Recipes for Starving Students in Paris or Anywhere

OK. Let's bite the bullet here. We talk about all the things we ate as students but how does that help the starving students of today? Zip! So lets start a collection of simple recipes you can make either with no cooking devices or with a simple electric hot plate, Camping Gaz bottle with burner, toaster oven (been available in France to for years), access to sink, some basic utensils and no bank account. Here goes "Recipes for Starving Students"

Food we love now that we are old, wise and never wrong.

We have expanded our food loves and passions (we all have affairs with food right?) so I think we need another Post section to cover what we love now and any recipes we have to share.

Food we ate then.

We have had a great thread, that I hope will continue, on recipes and food and olive trees and tall stories. But I am thinking that I would also like to know what we all ate back then. I'll kick it off. For a few weeks I lived with a widow and 3 other students working on their Masters from Stanford. We had little on common (they actually seemed to like to study!?) and I remember little about what I ate. I ate. I then found a room in an apartment at Ave. Rapp and St. Dominique of a little old lady (4 foot 6 inches if that) and cooked my own food. I bought ground steak from the butcher, Uncle Ben's white rice (can't remember if it was instant but if they had that, then that is what I bought), onions and peas. So, equipped with a Camping Gaz bottle (you know those little blue things with a burner that screws into the top) and one of the first non-stick skillets (all coated with raw Teflon!) and either fried up the ground beef or rolled it into little balls. The butcher would press the ground beef in an oval press to make a patty for me. Great meat too and not horse. I tried it once though (if we can eat those lovely creatures with their big eyes and kind ways, cows I mean, we can eat horses with their tempers and sharp hooves!) but I preferred the beef. I added the onion which caramelized. Put it aside to keep warm with a towel and then cooked the rice in a Scout's pot I had brought with me. Never a Boy Scout myself but they made great knives and camping gear. Since I lived in a small hotel the second year, I did the same thing there with a view of where the femme de menage washed her buckets and mops. She gave me pointers. (Very sweet woman with bright red/orange hair that hung like straw and a warm and caring disposition. My favorite person in Paris!). Sometimes I varied the diet with just the rice and butter. When I was flush, usually at the beginning of the month, I splurged and bought some prepared salads like the Carrot Rapé, or something swimming in mayonnaise. Usually, I had a patisserie that I had bought along with my morning croissant and ficelle at the boulangerie. My repast was then finished with a cigar bought in the same small shop that also sold what are now supplied in Mini-Bars and Airlines around the world, those little one shot bottles. So I worked my way through every liqueur known to man loving those made by monks from pears best. Loved those dedicated monks. Apart from the occasional sandwich Jambon, Croque Monsieur and the rare treat of an early in the AM of the onion soup with frites at Les Halles. I had yet to learn about Campbells Cream of Mushroom soup and Ritz Crackers that can be used to cover anything from a chicken breast to fish. I was a slow learner. Breakfast was almost always a cereal with the strange tasting milk that was supposed to last until I was dead and in my grave. But heated, it made that unique taste when steam heated and added to coffee. Yesterdays bakery items were brought out and eaten with salt free butter and some jam filled with fruit bits. OK. Now there are my sins, what were yours? If we all work well on this, perhaps we could publish here a cook book for poor students having to cook for themselves in Paris!