains like porridge/oats, since they're very cheap (38p at Aldi) and will make you full for a long time, and the fibre content is also great. Be wary of branded stuff that'll advertise "multigrain" and other seemingly-healthy stuff. You'll most likely see it on cereal since that's the sugariest, most "unhealthy" kind of breakfast, but know it's all BS.

After that long-winded introduction, here are a couple of meals I've cooked to stay sane. Use this for inspo. Mind, my grocery list makes me live well beyond my means, so I end up eating 1 meal a day and being very sedentary to compensate for it. If you're salaried and have set shifts and work full time, please don't be afraid to eat more. Protein is vital, fats are vital, don't discount these.

Courgette and bean pasta:

I cooked this with smoked mackerel from Morrisons that I got for just under £3, and I made enough to last 2 days (again, I eat 1 meal a day usually). You can obviously skip the fish!

You'll need:

- Half, or a quarter, or any amount you'd want of courgettes/zucchinis.

- Pasta (duh). If you want a guess on portion sizes, grab a fistful and then add a couple extra pieces. Depends on how long you want it to last.

- A spoonful of tomato paste. You can use fresh tomatoes (chopped, 2) instead, but you'd have to fry those and it would take longer to cook. This is just for flavour imo, since I think it didn't add much to it but it's pasta so you gotta add tomatoes innit?

- Chicken stock cube. Another investment but cmon everything is

- tinned butter beans

- you can also add onions to the frying stage to sweat them but I didn't do that and only realised onions would slap when i WAS COOKING THE PASTA

Chop up the courgettes into pieces and fry them in vegetable oil at a low heat for (I'd say) 15-ish minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the beans, garlic if you have any (BUY GARLIC) and cook it for another few minutes on higher heat until fragrant? And then add enough water to fill the pan and add a stock cube of any kind (you don't need chicken flavour this is just to distract from the fact that you are having nothing but water beans pasta and maybe garlic). Add pasta once it boils, and salt the water until your instincts say NO. Once it's soft, it's pretty much ready. I wanted a creamier texture so I boiled half a potato and mashed it with a spoonful of yoghurt instead of adding heavy cream because I can't afford it without losing bus travel money, but that option is there. Season however you like btw.

Ramen and egg - very self-explanatory. Ramen recipes are a go-to. Just fry whatever, like onions or tomatoes, or add cream cheese, or kraft cheese, and it tastes a million times better. Again though, your gut. Think about what brands you'd snag.

Tinned fish On Toast

- bread

- you don't need a toaster technically, just access to oil and a pan and toast on both sides innit

- Your fave tinned fish. I prefer sardines plain for this one.

- if you wanna get fancy you can add a drizzle of yoghurt or olive oil and place it under the sardines

- sauce of your choosing (ketchup is demonic but whatever floats your boat).

Just know that you're most likely gonna come across a tin with bones, so strip them of bones first if you're uncomfortable with that.

Tuna Rice

- tinned tuna, drain it, season with mayo and eat over a bed of rice. to cook rice, you'll need to wash it until the water runs clear, put it in a pot of water and make sure the water reaches past your fingertips from the rice.  boil it! put a lid over it for like 10 minutes or until you feel it's enough. then drain.

salçalı yoğurtlu makarna

It's a turkish thing. I'm not turkish so idk if I'm gonna kill anybody with how I cook it. It's got garlic mashed and mixed with salted yoghurt, and added to pasta after frying some tomato sauce with chilli. it's good.