There are only three requisites for a student's diet. It must be fast, cheap and filling. Anything else is a bonus. This is not to say that eating is not a pleasure for students. However, many would see certain foods as luxuries they can ill afford. The mention of mother's home cooking can leave you salivating like a rabid dog and send you into a daydream of a fridge with food. Independence is a double-edged sword, on one hand bringing blissful freedom and, on the other, the responsibility of feeding oneself.
Most students find the path to a meal to be a long, sweaty, painful one. Firstly, the ingredients must be bought. This involves a painstaking trek to a supermarket where your handful of pennies (the remnants of your purse after your night out), are mocked and ridiculed. After which follows a ritual of begging and pleading with your flatmate from whom you manage to accumulate enough funds for a few spuds and a pork chop. Next comes the cooking and the moment when you realise that Ready, Steady, Cook is a computer-generated mirage. There is no other explanation as to how they cook so fast and make it seem so easy. Then you wonder is it because they have the necessary equipment, such as saucepans, fryingpans, cookers (items that were assumed to naturally sprout from the kitchen utensil tree). For most, salvation comes in the form of the humble Pot Noodle and the ever-faithful beans on toast. Many students turn to vegetarianism. But this may be less because they have suddenly become sensitive to animal rights than because meat is generally out of a student's league price-wise. Some wouldn't even realise that their diet has turned vegetarian - all they know is that their two-veg dinner is lacking something. For these deprived omnivores, tuna is the new beef. A notable food writer maintains that one of the cheapest diets on which to survive is composed of peanut butter, whole wheat bread, non-fat dried milk and a vitamin pill. Imagine the joy every day of savouring peanut-butter and dry bread as it congeals and sticks to the roof of your mouth, washed down with milky water and finished with a delicious vitamin, happy in the knowledge that you saved a few bob in the process.
Another survival diet was created in the US during the Depression. It's called Sludge - it uses ground beef, wheat and vegetables and, it seems, it's as appetising as it sounds. The beef, wheat and vegetables are whisked into a mixture and poured into a loaf tin. This is then baked into a Sludge loaf, to be cut into slices and served with a garnish of parsley. Delicious!
Existing on meals that supply the required amount of nutrients reduces food to its lowest common denominator. In famine-stricken countries or war zones, food necessarily becomes a means to staying alive. Pleasure from meals does not come into it. However, there is no reason for a state of emergency to be declared in any student's kitchen.
Students of Ireland, stand up and be counted. Demand your right to eat cheap, healthy and tasty meals. Take the matter into your own hands. Discard noodles that taste like cardboard. Say no to pricey convenience foods. It's time to be sensible, though it may be against every belief you hold dear. Extreme measures, fresh food, vegetables, and fruits are called for - and take no prisoners.
Student food websites
Stephanie's Cheap, Cheerful, Posh Grub For Students - how to hold a dinner party with minimum effort and knowledge: at http:// hurricane.lamp.ac.uk/students/ StephanieDay/Recipe1.htm
Around the World in 15 weeks - five Californian student flat-mates put their contributions to communal dinners on the web: at http://www.geocities.com/NapaValley/3814/
Cooking for Graduate Students and Other Beginning Kitchen Dwellers - two graduates who learnt how to cook do food-evangelism at its highest: at http:// wywahoos.org/wahoos/cookbook/intro.htm
Alternative student food sites
Cooking with Beer - how to progress from a liquid diet to solids: at http:// www.ipass.net/carboy/cook.html
YSTV - cooking with chocolate - how to make chocolate part of your daily meals: at http://www-users.york.ac.uk/socs16/prod/chocol.8.htm
The wrong path
Watch any episode of The Young Ones. Vintage comedy at students' expense.