Happy Friday everyone! I know that I'm coming off a blogpost yesterday about Bonfire Night, but we've reached a somewhat crucial juncture in term here, and that is: I've made it halfway through! Yes, Cambridge terms are eight weeks long, and we're already in Week 5! It feels so strange that I'm already half way through the term and thinking about Christmas vacation when I've barely been in the UK for a month. Yet here I am!
In light of this milestone, I feel it might be good to take stock of some aspects of living in Cambridge that I've touched on before, but didn't go into much detail initially. Today, I want to talk about something that is quite important to all of us and especially to me: FOOD.
For those of you who know me well, or have at least seen me eat in dining, I take food very seriously. As a tall person with a decently high metabolism, I need a lot of energy to get through the day, especially when I am sleep-deprived, as is often the case unfortunately. As you might have recalled from my earlier blogposts, I remarked about how "small" Cambridge and the UK in general felt. The food portion to price ratio was one of those "smaller" things for me, and suffice it to say it was quite a shock when I first arrived.
I have learned to cope with this fact to a degree, though I must say it is still a work in progress. For starters, like at MIT, you really have only two choices: either cook for yourself, or eat at college-provided dining services. Sure, there are plenty of restaurants throughout Cambridge, but it is definitely more expensive on average than say the other two options I just mentioned.
I ultimately chose to not cook for myself, but before I discuss college dining, I will make a few points about cooking for yourself. Relative to kitchen conditions in my dorm at MIT, the kitchen conditions here are significantly better in terms of overall cleanliness. If it weren't for my unwillingness to buy groceries on a periodic basis and spend time actually cooking the meals, I would seriouslyly consider it. Groceries are relatively cheap compared to restaurant food, so it does not cost you as much to make a good, hearty meal.
College-provided dining services are not so bad either with regard to pricing. You can get a pretty decent meal for say, five-six pounds, such as this one below:
Now for the average person, that meal isn't so bad! You can see here that you will get a pretty good balance of vegetables and starch and...well, you actually can't see it here, but there is meat underneath all of those beans! So a relatively cheap meal that is also healthy for you!
Except that I am not the average person. I am the guy at MIT dining who can easily eat two full plates of food, often twice as much compared to most of the people I am eating with. Even now, many of my MIT friends will marvel at how much I can consume. Sometimes to save time, I find myself eating in line while waiting for my second plate of food to come!
So yeah, that meal you see there...not quite an average meal for me given what I described. There should be a second plate somewhere in that ensemble! :) Now I must confess that I did only eat two meals a day at MIT because I rarely had time for lunch due to my schedule, whereas I can eat three meals a day at Cambridge. Nevertheless, the math still seems to win out for MIT when you consider that it is two plates per meal for two meals per day versus one plate per meal for three meals per day. Now to be fair, there are some smaller plates that I do get as you see here like soup. Perhaps that does add up to one larger plate. Nevertheless, that tray does look kind of empty, at least from my perspective. It could definitely benefit from some more food if it weren't for the fact that I would be spending more than I would like per meal.
However, just like I wouldn't allow myself to eat less food at MIT, I've carried that same resoluteness here to Cambridge! And so over the past couple of weeks, I've tried to come up with ways in which I can eat sufficiently well without burning a hole in my wallet, but before I go into details, it is worth describing some of the major differences I see between Cambridge college dining and MIT dorm dining that might be worth being aware of.
First off, the relationship between the college and the dining service is somewhat different. With MIT dining, you pay MIT directly for the meal plan that you purchase, after which all meals are buffet. At Cambridge, you pay the dining service directly, and there are no meal plans. Everything is à la carte. Thus, from what I can observe and understand, MIT acts as a middle man between the dining service and the students, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is some sort of agreement that makes the dining service able and willing to serve us all we can eat. At Cambridge, the dining service is more like a business, so they are very scrupulous when it comes to making sure that you pay for everything that you have on your tray. That sometimes can even include the portion sizes that you put on your plate for food items that are self-serve. For example, if vegetables cost 35 pence, but you fill your plate with vegetables, they will likely charge you twice the amount because the quantity on your plate exceeds a "portion size". Thus, for a person like me who eats a lot more, the fixed cost scheme at MIT works more in my favor compared to the à la carte scheme at Cambridge.
The second major difference between Cambridge dining and MIT dining is that there is no "food made fresh" such as omelettes or stir-fry. The entire menu is pre-set, but personally, I much liked the stir-fry and omelette stations at MIT. Not only was the food fresh, but you could also customize it depending on what sort of flavors you felt like having. In addition, the omelettes were quite filling, though perhaps that was particular to the chef who made the omelettes every morning. Not all chefs at the omelette were as generous as he was with fillings.
