Time and money. As students, we have little of either, so it isn’t surprising that many of us leapfrog from slices of pizza to bags of chips in order to fuel our late-night dates with Descartes. It also can be tiring to eat Ferris pasta every day of the week if you’re on a meal plan.

How much time, money, and effort does it take to produce the satisfaction of tummy and mind that comes with a meal made from scratch? Last weekend I decided to grab some chicken and find out.

I stumbled across a recipe online for a stew that requires (in addition to a feathered friend) only a can of peeled tomatoes, an onion, a few cloves of garlic, and some white wine. Most of these items are pretty cheap, but I should utter a brief word of caution on the subject of meat: If you’re looking for the kind of poultry whose producers have a conscience, you should be prepared to throw down. I’m talking $16 for two large, USDA organic chicken breasts. Thanks to the inexpensiveness of the other ingredients, though, being eco-friendly is still relatively budget-friendly. Once in the kitchen, most of the work involved chopping and dumping materials into their respective pots, pans, and dishes.

In addition to the chicken stew I sautéed asparagus with basil and oven-cooked garlic potatoes. It was so easy that I might have been bored, had it not been for my self-proclaimed “kitchen-clueless” friend Sarah, who hovered over my shoulder gasping things like, “Why are those potatoes purple?!” and “Why would you ever put wine in food?!” in true TV-sitcom fashion.

The whole production took about an hour and 45 minutes and cost around $26 (three people, multiple servings, plenty of leftovers). My friends and I lingered over the meal for over an hour, disappointed when we finally became full. Though too time-consuming to be a nightly affair, we agreed that we should indulge this homey craving more often. As precious as our minutes and dollars might be, this is something worth splurging on every once in a while, especially when the splurge is under $30 and could lead to one of the best meals you’ll have all semester.