Columns
May 18
Practically every phone conversation I've had with my grandmother over the past three years has had the same format: She asks me about the weather in Boston ("It's cold, Grandma, but I'm keeping warm"), she asks me about my classes ("There is a lot of work, but I like my courses"), and then she asks me how the food is.
The last question has not always had such a standard answer.
During my freshman year, I babbled on and on about all of the choices for food there are on campus. I would tell her about stir-fry in Carmichael on Tuesdays and late-night snacks at The Commons or The Tower Café. Sophomore year, my enthusiasm waned; our conversations were more like, "I am so stressed, and I am bored of the dining halls, and I wish I could get pizza delivered to the library, and now I have to go do work, OK love you, bye!" As a junior, I told her about eating at my friends' houses and my favorite places to eat out in Cambridge and Boston.
Constantly talking about my food choices with my grandmother has made me realize something: Collegiate culinarians have it rough. It's hard not to get stuck in a rut after eating in the same dining halls and ordering from the same restaurants day after day, year after year. Living in a house off campus can provide more food freedom, but who has time to cook every single day after sitting through class, writing papers, doing problem sets and then going to a never-ending slew of appointments and meetings?
Yet despite my frustration over the years with our food options, I've realized something: The concept of the college meal plan is absolutely genius.
I feel like if there were a way to apply a meal plan to real life — aka life after graduation — it would be brilliant. No more coming home from your job and scrounging around in the kitchen to cook something while you're exhausted and just want to crash on the couch. No more living on sandwiches and pasta because that's all you know how to cook. Think about how nice it would be if you could pay an upfront fee and then have all of your meals taken care of for a couple of months with a variety of choices in location and type of cuisine for each meal. If your new job in New York City came complete with a New-York-City-on-a-meal-plan, it would be like heaven on a Big-Apple-shaped plate.
Clearly, my real-world-meal-plan plans need some work, but there are definitely parts of collegiate dining that can be applied to life after the dorms. First, always keep a well-stocked pantry; just like it was always helpful to have cereal and soup in your dorm room for late-night cravings, it's even more useful to always have staples like pastas, rice and beans in the pantry for quick meals when you're crunched for time. Second, don't forget about creative means to cook things; you can make a great grilled cheese with an iron (just don't use it for clothes afterward), and you can cook oatmeal and even brew your own beer in a coffeepot. And finally, don't completely dismiss dorm room mainstays like Cup-o-Noodles or Ramen — I know a great recipe for a delicious pasta salad made with Ramen noodles and bagged coleslaw mix.
Here is the best advice I can give to the Class of 2009: Always remember what you've learned about food in college, use your good food genes, watch as much "No Reservations" as possible, and stay away from high-fructose corn syrup. And as you embark on your post-Tufts adventures, keep in mind the words of Henry Bromel: "It's important to begin a search on a full stomach."
