Rather popular these days are guides and televi- sion programs that try to help the smart per- son eat gourmet food on a tight budget. As students, we are usually plagued by limited income and often face the decision between eating cheap food or spending our entire week's cash on restaurants or quality ingredients.
Few Hopkins students I have encountered are such adamant connoisseurs that they choose the latter. It thus goes without saying that most students aren't eating as well as they'd like to.
If you are of a contemporary extraction and it is within your nature to shrewdly shop for the absolute best deals, by all means utilize the resources offered by Food TV, magazines, and other media.
On the other hand, you don't even need to possess an eye for value or a finger for coupons to truly enjoy eating on a budget. By merely cultivating a particular outlook on the gustatory experience, almost anything edible should provide a pleasant repast.
If my dear readers will forgive my amateur philosophy, I shall henceforth embark on a series of musings that will turn a two dollar meal into ecstatic poetry!
Poetry offers the perfect analogy to the enjoyment of food. After all, most, if not all of us, are taught in some way to appreciate and understand literature at an early age. However, American educational institutions fail to teach students how to appreciate and understand food.
Millions of individuals graduate from high school generally unprepared to enjoy food to the fullest--seeing it as something merely practical or, worse "a necessary evil." Tragic, says I, because everyone eats hopefully at least one meal a day, and with this outlook, they are doomed to suffer through it.
One method for getting the most out of your food is to know as much as you can about what you're eating. Learning to develop a palate that can distinguish minute flavors can turn eating into a game -- a challenge to yourself and your companions to describe the particular flavors of an item.
Similarly, becoming acquainted with the historical or cultural significance of a dish could certainly kick up the excitement. Maryland crab soup tastes a lot better when you're in Maryland.
By becoming intimate with the details of the food, we become more intellectually engaged with the process of eating itself. Additionally, we strike emotional connections with food. One may associate apple pie with a dear grandmother, or a brand of wine with a particular romance.
The sensation of food, when coupled with various tangentially related sensations, becomes a manifold experience, one that transcends the practicality usually associated with eating.
First order sensations, like taste, are fine and dandy for making a meal good, but they're not the only group of pleasures that go into one's enjoyment. I recommend opening one's mind to encompass all of the synaptic cascades an item of food might cause.
Allow me to digress on a whim regarding Taco Bell and my undying love for it. I will admit that Taco Bell provides disgusting, unhealthy fare that is only marginally food, but I have grown quite fond of it.
As a member of a Blink-182 parody band (the creatively titled Wink-182), I and my fellow musicians tried to recreate the lifestyle of corporate pop-punkers by eating what we thought they would eat--Taco Bell.
Thus, we found ourselves enjoying faux-Mexican food, not for its taste, but for the fact that it acted as a prop in our farce. I still relish late night visits to that esteemed taqueria for snacks, mainly because a burrito is a catalyst for a slew of memories of snarky teenage days.
Furthermore, I enjoy the perverse unhealthiness of the food offered. The Cheesy Gordita Crunch is a more apt critique of modern culture than any I can offer. But simply eating a certain type of food can be an ornamental flourish in an existential mode: Taco Bell for the carefree rock-and-roller, coq au vin for the erudite epicure, etc.
There are types of food that can unlock and articulate any part of one's psyche, and certain meals can even transport us away from our typical lives.
One must merely have faith that food can be something more than a source of nutrients for our corporeal selves.
So when you sit before a sodium-driven bowl of ramen noodles, choose to appreciate the coarseness and simplicity of your meal. Muse on the fact that ramen was once a very expensive convenience item for traveling Japanese businessmen.
Meditate about this boggling stage of our lives where we can survive while spending only three dollars a day on food.
Do not hesitate to give humble items of food more consideration or credit than they are due. Or, at the very least, cherish how "college" this all is.
