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The legendary early-aughts webcomic that inspired a wave of webcomic creators.
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No, given that some of the wraps use pre-cooked meats and of course the chicken and tuna salads are from cans that’s actually pretty accurate if you think about it!
Health tip: hot water leaches metal from the pipes (mainly copper) and also spends more time in the hot water system waiting to be used (while cold water is more like fresh from the supply). If you see the sludge that gets periodically flushed from the hot water tanks you might lose the taste for using hot water for cooking.
All to true BUT most modern – inexpensive – plumbing installs use plastic pipe and if done right the pipe is rated for hot water use.
The good stuff is PFE lined and does not use glue or other solvents, so no worries about leachates. Concentrated contaminants already in the water supply is something else entirely.
Yup, here at least only older piping systems use copper- I believe all modern ones have to meet certain standards which includes the hot water being safe for consumption.
Does “put meat in countertop oven for 25-45 minutes, remove, eat” count? Because that’s about the extent of my bachelor chow cooking. Sometimes I get fancy and roast potatoes at the same time.
Try slow cooking in instant onion soup. It makes wonders and usually smells really nice. Just put half the water recommanded on the box. I’ve only done that in a proper oven but it might still work on the countertop. Otherwise you can always just learn how to make a croc monsieur (i.e. ham on bread with cheese melted ontop at a broil setting :p )
Crock pot with real onions, Tetra Pack stock, and whatever herbs and salts you want to add. Low and slow will perfume the room but cook things to perfection. May have to add extra water if too strong/salty.
Seriously, go buy a slow cooker. It’s a lazy, delicious way to cook, because 99% of slow cooker recipes can be summarized as “dump ingredients in crock pot, turn on heating element, ignore for 6-8 hours”. It’s best to get one with a programmable timer, so it can turn itself down to ‘keep warm’ after the appropriate cook time has passed.
Also, go binge read Cooking Comically. The chili recipes and Trust Fall Chicken are good, and the format and presentation really help break the process down.
Personally, even that is too much commitment in terms of deciding what I’m going to be eating. If it can’t be whipped up last-minute to suit the dietary whim of the evening, it’s too much!
(Rice is an exception, because rice is plain and comforting and goes with everything.)
Darn you Needfuldoer, darn you straight to heck! (staying family-friendly here)
Now I have yet another good source of odd-end recipes to dig through when I’m looking for something different to throw on the table… I’m making the Colombian Arepas tonight!
Do you have an instant read meat thermometer? I highly recommend getting one, because they take all of the guesswork out of determining if your meat is really cooked all the way through.
Don’t get a non-instant analog one that you’re supposed to leave on the piece of meat the whole time it cooks…those are prone to spontaneously blowing up in the oven. For that reason alone, an instant read digital is easily worth the $20+ you’ll have to spend on a decent one. (Good lower end options include OXO’s digital instant read and ThermoWork’s ThermoPop.)
Pah I eat your meal plan points for breakfast. I used to get a delivery from the local Walmart (in the uk Walmart delivers) every 3 months as a student. My housemates used to think I was planning for WWZ. I still ate a different cooked meal every night.
I have microwaved instant noodles, but ramen in a block in a packet? I did make some on stove top. Usually had some precooked frozen shrimp I would thaw out and put in a pan with butter and garlic salt. I’d prepare the ramen on the stop, and put just a touch of shrimp seasoning on top. Not a lot because that stuff is full of sodium. Eat with the shrimps and it was really good…
But for some reason the frozen shrimp I used to use started to taste terrible DX so I don’t do that recipe anymore The shrimps were from CostCo so the big bag was really cheap. Also made an easy snack… But after a while they started to taste really…powdery. I dunno how to explained. And it wasn’t just 1 bad bag.
There are special plates now where you just dump the ramen block, the powder, and water and then you nuke it. It’s supposed to come out right, but I don’t trust them.
I mean I like my ramen kinda chewy but I’m afraid it would just melt the plate or something.
At the same dollar store at which you bought that piece of “special ramen cooker” crap that’s exactly the same as the “special mac-n-cheese cooker” or “special oatmeal cooker”, splurge (it might even cost the same or less) on a glass or microwave-safe ceramic bowl big enough to hold the ramen and use that. Easier to clean and it will last.
They’re not. They take a long time to heat up on our typical 120v service. (We have 240v outlets, but they’re typically for large appliances like dryers and ranges.) It’s faster to just microwave hot or room temperature tap water.
The closest thing you’ll find in most places in the states is a hot tap on those water dispensers that take the 5 gallon jugs.
Homemade Beef Barley Soup (or stew, depending on how much water you add):
Take a big stewpot (ideally) or a saucepan. Pour a little water in, just enough to cover the bottom. Medium heat. Brown your ground beef in it (doing so in water rather than oil will break it down into smaller pieces which is nice for the soup). Add a little salt, pepper, Worcestershire Sauce, oregano, garlic (powdered, fresh, minced, whatever), and a big squirt of ketchup. Mix together. Add a bunch of water. Add a bunch of barley (I like pot barley but it doesn’t matter what kind. Note: Can substitute rice or what although brown rice would probably be nicest). Add a bunch of lentils (brown or green, whatever). If you got ’em, dice up and add carrots, onions, and/or green onions or leeks; if you don’t have ’em, no biggee. Cabbage (especially savoy cabbage, aka the wrinkly one) is also nice in there. Can add split dried peas if you like; they will take the most cooking. Do like a couple handfuls of each of the dried stuff and the carrots, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 an onion if you have one. Or leeks; leeks are nice. Toss in a bouillon cube if you’ve got one, whatever flavour, doesn’t matter.
Bring it all to a boil over medium-high heat, stir, cover, and turn down to low, and let it quietly simmer at least two hours (three or more ideal, especially if you used the dried peas). Give it a stir occasionally and check if it needs more water. It’s done when the dried stuff is cooked through; don’t worry if any of it overcooks; the lentils, for example, break down into a mush and thicken it up nicely. Can substitute lentils completely if you don’t have the meat; may not need the ketchup in that case but will want to add another bouillon cube.
