Congratulations!!
You've made it into University.
Now what?
The above pictures are just some snippets from my uni life last year.
Food becomes one of the main focus's of your daily life,
as for many people it's the first time they've had to cook for themselves.
Here are my top five tips relating to food at university.
1.
Make your food from scratch if at all possible. The may seem appealing to live on ready meals, but what you save on time you lose on money. Fresh ingredients are much, MUCH cheaper than ready meals and you can make more than one meal out of them.
It also gives you the ability to branch out on what you're eating - some ideas I've cooked (as shown above) are homemade beef burgers, chicken pie and roast veg, risotto. Vary what you eat, you will get bored of pasta all the time!
2.
Practice now, whilst you're still at home and can ask the advice of your mum, dad, grandparents, siblings. They'll have useful advice and will correct you when you make mistakes.
This should also help you build up a repertoire of recipes that you're confident cooking for those first few weeks. Having a taste of home (literally) will help you feel less homesick when you're feeling down.
3.
Buy little and often. It will save things like your milk and vegetables not being finished and consequently going off in the fridge - which is unpleasant for all involved. It's also kinder on your pocket as you're not throwing away half of what you buy.
If you have the space, yuou can freeze things like milk and cheese and defrost them as and when you need them so you don't get caught short. As for everything else, if your walk home from uni is anything like mine, it will be littered with tesco express's and quicki-marts. So you can pick up those odds and ends you may need on your way home.
4.
If you do need to do a bigger shop, for example at the start of a new term, I highly recommend using the online services provided by most supermarkets.
Trust me, after a long day at uni the last thing you will want to do is walk to the supermarket, walk around the supermarket and then walk home with 10 million bags. So do it from the comfort of your house and get them to deliver it! Also, while you're at it, sign up for a tesco clubcard/nectar card/ points card because you will accumulate a lot of points which can help take the sting off some of your bigger shops!
5.
Most students know they can get money off clothes and other things with a student discount, but not many know that some restaurants do student offers. For example, Nando's do a 20% student discount monday-thursday and with an NUS card you can get 20% off at Pizza Express sunday-thursday.
Websites such as NUS and student beans can help point you in the right direction!
Finally, this isn't really a tip, but a suggestion for something I found very successful. Once a week (on a wednesday) I would cook a meal for myself and my best two gal pals. They in return would bring the wine. The three of us would eat and drink well for pennies, and afterwards we'd get ready together and go out to the biggest student night.
It ended up being one of our highlights of the week and they loved my cooking as I was more adventurous then they were!!
It ended up being one of our highlights of the week and they loved my cooking as I was more adventurous then they were!!
So there are my top tips for eating at university!
Don't be afraid to try something new!
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Good tips Pol! And the meals look GREAT.
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