WTF! Anyone else horrified at this Guardian article about "student" food?

[MrsTittleMouse]

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/21/student-cooking-recipes

It all costs an absolute fortune! My DH has a good job, but we don't have enough grocery budget to cook half this stuff. What are they all on?

I also once agreed to go on a date with a guy who was short, very spotty and a bit of a druggie as he was taking me out for dinner. When he was all keen and wanted to go on another date a week later, I said "that would be great, but I'm going out with my boyfriend that night".
I still feel kind of guilty about it, but in my defense, between our "date" (free meal) and him asking me out again I did start seeing a friend. So there.

i lived on cheapo white bread, cbinbutter, value cheese, supernoodles, tea & vodka. i had hideous migraines most weeks, the kind where u think ur gonna die. once a mate showed me how to make pasta with cheese sauce and frozen brocolli and i thought 'how quaint- vegetables! it's like havin my mum around!'

I was a malnourished idiot.

at Abs.

I also worked in a restaurant for the free food Abs you gotta choose your restaurant wisely!

I use that methodology now when I look around for clients - so far so good. I love a 'contra', me. One hand washes the other.

No offence LRD! Just based on MVHE

4 egg yolks in Macaroni cheese?!

I only put 4 egg yolks in custard tart!

" I love a 'contra', me. "

Or tax evasion, to give it its full name

They changed the head chef at one point, and he started trying to convince the waiting staff that they were only allowed soup or a sandwich. There was rioting I tell you.

I personally was used to wondering into the kitchen, and saying to the lovely chef (whom I had a crush on) "I feel like duck today .." and then getting called in 20 minutes later ... for duck! AMAZING.

for £22 you could buy a couple of thai curries! I could cook every one of those recipes on there for a fraction - in fact I regularly do - without compromising on nutrition or flavour, and cooking it all from scratch (apart from the thai paste which I buy from the chinese supermarket)

Ridiculous. Maybe they are aiming it at students that get allowances from the bank of mum and dad.......

I am not a student but a lecturer, and I still don't feed my family of 4 at the £22 level. There is no way bank of mum and dad is going to fund this kind of extravagant living!

I remember a pound a pint. Also 50p for a shot of Rumplemintz which was so minging we usually put it IN the pint ( WHY???) We also had a pub that used to so a full sized pizza (with either mushrooms or peppers) with a pint for two quid, we used to go on special occasions. . I remember only needing a tenner for a whole night out getting rat arsed, because I had a moisturiser bottle full of vodka in my bag. I remember by boyfriend going to his aunties wake and bringing me all the leftover sandwiches! I only had seven hours of classes in third year too, and I didn't make it to half of them. God it was great fun!

That thai curry costs almost half my food budget too. That's my food budget for the week, for four of us.

When I was a student (reaches deep down into memory) there were very few students with cars. I knew of a few that had the car bought by Mummy and Daddy, and my boyfriend was sponsored on his course, and so was able to buy and run an old banger. Personally I thought that a car was a bit of a liability, especially in a big city. This was a RG university too.

I think that it's sad if students now feel that they have to straighten their hair and drink starbucks and so on. Living off bugger all money is fun when you're all doing it and all in the same boat. And it helps to get the practice in before you get your first mortgage or have children and drop down to one salary (or use up most of one salary on childcare). :)

tokyonambu Wed 22-Sep-10 10:52:32

" I love a 'contra', me. "

Or tax evasion, to give it its full name smile

silly, I always disclose my contras to the IRS - don't you?

Hilarious article, I kept last week's recipe book as some of the stuff looked good for us now (grown up family with proper kitchen and know how)! I can just imagine cooking up a storm in the horrendous kitchen in my 1st years halls of residence. 2 electric rings between 30 people...

Student food if I recall correctly was mostly loaves of sunblest, pasta with dolmio for a real blow out meal served up with gin and B&H.

I was really thin in those days.....

"I always disclose my contras to the IRS - don't you?"