Keeps for a few days in the fridge (will thicken up; you’ll need to add a little more water when you reheat or nuke it); freezes well. Cheap to make, easy to do as it’s literally just tossing stuff (mostly dried) into a pot and then stirring occasionally and ignoring it otherwise until it’s done. Very tasty.
Serve with buttered bread or warm scones or crackers if you like.
Beef “Stroganoff”: Brown ground beef. Add a can of cream of mushroom soup. Stir well. Serve over broad egg noodles (cooked in salted water; can add a bouillon cube to the water if you like), and with like heated canned peas or peas and carrots, if you like. Or, hell, drain the can and toss it right in with the meat and stir it in with the soup.
Super simple, tasty, cheap comfort food. Reasonably healthy, as well.
Cock-a-leekie Soup: Again, super easy. Get a cheap cut of chicken (boneless skinless thighs works well, only need a few), dice, brown in oil in a pot. Add water, salt, chopped leeks, bouillon cube, and rice or barley (optional). Can add chopped green cabbage if you want to fill it out a bit, or add some chopped green onion at the end; but it’s not necessary. Fairly brothy soup, but nice on a cold day or if you’re feeling sick. You can toss in a little garlic if you like; a little curry powder just to add some complexity to the taste is nice too. Buttered bread or scones or what on the side are nice too.
Again, cheap and easy; you don’t need to worry too much about proportions etc, just so long as it tastes good. I like to give it all a stir and then scoop some up on my wooden spoon and see if there seems to be a reasonably balanced mix of meat and leeks/cabbage/whatever in there.
As an aside, green onions are less than a buck for a bunch; but they turn to green slime in the fridge really super fast, so don’t put them in there. Instead, take off any elastics, and put them in a glass of water on your window sill (in the kitchen, ideally), and they will sprout and last forever, and be ready whenever you want to snip a piece off. Well worth the 79 cents.
“Although I DO offer to buy her lots of sodas from the machine, ensuring she will be in there for at least the three minutes making microwave ramen takes. Sometimes I email her videos of waterfalls.”
Given the nature of this dorm, if microwave girl is “other Mary” then she probably gets up and “goes for a pee” every time she sees Nash hanging around her door with a noodle packet.
Heh if I wait that long though I’ll probably get fancier cheese than that. There’s a local brie called ‘Cendré de Lune’ that is to DIE FOR! Sometimes when I don’t feel like cooking I grab a small baguette or something, that cheese and grape tomato. Or some other time I had some slices of salami or other types of dry sausages.
Obviously it’s a little beyond a simple student’s budget.
We have a fishy little store where all the stuff gets after it can’t legally be on a regular supermarket shelf. So it has an everchanging collection, but this is the only place I can afford goat cheese, usually at half price. And it is an adventure every time. Will I find some good cheese today? Who knows
Okay, that is not okay, my opinion of Nash is decreasing
You can’t just — you can’t just DO that! You don’t know what kind of allergies they have, and beyond that, you can’t just invade someone’s private space like that!
I’ve got a friend with a severe allergy, and he can’t even eat food I’ve cooked in my kitchen. It *might* be fine, but he’s also said some of the worst reactions he’s ever had were from things where some cooking tool was allergen-adjacent, and technically “should be safe.”
Especially if this person is the only one who’s bothered to get their own microwave – you should definitely make sure it’s okay before you just throw your own food in there willy nilly.
I mean, Nash is a cartoon person and it’s just the punchline to a joke, all in fun, but it’s a really good point to keep in mind for the real world.
If nothing else, that is living surprisingly dangerously. I know quite a few people who would flip out about you sneaking into their room to use their appliances without permission.
Billie should probably lock her door whenever she’s not in her room, given the casual disregard for privacy and property shown here.
She’s translating as they speak, isn’t she? That’s actually SUPER skilled, you can legit get a nice job doing that if you’re good at figuring that on the fly.
(I just looked through 5 pages of comics tagged Marcie…go figure, the comic in question has an obvious title and I didn’t need to try to read the thumbnails!)
Is Nash signing or just fidgeting? Oh! Beatrice is deaf, isn’t she? Nash is translating what everyone is saying so Beatrice can follow the conversation. Cool!
These people don’t have a common area microwave? What’s even the point of a common area if you can’t even cook anything in it?
Maybe I’m biased because I started saving money by skipping the meal plans as soon as we were allowed to. (AKA sophmore year.) but a common area microwave does not at all seem like an unreasonable luxury. (Also my dorm specifically forbid students from having their own microwaves anyway due to electrical concerns. Mini-fridges were alright, but no microwaves.)
Aren’t “meal plans” mostly to give peace of mind to the parents, so their kids have to spend that money on food? I remember the dining halls would let you pay with good old cash if you wanted to eat there. They were even open to the public at the time.
Skipping the meal plan as in not signing up for it at the beginning of the year at all, I assume. Not “sign up for meal plan and then just not eat”, which presumably would save nothing.
Only one girl on the floor has a microwave? I’m pretty sure almost everyone had a microwave in their rooms when I went to college, and I graduated in 2011.
This is such a cute group. I want them to have an adorable “rumble” with Sal, Marcie, Carla, and Malaya. Like a street fight, only it would involve water balloons or something.
One thing that I’ve noticed that really almost makes up for my FEELS ABOUT THE MICROWAVE is that all of the girls here — especially Nash — are so used to signing everything they say, for (I assume) Beatrice’s benefit, that they even do it when Beatrice isn’t necessarily around. It’s become a habit and that’s awesome.
I get the impression that ‘life outside of campus’ is a sort of running joke at Forest Hall; Billie will just have to learn to understand all these quips and in-jokes on which she’s about 3-4 months behind!
Yeah, I think everyone’s right: Beatrice is deaf; she’s looking at Nash, who’s giving a running translation into ASL.
I wonder how Beatrice handles lectures, and I suppose other classes. Does Nash accompany her to translate into sign? Hope it doesn’t interfere with her own classes.
