Micro Review
OK, a copy landed on the mat this morning packed in one of those cardboard sleeve things. You get 122 pages in a glue spine paperback. Recipes divided down by food type (Bread, Pasta/Pizza, Meat &c) rather than meals (breakfast, lunch dinner). There is a section on veg cooking and buying that might help clueless students (e.g. me, 30 years ago).
Biggest omission (in my opinion): oatmeal. Cheap source of carbohydrates, good for you and would sort breakfast out when made half-in-half with milk and water. Something like a quid for all week mainly depending on the milk as oatmeal can be had for £1 per kg and keeps for a year or two. Add another £1 for a month's worth of honey for sweetening. Or chop half an apple in or some nuts or dried fruit. Or throw in some scavenged blackberries - ace.
Savory oatmeal for a warm lunch or light meal: fry onion in some kind of fat (bacon fat would be tasty for meaties, butter is good as well) in a small saucepan, add one cup oatmeal and stir in for 30sec then add two cups water, salt and boil for the usual 5 min. A good handful of spinach leaves helps appearence and taste. Towards the end of the boiling, chuck in a stingy handful of the strongest grated cheese you have. For a main meal pop a poached egg on top. Pepper to taste.
Oatcakes: Continuing the bread theme in the book, you will need a whisky glass of course...
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/520634/scottish-oat-cakes
No yeast so might be an easier way into bread making for those of us who have never got round to trying.
Second biggest omission: kidney beans &c. I just use the canned ones as the factories get the beans fresh and steam cook them on an industrial scale. Barbunya Pilaki made with Borlotti beans (aka Roman beans) could be a pre cooked neck filler when served with pittas and homous.
The audience: if this goes to a second edition, the thorny issue of educating the clueless students without nagging them arises. Drip feeding information about storage of left-overs (lifetimes in the fridge), diet balance for a weekly menu into the recipes might be an idea. Or just go for it and put a chapter in about a typical weekly menu at the end.