Hello?

I might be talking to the spiders creeping around the corners of this blog, but I'm here to turn on the lights and wipe the dust away – second year at college has been crazy, but these are all you need to know about the past few months of the gastronomy of student life:

The most important things I've learnt from student living:

1. Cream cheese and honey on toast makes a bangin' breakfast. Richard claims it to be "like cheesecake on toast". TIP: Stuff warm pita with the same stuff. It's ridiculous.
2. If you don't buy it, you won't eat it. Do you really need a pack of McVitie's Chocolate Digestives every time you pass (or delibrately browse) the biscuit section in Tesco's?
3. Light butter spread is pretty useless. I dunno, it might help with the calories and saturated fat and whatever, but it barely tastes like the real deal!
4. Never let yourself run out of milk. Milk is the loo roll of the refrigerator. Gotta have it at all times. No milk means dry cereal, black coffee, black tea, no means of making hot chocolate, pathetic scrambled eggs, no impromptu pancakes... and the list goes on.
5. Abstain from purchasing cereal. Mostly if you're someone like me who cannot resist eating cereal out of the box, cinema-popcorn style. I've opted for porridge oats, which are less edible straight out of the box.
6. Frozen food is your best friend. Meat, veg, pizza, pies, ready meals – the best thing to do after a long day at dance college is sticking something into the oven for dinner which hardly cost anything.
7. Sweet potato fries are the ish. Slice them up, stick them into the oven with oil, mixed spice and salt, and you're ready to go.
8. Portion minced meat before freezing. It's not much fun digging your pathetic knife into a solid block of meat when all you want is just enough for two portions of spaghetti bolognese.
9. Raw mushy sausages can become meatballs. Feeling like bits and bobs instead of rods? Worried that sausages and pasta don't look very sophisticated? Cut up raw sausages before cooking.
10. You can indeed accomplish an epicmealtime 'handle it' recipe. I've done it, and it was glorious.
11. Just take the mould off the cheese, nobody's going to die. Cream cheese and cheddar alike – I'm still here, aren't I?
12. Don't look down upon a roasted onion half. It's gooood.
13. Make and keep tons of tiny pancakes to use up expiring milk and leftover chocolate chips. You're welcome. Keep them in the freezer for an eternal breakfast backup plan.

It's been two years of student-living in an English country, but there are wonders undiscovered, the gaps of which my English boyfriend has happened to fill with his superior knowledge.

1. Fire ovens still exist. Richard had one in his student house.
2. Gravy granules! I'm learning.
3. Golden syrup or honey with beef and gravy. *Melts*
4. Mixed herbs can save your life. A sprinkle does magical wonders to almost anything.
5. Sweet and sour sauce with spaghetti is legit.
6. Actually, anything with pasta can be dinner.
7. Yes, even gravy.

Other stuff you should totally try making:

1. Peanut butter and banana milkshake: Blend two generous dollops of peanut butter, a chopped up banana, one or two tsp of sugar, and milk to cover 3/4 of what you've already got in the blender.
2. Peanut butter and banana porridge: Stir in mashed banana and however much peanut butter into your warm porridge for an energising start to the day! Much needed when you start with a ballet class every morning at college.
3. Nutella and peanut butter sandwich: I don't know why most people I speak to haven't tried this yet. Spread one slice of warm toast with nutella, the other with peanut butter, and stick them together. Watch them ooze and fuse. Enjoy.

Greggs

I didn't have a good impression of Greggs right from the start.

The first time I heard about it was when I chanced upon an article on the Daily Mail, in which a Greggs employee acts like a gassed eight-year old and decides to badmouth artisan bread-maker, Paul Hollywood, for doing the plaited loaves all wrong and speaking like an Enid Blyton narrator. Accompanying the article was this picture of a Greggs shopfront:

I am not a big fan of the storefront. It looks more like a bookstore than a bakery to me.

The other thing is, you can't insult Paul Hollywood, you simply can't.

Just look at all that adorable-ness.

Bam. No one can make bread-making look more epic than the Hollywood.

