P.P.S. One more quick meal formula. This one is actually my favorite in terms of time, nutrition, and budget: brown rice and lentils with roasted vegetables.

P.P.S. One more quick meal formula. This one is actually my favorite in terms of time, nutrition, and budget: brown rice and lentils with roasted vegetables. Rice and lentils can be stored dry for months, and lentils (unlike other beans) can be cooked without soaking them first. If you always have rice and lentils on hand, you're always halfway to a decent meal. Cook the rice and lentils however you like; there are a million ways to do it. You can even just cook the rice and lentils together in a pot and rely on the roasted vegetables to provide all the flavor. Roasting vegetables is extremely fun and satisfying for two reasons: 1) It's by far the simplest and laziest way to prepare vegetables. Roasting makes stir-frying look like railroad chain gang work. 2) You can roast damn near anything. Potatoes, carrots, onions, cauliflower, broccoli, asparagus, garlic, Brussels sprouts, fennel, endives.... Here's a short (2:25) video telling you absolutely everything you need to know to start roasting vegetables: http://www.chow.com/videos/show/all/12072/how-to-roast-vegetables-with-lisa-jervis http://www.chow.com/videos/show/all/12072/how-to-roast-veget... You can get fancier than that, but you might never want to.