got any food hacks?
btilly: The trick is called advance planning.Similar to the "whole bunch of meals" I remember a fellow grad student who would cook a large dish every Sunday, then parcel it out into meal sized portions which he would then freeze.  He always had meals from multiple weeks in there, so he could microwave chili, lasagna, stew, etc, whatever he felt like.He did this with a normal sized freezer, but it was a well organized one.Personally I'm fond of pancakes.  I always cook more than I need, put the excess in the fridge, then microwave one when I want a pancake.  See http://www.recipefiles.org/view_user.php?user=ben_tilly for some of the pancake recipes I make.  Particularly with the buttermilk, I find that the pan gets hot in the same time it takes me to make the batter, and cooking from scratch tastes a lot better.You'll also find there something called "Daddy's chicken".  I do that as a marinade in the fridge.  Many marinades are surprisingly fast to cook.  You just prepare them, let them sit in the fridge, then the next day pop them into an oven and come back when they are done.  Sure, it takes 40 minutes to an hour of cooking time.  But that is wall time, not your time.