College Dorm Cooking: The Good, The Bad, The Dangerous

Should I continue with this project? Should I--as blogbuddy Chance suggests--write an ecookbook? So far, I have started a pantry, including a freezer pantry, suggested some essential equipment, notably, a rice cooker, and test-driven a recipe-less concoction in the rice cooker. So far, so good.

I continue to look around for helpful sources. I was in Barnes and Noble last week and saw a slew of slow cooker cookbooks, with nary a rice cooker book. I check around the blogosphere. Let's go through my subtitle in reverse order.

THE DANGEROUS. There are many blog posts that suggest going against dorm rules so you can keep a toaster over, a Foreman grill, even a hotplate in your dorm room. Many of these have a jeering tone: "Hey, I'm an adult. Can't I be trusted with a hotplate?" Uh, no. I remember reading about a dorm that burned down because a student tried to dry her underwear with a blow dryer. And I remember being in college myself, trying to stay up all night, and falling asleep over my books.

Some of the posts advising hiding proscribed appliances in your closet are written by PARENTS. Please, parents, your child is just as likely to pass out as the next kid.

THE BAD. I've already described some of these: ramen stroganoff, velveeta nachos, and the like. One recent discovery (no link--find it yourself if you want it) gave directions for microwave meatloaf, which consisted of 1/4 lb of ground beef cooked in a mug with various meatloaf ingredients. To me, this is simply useless. Assuming you don't have 1/4 lb of hamburger in a defrosted state, you need to trudge to the grocery, purchase your quarter pound of meat, pay, return to the dorm, and concoct your meatloaf.

The GOOD. Well, it doesn't exist. There are decent college cookbooks out there, but they are not dorm cookbooks. One I flipped through at Barnes and Noble gave the useful (I'm being sarcastic) suggestion that if you don't have buttermilk to make your muffin batter, you can sub yogurt. Gee, that's helpful for the average dorm dweller.

So this is what I think would be good.
First, a PANTRY. I've already started this. With basic ingredients, you can make any number of things quickly. It's the haphazard shopping that is a time-waster.

Second, a FEW recipes. Many blog posts on the subject advise buying your scholar a basic cookbook. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything is often mentioned. That's a fine suggestion for someone like me, who loves to peruse cookbooks, but that sucker is over 900 pages long. I can just see your scholar flipping though, trying to decide. Remember: PARADOX OF CHOICE. So let's limit the choices.

My cookbook is written for my darling daughter, so my recipes will be her favorites. I remember reading Peg Bracken's I Hate to Cookbook, a fun read, though I never did cook anything from it. Anyway, she said: no one needs more than 28 recipes (or was it 30?). Well, I think that the college student needs even fewer.

These will be mine, decided on in consultation with my dear Lucy M.
1. African peanut soup
2. Thai coconut curry (shrimp, chicken, or vegetable)
3. Shrimp and corn soup
4. Burritos
5. Chilaquiles
6. Chile (beef and vegetarian)
7. Red beans and rice (of course!)
8. A magic spinach/ricotta dish that can be Italian or Mexican, depending.

None of these needs the stove; some can be put together and then microwaved. These--along with the rice cooker basics--provide plenty of variety. They are mostly one-pot meals. I seem to remember Peg Bracken also saying that you don't need to get all your nutrients in each meal; you can spread them out over time! Good point.

Anyway, I would be appreciative of any other ideas. Be looking for further development through summer.

Newsflash: Peg Bracken's book is being republished in a 50th Anniversary edition. Bracken is a great writer.

College Cooking: Smoothies with Your Immersion Blender

Now that it's June, my little project is taking on some urgency. You've all acquired an immersion blender, right? Smoothies can be made in regular blenders, but the clean up is a pain. With an immersion blender, you can just rinse off the blender and your container. I know that for harried students, even that can be too much sometimes. But yucky blenders are the worst!

Smoothies: These are ridiculously expensive in shops. One hardly needs a recipe: we use yogurt, frozen banana, and whatever other fruit we have that seems promising. A little sugar or honey and you're done.

For the dorm cook, even the simplest concoction comes with roadblocks. What if you don't HAVE a frozen banana (because packing bananas for the freezer is a pain)? What if you don't have fruit? What if you don't have yogurt? Besides, yogurt can get expensive; we make our own chez frugalscholar, but that would be too much for most students.

This morning I conducted an experiment: regular unfrozen banana, handful of frozen blueberries, powdered milk, water, sugar. It was just fine.

Then I tried a trick I read about recently: I put in a handful of regular flaked oatmeal and blended it in. It worked!

