Hi Sarah,

Welcome to the list. I appreciate your situation, since I'm a student and
have to share a small kitchen and fridge with about 8 other people, so I
frequently can't be bothered to cook. The idea of getting a little fridge
and crockpot to have in your room is definitely worth investigating. Also
over here (in the UK) you can get little electric cooking rings suitable
for cooking some vegetables or soup on - often aimed at people with
caravans or houseboats. But then you'd need a saucepan. Perhaps it depends
on how long you're going to be at this friend's house.

Things I tend to eat when I don't feel like cooking: bagged ready-prepared
lettuce, topped up with cucumber, celery, tomatoes, avocados, etc. For
protein: sliced deli meat, cold chicken, hardboiled eggs, canned fish. When
I do cook, I do plenty so there are leftovers to eat the next day. Nuts
make a convenient snack. I have just bought a thermos flask with a view to
heating up soup at home and bringing it in to work to have at lunchtime.

A word of caution on the weight loss: you may want to keep an eye on your
fruit consumption and I would avoid dried fruit altogether at this stage
(but eat plenty of veggies to compensate). And although the books say
calories no longer count, some of us on this list have found that is over-
optimistic. You may hit a barrier a few weeks in, in which case you may
want to consider carb and calorie-counting.

Good luck, and let us know how it is going.

Jo