Food Glorious food indeed!

Brahm, Ajahn  Who ordered this truckload of dung: Inspiring Stories for Welcoming Life's difficulties, 2005
Franco, Silvana,The Really Useful Ultimate Student cookbook, 2003
Kakuzō,Okakura The Book of Tea 1906
Hensperger Beth Not Your Mother's Microwave Cookbook: Fresh, delicious and wholesome main dishes, snacks, sides, desserts and more 2010
Waugh, Evelyn, Brideshead Revisited, 1945
Articles


Harriet, Ainsley, Student food, The independent, 2009

In Be Your Own Architect by Gene B. Williams, he writes "As often mentioned in the last chapter, the kitchen is often considered to be the most important room in the house[...] in many homes the kitchen is where the family gathers together most often." (76) In university accommodation the kitchen has become something completely different. Granted, people still eat and prepare their meals in there but they are used more often for far more 'studenty' purposes.
Yesterday I walked into my kitchen (which I share with 25 other people) to find a first year student crouched in the corner covered in ketchup, a sullen expression strewn across his drunken face. Over the walls there was finely spread mayonnaise, half empty vodka bottles piled up on the table next to mouldy cheese and egg shells.
University kitchens, my one in particular, has become more of a social space, not one to share a family meal and have a nice discussion, but rather a grizzly, messy common room.
Food gets forgotten. I could be being a touch dramatic but I can't see any reason not to suggest that there must be a link between student's poor nutrition and their kitchen spaces. Once in a blue moon I will see someone walking down the corridor with a large bowl of delicious steaming pasta or a juicy steak, however firstly they always eat in their rooms, as if they are being protective of their tasty food, secondly after spending a rather large amount of time in that kitchen it takes at least a week before they have plucked up enough courage to re-enter it and cook again. The bar, cafes and even the library become places to eat just to avoid the kitchen.
Perhaps if students were given better facilities student food wouldn't be an issue at all, or maybe again I might be just a little over-dramatic.

I hate microwave meals.
Not because I think they are destroying cooking (which they seem to be doing) not even because they taste bad (which they do) but simply because of one experience I had with a chicken rustlers burger. 
I understand that food becomes a time consuming necessity for university students rather than a chance to escape from the stresses of essay writing and microwave meals have become a less time consuming solution and in Beth Hensperger's Not Your Mother's Microwave Cookbook: Fresh, delicious and wholesome main dishes, snacks, sides, desserts and more she writes "microwave ovens have become an essential part of modern life- even for those who do not consider themselves cooks. Microwave cooking, especially using the ovens sold today, is a convenient and safe method of food preparation".(1) My initial problem with this statement was the fact she suggested that 'cooks' often use microwaves and that she states that microwaves are essential for today's average person to cook a meal. Firstly microwaves were not affordable or used in homes until 1965, so how were people who were not able to cook normally able to make warm food? It is a mystery to me too....
My first experience with a chicken rustlers burger terrified me.
As I made a small tear in the side of the casing, just enough to let out the faintest whiff of plastic cheese and half cooked "chicken" I began reading the cooking instructions. Cook for 70 seconds....... Cook for 70 seconds...... Cook for 70 seconds.... yes, that's right, 70 seconds. Now, I've cooked chicken before, and it has never taken 70 seconds. I watched the burger spin round in the garish white light created by the humming microwave and as I did I realised that the chicken inside was contracting and expanding. Growing and shrinking as if it was a pair of lungs or it's own living creature slowly going through steps of evolution, from a flat useless slab of 'meat' to a fully formed thing of it's own. I was nervous. 
It was hard, yet soft at the same time and as I came to my final few mouthfuls I began feeling disappointed in myself. I have just ingested something that I know has no nutritional value, tastes terrible, looks horrific and grows and shrinks. I had wasted £2.50....
All I urge you to do is stop and think before eating something that cooks in 70 seconds... It's not nice. 

When I first came to university my mum and my two sisters made me a cookery book.