I’d imagine the university has disability services that help to some extent – I know my school has note-taking services, which students who have trouble either understanding auditory information or physically taking notes can use. I think we’ve also seen Beatrice lip-read, so that might help?
(There may be additional services for deaf students that I’m not aware of, as I was specifically researching stuff to help me deal with a nerve injury in my writing arm.
I believe it is, my mom was a sign language interpreter at a community college for a while and she also sometimes had to proctor tests for students who had disabilities, and I can’t imagine that school doing a god damn thing for its students it wasn’t legally mandated to do.
There was a deaf student in my graduate-level statistics class who had sign language interpreters that I assumed were from the University. I can’t even imagine the skill needed to do that.
Oh man, does this ever bring me back to my days living in dorms. I was more the “buy packages of cookie dough and eat it straight outta the bag”* type, though. Now that I’m living off-campus and mostly surviving off canned soup and PB&Js, I gotta say having regular access to hot meals that I don’t gotta do the dishes for is pretty appealing, but the grass is always greener and yadda yadda.
(*kids, don’t do this, it aint worth the tummyaches. at least get cookie dough ice cream or search out the holy grail of ‘cookie dough intended to be eaten raw’ that they have in some fancypants grocery stores)
I think it’s more that that it’s not like the caf will just give you a block of cheese and it’s a weird piece of food to have in the dorms (and we don’t see Billy off campus much. I think it’s liquor store once and the beach episode and that’s it)
Campus life must be interesting. Our dorm was in a totally different part of the city than the university bulidings, and it was horrible. Although we had as many groceries as we wanted.
I’ve never understood the appeal of just eating straight cheese. Cheese is something you put on things, not something you eat by itself. It’s like drinking salad dressing.
On the other… look every so often, I’ll treat myself to Brie… oh uh and with some crackers i guess i mean you can’t grab eat the cheese straight you gotta have something with it ya know.
Hummus can be like that too. Delicious, delicious hummus with some bread thrown in there i guess :D.
… Culture shocked.
Okay, I used to drink salad dressing as a kid beacuase I really like vinegar and dijon (real dijon so hard to find now…I’m sad). But to ignore the unmitigated taste of sole cheese…
It depends on the cheese. Some are really only good for putting on other things, but there are many which can stand on their own with no problem. Mostly french cheeses that often contain mold (Saint Agur is just divine), but some hard cheeses as well like a good cheddar, a well-aged parmigiano or grana padano, or a manchego off the top of my mind. There are definitely more out there but I haven’t yet had time to taste them all, though I’m trying.
Anyway, point is there’s a huge difference between a young cheese that you put slices off on top of your bread (or, god forbid! those pre-sliced or pre-grated cheeses. And just stay away from those “products containing 51% cheese” I’ve heard exist in the USA) and a cheese that’s been allowed to age for the better part of a year, or 2 years, or 3, in a cave in the European Alps (or least under controlled humidity and temperatures resembling such a cave). The cheese develops so much flavour if you let it ripen it becomes a shame to dilute the taste by putting it on a sandwich.
Soft cheeses go the other way in that they hardly mature at all so you keep many of the flavours of the milk and get a very soft and creamy texture. That’s why crackers are used, they have very little taste of their own but add some salt and are a good medium for getting the cheese into your mouth without getting it all over your fingers.
True words spoken. I love a good aged cheese (like some of the gouda I had in Amsterdam), and it’s tasty all on its own. But for me there’s also a place for the American cheese food product, and that place is on a Philly Cheesesteak sandwich. Hoagie roll, thin-sliced beef, grilled onions, and Cheez-Whiz (TM).
Damn, now I need to head to Philadelphia again…
This is especially amusing because of how my freshman year was. My roomy/flatmates all had the dining hall stuff. I’m a picky eater and my parents and I agreed that spending all that money for the dining hall when I may not even eat half their options for food wasn’t a good use of money. So in my room, I had a microwave and a mini-fridge! My roomie would borrow one shelf because she’d buy things like milk or yogurt. I missed having an oven to cook with, but I did fine with the fridge, microwave, and the food places on campus. My college is second largest in the country in terms of student size so we have a food court in the dang Student Union.
Honestly, I HAVE only been to…two college campuses? So I don’t exactly have a great sampling size to determine if it really is weird. I just know when I’d tell people about the Dominos, Subway, and Nathan’s Hot Dog areas of my student union they seemed surprised. Maybe it’s because people are more familiar with community colleges? Cool to hear that your’s has a food court though! Was the food good?
May depend partly on age? I think the franchises have been making more inroads on college campuses over the years. There were basically none where and when I went to school, but I was back on campus some years later and they had moved in.
Good cheese is so dang expensive. It has to be imported here. I buy it very sparingly, like 2 or 3 times a year, and I have to finish it within 2-3 weeks before it goes bad.
Man, that takes me back. I went to a private Christian college in Tennessee in the ’70’s. The cafeteria director truly believed he had a mission from God to make wonderful food for college students. 3 meals of amazing food every day. It was so good they opened up the cafeteria for local people to come have lunch after Church on Sundays as a revenue stream.
I’ve spent really no time on a campus bigger than my college’s, enrollment under 3000 (incl, masters’ students).
So, how big is the IU campus? And what’s the nearby grocery scene? Bodegas, supermarkets (think IGA or old A&P), supersupermarkets (Stop&Ship), megamarkets?
In U.S. News and World Report‘s list of 331 “National Universities,” IU-Bloomington ranks 9th in terms of enrollment.
According to IUB’s Ranking and Statistics page, in 2017 there are 39,184 undergraduates and 49,695 total students. According to USNWR’s IUB profile, 35% of those undergrads live in campus-owned/affiliated housing — somewhere around 13,700. (No stats readily available for grad students.)
You can find it here. Ya just gotta know where to look. A small dairy not far from me has great cheese: http://www.cowsoutside.com/100-grass-fed-cowsmilk-cheeses
It’s spendy, but I’d bet it’d cover most people’s definition of good cheese!
