It has been a long time since I attended college and I am probably severely out of touch with what a student’s life is like at college during the present day, but let me suggest some things regarding food that would have been helpful when I was attending college those many years ago.

Braun makes a multi-tool for the kitchen which includes a food chopper, a whisk, and a stick blender. Maybe not in a college dorm, but the stick blender can be used to puree various soups while the soup in still in the hot pot. I originally bought a Braun multi-purpose tool because I wanted the stick blender to help me make my “Curried Apple” Soup. The Braun equipment I originally bought was not very powerful, nor was the chopper container very big. In fact, I could not even process a whole can of garbanzo beans when trying to make hummus. Later I would buy a more powerful Braun system that had a bigger chopper container and the motor could handle blending a whole can of chick peas.

Homemade Hummus

If you like hummus, you can easily make hummus at home, and cheaply. Get a can of garbanzo beans and throw those into your chopper bowl. Add some cumin seeds (or ground cumin), some lime or lemon juice, some turmeric and some salt and blend this mixture. If you like tahini (fermented sesame seeds) you can add that also. Although tahini is is the original hummus recipe I had, the hummus I make is just as satisfying without it. Maybe some roasted garlic would blend well with this too.

Turmeric provides an interesting taste and color to making pickled sweet onion, bell pepper and tomatoes. I guess I might call it an acrid flavor, but marinate those veggies in this vinegar mixture and they become addictive.

The nice thing about hummus is that it becomes the base for all the other flavorful veggies and other ingredients you might want to eat with it. I like sweet onion, colored sweet bell pepper, chopped tomatoes, and carrots, but I also like Smoked Oysters. I like celery, but for some reason I don’t like it with hummus, and it seems to be perfectly suited for scooping up hummus. I could see making a whole meal, without meat, around hummus and veggies.

Homemade Salsa

Buy the chips and make the salsa in a food chopper:

You can start with fresh chopped tomatoes, but I like the diced fire roasted tomatoes, or those in a can flavored with roasted garlic. Add some sweet onion and sweet, colorful bell pepper to this also. I like the flavor and heat from a premade salsa called “Salsa Ranchera” which is made by the Herdez Company. I think this is ground Chipotle peppers, which are roasted Jalapenos. So, you could add any type of hot peppers to your desire, or maybe some fresh jalapenos or poblanos. Here are three peppers I tried last season that had a distinctive flavor and I don’t recall any of them being too hot: Biquinho, Trinidad Perfume and Brazilian Starfish. One of these looks like little yellow tear drops and one is bright yellow, and one looks like a tiny bright red “patty pan” squash. It doesn’t taste anything like squash, but the shape is almost exactly like those squash which are an ivory white. Oh, I almost forgot, you can roast your peppers and onion before blending them. Adding cilantro leaves would provide extra color and flavor. Ground cumin or cumin seeds and S&P are interesting.

I don’t know what the dorm policy is, but if you are not allowed to cook in your room, I would think that being able to make hummus and/or salsa should still be allowed, and you can store all the necessary ingredients and finished product in a mini fridge. Put a chopping board on top of the fridge with any kitchen tools (sharp tomato knife) and plastic storage containers you may need.

If you are allowed to cook in your dorm room (or have an apartment later) I would suggest that getting an electric wok would be the best investment you could get. Cooking with an electric wok is perhaps the easiest way to cook that I know of. You can chop up the ingredients for a “stir-fry” quickly, cook them quickly and clean the wok very quickly afterwards. You do need a fire proof spatula for moving the cooking food around in the wok.

I would get a can of Toasted Sesame Oil and some olive oil for cooking in a wok. Toasted Sesame Oil provides the classic flavor for fried rice.

Soy sauce is another classic flavor and even some lime or lemon juice.

Most meats like chicken or pork you chop up into bite sized pieces. You don’t have to chop shrimp or ground beef. And then the veggies: Asparagus, Bell Pepper, Broccoli, Cabbage, Carrots, Cauliflower, Mushrooms, Onion, Tomatoes and even Zucchini. Maybe add some sesame seeds, or buy a can of mixed Stir-Fry Vegetables (bamboo shoots, baby corn, bean sprouts, water chestnuts) or buy individual cans of those you especially like. White rice is probably traditional, but fried rice would be good also with some diced carrots & garden peas.

