Last week’s column on the food that grocery stores market to college-age consumers drew several comments, including this one from John Poertner. He believes the supermarket that featured the enormous ramen display missed an opportunity to educate young customers about nutrition.

“Since ramen is so cheap and popular, why not show students how to make it a good meal?” he asks.

“Start by picking up the cheapest veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, greens). You might even pick up what is in the produce section’s reduced-for-quick-sale rack (same as before but also including mushrooms, eggplant, etc.).

“When you open the package of ramen, throw away the little package of flavoring and spices. Have fun by experimenting with your own combination of spices. You can go hot and spicy with curry pastes, soy sauce and hot red pepper or not with oregano, thyme, marjoram.

“Briefly saute the veggies, spice them up, cook the noodles and enjoy.

“What if that pyramid of ramen packages at the entrance of the store had suggestions for how to make an inexpensive and nutritious meal?”

Indeed. Instead of sending the food demo people out onto the floor to dispense cheese squares and miniature sausages on toothpicks, perhaps supermarkets could offer actual cooking demonstrations for young people. How hard could it be to set someone up with an electric wok to show how easy it is to create a nutritious meal using ramen?

I won’t hold my breath, but I will invite anyone with an easy and inexpensive recipe that would be appropriate for college students or someone eating on a tight budget to drop me a line.

Quite by coincidence, a cousin from New Jersey sent me a note recently that contained 10 recipe cards my mother had written for her in the late 1960s, when my cousin graduated from college, got her first teaching job and “set up housekeeping.” We no longer think in such terms, and these recipe cards offer a glimpse into a past that seems rather foreign, particularly in light of last week’s discussion.

What a difference 35 years makes. There was no ramen then and no microwave ovens. Box mixes and prepared foods were fewer and of negligible quality, and fixing something to eat generally meant cooking from scratch.

So when my mother sent my cousin a recipe for “casserole of beef” that called for 1 1/2 pounds of round steak and an assortment of root vegetables, she undoubtedly was envisioning this as the sort of dish that could be made on the weekend and eaten as leftovers during the week. Today a young person who wanted to eat something like “casserole of beef” would probably choose a frozen pot pie or open a can of beef stew.

Also indicative of that time is the fact that this collection of recipes included cards for pudding and brownies, which most people make from a mix if they make them at all, as well as a cookie and bread recipe that called for dates, which have long been out of vogue. And as a kind of ’60s trademark, there’s also a recipe card for a Ramos Gin Fizz, which I’d be reluctant to publish today because it calls for raw egg whites.

If we were to select 10 recipes to give to a young person just “setting up housekeeping” today, our choices would undoubtedly reflect our era as well. Then, 35 years down the road, what looked like a reasonable assortment of recipes to us now would seem hopelessly out of date. I’m guessing by that time ramen noodles also will be passe.