I am at once bothered (mortified, offended, etc) by “American cheese” – vinyl-like squares of thoroughly processed food product, engineered for things like consistency (in shape/dimensions, melting behavior, etc etc) and shelf life over taste – and reluctantly forced to concede, “yeah, that’s… about right.”
There’s plenty of good cheese in the US. Much of it made here, in addition to easily available imported cheeses. Vermont and Wisconsin Cheddars are only the most obvious.
We also invented processed “cheese food” and make and sell a lot of it, but it’s far from all there is available. It’s just cheap and convenient, like most processed foods.
Wait, but… are microwaves not allowed on IU’s campus or something? At my undergrad dorm generally every set of roommates would arrange for someone to buy a cheap microwave and mini fridge
and there was a small communal kitchen(a stovetop oven, a sink, and a microwave) on the first floor
If I remember right, some dorm halls might be strict about it. I know my college allowed them, but they had to be lower watt microwaves. If they went above a certain wattage, they were not allowed.
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I wouldn’t call myself a chef, but sometimes I even go a little crazy and heat my noodles on a cooktop instead of a microwave.
However, I’m not sure I’d really refer to instant ramen as “non-preprepared.”
I agree. It’s non-prepared, but it’s not non-prepreprepared.
Oops, I did one too many prefixes.
No, given that some of the wraps use pre-cooked meats and of course the chicken and tuna salads are from cans that’s actually pretty accurate if you think about it!
Not if you just shove it into the microwave, dump the packet over it, and eat.
If you put your own spices and veggies into the broth, of course it is.
That said, if the standard is “block of cheese” for non-prepared food, then ramen is at least as good.
Pro tip for student cooking: If the water from your hot tap is really hot, you can use it on your pot noodle without having to borrow a kettle!
…perfect gravatar for that tip!
Health tip: hot water leaches metal from the pipes (mainly copper) and also spends more time in the hot water system waiting to be used (while cold water is more like fresh from the supply). If you see the sludge that gets periodically flushed from the hot water tanks you might lose the taste for using hot water for cooking.
Oh god thank you. It’s bothered me my whole life knowing there was probably a reason we actually heat water for cooking/brewing, but not knowing why.
All to true BUT most modern – inexpensive – plumbing installs use plastic pipe and if done right the pipe is rated for hot water use.
The good stuff is PFE lined and does not use glue or other solvents, so no worries about leachates. Concentrated contaminants already in the water supply is something else entirely.
Yup, here at least only older piping systems use copper- I believe all modern ones have to meet certain standards which includes the hot water being safe for consumption.
P sure there’s still lead in a lot of piping in the US as well, which hot water pulls from the piping.
At least, that’s what the fridge magnet said.
I just want to know why the Cheese didn’t get a tag.
There’s no room for the cheese slices.
Hmm… I think I misremembered an obscure Buffy quote.
http://i40.tinypic.com/dpbj0j.gif
Not cool, brain. Not. Cool.
Does “put meat in countertop oven for 25-45 minutes, remove, eat” count? Because that’s about the extent of my bachelor chow cooking. Sometimes I get fancy and roast potatoes at the same time.
Yup, sorry, you’ve gone too far.
You are beyond the chef event horizon and now you can never escape.
You’ve now become fully embroiled.
*flees for dear punning life*
I really hope you get roasted for that one.
That was a braisen pun Roborat.
Try slow cooking in instant onion soup. It makes wonders and usually smells really nice. Just put half the water recommanded on the box. I’ve only done that in a proper oven but it might still work on the countertop. Otherwise you can always just learn how to make a croc monsieur (i.e. ham on bread with cheese melted ontop at a broil setting :p )
Crock pot with real onions, Tetra Pack stock, and whatever herbs and salts you want to add. Low and slow will perfume the room but cook things to perfection. May have to add extra water if too strong/salty.
Seriously, go buy a slow cooker. It’s a lazy, delicious way to cook, because 99% of slow cooker recipes can be summarized as “dump ingredients in crock pot, turn on heating element, ignore for 6-8 hours”. It’s best to get one with a programmable timer, so it can turn itself down to ‘keep warm’ after the appropriate cook time has passed.
Also, go binge read Cooking Comically. The chili recipes and Trust Fall Chicken are good, and the format and presentation really help break the process down.
Personally, even that is too much commitment in terms of deciding what I’m going to be eating. If it can’t be whipped up last-minute to suit the dietary whim of the evening, it’s too much!
(Rice is an exception, because rice is plain and comforting and goes with everything.)
Darn you Needfuldoer, darn you straight to heck! (staying family-friendly here)
Now I have yet another good source of odd-end recipes to dig through when I’m looking for something different to throw on the table… I’m making the Colombian Arepas tonight!
Do you have an instant read meat thermometer? I highly recommend getting one, because they take all of the guesswork out of determining if your meat is really cooked all the way through.
Don’t get a non-instant analog one that you’re supposed to leave on the piece of meat the whole time it cooks…those are prone to spontaneously blowing up in the oven. For that reason alone, an instant read digital is easily worth the $20+ you’ll have to spend on a decent one. (Good lower end options include OXO’s digital instant read and ThermoWork’s ThermoPop.)
I’ve no beef with that.
Pah I eat your meal plan points for breakfast. I used to get a delivery from the local Walmart (in the uk Walmart delivers) every 3 months as a student. My housemates used to think I was planning for WWZ. I still ate a different cooked meal every night.
dawgs, microwaves are stupid cheap, especially if you utilize the Poorcraft method (p. 25)
also I don’t think I’ve ever *microwaved* ramen
I did once buy a log of ground beef and essentially make ground beef stew in a pot by just stirring it (I don’t have patience for fancy cooking)
I have microwaved instant noodles, but ramen in a block in a packet? I did make some on stove top. Usually had some precooked frozen shrimp I would thaw out and put in a pan with butter and garlic salt. I’d prepare the ramen on the stop, and put just a touch of shrimp seasoning on top. Not a lot because that stuff is full of sodium. Eat with the shrimps and it was really good…
But for some reason the frozen shrimp I used to use started to taste terrible DX so I don’t do that recipe anymore
The shrimps were from CostCo so the big bag was really cheap. Also made an easy snack… But after a while they started to taste really…powdery. I dunno how to explained. And it wasn’t just 1 bad bag.