Multi-Bean Salad

If you’ve never had it, a variation of 3-Bean Salad can be delicious and filling. I would have never thought to mix beans with sweetened vinegar. But, when I think of sweetened vinegar, I usually tell myself, oh, that’s just pickle juice. So imagine marinating various beans in a sweet pickle juice.

The surprise for me was the variety of beans you could use to provide both color, flavor and texture. Black, cannellini, green, garbanzo, kidney, navy, pinto, and wax beans all work well in this concoction. For simplicity sake you might just choose three of the above listed beans, but feel free to add to the number if it works for you. But this isn’t just beans and sweetened vinegar. You can chop up some sweet onion, or get some pickled peppers. Basically anything that is sweet pickled would probably taste good in this salad. I’m not sure if beets (and I like beets) would work because they might discolor the rest of the white beans, but conceivably “pickled beets” are in a sweet vinegar.

If you can have a toaster oven:

Ciabatta Roll Pizzas

A basic pizza sauce is easily made at home from about 7 ingredients and then can be stored in the fridge for several days. The ingredients include: tomato paste, oregano, thyme, white vinegar, garlic powder, olive oil & salt. How simple is that? And it tastes like one of those pizza sauces from my past.

I’m talking about making personal pizzas using split ciabatta rolls, but you could buy a prepared pizza dough and just slather on the homemade sauce before adding your favorite ingredients. But, ciabatta rolls will fit in a toaster oven easily whereas even a small pizza might not.

If you have a microwave:

One item I would buy would be an microwave onion cooker. What’s that you ask? Well, they (some manufacturers) make plastic looking onions that have a top and bottom. You can put a whole onion in one of these, put the top on and heat it in the microwave for say 5 minutes (maybe more if necessary, the power of your microwave can determine cooking times) and you get a deliciously sweet baked onion. The phrase to remember about cooking any onion is that, “Any onion is sweet, once it hits the heat.” There’s just something about the sugars in an onion that are enhanced by heat. Even a bitter or hot onion will sweeten when you cook it. So, save your Sweet Vidalia Onions for salads or to slice for burgers or chop for hot dogs, and microwave regular onions or cook them on the stove top or in soups.

But, having said all that about using an onion cooker for onions, there are at least three other things you can put in one of these that can turn out delicious: bake a sweet potato, a regular potato, or create an egg omelet. I’ve found that adding a little water when cooking a potato helps keep them from drying out.

Beat one or two eggs in a bowl and add some olive oil (both to the onion cooker & in the beaten eggs to avoid sticking to the plastic cooker), with S&P. I like to add some other things like dulse (a salty seaweed), celery seeds, and garlic or onion powder. You might also add some cayenne or red pepper flakes. If you are going to add chopped onion or jalapeno peppers I would roast them first. It may take about a minute or a little over to completely cook the eggs in the onion cooker, but if you want to add some shredded cheese blend, or the roasted onion/pepper then I would cook the egg first for about 30 seconds. This will start the egg to solidify on the bottom of the cooker. Stop the cooking process and then add the extra ingredients to the still uncooked egg. Put the top back on the onion cooker and finish cooking your egg(s). Check to see if it looks like your eggs are done. If so, you can dump them out on a plate. The nice thing about using this cooker is that the cooked eggs look like the rounded egg patty that comes in an Egg McMuffin. And, if you have an English Muffin (toast it) you can put the cooked egg on the muffin. If you have some Canadian bacon or regular bacon you can add this to your breakfast muffin sandwich also. If you haven’t already put cheese in your eggs, then you can put a slice on top of your egg.

I cook all my bacon in my microwave. I cut my bacon in half, but you don’t have to, but it seems to fit better on a dinner plate. I have a splatter guard that I can put over the plate to keep the bacon splatters from messing up my microwave. I then cook the bacon one minute at a time. Usually about the third minute, I pour off the bacon grease that has drained from the cooking bacon. I put the hot grease in a little bowl because this can be used later for flavoring other things I am cooking. If I have a small Ball Jar, I let the bacon grease cool down, put a lid on the top and put this in my refrigerator.

