Picnics to potluck suppers: building friendships through food at university

In my second year at university, three of my pals turned up unexpectedly at the doorstep late one evening, having just pilfered a biblical quantity of mackerel from the murky depths of the North Sea. They were looking for somewhere to gut and fillet everything in one go, so we cut a deal: in return for temporarily turning our flat into a fish factory, my flatmates and I would keep a few for the freezer and get a second dinner that night.

An hour later, as I squeezed bottled lemon juice over a plate of deep-fried goujons, it dawned on me that this was probably not a typical university social activity – but it definitely beat an evening sinking pints at the pub.

Mackerelgate, though particularly memorable, was just one example of the ways we used food as an excuse for a social event during my student days. In fact, meeting and eating seemed to be my peer group’s preference: from mass pizza or pancake gatherings, picnics at the park during the summer, chaotic suppers, and impulsive group feasting whenever one of us found a joint of meat with a big yellow sticker on it. The relationships I built and maintained over food became far stronger than those that arose just from getting plastered.

That’s not to say we didn’t drink at all – oh, we very much did – but it was always cheaper, and often a lot more inclusive, to simply put “dinner at ours tomorrow, bring pudding/wine” in the group chat, than fritter away hard-loaned cash at the pub.

Of course, this seems like an easy thing to do once your friendship group has established itself, but actually, using food as a way to fast-track those friendships in the first place is the real secret to building a strong community around you while away from home.

So, if you’re thinking about going to university and forming some robust relationships through the medium of food, here’s some advice from someone who still regularly overfeeds the same friends, two years after graduating.

Be generous with your resources

Fostering good vibes – ie trust and openness – with your immediate flatmates from the start is key to making sure your kitchen is a nice place to hang out in. Happily, this costs nothing except a little bit of communication and the belief that what goes around comes around.

Although none of us from my halls ended up living together afterwards (four were exchange students, and Jenny had a sudden career epiphany and dropped out after term ended), we had a great year together, helped by sharing lots of baked goods and potluck suppers, plus agreeing to split basics like oil, vinegar, salt and washing-up liquid from day one.

Additionally, and somewhat uniquely I think for halls, we quickly implemented a “help yourself but if you break it, you replace it” agreement. This meant we could use each other’s crockery, cutlery and gadgets, rather than guarding individual forks or plates with a gollum-ish “my precious” attitude, which has always baffled me.

We also kept things civilised when it came to stuff like flour or sugar: an ask-first policy worked if we needed to use or borrow something, which would be replaced as necessary.

This mutual generosity of resources contributed to a nice, homely community feel, and avoided the “who stole my ketchup” culture that seemed to plague other people’s halls of residence. (I once saw padlocked food cupboards when visiting a different university. It nearly made me cry.)

Learn to cook cheap ‘elastic’ meals

You’ll work out pretty quickly what is and isn’t cheap when you have limited funds. You’ll be able to feed yourself more than adequately on a budget of about £25 a week – the cheapest, healthiest meals are dals, root vegetable soups and stews, veggie chilli con carne and tomato-based pastas.

The beauty of lots of these dishes, most notably soups, stews and curries, is that it is cheap to add to them or expand them, if you have extra guests coming. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who studied how people ate in France in the 1960s, called this quality “elasticity”. For example, you can add another tin of lentils to a dal, or for a soup, perhaps another three or four chopped potatoes to feed more hungry mouths.

Of course, having the confidence to cook these dishes in the first place is key, as is asking people about their dietary requirements, or allergies, before they come over. Often, I’ll just cook something plant-based and gluten-free to cover everyone.

And if you don’t have the resources to cook for others at all, simply sharing picnic-style meals with a generous spirit of hospitality is a great way to ensure you’ll never be short of friends in the long run – and maybe you’ll even get the odd bit of fresh mackerel out of it too.