Desperate Measures

[Mssmltzr]

A young foodie like myself can easily become depressed by the college culinary scene. However, a hungry stomach must be fed. What are your horror stories of college food gone terribly, terribly wrong?

Personally, I have been known to eat dry Ramen Noodles when times are tough. I swear they seem more filling eaten that way.

[mongo_jones]

oooh memories--of boarding school, however and not college. major delicacy: take packet of maggi instant noodles; remove flavor packet; crush the noodles inside the packet so that they break into individual curly pieces of about 3 cm length; pour in contents of flavor packet; shake vigorously. now, that's good eats!

[chow guy]

When I was I college and times got tough, I would walk 20 blocks over to Nathans' Famous on 8th Street and enjoy sauerkraut with mustard on it. Around the same time my buddy and I swept the rice up from the church steps after a friends' wedding. We joked about eating it but never did.

[bleudauvergne]

So many disasters not enough bandwidth.

My college years were all just one big experiment with an old gas stove.

My favorite cookbook: 365 Ways to Cook Chicken.

Lessons learned: Cucumber cooked with fish does not make it taste fresher.

A1 steak sauce in lasagne gives a strange gamey taste.

"pasta salad" made with ramen noodles can be used sucessfully as a door stop.

Ah, the memories. The hundreds of glasses containing things with mold growing on them, which I insisted were experiments not to be touched. (pride)

The innocent subsitutions, resulting in enormous waste. The waste. It was horrible.

But what did I subsist on from day to day? Beans, lentils, pasta, oats and tea, and bagels with cream cheese, ketchup, and salt.

[GG Mora]

Boxty and applesauce. Lots of that. And a lot of "culinary" experimentation (like how to dress up Kraft Mac & Cheese).

Certain roomates were ultimately banned from cooking activities, specifically after being entrusted with making sandwiches for a day trip and turning up tunafish on whole wheat....with strawberry jam and cinnamon. Where's that green puke-face when you need it?

[Mssmltzr]

Pasta salad made with Ramen Noodles? Oh dear God...

[JPW]

Microwave grilled cheese.

Put two slices bread in toaster. Put two slices of your favorite individually wrapped super-processed american cheese on a piece of Saran Wrap. Microwave on high for 45 seconds. Place a piece of toast on top of each piece of cheese and carefully flip over. Peel off SaranWrap and slap two parts of sandwich together.

A snack that Sandra Lee would be jealous of...

[NulloModo]

Blue cheese cups that come with the buffalo wings from every local wing joint wish a few dashes of hot sauce... eat it with a spoon.

[NeroW]

The weird thing is, I'm in college again right now, but it's culinary college, and the College Food Rules still apply. I thought I would be eating relatively well: either I thought I'd have more money than I do or I thought the school would feed me more or I thought that my "heightened sensibilities about food" would mean I'd eat better, through . . . osmosis, I guess.

During the semester I eat: Ramen (bought the last 7 chicken-flavored Ramen from the neighborhood store last night), sometimes Ramen with Crema Mexicana because it really cuts the salty mouth-stinging taste, that Goya rice mix, Kraft Mac and Cheese, bizarre salads my roommate concocts of tunafish and cannellini beans and cabbage, just because my body cries for the cabbage, RED BEANS AND RICE with lots of vinegar, tamales from the man on the street who sells them for $1, grilled cheese and tomato soup (can), vending machine food from school (current favorite: turkey and cheese sandwich on white, Doritos, Mountain Dew), and beer. Not as much beer as I'd like, but still: I'd be lying if I said it weren't a food group.

How's this for depressing? I just looked in my cupboards, and here's what's in there:

cookie sprinkles (green and multi-colored)

Sugar In The Raw

an old, old, old jar of honey that was here when we moved in

Saltines

Wondra

A.P. flour

dried peaches

cornstarch

Thai bird chilies

dried mangoes

teas

7 chicken-flavored Ramen

Goya "Primavera" rice dinner

And the refrigerator:

mayonnaise

milk

half a head of green cabbage

green olives

leftover Goya "Broccoli and Cheese" rice dinner

And the freezer:

ice

Also, I drink instant coffee. I'm drinking it right now.