“also I don’t think I’ve ever *microwaved* ramen”
There are special plates now where you just dump the ramen block, the powder, and water and then you nuke it. It’s supposed to come out right, but I don’t trust them.
I mean I like my ramen kinda chewy but I’m afraid it would just melt the plate or something.
Glass bowls are great. Just saying.
That said, I mostly make ramen on a stove top, just because it’s faster and cheaper (with a gas stove).
Rectangular silicon container. There is one for Mac n cheese, too. (fill-line is different, because of different contents)
They do fine. Not great; just fine. I find them impossible to clean satisfactorily.
My silicone cookware is an ass to clean too, despite how it seems like it should be easier than my other, generally older, cookware.
And silicone bakeware makes things taste weird. :/
Hey, Inahc = “Dune” reference?
You, um, keep using that word…
Plates are flat. To make ramen you need a *bowl*.
At the same dollar store at which you bought that piece of “special ramen cooker” crap that’s exactly the same as the “special mac-n-cheese cooker” or “special oatmeal cooker”, splurge (it might even cost the same or less) on a glass or microwave-safe ceramic bowl big enough to hold the ramen and use that. Easier to clean and it will last.
They have ramen in cups here that you just fill with water up till the line and then microwave.
… That’s weird. Here, the kind in cups is meant to be filled from a kettle, not filled with cold water and nuked.
I have heard that in a lot of places in the states, electric kettles aren’t a common thing, so that might be the difference.
They’re not. They take a long time to heat up on our typical 120v service. (We have 240v outlets, but they’re typically for large appliances like dryers and ranges.) It’s faster to just microwave hot or room temperature tap water.
The closest thing you’ll find in most places in the states is a hot tap on those water dispensers that take the 5 gallon jugs.
And here they come with instructions for both methods.
Homemade Beef Barley Soup (or stew, depending on how much water you add):
Take a big stewpot (ideally) or a saucepan. Pour a little water in, just enough to cover the bottom. Medium heat. Brown your ground beef in it (doing so in water rather than oil will break it down into smaller pieces which is nice for the soup). Add a little salt, pepper, Worcestershire Sauce, oregano, garlic (powdered, fresh, minced, whatever), and a big squirt of ketchup. Mix together. Add a bunch of water. Add a bunch of barley (I like pot barley but it doesn’t matter what kind. Note: Can substitute rice or what although brown rice would probably be nicest). Add a bunch of lentils (brown or green, whatever). If you got ’em, dice up and add carrots, onions, and/or green onions or leeks; if you don’t have ’em, no biggee. Cabbage (especially savoy cabbage, aka the wrinkly one) is also nice in there. Can add split dried peas if you like; they will take the most cooking. Do like a couple handfuls of each of the dried stuff and the carrots, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 an onion if you have one. Or leeks; leeks are nice. Toss in a bouillon cube if you’ve got one, whatever flavour, doesn’t matter.
Bring it all to a boil over medium-high heat, stir, cover, and turn down to low, and let it quietly simmer at least two hours (three or more ideal, especially if you used the dried peas). Give it a stir occasionally and check if it needs more water. It’s done when the dried stuff is cooked through; don’t worry if any of it overcooks; the lentils, for example, break down into a mush and thicken it up nicely. Can substitute lentils completely if you don’t have the meat; may not need the ketchup in that case but will want to add another bouillon cube.
Keeps for a few days in the fridge (will thicken up; you’ll need to add a little more water when you reheat or nuke it); freezes well. Cheap to make, easy to do as it’s literally just tossing stuff (mostly dried) into a pot and then stirring occasionally and ignoring it otherwise until it’s done. Very tasty.
Serve with buttered bread or warm scones or crackers if you like.
Beef “Stroganoff”: Brown ground beef. Add a can of cream of mushroom soup. Stir well. Serve over broad egg noodles (cooked in salted water; can add a bouillon cube to the water if you like), and with like heated canned peas or peas and carrots, if you like. Or, hell, drain the can and toss it right in with the meat and stir it in with the soup.
Super simple, tasty, cheap comfort food. Reasonably healthy, as well.
Wouldn’t it work better if you put in the vegetables and not the can?
Cock-a-leekie Soup: Again, super easy. Get a cheap cut of chicken (boneless skinless thighs works well, only need a few), dice, brown in oil in a pot. Add water, salt, chopped leeks, bouillon cube, and rice or barley (optional). Can add chopped green cabbage if you want to fill it out a bit, or add some chopped green onion at the end; but it’s not necessary. Fairly brothy soup, but nice on a cold day or if you’re feeling sick. You can toss in a little garlic if you like; a little curry powder just to add some complexity to the taste is nice too. Buttered bread or scones or what on the side are nice too.
Again, cheap and easy; you don’t need to worry too much about proportions etc, just so long as it tastes good. I like to give it all a stir and then scoop some up on my wooden spoon and see if there seems to be a reasonably balanced mix of meat and leeks/cabbage/whatever in there.
As an aside, green onions are less than a buck for a bunch; but they turn to green slime in the fridge really super fast, so don’t put them in there. Instead, take off any elastics, and put them in a glass of water on your window sill (in the kitchen, ideally), and they will sprout and last forever, and be ready whenever you want to snip a piece off.
Well worth the 79 cents.
“Although I DO offer to buy her lots of sodas from the machine, ensuring she will be in there for at least the three minutes making microwave ramen takes. Sometimes I email her videos of waterfalls.”
Microwave girl for other Mary ?
Given the nature of this dorm, if microwave girl is “other Mary” then she probably gets up and “goes for a pee” every time she sees Nash hanging around her door with a noodle packet.
Man now I want some cheddar or something…
me too.
luckily, tomorrow is grocery day. I will buy ALL the cheese!
