It doesn’t take much to craft a home cooked meal.
Whether it’s throwing ramen in the microwave for a shared late-night snack or creating a gourmet dinner at low-cost, cooking has a way of bringing people together that few other hobbies can boast.
For junior Christina Veatch, a psychology major, making food also provides a sense of satisfaction.
“I just enjoy the science behind it, specifically with baking, because you’ve got to make sure your measurements are right,” Veatch said. “And then, I actually enjoy cleaning up and just kind of [feeling] the satisfaction of having … a finished product of a clean kitchen.”
Of course, eating the baked goods is never bad, either.
While Vetach noted she hasn’t baked often since she’s been on campus, she has made banana bread and buckeyes in her home in English Hall, and is looking forward to trying new recipes in a recently-bought cooking book.
The only difficulty? Finding time and supplies. While the front desks of campus dorms do allow students to borrow utensils such as frying pans or strainers, Veatch said the quality and variety of the dorms’ options are limited.
“It'd be really nice to have [those] supplies already there for us, rather than having to turn in our IDs for one singular pan, or to kind of depend on the upperclassmen to have some of those appliances,” Veatch said.
It was an obstacle junior Elijah Choi has also experienced, and one of his primary motivations for moving to the Honors Lodge this year.
Although Choi is also a psychology major like Veatch, his true passion lies in the culinary arts, and he plans to open his own restaurant after graduation.
In preparation, Choi has been selling fried rice outside the Student Center for the past few weeks. Tasked in his Entrepreneurship class to turn $25 into $500 in 12 days, Choi realized he could easily make up the cost through cheaply purchased, well cooked ingredients.
“After about three days of selling we hit over $500 in profit,” Choi said. “Not only is it comforting for me, and it's fun for me, but being able to share my food with other people … feels really, really good.”
Cooking is almost therapeutic for Choi, and being able to store his own utensils has helped him develop his passions. While living in the dorms, Choi said he packed vertically, purchasing plastic shoe crates to stack ingredients and pans.
He also took advantage of beneath the bed storage and pull-out drawers for pantry items.
Still, according to both Choi and Elizabeth Shatzer, a freshman music education major, the best part of cooking is community.
Another baker, Shatzer reported the secret to her baking success doesn’t lie in cooking at all but in her music. Putting on popular playlists to draw her Gerig dorm mates to the kitchen, Shatzer’s cooking is about creating a sense of home.
Over J-term break, Shatzer made an extra large tray of cookies to share.
“Everybody seemed really sad,” Shatzer said. “[So,] we had a group of girls that we went up to FOSO [fourth floor Gerig] and gave everybody cookies and then we went down to First Breu.”
The hospitality mindset has become a ministry for Shatzer, as it has for Choi and Veatch as well. The twenty minutes it takes to bake cookies or the forty minutes it takes to fry rice has become an opportunity for connection for each student—filling not just the time, but the stomachs and hearts of those around them as they offer a little taste of home.
