Mini's Student Survival Guide: Don't Waste Food!

Being a student who is seriously strapped for cash, wasting food is something that I try to avoid as best I can. Sometimes you cook more than you can eat. Sometimes you cook and then realise that you're not as hungry as you thought you were. Sometimes you buy things that you cannot possibly use before the use-by date.

With 24 hours before a litre of milk would expire, I couldn't deal with the pound that was about to be wasted when it could be put to good use.

Right now, I present - as a part of what I hope will become a regular feature of 'Mini's Student Survival Guide' - how to use up that milk before it stinks out the kitchen and gets thrown out by a flatmate. Of course, this relies on you having certain other things in to use them with, but it'll be worth it in the long run.

1. Meals to reheat. Some packet mixes require you to use milk to make the sauce, so this is what you need to go with (my personal favourite being chicken supreme, although I use Quorn pieces instead of chicken because I don't eat meat). The packet will probably say three to four servings, but I usually only get two. Either way, you have one for the fridge and one (or more) for the freezer.

Milk used: 425ml

2. Sweet treat. My homesickness food: Angel Delight. I know it isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it comes in a range of flavours so you can find something that tickles your fancy. Whip it up with fresh milk, put it in a bowl and leave to stand for 5 minutes (I prefer to stick it in the fridge, but there is no need to). One packet will do 4 servings, but nobody will judge you if you eat it all in one sitting.

Milk used: 300ml

3. Does cooking make you peckish? Grab yourself a bowl of cereal. Cheerios are my 'breakfast-as-midnight-snack' of choice, but whatever you've got in the cupboard, with a generous splash of milk, will sort out those hunger pangs, at least for the time being.

Milk used: 225ml

4. And wash it all down. Get yourself a hot drink. Tea, coffee, hot chocolate; whatever floats your boat. Of course if you like your coffee black then this won't help you, but a nice milky hot chocolate sorts me right out just before bed.

Milk used: Depends on your preference, but hopefully most of the rest.

5. If there's any left, you may as well just drink it straight from the carton. It's only going to start smelling if you leave it.

So don't waste it, allow yourself a midnight snack, a milky drink, a sweet indulgence and at least two meal portions.

1 litre of milk gone in less than 1 hour.

How would you do it?

Advent calendar dilemma

When do you eat your advent calendar chocolate?

I feel like a big kid still having an advent calendar at the age of 18, but I’ve done it for the last 17 Christmases in a row so why would I stop now? I think the most childish part of it is that my mother bought me my advent calendar again.

For anybody interested, it’s a Mars one, which means it isn’t quite as good as the Cadbury one I had last year, but it is still pretty good. The window for Christmas Eve is really big as well so that’ll probably be a fun-size Mars bar I imagine.

But there is a dilemma which I face every morning when it comes to eating my advent calendar chocolate. Obviously you have to brush your teeth before you leave the house (although this doesn’t seem to be obvious to some people in my lectures, but so is life) but this will have an effect on your enjoyment of the chocolate.

The basic problem I have is: do you eat your advent calendar chocolate before or after you brush your teeth?

If you eat it before, then the taste of the chocolate gets washed away when you brush your teeth. However, if you eat it afterwards, the chocolate will taste funny. So, what do you do?

The bestest says she brushes her teeth, eats breakfast and then eats her chocolate, which seems to make sense as a logical sequence for when it comes to eating chocolate. But, I don’t eat breakfast. And I brush my teeth after breakfast if I ever get it because food gets stuck in my brace.

I still don’t know what to do in relation to eating my advent calendar chocolate and brushing my teeth. If anyone fancies giving me a solution that still allows me to have my daily December fix of chocolate in the morning before I have to go and do something else but allows me to have the most enjoyable chocolate experience that will last me the whole day.

Am I overthinking this? I should probably just eat my damn chocolate and get on with it.

365 days in 30 ways update: I received a parcel in the middle of last week, which contained a signed book by my lovely name twin Caroline Smailes. It also had a post-it-note which says ‘All the bestest lasses are called Caroline’ which now has pride of place at the top of my wall, which I will be able to resume showing you in January.

Number 24, checked off.