(…because it was already on the shopping list)
Heh if I wait that long though I’ll probably get fancier cheese than that. There’s a local brie called ‘Cendré de Lune’ that is to DIE FOR! Sometimes when I don’t feel like cooking I grab a small baguette or something, that cheese and grape tomato. Or some other time I had some slices of salami or other types of dry sausages.
Obviously it’s a little beyond a simple student’s budget.
We have a fishy little store where all the stuff gets after it can’t legally be on a regular supermarket shelf. So it has an everchanging collection, but this is the only place I can afford goat cheese, usually at half price. And it is an adventure every time. Will I find some good cheese today? Who knows
I always want Cheddar, but now I want it slightly more. Damnit, where’s my coat? I’m going to the store.
These people are all REBELS.
Raw raw, fight the powah!
Okay, that is not okay, my opinion of Nash is decreasing
You can’t just — you can’t just DO that! You don’t know what kind of allergies they have, and beyond that, you can’t just invade someone’s private space like that!
/microrant
/microwaverant
I don’t get it, what do allergies have to do with using someone else’s microwave…
I guess you could leave traces of food in there? I’ve never seen a microwave that maintained a clean ceiling for very long.
Microwaves are like black socks. Never need to clean em.
Which is why a microwave should be kept below eye level at all time. Filth you can’t see doesn’t exist :p
I’ve got a friend with a severe allergy, and he can’t even eat food I’ve cooked in my kitchen. It *might* be fine, but he’s also said some of the worst reactions he’s ever had were from things where some cooking tool was allergen-adjacent, and technically “should be safe.”
Especially if this person is the only one who’s bothered to get their own microwave – you should definitely make sure it’s okay before you just throw your own food in there willy nilly.
I mean, Nash is a cartoon person and it’s just the punchline to a joke, all in fun, but it’s a really good point to keep in mind for the real world.
If someone in your dorm had allergies that bad, you would know.
If nothing else, that is living surprisingly dangerously. I know quite a few people who would flip out about you sneaking into their room to use their appliances without permission.
Billie should probably lock her door whenever she’s not in her room, given the casual disregard for privacy and property shown here.
Wait… is there another deaf character in the room? Is she interpreting, or just a hand talker?
She’s interpreting for Beatrice, I assumed.
(Beatrice, who has made jokes about being Deaf.
I guess I didn’t grok on the fact that she was deaf since she spoke (yes, I know not all deaf people are mute)
The red-head, Beatrice?
See here for example: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/01-face-the-strange/salacious/
yea I think bottom left girl is deaf (she just stares for the entire stripes, I assume she’s looking at the hands)
Both Nash and Beatrice were signing in http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/01-face-the-strange/salacious/
*plays the classical music Kraft used in their TV ads of the late Seventies/early Eighties on the hacked Muzak*
Kraft – werk?
Cheddar: it keeps you sane ™.
She’s translating as they speak, isn’t she? That’s actually SUPER skilled, you can legit get a nice job doing that if you’re good at figuring that on the fly.
Now I wonder what sign language of a Donald Trump speech looks like…
It’s just one hand gesture at slightly below waist level.
Right hand palm toward you, fingers curled into a very loose fist, move it up and down for the duration of the speech..
I would also expect meaningless gesticulation and a few flipping of the birds in there… What is sign language for ‘bullshit’? :p
It’s a funny sign! If I learned it right, you make horns with one hand, your arm is like the length of a bull’s body, and the other hand poops.
Hahahahaha awesome.
Teehee: https://tenor.com/view/bullshit-sign-language-asl-signing-american-sign-language-gif-9262794
We’ve seen Marcie make that sign!
I knew that looked (sounded?) familiar… because it’s been featured in DoA already!
(I just looked through 5 pages of comics tagged Marcie…go figure, the comic in question has an obvious title and I didn’t need to try to read the thumbnails!)
Nice!
Sign interpreters don’t do Donald Trump.
Hell, translators CAN’T EVEN HANDLE HIS STUPID SPEECHES.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/06/trump-translation-interpreters
The rest of the world gets a coherent president, but we don’t? No fair!
Ill just leave Putin here. Watch him hes a gang……president.
After two sentences it’s probably something like that :
https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipMFgDNZkvYOjt-VcDkm8nhRtXwdajYGAWV6j2OJ/photo/AF1QipMFpw-RG1YtFBoE3SA4rcwq1f3LD28nrVLYksvP
An example of Trump translated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qL1un6NPZA
Oh my.
Gotta love a cameo for The Cheese.
Kinda sad there’s no Cheese tag.
I know. Right.
Is Nash signing or just fidgeting? Oh! Beatrice is deaf, isn’t she? Nash is translating what everyone is saying so Beatrice can follow the conversation. Cool!
These people don’t have a common area microwave? What’s even the point of a common area if you can’t even cook anything in it?
Maybe I’m biased because I started saving money by skipping the meal plans as soon as we were allowed to. (AKA sophmore year.) but a common area microwave does not at all seem like an unreasonable luxury. (Also my dorm specifically forbid students from having their own microwaves anyway due to electrical concerns. Mini-fridges were alright, but no microwaves.)
I’m sure the EE students had some “projects” in their rooms involving magnetrons.
Aren’t “meal plans” mostly to give peace of mind to the parents, so their kids have to spend that money on food? I remember the dining halls would let you pay with good old cash if you wanted to eat there. They were even open to the public at the time.
Skipping the meal plan as in not signing up for it at the beginning of the year at all, I assume. Not “sign up for meal plan and then just not eat”, which presumably would save nothing.
These girls seem nice. Good for Billie.
Did you know: the ASL for microwave is your pointer finger doing a li’l crawl, it’s a tiny wave
(Well, it’s not the official sign, it’s just a common pun. But still.)
Dangit. I fell for that.
I like Nash. What’s going on with her hands though?`
Sign language! Beatrice is deaf.
Oh! Cool detail
Do these girls ask permission before doing ANYTHING?
They’re one power outage from Lord of the Flies in there!
I love all of these cheese-lovin’ rebels!
