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?

The Guardian is much posher than the Times.

And a lot of it is written by people who went to Oxbridge and perhaps want to pretend this was how they lived when they were there?

LRD - I know, but they try and pretend they are for the common man and it is bollocks and annoys me

I read a piece somewhere a few years back by a student (talking about house insurance, I think) who said something like "There are four students living in the house, so of course that means four stereos, four televisions, four DVD players, four computers..." [and I think she went on with other consumer goods] and I thought " of course ? " and turned into one of the Four Yorkshiremen...

You and me both, Prof! Bloody hell, I'm a proper grown up postgrad with a husband who works, and we still don't have a TV/stereo!

I didn't know anyone who had a television when I was a student, we all watched the big one in the common room. My brother's lot used to hang theirs out of the window when the license people came in the (misguided, I fear) hope they'd not get caught.

'we could never afford meat or fish as students. Heck, cant now '

Meat was something I ate on dates. I'd get the ol', 'Oh, wow. I like a woman who eats on a date and not just has a salad and picks at it.'

I'd think, 'Good! Cuz I'm having a pudding and a coffee, too.'

:o

My fave meal was bean pot. Tin of bins, tin of tomatoes, mixed up with diced onion and a splash of HP sauce. Top with breadcrums (generally torn up sliced loaf works well) and grated cheese. 20 mins in the oven - delicious. Still eat it now.

Agree that the food supplement for students was daft. Though students now are more picky than I ever was. We lived in dumps of shared housing. They have en suite rooms with double beds FFS! In the private rental sector anyway. Our area is full of these blocks. God help the poor parents who no doubt have to pay their rents.

Television?

Oh please. We had plastic garden furniture knicked from the apartment complex pool party that someone had tossed in, inflatable cushions and futon mattresses on teh floor.

It was 40 degrees, but we couldn't afford to run the A/C so we'd run a fan.

Funnily enough, though, we always had money for booze and fags :o.

LOl at tv out of the window.

We lived in a basement flat in second year and I was given a second hand tv from my parents that I put in communal sitting room/kitchen. There was no aerial at all, so we found a proper 'top of the house aerial' in a skip and used to take turns holding it at the perfect angle out of the window to watch TV. You had to turn the aerial if you wanted to change channel. It was Glasgow so a cagoul and gloves were needed

'Funnily enough, though, we always had money for booze and fags'.

Odd that, isn't it? Us too!

I remember when I started my second year, casually adding up my termly booze-bills and going a bit green!

Btw, Riven - sprats. Fish, and cheap.

But not when I was a student. Gutting fish in a student kitchen is not the way to make friends.

Tuna (sustainable fished of course...) is a students friend.

And my mum used to give me tins of salmon in a food hamper as a main present every Xmas.

I was popular in my flat for at least a week every January...

Bean pot sounds well nice.

I had my boyfriend's old futon mattress on the floor...it was about 2mm thick as was so old. Every bone in my body used to ache after about 20 minutes. Again, thank goodness for weed and booze.

As a treat to ourselves in the third year, my flatmate and I rented a video player. It was so ancient that it couldn't play tapes recorded on long play, and certainly couldn't record. It had a pop-up toploading tape slot and those massive lever-like controls. We were unintentionally steampunk.

notyummy, you've evoked fond memories of us all rushing back from the pub on a Friday night to watch Prisoner Cell Block H through storms of green static snow on a tiny portable tv :)

I turned up to uni in the first year with a caterer's sack of teabags and two crates of tinned tomatoes, bought by my dad on his Macro card. I was so popular!

My boyfriend bought a secondhand Ferguson Videostar (remember them...?) when I was in 4th year and fixed it as a pressie to me - it was considered ancient even then in 1993. I remember the excitment of me and all the flatmates going out Blockbuster to rent a video - Terminator 2!

am just amazed at the cost...
it would be cheaper to buy the M&S £10 deal, get 2 meals and a bottle of wine!

OMG - I've been reading this thread with fond memories of student days but not looked at the receipes. OMG again!!! £9 for shepherds pie!!!!!!!!

I'm horrified and gobsmacked. When I was a student, I had about a tenner a week for food!
A real treat was a bit of slow-roasted belly pork - it was about 49p for loads. Those bloody chefs publicised it about 10 years ago and it costs a bomb now.

Deserts are funny too. Where are the Yorkie bars from the local offy or Breakaways?

Finally had a glance at the offending article.

First line: "Being on a budget doesn't mean you have to cut corners." Er, actually that's exactly what it means, you satchel-faced fucko

I don't think it is just that students have more money now - a generation ago there were plenty of well off students. I think it is down to a change of attitude. When we were students, everyone lived in awful accomodation, ate terrible food, we didn't even question it.

Maybe it's due to all the helicopter parents now, who cannot bear to see their children slumming it.

"Although the anarchist group did have a minibus, if that counts."

Fitted with twelve steering wheels, presumably.

Another article gem: "Buy chopped Italian tomatoes in cans: these are usually picked ripe and are worth the extra expense." NO THEY'RE NOT, they're tinned tomatoes ffs, students don't sit around doing tomato taste tests like bloody wine connoisseurs.