LIFESTYLE: The Joy of Cooking
They're tired as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore. They are the Stouffer fugitives, University students who prefer to cook their own meals when they can. They take that historic leap beyond microwaved popcorn and Chef Boyardee. Eschewing the daily salad bar and milk-and-Cheerios scene, University students can be found in their High Rise and off-campus apartments fending for themselves in the uncharted terrain of skillets, Ginsu, and Cuisinart -- a place where no man (except Mom) has ever gone before. College junior Meredith Fein bid her farewells to Dining Services her sophomore year when she went from the minimum five meals a week to dropping the meal plan altogether. "I went off dining services because at night I'd wind up getting stuff at Wawa or ordering out," Fein explained. "Dining Services just didn't hit the spot." Gary Roth, an Engineering senior who was on the Hillel meal plan, also went off his sophomore year. "I was [originally] on the full meal plan, but like any meal plan, you get sick of it," Roth said. "Dining Service is expensive. I can cook myself a decent meal for half that." Roth cooks his own dinner every night, and sometimes brown bags it for lunch, too. College senior Al Bustamente, who is on meal plan, still feels compelled to try his hand at Mexican food. Because he lives in a High Rise apartment that has no kitchen, he usually cooks with his girlfriend. Bustamente has always been on meal plan and says that even if he did have a kitchen, he would stay on Dining Service "because it's convenient, not because it's good or anything." · Fein had no problems in immediately replacing her Dining Service meals with tasty, wholesome, inexpensive food prepared in her own kitchen. She sought professional help. "My mother writes food articles for three newspapers," Fein said. "She writes a column on a weekly theme." For instance, if the week's theme is avocado, she finds and invents recipes containing avocado and tries them all on the entire family. Despite her resources, Fein usually does not rely on recipes to cook her meals. "Usually I make something up -- I play it by ear. I'll call up my mother, tell her what I have in the refrigerator and ask her for advice," Fein said. "My mom is psyched when I call her. It gives us something to talk about." She added that a whole room at her home is dedicated to cookbooks and recipe files. Fein cooks for herself every night that she is home, usually preparing the main course for herself and her three roommates. But "the whole apartment cooks now," insisted Fein, and they all chip in by making the salad and cleaning up. Sometimes they get more extravagant and cook for guests. "Last year we threw a surprise party for my roommate . . . it took days of preparation," Fein said. Like Fein's roommates, Roth's joy of cooking developed during his sophomore year while he was living with University seniors. Roth explained that cooking a satisfying meal is not nearly as complicated as many students would think. But he has not always been good in the kitchen. He said that culinary skills must develop over time. "I didn't know a thing at first, like how to separate eggs." While he sees basic cooking as a necessity, the experience eventually took on a whole new light for Roth. "As long as you do it, you may as well do it well," he said. "Any idiot can follow a recipe. You just have to have someone to call if you have any questions. It's not that complicated." Roth continues a tradition which he started two years ago with his former roomates. He invites several friends over to his place and makes an elaborate dinner to celebrate the weekly Jewish sabbath on Fridays. "I usually invite no more than six people, because I like to talk to them," Roth said. But he has cooked Shabbat for as many as twelve guests. "My grandmother was flabbergasted," Roth said. But although he regularly serves sophisticated meals for guests which include salads, appetizers, soups, main courses and desserts, Roth insisted that his most prized recipe is one that his mother has been using "for as long as I've been alive," -- the perennial favorite, chocolate chip cookies. · Some students cook because they are not satisfied with the prepared food they find in stores, either. Bustamente, an avid fan of salsa, has gone with his girlfriend, Wharton senior Isabel Casillas, on a quest for good salsa which has taken them across the country and even down to Tijuana. "We really like salsa," he said. "We've tried to sample every variety on the market, but we just weren't satisfied. They are either not hot enough, or if they are too hot, they don't have a good flavor. Some kinds are too chunky." The two of them love Mexican food, which is one of the main reasons they went down to Tijuana while they were in Los Angeles for Spring Break. "We drove three hours to go to some great little hole in the wall in Tijuana, mostly to try the tacos, but they had the most awesome salsa, too," Bustamente said. Bustamente has since been perfecting his own version since he cannot purchase anything sufficient locally. While they are certainly picky about their salsa, Bustamente and Casillas are less demanding in their choice of nachos. "Tostitos Restaurant Style are good, because they're light. But when worse comes to worse, we'll use anything," Bustamente said. "They're just a vehicle. Ideally, we'd like to start making them, too. Fein has been perfecting a homemade spaghetti sauce recipe which she says is both easy to make and whose ingredients are easy to buy and store -- they are all either canned or from a vegetable truck. "It's filling, it's easy, and it can make spaghetti into a main course. You can also take a shower while its simmering," Fein said. Fein also points out that cleanup is a consideration, too. But this dish, she said, keeps the mess to a minimum. Fein accompanies her Italian main courses with bread which she bakes herself. Well, almost. "If you buy Boboli [an Italian pre-baked flat bread] and top it with olive oil and garlic salt, it is really good with any dish that is remotely Italian," she said. Other students have a variety of ways of circumventing the difficult process of making bread while still enjoying the impressive results. College senior Amy Swing also recommended keeping frozen bread dough on hand for its versatility. "Strombolis are fun and easy to make," Swing said. "You can chop up vegetables, spinach and cheese. You can stick any combination of food in there, and roll it up and bake it." She also suggested that the dough is good for making homemade pizza, something that Bustamente and Casillas also make. Roth buys frozen dough for challah, the bread used in the shabbat service, thaws it, and tops it with egg white and sesame seeds to give it that from-scratch look. · University gourmets offered several tips to adventurous students willing to go the extra mile. Fein suggested a sample shopping list for the aspiring University chef, consisting of simple basics from the supermarket: milk, butter, cheese, pasta, chicken breast (or other meat), and canned tomatoes and olives. Then she fills the rest of her refrigerator with foods she must buy on a more frequent basis - fruits and vegetables, which she and her roommates buy from the trucks around campus. The key, she said, is planning ahead and buying groceries that can be stored for a while. Letting the cupboard go bare forces one to resort to two grim options: either going to Wawa for a container of Parmesan cheese that is half the size and twice the price of the one available at the supermarket or winding up on line at Billy Bob's for a cheesesteak and cheese fries. "You can't buy good ingredients [in convenience stores]," Fein said. "And if you eat out, it's greasy." Many students wilt at the suggestion of grocery shopping in West Philadelphia and also bemoan the prospect of lugging the goods back to campus. Some students are a bit turned off by the condition and selection of nearby supermarkets. "I don't like to go to the Acme on campus because it gives me this unclean feeling," Fein said. Luckily for her, she has a car and shops regularly at a Shop Rite on the outskirts of the city and has the means to bring her groceries home. "Having a car makes me very popular," she said. Roth said his secret is finding some food that is already prepared and adding to it. "Like getting soup mix and then adding chicken and noodles. Or I bake a Duncan Hines cake in two pans and put fruit in the middle," he suggested. Naturally, Roth said, people "flip out" when they think he has gone through the trouble of cooking something special.