Student Food:
Don’t Demand Better
Essay for the Stranger, 9/27/95
The most important rule to eating on a student’s budget: Don’t learn to expect better. While you’re (I hope) training your mind to discern ever more subtle gradients of thought, don’t train your palate to demand more than you can now afford to eat. I know microbrew drinkers who order at least one Bud (or even Schaffer) per drinking session, so they don’t lose tolerance for the cheaper grain-water. The same principle goes with solid food. You can get some gourmet restaurant entrees for the price of a CD, but too many and you’ll be miserable with what you have to eat the rest of the time. If you must eat fancy, join an ethnic-studies club that makes joint meals or take an Experimental College cooking class.
Much of what I say won’t apply to dorm residents, who face limited facilities and space for preparing their own meals. Even then, there are alternatives to the dorm cafeteria. Like an artist I know who’s not supposed to live in her work studio but does anyway, you can sneak in a mini-microwave and/or a hotplate. Even without a mini-freezer to store stuff, you can stock up on unfrozen microwave foods like Top Shelf and buy the occasional Michelena’s or Healthy Choice goodie for same-day use.
If and when you get kitchen access, such as in a rental house, a universe of modest eating opportunities awaits, including that monthly ritual of the shared household, The Costco Run! Giant sizes of everything: pre-made salad in a bag, cereal, crackers, Danish cookie tins, five-pound packs of hot dogs, and all the free samples of gourmet frozen entrees you can eat. But remember, it’s no bargain if you can’t eat it all before it spoils or you can’t stand the sight of it anymore.
More conveniently sized bargains await at dollar stores. You can’t get a complete diet there but you can stock up on pasta and sauce, canned veggies, foil-pouch juice drinks, and assorted oriental noodle products. TopRamen, Cup Noodles, Bowl Noodle, etc. have long been the choice for many who prefer to spend little time eating and no time cooking. But beware, before long you’ll confront one of food’s great mysteries: What is “Oriental Flavor”? Best answer I heard had something to do with a line in the prologue of You Only Live Twice.
You can go beyond convenience into real cooking, yet stay in budget, with the student eater’s secret weapons: Calrose rice, beans, pasta, curry, stew (I had a housemate who ate from the same ongoing stewpot all week and spent the money he saved on Glenlivet), restaurant-supply stores like Serco and Pacific Food Importers, bakery outlet stores (closest to the U: Oroweat in lower Wallingford), and knowing where the more obscure bargains are. Your first tip: the big bags of “unfortunate fortune cookies” at the House of Rice on the Ave. Good hunting, and good eating.
