This one is especially for those of you (if it indeed applies to anyone in the class) who live in a dormatory.
As a student, is it worth spending extra time on cooking? What can you manage to cook given limited equipment and money (and of course time)? If student cooking is a good trend in terms of health, what can be done to encourage more students to cook (and eat) healthy meals? For example, should cooking classes be a mandatory part of the high school curricula?
I’ve chosen this article because it kinds of resembles my life situation in which I am right now. I have moved from the comfort of parents house to dormitory, where I am all on my own.
ReplyDeleteOne room is occupied by four of us. Each has different habits to which he tries to stick. Soon we found out that it is impossible to maintain that, while we need to adjust our expectations so that we can live together. It really did not take long to get used to ourselves, after the second week we started to be pretty familiar and now, month passed and we feel like we have known each other for years.
Probably the most awaited thing in the day is the dinnertime! It occurs between 7pm and 9pm. We are not yet perfectly used to new school so we just devour something edible that chases the hunger out of stomachs and continue our studies and we have not yet found courage to cook but we had already started to make preparations and brought a pot and a pan. We plan to manage our time better and enjoy hot self-cooked meals soon. I believe I will have no problems cooking as I have been doing that for the last year from Mondays to Wednesdays because mom found a work in another city and was coming back on Thursdays evenings. I am really looking forward to it.
In my opinion, food is also very important in students life and every healthy hot meal counts for three cold or/and unhealthy. I think cooking should not be the question of time but the question of possibilities.
In order to encourage students to cook for themselves more, I would suggest focusing on dormitory’s kitchen equipment. It is impossible to boil an egg on a pan so having the right and sufficient tools for cooking is the best way how to provoke the idea of tasty warm meals in students minds.
On the other hand, I do not think it is needed to put compulsory cooking classes in high school curricula. The menu (at least to the limit where you can still influence it) is strictly each one’s personal thing.
To sum it up, we are really happy to have the possibility to cook for ourselves and our kitchen (one on each floor) is not half bad either. So as soon as we settle down with all the school stuff and find somewhat acceptable time schedule, we surely will cook and we surely will enjoy it.
Although I do not live in a dorm I still appreciate good food and I guess I could say that I’m sort of a “gourmand”. Occasionally after school, I make myself a “second lunch” at home, since the portions of lunch at school are rather small. I have learned how to make these meals from my parents, but I think it would be great to have cooking as a separate lesson in high-school even though there would always be certain students who might disagree and think it’s useless since they now, at high school, have their lunch prepared, however once they move to universities and begin to live alone they begin to realize how useful it would have been to have learned that skill. The students would be able to learn how to take care of themselves when they’re hungry instead of being dependent on someone else.
ReplyDeleteIn order to encourage cooking amongst students, schools should emphasize how useful it can be and they should teach students how important it is to have a healthy and balanced diet.
I consider the skill of cooking really neglected in today’s world. Cooking as a skill is practical and useful in everyday life and doesn’t really have any negatives. I mean, who doesn’t appreciate a person who knows how to cook good and healthy food?
@Andy
ReplyDeleteLike Andy, I also like good food. My mother doesn’t have a fulltime job, and luckily for my family and me, she has the time to cook everyday and serve hot meals to us. I see her cooking a lot of times, often I even cook with her or help her. I have learnt how to prepare some meals by helping my mom with them.
I agree with Andy on the fact that knowing how to cook is a very useful skill that we will definitely need in our further lives.
But I disagree with him on having mandatory cooking classes in schools. School is an institute that provides education for their students. I don’t think the skill of knowing how to cook and preparation of good meals will increase our knowledge or improve our education. In my opinion it would be ideal if children were learnt how to cook from people that they live in one household with. Then in the school they would not have to waste time with the subject cooking, when it can or should be learnt by the students family members they live with. Teachers have to be sufficiently qualified for the subject they teach like Chemistry or Math, but a huge percentage of the population knows how to cook. I think that it would be better if children in schools learnt how to cook elsewhere.