Comments on: Graduate School Gourmet

By: A Stanford Physics Student in Berkeley » Blog Archive » Grad Student Gourmet

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 07:55:29 +0000

[...] JoAnne Hewett’s Cosmic Variance post in response to the above. [...]

By: Friday Femmes Fatales No 41 - Philobiblon

Friday Femmes Fatales No 41 - Philobiblon — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 21:53:19 +0000

[...] Also in the “that takes me back” category, JoAnne on Cosmic Variance assembles various graduate student recipes. Which reminds me I haven’t seen a picture of one of my equivalent brews – an enormous pot of hopeless overcooked pasta that had turned, for some reason, a really odd shade of pink. Cooking one thing and eating it for a week was my standard behaviour then … [...]

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 08:29:29 +0000

There’s a persistent myth at Stanford about an unfortunate (stupid?) grad student who ended up in the hospital with a bizarre smattering of bruises and rashes covering his entire body. At first the young doctors were unable to diagnose the illness, so they called on a more experienced clinician. After some thought, the wise old doctor asked the grad student what his typical day was like, specifically what he ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “Hot dogs,” the student replied. “For which meal?” the doctor asked. “All of them.” According to legend, this was the first diagnosed case of scurvy (vitamin-C deficiency) in the history of Stanford Hospital. The treatment: “Go home and eat an orange.”

By: Harv

Harv — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 23:48:57 +0000

Sam, I do recommend it, though my fiance is only a gourmet chef on the side – he’s a theoretical astrophysicist by day.

By: Bob

Bob — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 04:43:12 +0000

I eat one raw bell pepper with each meal along with one jalapeno. I even sneak them with into restaurants, cut up nicely in a zip loc. Being a celiac, pizza is out of the question along with any bread whatsoever. Yet, from what I am reading here in these posts does appear to fit what most grad students do throw done their gut…Pizza wins by a mile.

By: Plotinus or Bust! » Graduate School Gormet

Plotinus or Bust! » Graduate School Gormet — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 21:27:50 +0000

[...] Via Cosmic Variance,Â a listing of (less-than) phenomenal foods eaten by some of the smartest people in the world who now work for Fermi Lab doing particle physics work.Â The original article is linked here, which will take you to the Symmetry Magazine website. [...]

By: Astro Grad

Astro Grad — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 19:51:57 +0000

I feel amazed that no one mentioned frozen dinners or cans of soup! A guy in my class didn’d even have cutlery or plates, he just heated the stuff in the microwave and ate it with plastic spoons. I on the other hand, definitely had utensils but ate frozen meals 10 meals out of 14. The other 4 meals I would do some cooking but very basic stuff, like fried rice & some veggies.

By: Sam Gralla

Sam Gralla — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:11:30 +0000

Harv,

Wow–I’ve got to find me a gourmet chef to live with!

-Sam

By: robert

robert — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 12:30:11 +0000

Good to hear that pig’s feet are still sustaining post graduates. Many years ago, the good wife and I would purchase a foot or two from the local butcher. Boiled up, this provided meat and jelly sufficient to make pork pies (this is the UK after all) that sustained us for days. And what did we drink? A bizarre brew made by boiling up dandelion roots and lemons, adding sugar and fermenting. Excellent , though the bottles did tend to explode in the summer.

By: JoAnne

JoAnne — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 04:34:51 +0000

fh: I am stuck on frozen pizzas to this day, actually they were too expensive for me as a grad student, but I eat them in large quantities now! In fact, I just had one tonight – a CPK (CA Pizza Kitchens) portobello mushroom pizza which I embellished with proscuitto, goat cheese, and fresh tomatoes. Yum! I’m a sucker for pizza…

By: Quibbler

Quibbler — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 14:13:25 +0000

It almost pains me to hear some of these stories. I eat well and cheaply at university. The recipe i linked to in my post (number 17) is one of my current favourites — there’s nothing like harisa to warm you up in January. It’s not for people who can’t handle spice though.

Other standard fare includes steamed or stir-fried veg with pasta, chicken and veg and rice, home-baked bread, lentils, or risotto (which is a brilliant plan for students — it’s cheap, easy to cook, doesn’t require that much in the way of ingredients, yet is so filling and much more interesting than plain rice).

