Midnight oil

College eating doesn’t have to be dull

By Josey Duncan

September 4, 2007

College cuisine — that definitive oxymoron — has typically been synonymous with pizza delivery, ramen noodles, and limp salad bars. With late hours and busy schedules, plus little or no kitchen access and irregular cafeteria and grocery options, collegiate living can make healthy meals seem almost impossible. But against all the late-night-snacking odds, plenty of the nation’s approximately 17.5 million college students are eating just fine.

Many are preparing simple, inexpensive, even healthful meals in their dorm rooms with just a few appliances and easy-to-find ingredients. Others are benefiting from the increased array of options in campus eateries. And some are learning to cook, cooperatively, in kitchen-equipped campus housing.

The DIY kitchen

Many colleges, of course, have strict policies prohibiting certain appliances in campus housing — toaster ovens, for example, can be as much of a fire hazard as scented candles. But a wisely assembled collection of small appliances can enable anyone to whip up simple meals in a dorm room (or, for the post-college crowd, an under-equipped office). The MVP list? Mini-fridges, rice cookers, microwaves, electric teakettles, toaster ovens, hot plates, Crock-Pots, and George Foreman grills.

Quesadillas are easy to make with the aid of a mini-fridge and a microwave.

At Reed College in Portland, Oregon, a 2007 psychology graduate named Elana (who declined to reveal her last name) says that as a student, she relied on her rice cooker to produce tasty and simple sushi. “Senior year, I basically lived on vegetable sushi rolls,” she writes in an email. “I always kept a package of nori wraps in the cupboard. I just put rice in the rice cooker for 40 minutes while I read, then filled it with whatever vegetables were in the fridge. Most excellent!”

Another innovative use for a rice cooker comes from Chelsea Faith, a 23-year-old vegan musician who lives in Alameda, California. “I might suggest my ‘throw everything in the rice cooker’ strategy,” she emails. “You put the usual amount of rice and water in the cooker, add maybe a quarter cup of soy sauce and other seasonings you might have, and whatever vegetables you have in the fridge. I usually put in some bok choy, broccoli, tofu, frozen peas — all of which are really cheap.”

Faith cautions dorm chefs to remove their concoctions promptly when they’re done cooking: “Otherwise, if you let it sit there on the ‘keep warm’ setting, it will make your veggies turn mushy and lose their color.”

Gina Collechia, 20, a Kentucky native who now attends Reed, suggests spicing up simple canned tomato soup (easily heated up in a microwave) with garlic salt, pepper, and a little Parmesan cheese. Rachel Leaf, a 20-year-old Reed student from Minneapolis, Minnesota, swears by her own tasty invention: popping a piece of buttered bread in the toaster oven for 30 seconds, sprinkling it with salt and pepper (and cheese, if she feels like it), then dipping it in vodka marinara sauce.

Other quick snacks include the Pseudo-Quesadilla: Shred cheese on a whole-wheat tortilla, then place it in a toaster oven or microwave. Once the cheese melts, remove the quesadilla and dip it in plain yogurt and fresh salsa. No cooking appliances handy? Stock up on fresh fruit (bananas or apples, sliced and then spread with peanut butter, are filling and fast) and veggies (dip carrot sticks, celery, radishes, cucumber slices, and raw broccoli in creamy salad dressings). And try to avoid the junk-food aisle at the campus store; seek out nearby grocery stores or even farmers’ markets for locally grown seasonal produce.

For dessert, Ellen Green, a Reed student who’s studying abroad at the American University in Cairo this year, suggests her no-cooking-required favorite: Chocolate Butterscotch Peanut Clusters.

“You just need a bag of chocolate chips, a bag of butterscotch chips, and a container of Spanish peanuts,” Green explains. “Mix both kinds of chips together in a bowl and melt them in the sun (in the summer) or on top of your dorm-room radiator (in winter). Then mix in the peanuts and drop clusters of the mixture onto a plate or a cookie sheet covered in wax paper. Let them cool and you’re done.”

The cafeteria makeover

Beyond the dorm room, the campus cafeteria these days is often undergoing changes, ditching the iceberg lettuce and frozen fries for fresher, more creative fare.