Obviously we're as pure as the driven snow. But I've head rumours that there are a few people who don't have our profound morals.

Riven my brother was at Cambridge, and yes some people had a lot of money but there was much less conspicuous consumption that at Bristol - which is I believe about the worst for the 'oh Daddy has bought me a flat and a BMW' brigade.
I was at another RG group Uni and my then boyfriend was at Bristol. This was 15 years ago but it was dreadful even then for all the swishy-haired horse types. Gah.

Your DD will be fine, there will be loads there who are just as skint as her.

When I was at Uni I used to eat cheese on toast with ketchup, Pasta'n'Sauce and lots of sandwiches! The one thing I used to cook was spag bol.
In later years sharing houses with friends we used to have a cooking rota which worked pretty well. I would spend about £10-12 on nice ingredients to cook a meal for 5 of us, and then get fed for the rest of the week. Worked out pretty cheaply and we used to eat vegetables and salad and everything And wine obviously!

No wonder so many people do not cook, these recipes would put you off before you even start. These recipes are too complicated for most students who want to prepare a quick meal (by quick I mean less than 1 minute!). Recipes for students should include omlette, potato wedges, roast chicken legs etc, that are cheap and vvv easy, with only a few ingredients.

When I was a student our kitchen was so grotty that there was no way I would even want to prepare a proper meal in it! A tub of humous and bread was my favourite meal for two!

All the students were like this, a student next door to me had his dad in the Sunday Times Rich List, and he still ate cheaply - that was the student experience then!

oh this thread is marvellous. I was at Oxford. we knew 2 people with cars. One was a beat up Ford Capri worth about £50. The other was a talbot samba convertible (arf) equally beaten up.... In both cases the owners were natural mechanics..the kind who would mend their car with a yoghurt pot and some sticky-backed plastic. The Samba owner once got stopped by the police because they were concerned about "the general state of your car, sir"

our stock meal was known as tuna splag. onions, tinned tomatoes, tinned tuna, and sometimes sweetcorn. I loved it.

another one was left over sausage curry from a local care home....one of my housemates worked there as a cook and he would bring home left overs. hell those sausages were awful, not sure they'd ever seen a pig. but we still devoured the stuff.

When I was a student, no meals had more than 4 ingredients in them, and that would be a posh meal.

I cooked very nice food as a student. Of a wholefoody vegetarian nature, involving veg from Oxford market (NOT the covered market referred to in the Guardian pullout) and lots and lots and lots of lentils and chickpeas and so on. This was in 1982. And I didn't know anyone with a car. Although the anarchist group did have a minibus, if that counts.

I still cook the chickpea curry that I perfected as a student, in fact. I rather suspect I had more time to cook in those days, in between Objecting To Things and err yes doing a bit of work as well.

The Guardian is such bollocks. £22 for a curry?

And Riven, for what its worth - I was a Magdalen undergrad at Oxford from 2004-7(slightly different from Cambridge, but pretty much the same demographic). You'd be surprised at how many undergrads were utterly skint; my friends and I did most of our shopping at FarmFoods in Banbury and lived off cheap kebabs. And considering things have got steadily worse for students, your daughter won't be alone if she doesn't drive in with a Prius.

I've been getting more and more annoyed thinking about this. If a similar article had appeared in the Times then you would have lefties jumping up and down saying it was alright for rich Tories who could afford to give their offspring vast food budgets to cook £20 curries every night.
So who are the Grauniad aiming this at? All those low-paid socialists who read their paper? Bollocks, it's hypocrisy of the worst kind.

Chickpea curry was one of my staples too. Other popular meals included:
pasta with home made tomato sauce (still my comfort food of choice now)
beans on toast
peanut butter on toast
toast
lentil bake
experimental soup
jacket spuds with cheese

There was also the occasional stodge special: two fried eggs on toast, covered in beans and grated cheese. That would keep me going all day.

I found getting as stoned as possible all day every day to be an excellent appetite suppressant.