college cuisine
When facing the challenges of cooking, like trying to find time, something edible and the energy to clean up the mess, some students reach for TV dinners or a bowl of cold cereal. Luckily for students like Alyssa Lowry, some roommates, like hers, love to cook.
“She takes care of us. She’s like our mom,” Lowry, a sophomore in public relations, said of her roommate Danielle Schaap. “Her cooking reminds me of my mom’s cooking. It’s refreshing. It’s like you are back home.”
Schaap, a sophomore in accounting, said one of her favorite reasons to cook is to entertain people. Some of her friends have even compared her to the character Monica on the television show “Friends,” who also likes to cook and entertain.
“I just like making new things and feeding people and seeing their reactions,” she said.
Schaap isn’t the only student who enjoys cooking for other people. Robert Steed, a junior in psychology, and Elizabeth Snow, a sophomore in music therapy, both enjoy cooking for the same reason.
“I like to cook for people, but particularly for two if you know what I mean,” Steed said.
He said he enjoys feeding people, not just because he can cook but also for the company. He said the best part about cooking and eating is the conversation. Making food for his friends is a good way for all of them to get together to enjoy not just the food but also each other’s company.
Snow said she likes to make cakes and desserts because it’s easy to feed a lot of people with them. Every Sunday night, she makes a bunch of treats and invites people over to sample some of her baked goods.
“Cooking is such a stress reliever for me. I can just have fun with it. Cooking takes my mind off everything else,” Snow said.
Making people happy through food is one of her favorite things to do, even when she can’t eat what she makes. Snow said she is allergic to chocolate but loves to make brownies because everyone likes them. She said she just likes seeing people happy.
Many students don’t cook because they say they don’t know how or think it has to be complex to be good.
But another of Schaap’s roommates, Melissa Larson, a sophomore in exercise science, said, “A lot of the stuff (Schaap) makes is easy and simple to make, but it tastes so good.”
Schaap learned to cook from her grandmother and dad. She watched how they never used recipes and the food turned out so good. She has learned some different styles from her travels to places like Italy, where she saw a different way to approach cooking.
“People in Italy don’t go shopping once a week like we do here. They just get what they need every day so everything is fresh,” Schaap said.
She also said the most difficult part of cooking for her is finding the time to go grocery shopping.
Both Snow and Steed enjoy cooking because of the creativity that can be involved with making a meal. Steed said his love for cooking came out of necessity rather than just curiosity as he lived away from home for two years. While away from the home cooking of his mother, Steed watched how some Hispanics cooked, then put it into practice.
“I would watch how they wouldn’t measure things when they cooked, just making things until it tasted right,” he said.
Apart from eating well, Snow said cooking her own meals saves her a lot of money. Many students who don’t like to cook or don’t know quite where to start end up buying meals out of a box or things that can be heated up in a microwave. Snow said she can buy a large bag of flour for the price of about four of those boxed meals, but the flour will last for weeks of home-cooked meals, which saves her money.
Even though staring at the refrigerator trying to create a meal idea can be tough, Snow said she believes anyone can learn how to cook if they can get a basic foundation first. One of the first steps that would help, she said, is using recipes, and then from there be creative and simple.
Cooking for many students is a way for them to save money and enjoy the company of others while eating something good.
dwkoecher@cc.usu.edu