Cooking a Full Meal in a Dorm Kitchen

Speaker 0 00:00:00 In high school come dinner time. You probably sat down to Amelia. Parents made whipped something up in your stock, kitchen or drove to pick up your favorite takeout. I'm guessing you didn't walk in sub zero temperatures to a dining hall to eat dry chicken. Now the latter has become a reality for a lot of Northwestern underclassmen. What do you do when you're craving something other than Alison fine dining, but your Uber eats bill has been worryingly high. Recently. One option is to cook dinner in your dorm kitchen. How feasible is it though? To cook a meal in a dorm kitchen? I decided to find out I'm going to take you through all the logistics, materials, cost cooking and cleanup because I'm not gifted in the kitchen. I decided to go through this journey with Katia. Chada a self-proclaimed foodie. She is a Weinberg freshmen, his dorm kitchen, which has shared with about 70 other residents is equipped with an oven, a stove and little else. How often did you cook? Speaker 1 00:00:51 I lived at home at home, probably at least once a week. I mean, it depends on the week, but I cooked pretty often. What do you miss most about being able to cook at home? I think something that I took for granted was just having a fully stocked kitchen, like salt, pepper, spices, things that I never really thought to buy were just there. And now you kind of have to collect all of those ingredients all over again. If you want to make a meal, what have you done since Speaker 0 00:01:22 To college to try and find those things that you miss about cooking out in your own kitchen? Speaker 1 00:01:26 So I think for me, because I'm obsessed with pasta, I had to get a pot and a sauce pan, so I could boil some water and make pasta. So I've got that. I have a brownie pan because I can't live without brownies. I'm hoping to grow my collection. Speaker 0 00:01:43 And we decided on a fairly traditional menu for this challenge, pasta with pesto, a caprese salad and a baguette. First we gathered the materials. This brings challenged number one, because we don't have our own kitchen material collection means more than just grocery shopping. We need to acquire pots plates and utensils. In addition to ingredients and Katia is room. She keeps a pot, a sauce pan, and a brownie pan. I provide a few plates and a set of utensils to fill in the rest. We tracked a target and whole foods are total for materials and ingredients is $50 and 36 cents. And we plan to feed six people to put that in perspective at dinner, Alison dining hall for one person called $16 and 7 cents. This dinner costs half as much per person back in Katia storm kitchen. The true work begins, but first challenge. Number two, there's a group monopolizing the kitchen for coffee and Robin. We wait until they finished to start our dinner. Speaker 1 00:02:40 Well, the pasta's boiling. We're going to start to assemble the pieces out. Speaker 0 00:02:43 Um, since there's no cutting poured or bake knife around here, we're using a plastic plate and a kitchen knife to cut up the tomatoes. It gets the job done. I'll be a little messily. We don't have any serving plates. So we set the salad up on a personal sized plate. Speaker 1 00:02:57 That means it's time to check Speaker 2 00:02:58 Our coffee Speaker 0 00:03:01 Tastes good after straining the pasta and Katia is new colander. We mix it with our pasta. The sauce is store-bought. We unfortunately do not have the funds for a blender. We did, however, invest in a serving bowl. Speaker 2 00:03:11 Final step is the baguette. Speaker 0 00:03:16 While the fret heats up in Katia is brownie pan. She mixes together ricotta with honey salt and pepper. This mixture will serve as a spread for the bread. Finally, we're done. I asked Katia her thoughts, but not for a taste test. Speaker 2 00:03:32 Really good. I honestly had no idea what was going to happen when we tried to cook. So I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I Speaker 0 00:03:39 Also asked the thoughts of the other people who eat the meal. It was Speaker 3 00:03:42 Delicious. Thank you, Katia. I love it Speaker 2 00:03:44 So much. Alison Speaker 0 00:03:48 Taj number three comes with the cleanup. We used most of our ingredients, but there are some extra like the bus sonically is an olive oil Katia said that she plans to leave these ingredients in the kitchen for others to use for their own recipes. What do you think Speaker 2 00:04:01 The hardest part of this process? I think honestly, figuring out all of the equipment, obviously I'm used to a very specific set of, you know, the oven, the stove, and so adjusting to all of that and just figuring out how to use this new kitchen and work in it. What'd you cook a meal, this kitchen again? I definitely would. I mean, there were definitely some bumps in the process, including not realizing that the stove was not turned on for a good 15 minutes, but in the end I feel like the product was worth it and a good home cooked meal. It's just so delicious. You're planning to be on exec board for your dorm next year. So you'll have some power over the budget. How do you plan to invest funds into the kitchen? I definitely think the kitchen is just the hub of a dorm. I mean, food just brings people together. So I really hope to get a toaster and get a bunch of kitchen supplies so that everyone can make it feel like home Speaker 0 00:05:05 There. You have it folks, how you can spend $50 and several hours to avoid eating dining hall food. It's a great way to enjoy delicious meal while spending time with some friends. My conclusion to our initial challenge, it is in fact possible to cook a full meal in a dorm kitchen for WMUR news. I'm POS bomb.