In the words of the aptly-named "yumyum" website (www.yumyum.com): "You wake up at 7.45 a.m. for an 8 a.m. class, take notes until 3 p.m., and study until dinner. It's 6.30 p.m. now, there's nothing to eat, and you are meeting someone at the library at 7.30 p.m. But wait - there is chicken in the fridge and rice in the cupboard; add some steamed carrots and you have an inexpensive, gourmet meal in about 30 minutes.

"Most cookbooks will tell you that it takes time and energy to prepare an elegant meal. Forget it! Cooking a good-tasting meal can be easy, fast and does not even require much planning. While students do not have much time to shop for food or prepare meals, they can make good tasting food."

If you don't fancy chicken with steamed carrots (haven't tried it, but sounds pretty bland), you can always opt for the spicier 10-minute Szechuan chicken. Reading the list of ingredients, which includes chicken breasts, cornstarch (that's cornflour to us), garlic, white-wine vinegar, cayenne pepper and green onions, it would seem to be outside the range of most student cuisine. However, if your cupboard extends to the ingredients (or you can persuade your parents to part with them), then the cooking instructions are simple and the meal is only 221 calories per serving.

For students to whom pasta is still an exotic dish, try the "Idiot's Guide" provided in www.campusaccess.com. It sagely advises: "Always boil the water first and then add your pasta. Never put your pasta in cold water and wait for it to cook. You will end up with the sorriest excuse for pasta you have ever seen. Add a little oil and salt to your water so that the pasta does not stick together when it cooks."

Having absorbed that advice, you can move on to cook up some leek broccoli penne ("very tasty and healthy") or linguine with chicken in tomato garlic sauce.

Four American graduate students (Sarah, Kim, Felecia, and Diana, at the University of Wisconsin) have put together a website based on the idea that everybody has two favourite meals that they can prepare quickly. If these are shared, there will be fewer hungry students disconsolately roaming college campuses.

Their recipes, nicely presented on a background that mimics a jotter, can be found under the colleges website (www.sit.wisc.edu/~elgersma).

If you're floundering in the sea of websites thrown up by your search, it's hardly surprising, as the virtual shelf of cookbooks seems limitless, ranging from ancient Roman recipes to entomological recipes, to the more mundane Campbell's kitchen recipe box.

Students hoping third level will bring romance as well as reading might like to try some of the recipes detailed on the aphrodisiac dishes website (ww.santesson.com/recept). See below for more details. Naturally, all recipes serve two people.

And if you want to impress the foreign students in your class by demonstrating your cultural culinary knowledge, then there are shamrock-bedecked websites which will point you in the direction of coddle or Irish stew. www.irelandnow.com includes herb dumpling stew, Irish roast pork and potato cakes.

Colcannon, soda bread, Irish toffee, and Irish moss jelly all feature on www.swv.ie/recipes. The jelly requires 15g of Irish moss, one pint of water, half a glass of sherry, some lemon juice and sugar (just like your mother makes it!). The site also sells paintings by Roger, from Blackrock, Co Dublin, who is pictured in his bβinin cardigan, smiling hopefully at would-be customers.

Of course, the advantage of searching for that perfect recipe on the web (Roger's bβinin aside) is that almost every college offers web access to its students. So there's no need to spend your hard-earned cash buying a cookbook. Simply print out the recipe, shop on the way home, and then cook.

If you aren't cash-strapped or have a shared weekly kitty, you can even order groceries online from supermarkets such as Tesco (www.tesco.ie) or Superquinn (www.buy4now.ie). The downside is that there is a delivery fee and the service only extends to certain areas.

The Unofficial College Diet (www.geocities.com/TheTropics/8252/diet) paints a more realistic picture of student dietary habits. It lists five food groups. Group one (the sugar group) is usually found in vending machines (chocolate bars and fizzy drinks). The site does note this group "can also be found in the breakfast cereals, when we can afford them".

Group two (the salt group) is most notably found in McDonald's food, ramen noodles and crisps.

Group three (the fat or greasy group) can be easily accessed in fast food, pizza, snacks. Group four (the caffeine group) comes mostly from drinks such as Red Bull and coffee.

Group five (the alcohol group) is "usually found in liquid form, but have been known to found in the form of jello shots". Don't ask me - this is an American site.