Cooking takes time, and college students don’t have many minutes to spare.

Midterms are here, and there’s not a lot of flexibility in your schedule to eat good food, let alone prepare it.

Don’t waste your money or your health getting takeout or eating packaged foods. Instead, invest in freezable containers or freezer bags.

Soups usually freeze well and defrost and reheat decently, as do casseroles, pasta dishes and breads.

You can basically eat out of your freezer for a week from the items you prepared over the weekend.

Cooking in advance will buy you time. You don’t wash an outfit right before you wear it, so why would you cook every one of your meals separately when you could stock up? Think of cooking day like laundry day.

With the cold weather coming up, soups are great to warm you up and give you hearty nutrients that will help you sustain through the winter. But, making a huge pot of soup for one bowl seems like a waste. If you split the leftover soup up into serving-size containers, you can reheat them throughout the week or even month, giving you a little extra time to keep working on that research paper all while enjoying your delicious cooking.

Breakfast is possibly the most skipped meal. Many people I personally know skip this all-important meal. Even though cereal is one of the easiest things to make, with three steps: put in bowl, add milk and eat, it can get boring very quickly. Last spring, I made pancakes at 1 a.m. — the only time I had available — just so I could have breakfast for the next few weeks. And it worked. I portioned out three or four little cakes into each freezable sandwich bag. Not only did I look forward to my chocolate banana pancakes every morning, I actually started looking forward to my 9 a.m. class.

Below is a recipe for those same pancakes.
Some professionals would want you to let the cakes cool before freezing or even put them between sheets of wax paper, but I just throw them into a sandwich bag and that works out just as well.

Chocolate Banana Pancakes

2 c. of regular, everyday flour
3 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
¼ c. sugar
2 eggs
2 Tbsp. oil
1 c. milk
2 bananas
½ a regular bar of chocolate or ¼ c when chopped

Equipment:
Mixing bowl
Serving spoon or cooking spoon, or largest spoon you have
Knife
Larger pan or griddle (non-stick if you have it)
Spatula (without holes if you have it)
Cooking spray
Plate


Mix together all the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder and sugar. Make sure you really get the baking powder throughout all the mixture otherwise you could run into a clump of it later and that tastes nasty.

Mix in the wet ingredients: eggs, oil and milk. Crack the eggs into a separate bowl first. It’s easier to pick out any little shell fragments that somehow get into your mixture this way.

Don’t over-mix the batter. You want some small lumps, not huge ones.

Chop the bananas either into dice-sized chunks or slices as thick as two or three stacked poker chips. Chop the chocolate into smaller chunks. You really can’t slice chocolate squares, but if you can you either have more patience than I do or your knives are better than mine.

Stir bananas and chocolate into batter to ensure banana and chocolatey goodness in each spoonful.

Spray your pan or griddle with the cooking spray. Even if you have non-stick cookware, it’s better to give your cooking surface a little help.

Heat the pan/griddle over medium to medium-high heat.

Flick a bit of water on the surface. If the water dances, it’s perfect. If the water screeches, it’s too hot. If it just sits there, it’s not hot enough.

Spoon about three tablespoons of batter on the surface. When the batter starts to bubble and the edges look dry compared to the rest, it’s time to flip. Test one cake before you flip it by peeking underneath it. If it’s golden brown, flip that bad boy. If not, let it sit.
When the other side of the cake is brown, take it off and start making your stack on the plate.

Repeat until all of your batter is gone.

Divide leftovers into 3-4 cakes per bag and toss them in the freezer. They usually keep for about a month or two before you start realizing they taste a little off.

Microwave them on a plate, out of the bag, for about 45 seconds, and then flip them and put them back in for another 30 seconds. They will be delicious and you’ll not only be happy with the yumminess in your tummy; you’ll be happy enough to actually get yourself to class.

All comments are moderated before being published. We will not edit your comments, but we also will not approve those that are abusive, off-topic, attack another poster or contain information we know to be libelous or false.

During peak weekday viewing times, most comments will be reviewed within six hours. For more detailed information, click here.

After submitting your comment, check below for a confirmation message.

• Your name:
• Enter text from image:
  

• Your comment:

* 300-character count. HTML formatting will not display.