Corn on the Cob

If you have a grill, you might like the extra flavor of cooking your corn on the cob on the grill. If not, I’ve found that I can cook corn on the cob in my microwave easily. I normally buy unschucked corn because I’m going to use the microwave to steam the corn in the husk. If your corn is already schucked, you can wrap each ear of corn in a wet paper towel and then cook it. The paper towel will help keep the heat in next to the corn and steam it (like the husk does). *Here’s a trick I learned a short time ago, but it works usually. Corn still in the husk had what is called silks. They are those little inedible strings that stick to the corn on the cob, and you have to rub them off before eating the corn. The trick? You cut a little bit of the stalk end of the corn off, exposing the ring of corn kernels. Then cook the corn. When you first remove the corn it might be extremely hot. After all, there has been steam involved in the cooking process. I start cold running water from my sink, change it to spray the water, and then pinch the silk end of the corn cob. As you squeeze the cob, the cooked corn will begin to squeeze out the cut stalk end and the silks (miraculously) will remain with the husk. You won’t have to peel off the husk and then rub the silks off. Who knew? Not me and I’m an old man. *Sometimes you can’t squeeze the corn out using the above method. If not, then remove the husks and rub the silks off and there is no loss.

If you have a toaster oven:

Pastrami Reuben

Basic Ingredients: Seeded Rye Bread, Swiss/American Cheese, Pastrami, Sauerkraut, Thousand Island Dressing, Margarine.

Homemade Thousand Island Dressing

Basic Ingredients: Dukes Mayo, Ketchup, Hot Sauce, Chopped Onion, Pickle Relish, Minced Garlic, White Vinegar & Salt.

Construction:

Butter the outsides of the bread and toast them. When the butter is melted and the outside is toasty, flip each slice of bread over and put on your cheese to melt it. Swiss is traditional, but I like White American Cheese also. I think of the cheese as forming a protective layer for the bread in case your sauerkraut or Thousand Island Dressing is too watery. When the cheese is melted I would put a few slices of pastrami on each slice of toasted cheesy bread. Then put on some sauerkraut and mix a little dressing with it. **I like using this Sauerkraut & Dressing mixed as a side dish. You can change the order of the ingredients within the slices of bread, but done in this order, the wet items are in the middle. Maybe not classic by having a large hunk of sliced meat in the middle of your sandwich, but a thoughtful choice to make it a less messy meal.

Oh, and a classic Reuben sandwich has Corned Beef, but I’ve heard that if you use Pastrami then you call this sandwich a Rachael. ***I like to have some wavy potato chips & a Ranch Dill Pickle spear with this sandwich.

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[09/03/24]: I made a really good green beans, potatoes, and bacon side with a little chopped onion (starting with some bacon grease) and then I threw in some small polenta wedges (they remind me of little cornmeal dumplings). I did add S&P, some garlic powder and a generous portion of margarine. *These turned out so good that I ate all of it instead of having two or three meals from it. However, I didn’t sautee the fried okra I had planned, but I did microwave an ear of corn.

While at my doctor’s appointment yesterday, the check-out receptionist told me about Anne’s Old Fashioned Flat Dumplings (pastry). It comes in a red package and can be used for things like chicken & pastry or lima beans & pastry. [end]

[NOTE 09/14/24]: I finally bought a package of Anne’s Pastry. It comes frozen. The pastry dough is very thin and there are three pieces per “sheet” with a divider sheet that helps you peel off a layer of pastry. I happened to see that I had a Tupperware container of garden peas in the fridge. I had used some of those peas in tuna salad a day or so ago. I thought that sometimes garden peas can have pastry so I started to make a helping. I had put the pastry in the garden peas, and had added some Chicken Broth to a little water in the pot. But, then I also remembered that I had some country ham and I sliced a few bits of that and added it to the peas & pastry. I think I also chopped up a little onion for this also. This turned out well and I ended up eating the whole helping instead of dividing it into two helpings. I was planning on fixing some steamed cabbage, but ate the extra garden peas instead.

[end NOTE]