 It was unlike any other cookery book ever made, written, published or created. The opening pages were filled with photographs from my old kitchen; colourful memories of a familiar place that made me feel at home. Next to these photos were small poems, drawings and jokes that made sense to me but not to anyone who just happened to pick up my big cumbersome cookery-book. After the first few pages the recipes come thick and fast. Instead of writing what the original name of the dish may be, my family have written their own nicknames for each meal. Spaghetti Bolognese becomes "Spag Bog" Mashed potato-topped sausage pie simply becomes "Pie Pie". For me these meals that reminded me of home. In conjunction with all the pictures, pop-out 'extra tips' this was the perfect "mum in a book".
Whether you're cooking for the first time away from home or you are a seasoned veteran of the student-kitchen, the best recipe, reference, question or tip that you will get about food will never be from a cookery book found online, or at the back of a dusty shop, but from your family, those people who have cooked you your favourite meals from day one!
How many people have had to ring their mum, dad, sister, grandma whilst attempting to stir a bubbling, spitting saucepan of some red-ish liquid to ask them simply the name of the concoction that has appeared in front of you? or just to question whether you are in fact allowed to eat the 'mystery meat' that has been lodged in the back of the freezer since your first week at uni. For me my family have always been my cookery-book, perhaps everybody should (depending on if your family can cook of course) ask their family before buying a microwave meal, or destroying your kitchen!

The vast majority of students will tell you they need caffeine to live. Waiting until 4am in the morning to even begin tomorrow's 3000 word assignment requires a rather large amount of the stuff and the easiest and probably most popular way of getting it is through tea. Tea for a student is, well especially in my case, often breakfast, brunch, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner and dessert. Students read, write and live with a small paper cup filled with warm fresh tea glued to their hand. Written in The Book of Tea tells of tea's spiritual assets "The 15th Century saw Japan ennoble tea into a religion of aestheticism- Teaism. Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life" In light of Teaism which seems to present the search for beauty in everyday life, I propose that for a student Tea becomes that beauty, that little light at the end of the tunnel. 


Tea is usually accompanied by it's small, round, delicious friend; The biscuit. This combination of dunking a biscuit into tea in such a way as to make sure it absorbs some of the tea but not to much to loose it's rigidity has become a powerful tool of procrastination for many students. However as seen by Sussex University's "Tea and Cake Society" people do take Tea seriously. These students created their society to be a place where people who enjoy sitting down and drinking tea can meet, a place where everyone has a space to relax and enjoy the 'little things' in life, as Teaism suggests we should do. As  Ajahn Brahm writes in Who ordered this truckload of dung: Inspiring Stories for Welcoming Life's difficulties "there is always something we can do with the ingredients of our day, even if that something is just sitting down, enjoying our last cup of tea" (119) For students I think tea has become not only a staple food, but also something that allows you to relax and stay calm. Although Tea is enjoyed by many it is my firm belief that for students it has become that 'little something' that could make or break a day, without the joy of a cup of tea who knows how happy students would really be!?

When wondering through the internet looking for useless information on whatever tickled my fancy at that particular moment I managed to stumble across what seems to be quite a fad in the on-line world. These are RECIPE GENERATORS. Recipe Generators are easy ways to get recipes and food ideas without the hassle of leaving your kitchen for more ingredients. You simply type into a small box whatever food you are faced with in your cupboard and "voila", you are given a recipe! I went onto studentrecipes.com to try it out for myself. Sadly the ingredients I had in my cupboard and fridge weren't looking rather useful. Carrots, Ham, Potatoes, tinned tomatoes and cheese.... I was then given a list of foods that I might be able to cook with these ingredients. The only thing I was told I was able to make without any other ingredients was "chips". Now..... no matter how minute your knowledge of food is I'm pretty sure that everybody knows 'if you cut up potatoes and fry them you get chips...'. Simple. However when looking down the list I realised how much I could do with food. The list which was titled "1 ingredient needed" was vastly different. "posh carbonara" headed the list, followed by "cheese and potato casserole". I found myself reading slowly down the list finding myself intrigued by the amounts of different foods that I could create from simple starting ingredients. Every ingredient has been added by users of the site who either have picked up a cookbook and added their own touch to a dish, as suggested by Franco in  Really Useful Ultimate Student Cookbook, or simply have created a brilliant recipe of their own which they want to share with the world. Although this  website and other sites that use this Recipe Generator may not present their recipes as easily and openly as a cookbook might, they are a useful way of sharing recipes, passed down through generations, or simply created themselves. These generators and forums are like those old, tattered and worn cookbooks your grandparents pull out, filled with recipes they had picked up from friends and family for decades, each page splattered with what looks like the same tomato based sauce , sticky, broken, cherished and loved. Are these websites and recipe generators the cookbooks of the future or are they just a student fad?