[FistFullaRoux]

Ah yes.... My bachelor days. Here were the staples:

Mac N Cheese (or if I was really flush, Velveeta shells and cheese) with a drained can of tuna mixed in.

Egg Noodles, boiled according to package directions, strained - then a can of Cream of Mushroom soup added while the noodles were still hot.

Spaghetti. Same basic techniques as above, but with spaghetti and sauce from a jar. A can of corn or a link of smoked sausage was optional.

Rice. Plain white rice.

White bread from the day-old shop, with whatever luncheon meat was on sale. Lots of bologna. But the bologna would have to be fried first.

Parsley potatoes - Potatoes, cut into bite sized chunks, either nuked or baked, then coated with butter and parsley. This is actually really good, but I can't look at it now.

And I ate so much ramen, that I'd sooner eat a Brillo pad now.

[Raynickben]

How about not eating at all?

That's what I did in culinary school. I was in the morning classes so I got breakfast and lunch during classes (woe the days we were in "International Kitchen" and had to eat kidney pie). When I didn't have any money for dinner I would just go to sleep, knowing that at 5 a.m. I could eat when class started.

[lala]

Yeah, it was funny at the CIA, too. I lived in one of the dorms. We were fed twice a day, but not at all on weekends. There was a student kitchen in B dorm, but it was just scary (we called it 'Tomaine alley'). We weren't allowed to cook in our rooms, but there were ways around that...I lived on curried rice made in a hot pot, while some people got creative with electric woks. I remember making grilled cheese sandwiches with my iron (cover the iron with foil first!). I also walked up to the store each week, to buy lots of fruit and veggies.

And about those two meals a day... not always great...remember, they're cooked by fellow students, so... if they were having a bad day, we all suffered! Plus, when I was there, it was strictly classical french for many of the classes. You can only eat so many meals covered in Mother sauces...

[tryska]

wow you sure where on the carb train, huh fist fulla?

i can't remember so much what i ate when i lived in the dorms as it was all meal-plan food, but when i moved into my first off-campus apartment, we used to cook all sorts of stuff.

1. Lipton noodle and sauce, with cutup onions sauteed in the fat before adding everything else.

2. tuna sauteed with onions, cayenne and garlic powder. sometimes used to top the noodles and sauce. sometimes jsut eaten with bread.

3. bush's vegetarian beans tarted up with brown sugar and hot sauce and a loaf of rustic bread.

4. oatmeal and peanut butter

5. kiwis and honey for dessert.

6. sliders form the white castle across the street

7. pizza by the slice from the pizza place across the street.

8. 40s.

Edit - oh i forgot! ramen noodles, boiled, drained, mixed with butter, the seasoning packet, and what ever other spices we needed to make it taste good.

- scrambled eggs and hot sauce, sometime with toast, sometimes with plaitains.

- whenever my jamaican roommate got ahold of some saltcod, she would soak it, then fry it with some onions, garlic and scotch bonnet pepper, and then we would mix that with boiled spinach and callaloo (or whatever greens were available) and eat it with boiled ground provisions (potato, green banana, green plantain, and sweet potato)

Edited May 5, 2004 by tryska (log)

[GG Mora]

8.  40s.

???

[tryska]

clicky.

[NeroW]

8.  40s.

???

[Mayhaw Man]

I had one semester in college where I was pretty much destitute and I LIVED on homemade pancakes with an egg on top and bacon, dairy products from the coop at the University Farm (great ice cream) and red beans with water ever the cheapest sausage or pork I could find and rice.

Needless to say the Atkins plan was not something I was considering or needed at that point.

And Beer. I always had enough money for beer.

[Pickles]

What are your horror stories of college food gone terribly, terribly wrong?

