Eating healthy may sound intimidating to all of us amateur cooks out there. It may also seem expensive on top of all the textbook rentals a student goes through in a semester but with a little planning you can eat healthy and pass your classes on a budget.

Try and make your meals as much as possible. The practice of eating out for lunch daily can add up fast, especially on a student budget.

Meal prepping as a student is more simple and affordable than you think. If you’re new to meal prep, try out this easy recipe. It requires little to no tools and cooking time.

You will need: a bag of pre-washed salad greens, raisins, nuts, leftover chicken, vinaigrette, a medium and small size reusable plastic containers.

Distribute your greens into a number of reusable plastic containers. For example, if you have a Monday through Thursday schedule on campus distribute the greens into four containers. Then add in a spoonful of raisins, or any choice of your dried fruit into each of the containers of salad.

Repeat the same process with the nuts and the leftover chicken. Finally pour a tablespoon of vinaigrette into an equal amount of small containers.

By keeping your vinaigrette in a separate container, you prevent your salad from wilting when lunchtime arrives. With this recipe there is very little prep time involved.

The leftover chicken serves as a form of protein within the salad and is a great way of using leftovers as an updated lunch. The chicken can easily be replaced with boiled eggs.

It can even be replaced with tofu for those who are vegan or vegetarian. The addition of protein, nuts and fruit are all optional but is strongly recommended because a boring salad is an unappetizing salad.

When you add in more ingredients to a salad you add in more texture and flavors.

Buying a lot of these ingredients may seem costly at first but is cheaper long term. Pre-made salads can cost more than five dollars and consuming them per day takes a lot out of a student’s budget.

Meal planning doesn’t have to be boring.