Fifteen Minutes: Food That Will See The New Millenium

Many students without refrigerators spend their lives eating Twinkie and Ho-Ho sandwiches, unaware that there is a whole world of strange and wonderful foods beyond the refrigerated aisles. Here, FM's picks of the bagged, the dried and the jarred. Can opener recommended.

1. In almost every store in Chinatown sits the canned Lychee, a tropical fruit that physically resembles an eyeball. Lychees usually have a black solid pit, but the ones from a can are pitless and 100 percent edible. Some students even enjoy drinking the syrup they come in.

2. Nutella, a hazelnut chocolate mix from the Netherlands, provides perhaps the most pungent fix of pure chocolate imaginable. If you haven't eaten Nutella before, it is suggested that you start slowly, working gradually up to your first full spoon in order to avoid an overdose. Kristin E. Kitchen `03, who has developed a powerful appreciation for the chocolate in a jar says, "We have a Nutella spoon for each roommate and an extra spoon for guests."

3. With some warm water and soaking time, you can hydrate Melissa's Dried Wood Ear Mushrooms to edibility in your own dorm room. These mushrooms are so non-perishable, the package makes the claim that they in fact have no expiration date. The eternal fungi also come in Wild Lobster, Oyster and Shiitake.

4. Marshmallow Fluff is a dorm-room favorite for sweet tooths and old boy scouts alike. Somehow, its creators have been able to capture the melted insides of patiently toasted marshmallows and shove them into a jar. Its taste resembles Cool Whip: Light and, of course, fluffy. And each container of sweet goo costs only 79 cents.

5. Clyde Sommers, a Star Market produce veteran, has had a lot of experience with shelf life and death. His personal recommendation for dorm-room shelves is the jicama. "It's like a potato inside. You can eat it like a mini carrot, and dip it in things." Other non-perishable fresh foods tend to be roots with dense textures, including the yucca, celery root and horseradish.

--N. O. Yuen