So here we have a healthy smoothie with roadblocks minimized.
1. You can use a regular banana.*
2. You can sub powdered milk and water for yogurt.**
3. Fruit is a problem area, because it's heavy to lug home from the store, fragile, and has a short lifespan.*** I suggest adding FROZEN FRUIT to your freezer pantry. The cheapest place in my town is Dollar Tree, where I can get blueberries, peaches, and strawberries. The fruit comes in bags, from which you can take what you want and then re-secure, either with a rubber band, a scrunchie, or a paper clip.
4. The oatmeal is a great add-in because it functions as a thickener, is VERRRRRY healthy, and gets around the problem of "I don't like oatmeal because it's slimy."

*Would it be unethical to snitch a banana from the cafeteria when you eat there? If not, you could use that banana.
**Same as above, except for yogurt. For some reason, I think the banana is OK, but the yogurt is not.
***For a wonderful children's book on mortality through the example of a peach, see

Frugal College Cooking: How to Spoil Your Child and Add to the Pantry

Thinking about how my precious little one will cook in the dorm next year is interesting. It is a problem-solving activity, which I hope will delay the onset of memory-loss. So many limitations. Her suite contains a kitchen area with a decent sized fridge, a microwave, and a sink. Additional equipment so far includes a rice cooker, a stick blender, and a knife.

I asked Lucy M., who is home from her 3-week service project in the Black Belt of Alabama, if she would be inclined to mosey to the dorm kitchen, which does have a stove, to make something. She said, "You have no idea how lazy and tired I can be." That's my girl.

One can still read the ubiquitous articles about helicopter parents, who competitively oversee (or over-oversee) every aspect of their child's life, from school, to sports, to artistic activities, to the Holy Grail, "getting into a good college." No, that's wrong: getting into a TOP college.

I was a mediocre helicopter, partly because competition makes me retreat, partly because I am scornful of such activities, and partly because I am somewhat countercultural and will rebel at the drop of a conventional hat. To that mix of good and bad qualities, add some basic laziness.

But I love reading cookbooks and figuring out how to do things the frugal way. And here is where the helicopter parents can join the frugal parents. Now that the parent does not have to quiz junior on SAT words, or chauffeur junior to community service activities that look good on an application, he or she will have a lot of free time.

What can we do for our scholars to ease the arduous task of dorm cooking? Figure out the road blocks to health, economy, even EATING, and get around them.

For our dear scholar: When Lucy M comes home, she says "Where are the burritos?" These are black bean and cheese burritos, which we make assembly line fashion, wrap up and freeze. We all love them. So instead of telling Lucy how to make them (she already knows how, anyway), we will bring some to her--frozen--in a cooler. Think how little room 60 burritos take up. Think how that is at least 30 meals. Think how your scholar will not have to chop onions, deal with messy and smelly beans, or grate cheese. Think how much time your scholar will have to cram for that test. And, finally, think how popular your scholar will be with suite mates and friends, when said scholar magnanimously offers to share part of her cache?

Or how about helping out with the ingredients that are a pain? I hate chopping onions. Even if you like this task, it is messy and smelly. But how wonderful onions are and there is seldom a recipe that doesn't begin: chop an onion. One of my OLD Joys of Cooking has a gem of a comment, along the lines of "If onions were rare, they would be as expensive and treasured as truffles." So when you get to the college town, treat your little one to a bag or three of frozen chopped onions!

Wait! Even better would be to saute a bunch of onions for your scholar, put them in zip-lock freezer bags, and put them in the cooler next to the burritos. Then your scholar won't have to even use the stove--or wash a pot.

Two nights ago, I made Lucy's favorite shrimp and corn soup, the best version of which starts with a gumbo base of roux with onions, celery, and peppers. I had made a whole bunch of gumbo base when I had an overabundance of onions and company; it was stored in a ziplock in the freezer. With that base ready, the soup took 10 minutes to put together.

Tomorrow, my Frugal Son will be returning from France. To spoil him, I will make gumbo. It just so happens, I will use more of that gumbo base. Another almost instant soup.

One problem with cookbooks is that everyone likes different things. So you may have to modify my ideas to your own tastes and situation.

A freezer is a pantry too.

So in addition to the pantry list of canned and boxed foods I've begun, let's start the freezer pantry and spoil our children.

My list so far for Lucy M: burritos, sauteed onions, roux with vegetables. All in zip-freezer bags.

