Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Being a poor student! I was happily veg for 4 years of high school, first 2 years of college while I lived in the dorms. Then I got an apartment. I have no problem cooking a totally vegetarian diet for myself in my home - I never buy meat ingredients at the store. And I still very rarely pay for meat when eating out, unless I'm really sick of just ordering the freaking veggie burger. But the number of free food events at my university and my poor student budget make passing up free meaty meals seem wasteful. I call myself a freegan now (vegetarian unless it's free). I've heard others use the term too.

Sympathies! my fellow student. All I did was take an hour at the beginning of last week to make a giant batch of cous cous and stir-fried veggies - dished some out for meals all week long. This week it's bagels and cc plus tomato and onion I have pre-cut in containers in the fridge. Apparently my quick comfort food is all about carbs.
Keep eating. Good luck to us both, and all the other students on here.

Reminds me of Nicaraguan hot dogs in the meat:condiment ration. Similarly shrimpy meatsticks in buns, Loaded Down with as much shredded cabbage as they can cram on there, plus onions, crema or mayo, ketchup, mustard, etc. But for about 40 cents, an excellent afternoon snack.

OMG don't get me started. Nicaragua is my adopted homeland, and the food seriously rocks my socks.
You will definitely have to have loads of gallo pinto for breakfast, which is mixed up rice and beans fried in oil. Yum.
Very traditional dishes are indio viejo and nacatamales, but they're both kind of a mishmash of low-grade ingredients. Peasant food.
I spend all my time in Leon, so I don't know how the tacos are in other cities. But if you can find people selling tacos on the street served in plastic bags with a handful of cabbage and some crema - highly recommended.
Eskimo ice cream is decent, and the only thing available as far as I've seen.
You must drink Flor de Cana (Gran Reserva) rum. Whenever possible. Also the national drink (only selected last year), the Macua.
The cheese in Nica is something of its own, and is delicious fried. As are plantains, fried either sweet (maduro) or like chips (tostones).
So, I could go on all day. If you want authentic Nica food that the Nicas eat, my greatest recommendation is to eat lunch at a comedor (like a cafeteria). There will be a glass case with a smörgåsbord of wonderful things in it, and you can get a meat entree and a bunch of sides for $3-4.
And the tortilla! have Nicaraguan tortillas! (much thicker and tastier than any I've had in the US)
And drinks! fresco de cacao (like glorious chocolate milk), flor de rosa de jamaica (hibiscus juice), pithaya (a cactusfruit drink), all the fruity lunch frescos.
And mango, on the street, but watch out they serve it with salt unless you ask otherwise. And mamones, a unique fruit-eating experience.

Aah! So - comedores and street stands (fruit during the day and fried stuff at night, many around the main plaza of Granada) for the most authentic Nica food. Eat everything you can get your hands on.

refrigerate, then cut? the chill of the fridge should reduce the fudgy factor long enough to cut them, and people can always reheat them later.

I was a vegetarian for a while, maybe around 8 years, one of which was spent in India, where it is supereasy and superdelicious (if you love Indian, especially South Indian, food like I do) to be a vegetarian. A few years later, I moved to Brasil where it is a lot harder to be a vegetarian, but I lived in Liberdade (Asian neighborhood) in Sao Paulo, and with all the access to cool mushrooms, noodles, seaweeds, etc., I was pretty happy.

I remember reading that book "Eat Right for your Type" which theorizes that people with type A blook do better with a predominantly veg. diet and people with type O blood do better with a carnivorous diet, and perhaps there's some truth to that.

Later, I was taken to a Brazilian rodizio (meat until you can't no more) place here in NYC and all that beef was delish, although my stomach rebelled.

Since then, I still don't eat much meat - small portions and lots of vegetables. Eating meat in huge amounts seems to only perpetuate the dominant model of a few lucky people getting the lion's share of the world's resources, and the factory farming of animals to be eaten still continues to be inhumane and motivated solely by profits. Mad cow disease is still much more of a problem than the major media and the government will cop to. I'm careful where I get my meats from, and still ya never know.

I becamse a vegetarian for a while in high school, but it was really only to annoy my grandmother, who I was living with at the time. She only had 4 stock dinners that she rotated over and over every week: meatloaf, green beans, mashed potatoes; roast beef, salad, baked potatoes; broiled salmon, broccoli, roasted potatoes; and spaghetti. She liked her meat and potatoes. There's only so long one person can deal with that if they're more adventurous. So I went veg.

These days I still only really eat meat twice a week. I feel like the US has a serious meat overindulgance problem.

In-n-out

Damn you double-double with onions and extra sauce...the saucy korean bbq had no sway over me but you, with your two patties, hand torn lettuce, melting cheese, onions, and that sauce....

@Shelby: Gained 10 during my bar study. It was a sedentary slog. Wish I exercised more . . . .

Apart from eating "brain food," you study-ers might try exercising, if you have time to get rid of test anxiety. Takes the edge off.

@minoric: It looks like too much, but I swear...it's not!

...Okay, I really love mayo.

Haven't had a potato salad sandwich before! If only I were in Japan. :(