Blogs: Food

What’s Your Grocery Strategy?

Feeding yourself in Cambridge without a car

July 2020
by Meggan D.
MIT Sloan MBA Program
Good food has long been my main vice. Before moving to Cambridge, I lived in DC and loved taking advantage of the diverse food scene. My Sunday ritual was going to the farmers market, heading to Whole Foods, and then coming home to cook for the afternoon. I knew once I was on a graduate student...

Loafing Around at MIT

Why baking bread should be your next hobby

MAY 2020
by Chanyoung P.
Biology
I started baking not too long ago, mostly at the advice of acquaintances who were already proficient bakers. My first few attempts weren’t great; I once managed to omit an entire cup of water from a naan recipe, resulting in a hard puck-shaped mass with the texture of stale Ritz crackers. But I...

An Indian Spice Blend™ You Won’t Find at Whole Foods

Add one tablespoon of Indian to one tablespoon of American to achieve optimal confusion

MAY 2020
by Rumya R.
Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology
One of the most challenging tasks every family must undertake at some point in their lives is deciding what to watch together. One evening, the compromise for our family was Hasan Minhaj’s Netflix standup special, Homecoming King. It was a win-win: my immigrant parents got to see a young brown man...

A Matcha Latte a Day...

This student’s secret weapon

MAR 2020
by Morgan J.
Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology
It’s no secret that students everywhere love their coffee, so when I tell people that I almost never consume the magical beverage, I usually receive an incredulous response. Something along the lines of: “So, you just... wake up in the morning and live?” Most of the time, that’s exactly right. I...

A Week in the Life: Food Edition

Building community by breaking bread

MAR 2020
by Mingyu Y.
Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology
I love to cook. I picked up most of my culinary know-how during my junior year of college, through a combination of YouTube videos and scrappily assembled family recipes. That year, my housemates and I would go shopping together every weekend and designate one day a week for each of us to cook a...

Taking Engineering Too Far

Food, weight, and body image in grad school

FEB 2020
by Sarah G.
Materials Science and Engineering
This post is part of a special issue: "Mental Health Matters: Asking for Help & Reaching Out". I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't trying to lose weight. When I'm sitting in my office and can't focus on my work...

Graduate Student becomes Chickpea Master Masher

Finding new skills in unfamiliar places

DEC 2019
by Geeticka C.
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
I am sitting at my desk, debugging some code that does not seem to work. The week has been tiring, to say the least. But next week is Brunch Week! When I first joined MIT, I was plagued by the usual...

Eating my way through Cambridge’s cultural heritage

This city is more Portuguese than you think

Oct 2019
by Eli P.
Brain and Cognitive Sciences
“What’s for lunch?” is one of the more universal questions of the human experience, though the presence of two large universities in Cambridge affects the range of choices available to a hungry grad student. Many of the food options near MIT and Harvard Square cater to the fast-casual appetites of...

B-list Superpower – Food Edition

The underrated, unrestrained power of meal prep

OCT 2019
by Faith D.
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
What is “meal prep”? First things first, what does “meal prep” mean? Is it the newest fad in age of fitness and health fanatics? Is it a euphemism for being lazy? Well, maybe. At its core, meal prep is exactly what is sounds like — preparing your meals. The key, however, is that it is done prior to...

I didn’t spend any money for 1 month and this is what happened

You probably don’t need to try this yourself

JUL 2019
by Stephen L.
Nuclear Science and Engineering
I share my office with a pugnacious Australian graduate student, who delights in competition and regularly poses challenges to me. One afternoon, he provoked me with a contest to determine who could function longer without spending money. He claimed that he had grown tired of the trivial grievances...