Frugal College Cooking: Pantry in the Dorm

i just noticed that some of my traffic is due to the search "college cooking" or "dorm cooking." Better get on with this. My sense of urgency comes from not only Lucy M's needs next year, but also a glance at what else comes up with the search. Martha Stewart recommending that you buy a set of her cookware at Kmart for your dorm. Or recipes like ramen stroganoff (ramen, cream of mushroom soup, hamburger) or Tex-Mex macaroni (box macaroni and cheese, salsa, hamburger). That's not how I want my girl to eat.

Before I start providing recipes, I will fill--both virtually and in reality--a pantry. It is a truth universally acknowledged that cooking from a well-stocked pantry is a time, money, and stress saver.

Remember, the college student doesn't need to cook everything in the dorm. A penchant for sushi can be satisfied at a restaurant, as can the urge for eggplant parmesan. I still remember cooking the latter for a bunch of people in a dorm kitchen and watching as they all left with thanks, on to a party, leaving me, the world's worst housekeeper, with a room full of dirty dishes and pans, including egg soaked breadcrumbs, tons of grease, and you know the rest.

BEVERAGES:
boxed soymilk
boxed milk
evaporated milk
hot chocolate mix*
powdered milk**
instant coffee (Nescafe Clasico is the only acceptable brand. I am not kidding.)

*It's as cheap in the envelopes as in bulk cans. Frugal Son gives me grief about excess packaging, but I say that we will use the envelopes as a way to the greater good.
**I will give Lucy some in a container. This is good for cooking.

PROTEIN:
tuna
salmon
peanut butter
I would buy these in the foil packages, which don't need draining. Draining tuna is a pain at any time, but in a dorm it becomes a major production.

BREAKFAST
instant oatmeal*
Again, a compromise. We prefer steel-cut oat groats! But this is acceptable for convenience. See above on hot cocoa mix for Frugal Son's likely objection and my riposte. There are recipes online for make-your-own instant oatmeal. but I've found that if you keep an eye out for sales, you can get it for between 8 and 10 cents a packet, which is as cheap as the homemade.

CANNED ITEMS
beans (black, kidney,whatever you like)*
refried beans**
rotel-type tomatoes***
canned tomatoes, preferably crushed or diced, so you won't have to chop. Also get stewed with onions, to save a step and an ingredient.

*If your scholar doesn't like beans, he or she should learn. It is a good thing economically and environmentally. Not to mention good for you.
**Ugh, hate these, but Lucy likes 'em. You can buy instant refried beans, which are great, but they are ridiculously expensive these days.
***If you have rotel-type tomatoes, you also have salsa for a lot cheaper than salsa. OK, it's chunky salsa. Live with it.

PEANUT BUTTER
A category unto itself.

RICE
See peanut butter. In a plastic container. See below for rodents. The rice is for the rice cooker i mentioned a few posts ago.

All these things can be stored in a bin under the scholar's bed. Note that all are rodent-proof. Since we got a note not to have crackers and such in our offices because mice can chew through the cardboard box, imagine in a dorm!!

Eating from the Pantry: Potato Soup

Now that Mr. FS has put new shelves in the pantry, I have to bring it to order. I must admit that this caused a bit of friction in our generally harmonious union. Mr. FS likes to store things in the "some here, some there" manner: canned tomatoes, of which we have many, are in several places, including some that are impossible for me to reach or even know about (boxed in an unmarked container in a shed). Problem: I buy MORE tomatoes, because I don't know how many I have.

OK. So we had a fight. I have now wrested control of the pantry AND the canned tomatoes. See, I've read all these organizing books (more honored in the breach than the observance**, I'm afraid). They ALL say store like things together. I haven't done that yet. I have put on the easiest-to-see shelf all the things that must be used ASAP. When these things are gone, I will do the pantry.

It is a motley assortment. Last night, I used some canned pineapple to make a sweet and sour Asian chicken, which was a blast from my childhood Chinese restaurant past. Two days ago, I FINALLY used some of the arborio rice I have and made the wonderful Italian soup/risotto risi e bisi. Tonight I am going to use some almost-too-old potatoes and some canned green chiles to make a wondrous and very easy soup.

Remember how I told you that when you linked to a cookbook on Amazon you could often do a search?

The recipe is from The Feast of Santa Fe.

It is called Potato Soup with Green Chilis on page 189. It is so good and now I don't have to reproduce the recipe here! Potato soups are often more than the sum of their seemingly meager parts, I've noticed.

**the allusion is to Hamlet 1.4. However, note that I am using it in the modern sense of the phrase rather than in the sense that Hamlet meant.

