Welcome

I'm a freshman in my second semester of college living without the meal plan. I used the meal plan in the first semester, but it was nearly impossible to eat decent food on a diet. If there was even anything nutritious on the menu for a given meal, it was probably awful. Factor in lack of variety and the probability that you are actually in the mood for whatever the dish you can eat is, and it all makes for one very poor dining experience. And the worst part: it costs $1726 per semester.

So I've ditched the meal plan, choosing instead to cook for myself. My budget: $1726 for the semester, which gives me more than $100/week for new equipment, groceries, and restaurant bills. The nearest grocery store is Bloom, a 15-minute walk down the road from my dorm. I'm also taking an above-average course load this semester, so I have restrictions on the amount of time I can devote to my cooking. Finally, I'm currently on a diet on which I'm trying to limit my calorie intake to about 1500 daily, so I also have restrictions on what I can put into my meals.

Having said that, here's what I have to work with...
I keep all of my cooking supplies in my room, along with most of my food. I wasn't using my desk anyway, so all of this used to be wasted space.

My dorm room setup

My dorm has two kitchens for 3 floors of people and each of the first floor lounges have a couple mediocre burners. I live on the first floor, so I'll be doing most of my cooking on the second floor.

Second floor kitchen

I know that most food blogs involve recipes, but I'm usually not going to do that. For one, I rarely cook with recipes, and when I do, I don't follow them very closely. I do a lot of tasting and adjusting and I just don't have the time to carefully measure and write up food amounts and cooking time. I'll usually provide an overview of what I did, though. You can always ask questions in the comment section. Also, I'm using my android phone for a camera, so the pictures will not be very high quality, as you can see.

I have several recipes that I've already cooked, so I'll be posting fairly frequently in the next few days to catch up.