I’ve been learning a little ASL for a summer job and it’s super exciting to see it in a comic. <3
(I especially like learning to tell terrible ASL puns. No one will be safe.)
Only one girl on the floor has a microwave? I’m pretty sure almost everyone had a microwave in their rooms when I went to college, and I graduated in 2011.
The common room in my dorm had a microwave. I wonder if every dorm on my campus had one. Gods, we were spoiled.
Super sweet of Nash to sign for Beatrice.
This is such a cute group. I want them to have an adorable “rumble” with Sal, Marcie, Carla, and Malaya. Like a street fight, only it would involve water balloons or something.
Sal, Marcie, Carla and Malaya specifically don’t do “adorable”.
Becky and Joyce and Dina on the other hand…
Meant as an answer to Lingo…
Yes but that’s what I’d love about it: the contrast. Sal et al. would take it way too seriously, whereas these girls would be all smiles and giggles.
Did you just use “the girls” to distinguish between two groups of girls
Nope, check again
*your first line* I BEG TO DIFFER.
So that one girl is incapable of keeping her hands still huh?
Never mind it’s sign language and I’m dumb
It’s cool I was wandering the same thing, until I noticed the other girl watching the signs ^^
One thing that I’ve noticed that really almost makes up for my FEELS ABOUT THE MICROWAVE is that all of the girls here — especially Nash — are so used to signing everything they say, for (I assume) Beatrice’s benefit, that they even do it when Beatrice isn’t necessarily around. It’s become a habit and that’s awesome.
I thought at first that she was wearing blue vinyl gloves.
i wondered about the doctor manhattan hands too. does blue glowyness just represent motion in the dumbiverse?
It… it has for a while. Has everyone forgotten basically every strip featuring Marcie?
I choose to believe that she is not even aware that she is signing.
“The Beforetimes”.
I love Rose being melodramatic.
Star trek reference
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Miri_(episode)
the real before times was watching ST in b&w.
I get the impression that ‘life outside of campus’ is a sort of running joke at Forest Hall; Billie will just have to learn to understand all these quips and in-jokes on which she’s about 3-4 months behind!
Yeah, I think everyone’s right: Beatrice is deaf; she’s looking at Nash, who’s giving a running translation into ASL.
I wonder how Beatrice handles lectures, and I suppose other classes. Does Nash accompany her to translate into sign? Hope it doesn’t interfere with her own classes.
I’d imagine the university has disability services that help to some extent – I know my school has note-taking services, which students who have trouble either understanding auditory information or physically taking notes can use. I think we’ve also seen Beatrice lip-read, so that might help?
(There may be additional services for deaf students that I’m not aware of, as I was specifically researching stuff to help me deal with a nerve injury in my writing arm.
Neat, I didn’t realize unis can go that far to help deaf students.
It may be legally required, implying that rad people fought for it at some point. Anybody know if it’s part of ADA standards?
I believe it is, my mom was a sign language interpreter at a community college for a while and she also sometimes had to proctor tests for students who had disabilities, and I can’t imagine that school doing a god damn thing for its students it wasn’t legally mandated to do.
Good on all the people who made it into a legal requirement, then, it must’ve been many working together to make that inclusive policy happen.
There was a deaf student in my graduate-level statistics class who had sign language interpreters that I assumed were from the University. I can’t even imagine the skill needed to do that.
Oh man, does this ever bring me back to my days living in dorms. I was more the “buy packages of cookie dough and eat it straight outta the bag”* type, though. Now that I’m living off-campus and mostly surviving off canned soup and PB&Js, I gotta say having regular access to hot meals that I don’t gotta do the dishes for is pretty appealing, but the grass is always greener and yadda yadda.
(*kids, don’t do this, it aint worth the tummyaches. at least get cookie dough ice cream or search out the holy grail of ‘cookie dough intended to be eaten raw’ that they have in some fancypants grocery stores)
Random thought – I find Billie’s incredulity at Rose having a block of cheese a bit hard to swallow. Does she think Rose is utterly destitute?
I think it’s more that that it’s not like the caf will just give you a block of cheese and it’s a weird piece of food to have in the dorms (and we don’t see Billy off campus much. I think it’s liquor store once and the beach episode and that’s it)
Campus life must be interesting. Our dorm was in a totally different part of the city than the university bulidings, and it was horrible. Although we had as many groceries as we wanted.
A check of the IU website says that there are convenience stores on campus that sell groceries, so it’s just the oddness?
Yeah, like it’s a college not a prison it’s really not that hard to go out and buy a block of cheese.
I’ve never understood the appeal of just eating straight cheese. Cheese is something you put on things, not something you eat by itself. It’s like drinking salad dressing.
On one hand, I agree.
On the other… look every so often, I’ll treat myself to Brie… oh uh and with some crackers i guess i mean you can’t grab eat the cheese straight you gotta have something with it ya know.
Hummus can be like that too. Delicious, delicious hummus with some bread thrown in there i guess :D.
I mean, Jarlsberg is pretty nommable on its own. It’s not like all cheeses come in “spreadable” and “slice-shaped extrudate”.
Cheese is, IMO, a taste best mixed with something else, especially something sweet!
… Culture shocked.
Okay, I used to drink salad dressing as a kid beacuase I really like vinegar and dijon (real dijon so hard to find now…I’m sad). But to ignore the unmitigated taste of sole cheese…
How do you make cheese out of fish?
It depends on the cheese. Some are really only good for putting on other things, but there are many which can stand on their own with no problem. Mostly french cheeses that often contain mold (Saint Agur is just divine), but some hard cheeses as well like a good cheddar, a well-aged parmigiano or grana padano, or a manchego off the top of my mind. There are definitely more out there but I haven’t yet had time to taste them all, though I’m trying.
Anyway, point is there’s a huge difference between a young cheese that you put slices off on top of your bread (or, god forbid! those pre-sliced or pre-grated cheeses. And just stay away from those “products containing 51% cheese” I’ve heard exist in the USA) and a cheese that’s been allowed to age for the better part of a year, or 2 years, or 3, in a cave in the European Alps (or least under controlled humidity and temperatures resembling such a cave). The cheese develops so much flavour if you let it ripen it becomes a shame to dilute the taste by putting it on a sandwich.
