You’ll never guess what this woman did to a peanut butter jar.
Pictures & Story by Gerjanne Hoek
Hello! Welcome to the very first episode of ‘What’s In Yo Fridge?!’, in which your favourite UCR Section Editor goes out and peeks into the most private part of a student’s home: their fridge. Because believe it or not, in many cases what you see behind those cold, white doors is not what you get. Fridges can hold the darkest of diets (when they’re painfully empty) and the guiltiest of pleasures (when you make sure to hide those chocolate bars behind your salad).
In this series, I will explore a very diverse range of student fridges, and I will give all of you a look into your fellow student’s weekly meals. Because isn’t this actually a very interesting thing to look at in such an international environment as UCR? Do Dutch students eat more potatoes? Or are they breaking free from a regime of Dutch Potato Moms and only eating pasta? What’s in a German fridge? Does our very own RASA Treasurer Daniël van Hemert really only eat pizza and microwave lasagna? All these and more burning questions will be covered by me and my shameless investigations in this new series.
This week, we have a thrilling kick-off with an exclusive peek into Noga Amiri’s fridge, which we shall now nickname The Temple of Greens. Noga is a 3rd semester student from Israeli origins who has her humble abode on the Roggeveenhof first floor. As you can see on the picture her fridge has a very romantic shade of yellow light which adds just that bit more of mysterious attraction to the food that is in there. And oh my grapey goodness does she have a healthy content or what?
Noga tries to get most of her fresh groceries at the market, and it’s her habit to then cook a big meal that will last her a few days. So smart! Many of her dishes are vegetarian, but this is mainly because she doesn’t really know how to cook meat, and that’s okay. The dish in the picture is one of those meals – it’s rice with dille, peas, feta and tomato. It smells delicious and will probably taste that way too! Noga is also a very practical and easy-going eater. Since she doesn’t have a microwave, she told me she has gotten used to eating her food as it comes. Just prepared means it’s a hot dish, but after three days in the fridge she’ll just eat her lentil-soup cold. Her grandma hates it and grandmas of the world would probably agree.
But what about those classic, gross, student fast-food habits? Where are the mushy chicken nuggets? Where are the nachos with AH Basic hot sauce and cheese? In Noga’s case, it’s very simple: If it’s within reach, she’ll eat it. That is what went wrong between her and an innocent peanut butter jar a while ago; it was empty in two days. Just straight off the spoon during another load of course reading. Her solution to make sure this never happens again? She simply doesn’t buy snacks anymore, and if need is high, she’ll just visit her friends and eat their chips.
So here we have it, a student-diet that exists of various dishes with rice, lentils, spices and vegetables. A household lacking both a microwave and chicken nuggets, and a healthy, independent woman with a weakness for peanut butter.
Tune in next week for another fridge you never knew you’d want to look inside of!
Gerjanne Hoek is a linguistics, politics and history major from Bunschoten-Spakenburg, The Netherlands.
