Why are you qualified to write this cookbook? Can’t anyone melt cheese on tortilla chips and call herself an author?
Put simply, while everyone else was joining a cappella groups and intramural softball teams during freshman orientation, I very confusingly decided to devote my entire extracurricular college experience to the dining halls. I wrote a weekly column in the newspaper in which I invented recipes that could be made with ingredients in the dining halls, and I worked as a consultant for the school’s dining hall provider. Both gave me a wealth of knowledge about this cookbook’s very subject matter. This may have looked lame to all the kids killing it on their sports teams, but I’m the one who got the book deal, and apparently my limited athleticism has finally paid off.
What if I have dietary restrictions, including but not limited to paleo, gluten-free, vegan, vegetarian, that new-wave Atkins diet, and pescatarian, and I also break out into hives when exposed to red-colored fruit?
In this book, the name of the game is flexibility. There are recipes for every diet and food preference out there, and each recipe is made to be customized. This isn’t your traditional cookbook, with very specific directions, ingredients, or measurements. Instead, you should think of each recipe as a basic blueprint that you can alter based on your personal tastes. Each recipe also comes with suggestions for modifying the dish, so check out those if you are looking to change it up!
Will I be laughed at for doing something different with my food and not just getting the standard entrees available at the dining halls?
Um — no. Haven’t you seen 21 Jump Street (the movie starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, obviously not the pre-2000s TV show)? Being more different-and-alternative Jonah Hill than jockish-and-mainstream Channing Tatum is totally cool now, so following these recipes is virtually guaranteed to boost your campus street cred.
I’m an on-the-go eater. Are these recipes takeout friendly?
Being a French major who wrote her thesis on why the true pleasures of dining involve spending hours at the table, I am obligated to tell you to take time out of your schedule to enjoy your meal and to avoid takeout. Being a former college student who had to balance school plus a million activities plus a social life, I get that from time to time, taking food to go may be necessary. That said, many of these recipes are very much to-go friendly and can probably be made right in a takeout container.
But every cafeteria is different! How can your recipes apply to any college dining hall?
Great question. Obviously I spent most of my time in the dining halls of my alma mater, but I also attended a few food services conventions while working as a dining hall consultant. At these conventions, I had the opportunity to talk to various schools’ dining hall providers about the ingredients and equipment they usually had at their disposal. Combine that with a lot of Internet research and several field trips to visit friends at other colleges, and I ended up with quite a broad understanding of a lot of different kinds of dining halls. And as I mentioned before, not every dining hall will have every ingredient in this book, and that’s okay — every recipe is designed to be adaptable.
This sounds like a lot of work. I think I’m just going to stick to takeout.
First of all, that’s not a question. Second, every recipe takes about three minutes or less to make, which is considerably under the time it would take you to wait for the takeout person to come to your dorm. So trying these recipes can really only improve your eating situation.
Are these recipes healthy?
I define healthy as eating in a balanced way. These recipes aren’t specifically designed to help you lose weight or anything like that, but I think they all fit nicely into a well-proportioned diet that includes whole ingredients and lots of different food groups. At the end of the day, the healthiest aspect of this cookbook is that each recipe forces you to be conscious of what ingredients you are putting into your body every day. People say this is the reason cooking for yourself, regardless of what you are cooking, is the healthiest way to eat — so think of this cookbook as a time- and resource-saving shortcut to healthful awareness.
I am not in college, and yet I have this cookbook in my possession. Can these recipes apply to me?
Yes! As a recent college graduate with budget constraints and a tiny kitchen, I can say with confidence that these recipes work just as well in the real world as they do in a dining hall. I haven’t tried them within other institutions with limited dining options, but once I do, you can look out for my sequel, Ultimate Jail Hacks: 75 Creative, Delicious Ways to Transform Prison Food and Make Your Fellow Inmates Jealous.
Can’t we just be done with the questions and get on with the cookbook already?
I thought you’d never ask! But first, keep reading for a quick guide on how best to use this cookbook.