Last year, one of us had a copy of Cuisine magazine sent to their dilapidated hovel, courtesy of a Meridian Energy contract that had long expired.
They enjoyed this subscription, and would excitedly pore over its sumptuous pages of buffalo’s milk cheese and fresh oysters as she ate Budget brand pasta (less than $1 a packet!), with Pam’s pasta sauce, with Home Brand frozen veges. They did not fail to notice the incongruity between what was on the pages,and what was on her plate, and her innocent, hungry eyes would fill with tears—which would prove to be the only refined liquid to pass her lips that year that wasn’t ready mixed with no-name alcho-dribble.
So, while the inspiration for this issue came from the real Cuisine, you might not find a whole lot of crossover between it and Salient’s take on their shared subject matter. There aren’t many students that can afford to dine at Logan Brown every Wednesday, sup on champagne-brushed heron as nubile and glittering waitpeople massage delightful aromatic herbs into self churned butter made from the milky tears of peacocks that is to be served with ladles of crème de gold-coated seal. Student food is tinned and reheated, rather than braised or decanted.
Much like moving into a flat halfway over the edge of a ravine with a family of overweight trampolinists, food on a student budget is a hard balancing act. But, as students, we’re all faced with the issue of eating cheaply, healthily, and tastily—with those three factors falling very much into a you can have two of these at the expense of the third equation. The dominating monolith of all students’ lives is their bank balance, so it is almost always health or taste that is sacrificed for the sake of your overdraft. It doesn’t have to be that way. We hope that some of the advice dotted throughout this Cuisine issue of Salient (in between the meatier chunks of info-feature) help you readdress that balance.
Bon appetit and good eatin’!
Uther & Elle
P.S. Turns out it’s Salient’s birthday this week. Happy Birthday Salient—still young at 74!