While a lot of students go home for the holidays, some don’t have that option or want to celebrate Thanksgiving twice: once with your families and once with your friends. Unfortunately, if you’re living in the dorms, you might feel like you have to make do with a feast of instant rice and Ramen noodles. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Below are 9 recipes that you can cook in a microwave and store in a mini fridge. Enjoy!
We’re starting with dessert, folks, because we all know what’s important here. Pumpkin pie is likely what you think of when you think Thanksgiving, excluding a certain cooked bird that we’ll get to later. With this recipe, you can cook one the way mother didn’t: in a microwave with only a half hour of prep and cook time combined. Reminder for all those on a budget, spices, pie crusts, and pie filling can be found at the Dollar Store.
While slightly less iconic than pumpkin pie, sweet potatoes are my favorite part about Thanksgiving. How could anything topped with marshmellows be bad? These candied yams only call for six, low cost ingredients and will take you just under fifteen minutes to prepare. I yam what I yam, and what I yam is impressed with this recipe.
Following its sweet cousin is the mother of all side dishes: the mashed potato. Sure, you can buy it in a box, but if you’re feeling especially domestic, there’s a microwavable recipe that uses whole potatoes and only three other ingredients.
Every recipe I’ve given you so far is pretty dry, so let’s sauce it up. With the help of a little orange rind and juice, sugar, and fresh cranberries, you can make your very own cranberry sauce. Who knows, the results may even be instagram worthy.
For our last succulently sweet recipe, we’re steering away from the normal Thanksgiving meal. Instead of making another pie–this time in apple–consider an apple crisp. It’s easier to store in your mini fridge, and you can heat it up and make it à la mode for days to come.
The next recipe is a vegetable–kind of. Well, it’s a vegetable surrounded by other, less healthy but infinitely more yummy ingredients. Not only is green bean casserole delicious, it makes the perfect leftovers if you’re not ready to go back to dorm food after the break.
This final vegetable is actually healthy, so it makes for a nice palate cleanser when you’re between your second piece of pie and your third helping of sweet potatoes. The recipe will only cost you 10 minutes of your time and has four ingredients, many of which you’ve already purchased.
This “side dish” has captured a lot of people’s hearts over the years and is infamously ranked up there with pumpkin pie. While the recipe does call for a few more ingredients than others, it’s a small price to pay for stuffing over the holidays.
I saved the best for last, and it’s the one recipe you can’t do without. Really, how can you celebrate Thanksgiving without this famous bird? Luckily for everyone out there stuck with a microwave instead of a stove, you can cook a whole turkey with what you have! The recipe only asks that you don’t try to stuff the bird before cooking it. Some concessions must be made.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! May your holidays be filled with Dollar Store pies and microwavable turkey.