Cookbooks in the Pantry

Continued....

The pantry clean out was--and is--dispiriting. I don't even want to tell you what I threw out (not that much, but still). The second- and third-tier cookbooks are giving me trouble too.

But what do I do with a copy of Anna Thomas's The Vegetarian Epicure, that staple of the student kitchen circa 1975? Everything in that book tasted good, no doubt because of the pounds of cream, butter, and cheese that nearly every recipe contained. And how's this for a blast from her past: The two-hours-later course is especially recommended if grass is smoked socially at your house. If you have passed a joint around before dinner to sharpen gustatory perceptions, you will most likely pass another one after dinner, and everyone knows what that will do...

I do sometimes make her Russian vegetable pie, which is filled with mushrooms, cabbage, cream cheese, and hard boiled eggs.

Then there is another veggie fave: The Vegetarian Feast by Martha Shulman. There you will find a recipe for Oeufs Poches en Souffle a la Florentine. This dish consists of poached eggs placed on croutons, covered with creamed spinach, topped with cheese souffle. These pages are unmarked, except perhaps with my sighs.

Anna Thomas, who sold millions of copies of the book she wrote at 22, has resumed writing cookbooks. I am sorry to say the new ones are terrible. Martha Shulman has veered from the vegetarian path and is now writing a Recipes for Health column in the New York Times. She has wonderful recipes and is particularly known for her Tex-Mex.

I recently bought one of Shulman's books, though I haven't used it yet:

One neat thing you may not know about: if you link to a book on Amazon, often you can "search inside the book." Click on it, enter a search term, et voila. That way you can look at and even try a recipe--to see if you want to purchase the book. Not all pages are available, but I test-drive cookbooks all the time.

In the Pantry with Mr. FS: The Dark Forest

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Oh, those beautiful first lines of Dante's Inferno.

Now in the middle of our life
I awoke in a dark forest
For the straight path had been lost.

To go from the mountain that is Dante to the molehill that is my life (OUR life, which we are in the middle of) is to go from the lofty thoughts with which I should be occupying myself to the selva oscura that is my pantry.

Mr. FS has taken it upon himself to reorganize what is a medium-sized, misshapen closet. When we moved into our house, the pantry was empty, and truly we had hardly anything to put in it. Fast forward to now and there is food of all sorts, cookbooks of the second rank, and Mr. FS's household tools. Oh yeah, and brooms. And work clothes (not for me, for Mr. FS).

I'm trying to avert my gaze. I did notice some Crosse and Blackwell mincemeat that I bought for a quarter several years ago. And some tea that a student gave me. And some English pudding given to me by--this is true--a cross-dressed attendee at a library program on Queen Elizabeth I that I led with a colleague. (This is funny because Queen Elizabeth herself was noted for her genderbending strategies.) Easy enough to throw the expired mincemeat in the trash. Not so easy to trash the sundried tomato relish that MUST be outdated because I can't even remember where I got it. Mr. FS said he threw several things out. He won't tell me what, however.

Mr. FS made some new shelves that will hold dishpans--the kind you get for $1.00. These are the cheapest organizing equipment. They will be labeled by cuisine, type of cooking, type of food: Mexican, Asian, tuna, baking needs, and so on. We had done this earlier, but with the passage of time, the tuna ended up under something else, and the old, should-be-thrown-out food was hidden behind the newer stuff.

Don't I sound reasonable? Like Dante, who travelled for a while with his beloved Virgil, reason is what you need for your journey through the dark places--like pantries.

But then I come to my cookbooks. Reason wavers. To turn to another mountain, John Donne, we learn

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Donne is talking about admitting God into his life; I, in the molehill version, am trying to restore (let's be honest, initiate) order in a pantry.

Has everyone else finished spring cleaning? I will post updates on my journey through the pantry.

Using my Talents: Stocking the Pantry for Lucy Marmalade

Those of you with a bit of Biblical knowledge may recognize the allusion to the Parable of the Talents, which exhorts us to USE our talents, rather than burying them in the ground. Talent, incidentally, was a unit of currency in Biblical times, but the parable has been extended to mean that we should use our talents, in the sense of what our gifts are. Something of the double meaning emerges in Milton's poignant sonnet 19, where he meditates on his blindness:

WHEN I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker. . ..

Really, I wish my talent were for something a bit more--shall we say, elevated--but it seems that my talent is for frugality. Well, that brings up one of my favorite ideas from Emerson, which I've cited here earlier:

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

So, to use my talent today, I acquired 10 cans of bargain-priced tuna, which are now residing in Lucy Marmalade's closet. She will be on a vastly reduced meal plan next year. We figured that each time she prepares her own meal, she will save around $8.00, which can go to a meal out or whatever the heck she wants.

