The act of preparing food within the confines of a college lifestyle is a laughable prospect. Even if I knew what to cook, I wouldn’t know how.
If it weren’t for the campus cafeteria, my fraternity provided meals or frequent visits to one of seven Moscow fast food joints, my food pyramid would consist of beer, ramen and frozen pizzas. As expected, my diet rapidly deteriorated to exactly that since moving out a ripe two weeks ago.
I started out strong with a meal prep amount of fried rice. Though it wasn’t quote-unquote healthy, it did the trick. After five whole-hearted consecutive meals of fried rice, I’ve hit a lull.
My nutrition for the past week has been toast, Sweet and Spicy Chili Doritos, an occasional Busch light or two, and ramen with a poorly added egg. I’ve thought about going to the grocery store but wouldn’t even know where to start.
What they don’t tell you about cooking is that seasonings don’t just randomly appear. If I wanted to cook a healthy dose of properly seasoned chicken, I’d need four to five well-rounded seasonings. Five dollars a pop, I’m already spending over 20 bucks on a mediocre meal.
Say it’s a one-time payment and I get over that hump, will I have to keep making the same things to utilize all the groceries I bought? Do I have to keep making fried rice to use all the sesame oil I bought before it expires?
How do I develop a revolving door of fruits and vegetables? When I buy bananas, by the time I want to eat a banana, half of them are bad. Am I supposed to buy a heap of herbs to only use once and throw the rest away?
Okay. What if I substitute all the fresh meals with frozen variants? Sure, they taste worse and probably aren’t as healthy, but at least I got a meal. But I’m left with the initial problem, eating chicken alfredo four nights in a row.
Not to mention, who has time to cook? Genuinely? I have class early in the morning, through lunch and meetings most evenings. I can hardly justify spending ample time on making a lackluster meal when ten minutes, a pot and bag of noodles will fill the void.
I know I’m mindless complaining about the natural order of things. Everyone grows up, everyone has to feed themselves. But this system is rigged against the college student.
The college student is somehow required to sustainably feed themselves with no knowledge, no money and no time. When those odds are stacked against me, I’d rather go with the basic beer, ramen and frozen pizza.
Carter Kolpitcke can be reached at [email protected]