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Struggle Meals: Your New Fave Cooking Network

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at MTSU chapter.

Short-form cooking videos are bigger than ever right now. I’d even say they’re the “cat videos” of today! However, a lot of them have expensive ingredients and not much bang for your buck. They’re often focused on being Instagram-able, rather than being nutritious and cheap. As college students, those two things are very important for our survival! This is where Struggle Meals comes in! 

Struggle Meals is a series in the network Tastemade. Tastemade is an online video network revolving around food. You can see all of their videos on YouTube or directly on their website. Struggle Meals is hosted by Chef Frankie Celenza and is practically made for college students (with access to a kitchen). In each episode, Frankie makes three different meals, each of which are nutritious and under $2 per serving! Each episode is centered around one ingredient or idea. These episodes focus on things such as brunch, cauliflower, travel foods, and sweet potatoes. 

Besides just offering recipes, money saving food tips and general cooking advice are abundant in each episode. This includes buying dry beans, buying in bulk, how to cut onions, using spices in place of other flavorings, and how to transform basic foods into something you’d get at a restaurant for $15! 

I know not everyone in dorms has access to a kitchen, so I will be releasing a few short articles with some tips and recipes you can make with a mini-fridge and microwave.

If you want to check out struggle meals, the link is below. If you take anything from the videos, let it be to always save your restaurant sauce packets for a packet drawer.

https://www.tastemade.com/shows/linear-struggle-meals

I am the President of MT Lambda, the LGBT+ organization at MTSU. I study Biology and Nutrition and Food Science! I'm not a writer, but I have a lot of feelings and writing about them seems to do some good. I also love cooking, so I'm always excited to share my experiences with food!