The tuna is in a bag. Also in bags in the closet: 20 cans of beans, quantities of oatmeal, canned tomatoes.

Note that this saves her money and time. It also saves me money, and doesn't really cost me time, since I am out and about in any case.

Here then, dear readers, is the beginning of a food future stockpile. Next year, I'll send her recipes!

Have you been stockpiling the food futures discussed by Funny's guest=poster?

Pantry Cooking for the Rest of the Week and Beyond

Tonight, we're going to the monthly free concert at the church down the street. These concerts are followed by food and wine. The concerts are great! But we've noticed that they are not the places to see and be seen by le tout as I call the high society folks of my little town. Most of the audience is comprised of residents of an upscale retirement community. Mr. FS and I are definitely on the youthful side of the demographic.

Usually we get enough at the reception to serve as a small dinner (but those retirees are very competitive eaters, I must say). Here are my pantry-busting meals for net week. I noticed that many of my favorite recipes are permutations of each other. That is why, I suppose, you can't really follow other people's cooking plans; you have to develop your own rhythm and repertoire.

I have cooked red beans (made extra), sausage,meatballs, shrimp,potatoes,cabbage, greens, and bacon. Plus odds and ends like carrots. Look at my choices.

1. Red beans and rice (beans, onions, sausage, peppers).
2. Portuguese soup (potatoes, kale,beans,tomatoes,broth--from The Victory Garden Cookbook).
3. Potatoes, sausage, and cabbage with mustard butter (from Desperation Dinners).
4. Meatballs on braised cabbage with tomatoes (from Marcella Hazan).
5. Cabbage, potato and leek winter soup (Deborah Madison).

That would be at least 10 dinners, since I cook extra.

Here's what I REALLY want to try: I found a recipe for bacon, shrimp, and mashed potato flautas. I am swooning just thinking about it.

Cooking from My Pantry: Progress and Plans

I want to make a dent in my food stockpile, so I set a rather arbitrary goal of spending $25.00 a week. No biggie if I don't stick to this.

Tuesday: Baked potatoes stuffed with cheese and sour cream with one of those fancy salad blends (on sale for 99 cents).

Wednesday: Winter squash soup (32 oz. Pacific boxed soup was 99 cents at Big Lots; I bought a bunch a while back) doctored with roasted peppers and extra onion browned with bacon. We ate another of the fancy salad blends mentioned above. I thought Frugal Son would love these, but he refused to eat them because they are "over-packaged." Ergh to the holier than thou 20 year old.

Thursday: Deborah Madison's lentil minestrone beloved by Mr. FS. With bread. This is a meal in a bowl. We used greens from the garden, which improved in the cold weather.

*****Went to the dreaded WM for bird food. Spent $13.00 on people food while we were there. The "budget buster": 2 bottles of rooster hot sauce for Mr. FS, who is an addict.

Friday: Made Italian wedding soup, which features meatballs (frozen, made by Son), stock (Thanksgiving!), kale (garden), beans and other odds and ends.

Saturday: leftovers of above-mentioned soups.

We walked to the little neighborhood grocery in the beautiful breezy weather. Mr. FS further busted the budget by buying his favorite cheap wine: Frontera Carmenere.

I only have $5.00 left. Mr. FS suggested that I employ creative accounting or deficit spending. Just like the big guys do.

Yet Another Eating from the Pantry Report

It's so much fun to stock my pantry with wonderful food that I sometimes--okay, often--get overloaded. Why is it so much more fun to acquire than to eat? I do not have the answer.

I decided to do this after my children went back to school. Then I discovered that hundreds of bloggers are doing the same. So it seems to be some seasonal rhythm at work.

The only hitch in my plan is that I started today rather than yesterday. That's because our Sam's Club membership is expiring, so we went to Sam's on the way back from dropping Frugal Son off at the airport. We mostly stocked up on feta cheese, which is 1/3 the price of the grocery model. Somehow, we spent about $100.00 on food, which is why we don't really like warehouse clubs. We declined their offer of membership renewal for $10.00 off. I'm always disappointed by their prices--except on feta and parmesan cheese and smoked salmon.

So my goal is to spend around $25.00 a week on food for at least a month.

How's your pantry?

Last night's dinner: giant stuffed baked potatoes with a nice salad.

Boring to you probably, bliss to us.