The "Dining" Hall was a very bad, bad place. I avoided it at all costs. At one point, unbeknownst to my Dad (who was footing the bill..) I cashed in on my board, and took the money and bought groceries to "cook" with rather than eat the cafeteria fare. I should have stuck with the latter, because my attempts at making chicken noodle soup resulted in a pan full of library paste. Too many noodes, not enough broth. I broiled pork chops in roommate Deb's pyrex pie pan. All was well until I placed the broiling hot thing in a pan of cold sudsey water. **BOOOOOM!!** So much for that. I burned everything. I burned salad! Or at least I was accused of doing so by my boyfriend. The dining hall mystery meat was interesting. There was "Hunter Stew" and I have yet to figure out just what was in it. Chicken Friccasee on biscuits was affectionately called "Chicken Frick On A Brick." And the Chicken parmesan was referred to by the boys as "Period On A Plate." We relied on pizza and subs a great deal. We all gained The Freshman Ten with all those carbs they shoved at us. Of course...they were just pouring that beer right down our throats!

Edited May 5, 2004 by Pickles (log)

[chickenlady]

All popcorn all the time.

I had the meal plan but never ate there. I always gave my pass to my (much older, slacker, mooching, unemployed, non-college student :angry: ) boyfriend so that he could eat.

I just ate popcorn.

[sequim]

This is a depressing thread.

[rlm]

I remember the days of sleeping on the floor and rolling up pennies to buy 5 bucks worth of gas for my Green Demon. In the dorms, I had to petition to have the number of meals in my cafeteria meal plan reduced since it was so expensive. I must admit that our two cafeterias were actually pretty good. We had a line of woks where we could do our own stir-fry, waffle presses at breakfast with different flavors of mix and various toppings, etc.

When not eating in the cafeteria and in my post-dorm experiences, my meals were much uglier.

*Lipton noodle packets gussied up with Swanson chicken in a can

*Hormel canned tamales

*Kraft boxed spaghetti meal (add one can of tomato paste to water and you're ready to rock-n-roll)

*Peanut butter on graham crackers

*Lots of Taco Bell's 39-cent menu items and Wendy's 99-cent options eaten while walking between classes. I can't eat this stuff now, needless to say.

*Bad sandwiches made using a cheap press from Target (featuring whatever supermarket bread was on sale, sub-par bologna or ham, and Kraft singles)

*Cabbage bread (biscuits stuffed with cabbage and ground beef)

*Hot dogs

*Anything that was cheap and microwaveable

[tryska]

*Hormel canned tamales

oh..the horror! the horror! this sounds like something that should be banned.

[twiggles]

i remember existing on the cheapest pasta, and sauce one could find. and sometimes added some frozen peas. that was about as nutritious as it got. don't ask me why, but we'd always get excited when the dining hall served 'broccoli cheesebake' (a mysterious concoction) and the 'choo choo burger' (chew chew, more like it )

[adoxograph]

When avoiding such fine dining experiences as Rice Krispie Chicken I could usually be found making strange hot pot couscous with tuna concoctions, or something out of those sandwich press thingies that make your sandwiches into hot pockets filled with something resembling nuclear fusion. Jiffy muffin mixes worked well in the sandwich maker - I would suddenly discover my neighbors when making blueberry muffins on weekends.

A friend of mine was the son of a Rabbi who lived in fear that the one day he didn't eat matzoh during Passover would be the day of a surprise parental visit. We made varing attempts at alternates to matzoh pizza (which we loved and he hated). Matzoh with radishes, ground beef and ketchup was not what I would call a success.

I always thought it was interesting that the dorm food meals cost the same as a quart of ice cream from the University Dairy Bar - and you could use your meal plan dollars for either.

blackberry ice cream.... beef on toast..... blackberry ice cream.... beef on toast....

[bleudauvergne]

- whenever my jamaican roommate got ahold of some saltcod, she would soak it, then fry it with some onions, garlic and scotch bonnet pepper, and then we would mix that with boiled spinach and callaloo (or whatever greens were available) and eat it with boiled ground provisions (potato, green banana, green plantain, and sweet potato)

That's what I call livin' large, Tryska.

Here's to foreign rommates, mine was from Taiwan. Jenny Li. We called her the Fang. (because her name was Fang but it didn't show up in her western name somehow). She cooked up some good stuff in those days. But the best thing was the tea.