The other night I ate paste — not pasta, paste. It was pretty good — cheap, easy to make and very filling. And as a college student without a meal plan, these are all very important elements.

That night, I looked in my refrigerator and saw the grilled chicken from the night before — flecks of brown still stuck to the dried skin because I concocted my own marinade with cinnamon and brown sugar. With a good drenching of ketchup, it had not tasted bad the first time around, but it had definitely not been great.

Besides the chicken, I had carrots, lettuce, apples, bread, peanut butter, cereal and home-made cookies — college food minus the ramen noodles and mac and cheese. Then I saw, tucked into the back corner of the fridge, a leftover container of refried black beans. Not only that, but calling from the pantry I heard the squeaky voices of yellow corn kernels reverberating inside a tin can saying “eat me!”

So I dumped the beans and corn into a pot, threw in a few spoonfuls of salsa and behold, a few minutes later, I had created paste. For fewer than nine dollars, I had created dinner in under five minutes. Skip the salsa and that price drops to $5 — with leftovers for the next night.

The most difficult parts to the cooking were using the can opener and remembering to turn off the stove. Not only easy to prepare, paste also contains almost all of the essential food groups: Beans, which provide protein; corn, which is a starch and possibly a vegetable; and tomatoes — from the salsa — which count as both a fruit and a vegetable.

The only two food groups that were missing were dairy and the smallest category at the tip of the food pyramid — fat, oil and sugar — which should not be overlooked. This problem of missing food groups could have been rendered very easily with a bowl of ice cream, which contains dairy, sugar and fat. Any food that fits into more than one food category must qualify as a super food, in my opinion. Conclusion: Salsa and ice cream are both essential parts to any well-balanced diet; however, they taste best if eaten separately.

Unfortunately, I had no ice cream and no desire or money to buy some, so I settled for the next best thing — chocolate, which, unbeknownst to nutritionists, qualifies as its own food group.

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