SurreyK was invited by the lovely Emma Gordon, an Events Manager for Scape Living, a student accommodation based in London and Guildford, to run a healthy snack making worship to help teach students skills for their time at university and beyond.

The event took place in the students communal area and not a kitchen so the challenge for SurreyK was to come up with 4 healthy recipes that could be prepared without the use of an oven or hob!

Students were studying a mixture of subjects including vocal performance, music production and events management at the University of Surrey.

We had the assistance of the wonderful Victoria and Stefanos, both music students based at the Guildford campus but who also work as part of the Social Team organising student events with Emma Gordon.

Here are the four recipes we made in our healthy snack making workshop for you to try at home:

1) Couscous salad (luckily we had access to a kettle in the students communal area!)

Ingredients (per person)

100g couscous
1/2 red onion
1/3 cucumber
6 cherry tomatoes
1/3 tin black olives
100g feta cheese
Dash olive oil
1 lime
3 sprigs fresh coriander.

Preparation Method:

1) Boil kettle. Pour couscous into a medium-sized mixing bowl and pour over enough boiling water to just cover the couscous. Cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave to stand for 5 minutes. Remove the tea towel and gently separate strands of couscous with a fork.

2) Finely chop the red onion and gently mix into the couscous.

3) Chop cucumber into small pieces, quarter each cherry tomato, chop feta into small cubes and have black olives with a knife. Gently mix into couscous.

4) Squeeze the lime over the couscous salad and add a dash of olive oil. Gently stir together.

5) Finely chop the coriander and sprinkle over to garnish the couscous salad.

2) Avocado Toast (It’s important to use a ripe avocado in this recipe)

Ingredients (per person)

1 ripe avocado
6 cherry tomatoes
3 sprigs fresh basil
1 slice bread
Dash of Worcester sauce

Preparation Method:

1) Halve the avocado with a knife, scoop out the pip and set to one side.
2) Scoop out the flesh of the avocado from each half with a tablespoon and place in a bowl. Take a fork and mash the avocado.
3) Toast a slice of bread.
4) Quarter the cherry tomatoes with a knife and gently add to the mashed avocado.
5) Finely chop the basil and sprinkle over the mashed avocado.
6) Add a dash of Worcester sauce and gently stir tomato and basil into the mashed avocado.
7) Spread avocado mixture over slice of toast with a table-spoon and garnish with a pinch of basil.

3) Almond Butter and Banana topped rice cake.

Ingredients (per person)

1 tbsp almond butter
1 rice cake
1 banana
1 small pinch of sea salt

Preparation Method:

1) Place the rice cake on a plate. Take a tablespoon of almond butter and spread over the rice cake.
2) Peel and slice a banana. Top rice cake with banana pieces.
3) Take a small pinch of sea salt and sprinkle over banana.

4) Yogurt-Berry Parfait.

Ingredients (per person)

125g greek yogurt
3 tablespoons granola
2 sprigs fresh mint
1/4 cup strawberries hulled and sliced
1/4 cup raspberries
1/4 cup blueberries

Preparation Method:

1) Take a wine glass or a highball glass. Scoop two tablespoons of greek yogurt into the base of the glass and smooth over.
2) Quarter 2-3 strawberry slices and sprinkle over the first layer of yogurt with a few raspberries and blueberries to form a second berry layer.
3) Top with 1 tablespoon of granola to make the third layer.
4) Repeat these three layers once or twice again depending on how large your glass is.
5) Top with a sprig of fresh mint.

If you want to make this healthy sweet treat a little more decadent then you could mix some gratings of dark chocolate with the granola.

Throughout the workshop students picked up tips on how to save money. Avocados are superfoods so supermarkets want to charge customers premium prices. Sainsburys were charging £1.80 for 2 avocados at the time of our workshop, 90p each whereas the market in Guildford was charging 50p for 3 avocados. That’s five times as expensive! Supermarkets are also heavy on packaging and food miles. Don’t believe it when they tell you things are on sale or discounted. Support your local market traders, buy from them where you can.

Students learnt that living on takeaways such as delivery pizzas is as expensive as it is unhealthy. Pre-prepared supermarket foods are also incredibly expensive compared to making them from scratch as well as being bad for your health.

The recipes designed by SurreyK gave students a wider range of food groups that would help them feel better, increase their metabolism and improve their performance whilst studying. We also talked about storage of food. Using a cheap tupperware container to store food you don’t eat for dinner, can save loads of money and time by keeping it for lunch the next day. We explained that for example students could make a batch of couscous salad, have it as a side with their dinner then store the leftovers in a tupperware container and have a lunch ready to go for the next day.

We ended our workshop with Ross’s guide to making the perfect gin and tonic as we’ve found so many places make this drink badly.

The students loved the workshop so much they have asked us to come back in the summer for a BBQ extravaganza!