–Q.

By: Chad Orzel

Chad Orzel — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 12:45:11 +0000

My own grad school staple required a bit more work, but, weirdly, it’s really popular with people in my department now– I made it for a departmental potluck lunch, and got a bunch of requests for the recipe.

I tended to make that, or chili, or a sort of “food that was on sale stir-fry” thing together with a great big batch of rice, and eat it for lunch and dinner over an entire week. I also had a couple of pasta things that could be padded out to a week’s worth of food (and at 6’6″, 270-ish, I go through a lot of food in a week…).

By: Harv

Harv — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 23:05:35 +0000

As an astronomy grad student, I feel I must contribute.

When I lived by myself, I ate seasoned noodles a lot – angel hair pasta with various spices, parmesean cheese (out of the can), and olive oil. I also would make Kraft Mac & Cheese with ground turkey or Shepard’s Pie – ground turkey, canned green beans, & cream of mushroom soup topped with out of the box mashed potatos.

Now that I’m living with a gourmet cook, I eat very well (Indian, Thai, Mexican, Chinese) and did even when he was still an astronomy grad student, too. One of our simpler dishes was French Bread pizza – one loaf of grocery store fresh baked French Bread, sliced in half lengthwise, one can of Ragu Pizza Sauce, some mozzerela cheese, and any veggies or pepperoni to taste. Put together and bake at 350 degrees for ~10 minutes or until cheese melts/bread gets crispy.

Sam Gralla, sausage with peppers and onions is one of our staple meals too – we usually eat the mixture over pasta and top it with freshly grated parmesean cheese (I’ve moved up in the world).

Nowdays, when he’s gone, I’ll just eat out or may be make an omelette.

Though I will say we live in a place with a lower cost of living and a grad school that pays well.

By: steve

steve — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 22:40:00 +0000

When Steve Sommars and I were grad students at SUNY@SB in the late 70s we organized a dessert club that worried about the ice creams and baked desserts we could do. One of our cheesecakes placed 2nd in a Macy’s NYC contest. Another member made serious art breads that were sold (illegally I’m sure) at BNL every day. Chocolate arrived every few months from people who were commuting back and forth to CERN.

Our oven was labeled in milli-electron volts …

By: Quibbler

Quibbler — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 22:00:37 +0000

For those of you wishing to smarten up your culinary repertoires, this is my standard student fare. And it’s super-yummy.

–Q.

By: citrine

citrine — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 21:52:03 +0000

I know that a lot of Asian grad students buy staples such as rice and condiments in bulk during the semester breaks. For those who live in small towns, this means doing a day trip to an Asian Food store in the nearest big town and returning home at night with a carload of stuff.

Fried rice is pretty quick and tasty. It’s also low cost and uses up a lot of leftovers, too.

To me, one of the most memorable phrases from “Cosmos” is that the brain is where matter turns into consciousness. So Sean (and others), think of matter from those hotdogs and Velveeta that transformed into your consciousness.

By: Ambitwistor

Ambitwistor — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 20:07:42 +0000

P.S. I will not even begin to describe my graduate colleague’s turkey bacon and peanut butter concoction, nor my other colleague’s soup prepared in the uncleaned coffee machine.

By: Ambitwistor

Ambitwistor — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 20:03:16 +0000

My advisor told me a story of his graduate school days at Chicago in the 1970s… he lived in a bachelor apartment with three other guys. One of his roommates had the following cooking strategy: put an eggplant in the oven and turn it on. When you hear the eggplant explode, dinner is ready. He said that nobody ever cleaned the oven either, and consequently, their meals were a statistical mixture of all previous meals ever prepared in that oven.

Mmmm!

By: Philip

Philip — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 19:01:01 +0000

I just read somewhere that during WWII in Great Britain when food was strictly rationed and proteins were especially scarce, biologists ate their lab rats.

Maybe you physicists could figure a way to market Schrodinger’s cat as diet food. Zero calories–at least in this universe.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 18:08:03 +0000

Hmm…graduate students will make excellent Fear Factor contestants…I wonder why they never came up with “He who knows all, eats all”…but wait, they did: The NERDS- the only candy a nerd can afford!…or how about: “The decay of the hot dog particle- a Sean Carroll Study: year 80″…