The whole thing was probably a publicity stunt by Greggs, but nevertheless I chose Greggs, out of curiosity, as a lunch option while shopping in Hounslow.

The café section was preceded by a bakery section. I think. There were about two shelves, which contained doughnuts, muffins, and loaves which looked very neat and identical.

Moving on to the café section, they had yogurts, salads, pasties, cakes, Danish pastries, croques, sandwiches, pasta, coffee, and other quintessential café food items. The prices were really appealing, with pasties costing about £1.50 and a bowl of pasta for £2.99. 

A steak bake pasty and an iced apple cream Danish cost me exactly £3.

The steak bake was puff pastry filled with beef stew. I loved the warm, creamy and hearty taste of the beef stew, which were quite generous chunks.

Emma, my food buddy for the day, tried some of my dessert. After the meal, I commented, "I do wish that there was more apple in it, though."

She replied, "It was supposed to have apple in it?"

The Danish pastry sandwiched a thin layer of apple and sauce under a thick poof of whipped cream, storybook style. The apple's taste was drowned out under the cream which was a bit much, and I could only occasionally feel its gooey texture.

Greggs is a good option for a cheap café lunch, with tasty-looking pastries and a few other limited options for savoury items, which includes customisable sandwiches (Emma: "The lady took forever to make my sandwich, and look, all my onions are falling out.") and fish fingers. Not somewhere to return to day-after-day, but alright when on a budget and for convenience's sake. Their next step will be to redesign their banner and stop being so cocky and dissing my Hollywood.

Greggs (Hounslow)

181 High Street

Middlesex

TW3 1BL

Tel: 0208 577 2890

Cinnabon

It was a sunny day in Piccadilly Circus and I had the mentality of screw-it-you're-in-london-it's-saturday-so-treat-yourself-to-something-good as I walked past Cinnabon.

Source because the cinnabons were calling me and I had to go in

The rustic, sweet cinnamon fragrance overwhelms you as soon as you step inside. 

There's a fast-moving queue in the little shop, and as you wait, you can't help but lift your heels up to get a better view of the plump, glazed buns huddled together in their pans.

They've got a Cinnabon classic roll, which is a warm and soft dough rolled with cinnamon syrup and glazed with loads of cream cheese frosting, all about the size of Hercules' fist, and also our server's favourite. They also have a mini-version of it called a Minibon, and a Chocobon which does not contain cinnamon, but is filled with chocolate, and drizzled with chocolate. The attention-seeker of the lot is the Caramel Pecanbon, which has added crushed pecan nuts and caramel to the classic version. The price of a Cinnabon classic roll is £2.99, which is definitely worth it for such a big and yummy cinnamon roll.

My friends and I illegally opened our box of 4 in a nearby café, attracting curious glances from around. (There were tables in the Cinnabon shop, but the shop is tiny and often at full capacity) These Cinnabons are messy business. Although we were provided with forks, they threatened to snap when we tried to saw through the pliant dough, so we gave up and put them in napkins to pick them up with. You're not faced with a particularly pretty sight as you gingerly use two fingers to tweeze the Cinnabon, lift it up, and pause as the brown cinnamon syrup drips from underneath the bun.

I thoroughly enjoyed my Caramel Pecanbon. It was sweet, warm, chewy and nutty, and left me licking the frosting and cinnamon off my fingers. However, you definitely wouldn't ask for seconds. My friends couldn't finish their Cinnabons. For people who aren't too keen on sugary things and desserts (i.e not yours truly), it is rather sickly and over-rich with sugar. For dessert-lovers, a Cinnabon is a trip to heaven. The Caramel Pecanbon is delectable, highly recommended!

Tips:

• Get the Minibons, or share a Cinnabon with someone. It's hard go solo on a single Cinnabon.

• Bring some wet-wipes with you, sticky fingers guaranteed.

• Go with a group of friends – you can get boxes of 4 or 6, which makes the price of each Cinnabon cheaper.

Cinnabon 7-14 Coventry St  London W1D 7DH 020 7287 9274

www.cinnabon.com