Food

Food

Alright, so now you have your regular place of gaming, and your space there. What next? Well, a geek's gotta eat! Tradtionally each person buys their own snacks, and buys some fast food on the way to the game or orders take-out during the game. But this is the most expensive option.

Dinner can be home-made, pot luck, or takeout.

 

Home-made is the cheapest option, but the most work. Here's a recipe which is cheap and relatively easy to produce, and can be eaten by almost anyone – including vegetarians, diabetics, etc.

 

Vegetable pasta sauce (serves 4 hungry people, or 6 light eaters)

• __Ingredients__: 2x tablespoons of vegetable oil, 4x cloves garlic, 1x onion, 1x small carrot, 1x stick celery, 1x small zucchini, 1x teaspoon dried oregano, 2x 410g (1 lb) tins peeled or diced tomatoes. 1x 500g (1lb) packet of whichever pasta you like – don't go for long pastas like spaghetti and linguini unless you're happy to clean up spilled sauce. Go for short ones like macaroni, penne, etc.
• __Method__: Peel and dice the garlic. Dice the onion, carrots and celery – not bigger than ¼ inch cubes. Fire up the frying pan, and put in the oil. Add in the garlic, stir it around for half a minute, then add in the onion, carrots and celery all together, stirring around well for a minute. Now dice the zucchini, and toss it in and mix it up well. Turn the heat down a bit and leave it to sautee for two or three minutes. Now put the tomatoes in, get the wooden spoon and squish them up if they're not diced. Put in the oregano, and pepper and salt if you like that. Mix it all up well, and leave it on to simmmer. Put on a pot of water. When it's boiled, add a dash of oil (this makes it less likely the pasta will stick together). Then put in the pasta, give it a good stir to break it up, and let it cook. As the pasta's cooking, the sauce will reduce – that is, some of the water will boil away and the flavour will become more intense. When the pasta is cooked, drain it, and put it back in the pot. Put the sauce in the same pot, and mix them together well. Serve! Prices of ingredients vary a lot from place to place, but you should be able to make this meal for not more than four US dollars or Euros, which is good for four to six people. Of course you can vary ingredients, using things like broad beans, mushrooms, eggplant, etc.

 

Home-made is usually only an option when the session's at someone's house, but often places like university lounges will have microwaves, so with a bit of planning and some takeout containers you can still have home-made dinners.

 

Pot luck is the medium-expense option, and everyone is guaranteed to have at least one thing they like. Everyone just brings what they enjoy, and shares it. This really shows how social the people in the group are: the more extroverted members will bring food that's easy to share, like dips and soups, while the more introverted members simply get a burger and fries on the way.

 

Takeout is the most expensive, but it's no work. The only difficulty is arguments about what to get, especially when dealing with things like pizza.

 

In any case, with food, it's recommended that the group consider the Geek $ Jar method of putting (say) $5 each per session in, and make one person responsible for buying it all up. Failing that, make each person responsible for a different thing - Anna always brings the drinks, Bob always brings the cheetos, etc. Otherwise different levels of spending can be a source of tension in the group.