- Intro
- 20/08/2025
Cooking for 32 People: No Intro Complete Without Pasta Pesto
GEWIS-mom Lizzy and Lucid-mom Amanda share a student house in the new campus housing. Cursor wondered how they manage to serve their “kids” a healthy dinner on Tuesday’s traditional eat-at-home night. How do you cook for 32 people in a regular student kitchen? “You make pasta pesto!”
Tomato allergy? Prefer vegetarian over meat? Not a fan of zucchini, or does it have to be gluten-free? No problem at Terra 65, the student house where Computer Science student Lizzy Papaconstantinov lives with Industrial Design student Amanda Jungschlager and six others. Terra is the low-rise building between the newest residential towers Castor and Pollux. Together, the complex is called Haven.
In the living room with open kitchen, 32 students are now eating—or waiting for a slightly different version of the pasta dish. They go through eight bags of half a kilo of penne each. That’s topped with green or red pesto, an Italian stir-fry mix, zucchini, and (vegetarian) ground meat. “Pretty good,” says Daan, wearing a blue Lucid T-shirt. “The pasta was just a bit undercooked.” Vincent from GEWIS finds it understandable that dinner is served on disposable paper plates with wooden spoons, and says it’s “no problem.”
Satisfied
Romanian student Maria Teiosanu thinks the whole experience—the meal and Intro—is amazing. “I should be overwhelmed, but I’m having so much fun that it gives me energy. I really lucked out with my Intro parents. I can tell they genuinely care about us.” She says this in English but wants to start learning Dutch once she’s settled in Eindhoven. She’s already picked up that overwhelmed translates into overwelmd. She’s also close to pronouncing the name of the street where she found a room: “Aalster…wag.”
Maria’s GEWIS-parents are Lizzy and Martijn van Dijk. They call their group of sixteen Musical Servers. “As Computer Science students, that seemed fitting,” says the dad. “We’re conquering Olympus (this year’s GEWIS Intro theme, ed.) by serving music. We have small plastic guitars as our gadget, because unfortunately the flutes we ordered on Amazon are still in transit.” Maybe that’s for the better—there’s more than enough noise tonight.
Lucid’s theme this year is Intro the sea. Moms Amanda and Naomi Epping gave their group a small plastic sea creature as a gadget. “On a string, so it wouldn't get lost.” Luckily, they’re very sweet parents, because despite the string, many gadgets have already been lost in the first two days of Intro. Normally, that would call for a playful penalty, but Amanda and Naomi are remarkably forgiving.
Dessert
Once everyone has had enough to eat—Lizzy even encouraged seconds—popsicles are brought out. Pear, rocket-shaped, and double-flavored, all neatly within the budget of five euros per person.
The evening program is a dessert of a different kind. “A few are heading to the Tangent track in Neuron,” the moms explain, “while the rest will go to Stratumseind.” There, the two groups who shared such a friendly dinner will part ways: GEWIS is going to the Feestfabriek, and Lucid will celebrate at karaoke bar Ameezing. Three Dutch students have never actually been to Stratumseind before, though they’ve certainly heard of it. “And we’re really excited.”
This article was translated using AI-assisted tools and reviewed by an editor.
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