Soft cheeses go the other way in that they hardly mature at all so you keep many of the flavours of the milk and get a very soft and creamy texture. That’s why crackers are used, they have very little taste of their own but add some salt and are a good medium for getting the cheese into your mouth without getting it all over your fingers.
True words spoken. I love a good aged cheese (like some of the gouda I had in Amsterdam), and it’s tasty all on its own. But for me there’s also a place for the American cheese food product, and that place is on a Philly Cheesesteak sandwich. Hoagie roll, thin-sliced beef, grilled onions, and Cheez-Whiz (TM).
Damn, now I need to head to Philadelphia again…
Y’all are super weird.
Weird can be good if it’s a non-creepy weird. The jury is still out what kind of weird the Forest Girls are.
This is especially amusing because of how my freshman year was. My roomy/flatmates all had the dining hall stuff. I’m a picky eater and my parents and I agreed that spending all that money for the dining hall when I may not even eat half their options for food wasn’t a good use of money. So in my room, I had a microwave and a mini-fridge! My roomie would borrow one shelf because she’d buy things like milk or yogurt. I missed having an oven to cook with, but I did fine with the fridge, microwave, and the food places on campus. My college is second largest in the country in terms of student size so we have a food court in the dang Student Union.
I also have a food court in my student union, but my school only has something like 28,000 students. Is it unusual to have a food court in the union?
Honestly, I HAVE only been to…two college campuses? So I don’t exactly have a great sampling size to determine if it really is weird. I just know when I’d tell people about the Dominos, Subway, and Nathan’s Hot Dog areas of my student union they seemed surprised. Maybe it’s because people are more familiar with community colleges? Cool to hear that your’s has a food court though! Was the food good?
May depend partly on age? I think the franchises have been making more inroads on college campuses over the years. There were basically none where and when I went to school, but I was back on campus some years later and they had moved in.
Good cheese is so dang expensive. It has to be imported here. I buy it very sparingly, like 2 or 3 times a year, and I have to finish it within 2-3 weeks before it goes bad.
Man, that takes me back. I went to a private Christian college in Tennessee in the ’70’s. The cafeteria director truly believed he had a mission from God to make wonderful food for college students. 3 meals of amazing food every day. It was so good they opened up the cafeteria for local people to come have lunch after Church on Sundays as a revenue stream.
I loved that man…
I’ve spent really no time on a campus bigger than my college’s, enrollment under 3000 (incl, masters’ students).
So, how big is the IU campus? And what’s the nearby grocery scene? Bodegas, supermarkets (think IGA or old A&P), supersupermarkets (Stop&Ship), megamarkets?
Short answer: IUB is huge.
In U.S. News and World Report‘s list of 331 “National Universities,” IU-Bloomington ranks 9th in terms of enrollment.
According to IUB’s Ranking and Statistics page, in 2017 there are 39,184 undergraduates and 49,695 total students. According to USNWR’s IUB profile, 35% of those undergrads live in campus-owned/affiliated housing — somewhere around 13,700. (No stats readily available for grad students.)
Is… cheese rare in America?
No, but undergrad students able to afford actual objectively-characterisable foodstuffs is nearly unheard of!
Far from it. We put cheese (and often times “cheese”, or a cheese-food product) on everything.
Well, real cheese is. What Americans call cheese is questionable.
You can find it here. Ya just gotta know where to look. A small dairy not far from me has great cheese: http://www.cowsoutside.com/100-grass-fed-cowsmilk-cheeses
It’s spendy, but I’d bet it’d cover most people’s definition of good cheese!
I am at once bothered (mortified, offended, etc) by “American cheese” – vinyl-like squares of thoroughly processed food product, engineered for things like consistency (in shape/dimensions, melting behavior, etc etc) and shelf life over taste – and reluctantly forced to concede, “yeah, that’s… about right.”
individually packaged, as a point of pride and/or convenience, yet almost perfectly identical
There’s plenty of good cheese in the US. Much of it made here, in addition to easily available imported cheeses. Vermont and Wisconsin Cheddars are only the most obvious.
We also invented processed “cheese food” and make and sell a lot of it, but it’s far from all there is available. It’s just cheap and convenient, like most processed foods.
Rose is my new favorite person.
This could purely be the Wisconsinite in me.
Unrelated to the strip, I just wanted to say I love the new Becky get-up. She looks awesome.
It would be funny if the one girl with a microwave is part of the group sitting there.
Lucy’s look reads as ‘hey, I’ve got a microwave’ to me.
Congratulations! You’ve climbed yet ANOTHER position on my “country I’d be most likely to glass if I had the chance.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/16/us-to-allow-imports-of-elephant-trophies-from-zimbabwe
Nah. The environmental impact statement would take you forever.
Don’t worry. Trump’s going to reduce the burdensome environmental regulations any day now.
Wait, but… are microwaves not allowed on IU’s campus or something? At my undergrad dorm generally every set of roommates would arrange for someone to buy a cheap microwave and mini fridge
and there was a small communal kitchen(a stovetop oven, a sink, and a microwave) on the first floor
If I remember right, some dorm halls might be strict about it. I know my college allowed them, but they had to be lower watt microwaves. If they went above a certain wattage, they were not allowed.
Wait–
Did we just see the ASL for ‘while she pees’?
I believe that is sign for “microwave”.
https://www.handspeak.com/word/search/index.php?id=4830
Whaaaat…blue signing gloves appearing and disappearing!? So confused.
The blue images just indicate motion. They’re like motion lines.
She pees for 3 minutes?
There’s the walk down the hallway to consider.
I do but because I’m also on the WiFis
That one girl is deaf/hard of hearing, isn’t she? I’m bad with character names and didn’t want to check the tags.
Definitely isn’t, other girl just moves her hands a lot, that’s my mistake.
…did I mention I’m bad with character names and I’m lazy?
No, the redhead girl is deaf, the girl in the hijab is tranlsating for her.