Soups can make very good pasta sauces or bases for stews. Salads are very easy, very quick and very healthy. Also if you’re a fresher with culinary or artistic flair they can look like you’ve been slaving over them for hours.

Roasting meat is a very good way of cooking food. It allows you to put your dinner in the oven and then retire to a comfy chair with a bottle of whatever but be careful not to get too drunk and forget the food is in the oven!

If any meals are included in the price of your accommodation try to get to them. If the food is bad then get it changed if they only serve breakfast till 8 o’clock then get the times changed. You are paying for a service so make sure the service works for you!

Finally, whatever your approach to cooking and eating at University, try new things. There will be people from all different backgrounds, regions and countries and they will be eating all manner of different things. Try them! University and college is a learning experience and not just in the academic sense.

And finally students have come across, as you will, some incredibly bizarre eating habits at University and college. Here are some of the strangest. A student who ate this everyday and nothing else! 1 bowl of corn-flakes, semi-skimmed milk, a roast chicken, salad, hallumi cheese and diet coke he ate this for 3 years without change!

One girl fresher who ate only apples, biscuits and crisps for an entire first year

The student who lived on cuppa soup and lived.