The final major difference is the times in which dining occurs! Contrary to MIT, Cambridge likes to start classes bright and early (I'll get into academics more in a future post!). As a result, breakfast hours are somewhat earlier than those at MIT. Also, dinner hours are significantly shorter at least in my college (6 pm - 7 pm VS 5:30 pm - 8:30 pm), so you can't spend forever eating and hanging out with friends as it might have been possible say at MIT. Furthermore, Cambridge dining often hosts special events following dinner, so while you can just chill out in MIT dining halls long after official meal hours without concerns of getting kicked out, the servers will kick you out promptly even if you are in the middle of eating so that they can start welcoming guests for these special events. As a result, you can't have that "mad dash" five minutes before dining closes to grab dinner unless you plan to bring it back to your room. Otherwise, expect to see most of your food go into the trash/compost.
So just how have I been managing for almost a month? Well, here are some tips that I have:
1) Change up the meat-veggie-starch ratio
I love meat, and when it comes to MIT dining, I try to consume as much of it as possible. At Cambridge, that isn't as feasible because meat is, not surprisingly, more expensive than other foods. Thus, if you are looking to get full without spending too much, try shifting your diet more towards starches and vegetables, which can fill you up for less money and are arguably healthier. While it is somewhat of a concession from a carnivore such as myself, do not fret over it too much! It's not "torture" to eat more vegetables instead of meat as long as the vegetables are done well, which for the most part, is not super difficult to do. Furthermore, it's not like you are going full vegetarian. It's better to be full with more greens than to not be full at all.
2) Don't be super conventional with servings
The dining hall tries to separate certain foods from each other (e.g. cold foods from the main course dishes from the desserts) by putting them at different stations and providing their own plates and bowls, which serve as the de facto portion sizes that make it easier for people at the cash register (known as the till in the UK) to quickly figure out what sort of food you got and how much of it you got. Convenient for the consumer and cashier, right?
However, what if I don't want a full serving? For example, I don't necessarily want an entire serving of cold tuna salad for lunch, so maybe I'll just get a spoonful and include it with the rest of my vegetables. Such a simple behavior can inadvertently throw the cashier off because you've put yourself in a gray area where you didn't really get one serving of tuna, but they don't have a method of measuring out "half portions" or portion sizes that are less than one of their standard portion sizes. More often than not, the cashier will decide to let you go and not charge you for that tuna you got because the portion is "too small" to be one portion, and there you go! You just walked out with free tuna. I wouldn't necessarily push your luck by getting lots of small portions of food because they might turn it around on you by bundling them all together as one portion of one of the more expensive items you got. However, one or two of these "small" portions can help in terms of providing a more satisfying meal.
3) Observe how much the servers serve to the people in front of you
All main courses are portioned and served by the servers directly instead of self-serve as it might be for cold dishes like the tuna I just described. While things are à la carte, the servers do not have exact measurement tools for giving out exact portions, and the cashiers know that and will provide some tolerance in case the portion seems a little "bigger." As a result, don't be afraid to ask for more! Like at MIT, the worst that they can say is "no," and I have yet to hear that response in Cambridge.
Secondly, be on the lookout for how much the servers are serving to people for the main dish(es) you want to purchase. As the servers are providing single portions, be on the lookout for any significant inconsistencies that could work in your favor (remember, they are human, not machines!). For example, one day, I and the guy in front of me were both getting shepherd's pie. The guy in front of me got a portion that filled almost half of his plate, whereas I got a portion that barely covered a quarter of the plate. I immediately asked the waiter why he had provided me and the man such different portion sizes to which he responded by giving me more (probably just to shut me up, but hey, more food is more food!). I'm not trying to take advantage of the servers, but as a consumer, I want to make sure that I am paying a fair price for what I am eating, and paying the same amount as another person for less food is not fair.
4) (NOT RECOMMENDED) The cashier can only charge you for what he/she can see on your tray
As the food in dining is à la carte, the cashier has to take a look at what you have on your tray and charge you appropriately for each item. However, if you have stacked your plate or bowl relatively high, the cashier is not going to spend time trying to rummage through this pile of food you have to figure out exactly what you got. This creates a prime opportunity then for some people to organize their plates or bowls in a way such that they can conceal more expensive food items under cheaper ones, like for example, slices of meat under a bed of lettuce. Thus, you can end up getting more expensive food items for less since you end up paying for whatever you used to conceal (e.g. generally something cheap like lettuce) those more expensive items.
This method though is definitely questionable from an ethical standpoint because you are essentially trying to steal food without anyone noticing, Thus, I would not recommend implementing this idea on a daily basis because you will get caught eventually. This suggestion should be used only as a last resort if for some reason you are really hungry or don't have/want to pay that much money on you.
Whew! That was a mouthful! I hope this gives you all some additional insight into dining life here at Cambridge! I may put up another blogpost on this topic should I learn anything else about dining life here throughout this term or the next. In the meantime, be on the look out for my post regarding the "Week 5 Blues" !