At first when cutting over to The Cheap Founder Life I found that I ate worse -- cheap frozen stuff, canned stuff and so on. Now I'm pretty sure that I eat better than before since I've gotten even cheaper and started cooking everything.
Fried rice (with veggies and egg), vegetarian jambalaya, pasta with a bunch of stuff added to generic sauce (beans, carrots, peppers), chicken noodle soup or gumbo (you can make enough to eat for 3 days in one go). It's seriously pretty easy to get your food costs south of $3 a day and to eat actual good food. You get fast at it too -- I can do most of the kitchen time on those things in about 20-ish minutes.
When both I and my wife were working full-time, we routinely ate frozen dinners not wanting to spend our precious free time cooking. Since I've been laid-off, I started cooking dinners for us soon afterward and haven't looked back. I don't know how much money we are saving, if any, but the quality is just so much better (at least I think so). This just feels closer to the way life ought to be.
Our ramen was rice and beans. In fact the rice and beans I used to make during Viaweb became the basis of the dishes we make for founders at YC dinners. (I say we because we now have a cook make the dinners, but I made them for the first 7 cycles.)
Rice & Beans For 2n
olive oil or butter
n yellow onions
3n cloves garlic
n 12-oz cans Goya white beans
n cubes Knorr beef bouillon
n teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
3n teaspoons cumin
n cups rice, preferably sushi rice
Put rice in rice cooker. Add water as specified on rice package. (Default: 2 cups water per cup of rice.) Turn on rice cooker and forget about it.
Chop onions and fry in oil, over fairly low heat, till glassy. Put in chopped garlic, pepper, cumin, and a little more fat, and stir. Keep heat low. Cook another 2 or 3 minutes, then add beans (don't drain the beans), and stir. Throw in the bouillon cube(s), cover, and cook on lowish heat for at least 10 minutes more. Stir vigilantly to avoid sticking.
While not only delicious, one reason Rice & beans is preferable to Ramen is that it is a complete protein[1], "a source of protein that contains an adequate proportion of all of the essential amino acids for the dietary needs of humans" [2].
I remember reading about a startup that produced a cookbook for startups out of their experience. Unfortunately I couldn't find the reference, but I wouldn't mind hearing what others have come up with.
Or allow a little bit of sticking at the end and add some white wine to unstick (deglaze) the sticky stuff. Cook away at least half of the wine you added. This little flourish always adds good flavors.
