Cooking on Campus: Dining in

College students, whose main focus is their studies, may neglect on their nutritional needs.They might even end up consuming food with either too much fatty content or too few vitamins and nutrients. Some students may use the money their parents give them via their Mocs card and forget that cafeteria food can be more expensive and less nutritious than cooking at home. Others may skip the cafeteria altogether, heading out to Chattanooga's various eateries and fast food joints near campus.

One way to help insure that food is nutritional and economically beneficial is for students to prepare the food at home in the dormitory. This may be difficult to plan properly, but once a strategy is in place, the students' wallets and their bodies will thank them. The easiest way to cook in the dormitory is for students to prepare dinners together with their roommates. This not only gives the opportunity to share the work of cooking and cleaning, but also a chance for roommies to spend some quality time together.

Amy Moore, a Collierville junior, quickly found this method worked best with her roommate.

"My roommate and I had the opportunity to speak with each other before school and both noted our common interest in family meals," said Moore.

She and her roommate developed a strategy to buy groceries together, including baking goods and pasta and have them on hand to prepare when convenient. But she also stressed how important it is not to discount pre-made meals just because they may not have the same homemade goodness.

"I came to college with the idea that it is not cooking if it is pre-made or frozen, but I quickly overcame that stigma," she said.

Occasionally, the invitation to dinner is extended to Moore's entire suite. The general policy in the room is that one roommate will cook the main meal while the others prepare sides and that if you eat any food, you must help with the cleaning. Moore said her strategy seems to work, as it has survived through her three years at UTC.

The important thing to remember when cooking in dorms or apartments is that with the average college student's hard-to-predict schedule, a would-be cook should have the food ready to prepare at a moment's notice. To plan a meal in advance may be a disaster, but to cook one when a room suddenly has a free night may be spectacular.

80 percent of UTC students claim that they do cook in their dorm rooms, according to Marc Booker, director of housing.

"Demand for apartment living [with kitchenettes] is large," said Booker. "Students report that they'd rather eat in their own kitchen, and many do."

UTC has met the demand for on-campus kitchen requests by providing apartment-style dormitories. In fact, 94 percent (2,250 out of 2,400) of dorm rooms on campus have full kitchens. Boling, Lockmiller, Village and UTC Place all have full kitchens, including full-size refrigerators, stoves and garbage disposals and UTC Place, even includes dishwashers. Pfeiffer-Stagmaier and Stadium halls have community kitchens that can be used by any residents.

Booker said students don't often know the benefits of having such utilities available to them.

"Few students realize how often or how much money they spend going out to McDonalds, Arby's, Burger King, etc," said Booker. "There are a large number of students who do eat breakfast and lunch in the cafeteria, but business tapers off at dinner."

Booker also commented on the possible time saved by students who cook for themselves.

"[Time saved] really depends on the meal being prepared," he said. "At this point, few students equate time savings as a real cost savings, because they have more time than money."

No matter how you slice it, cooking on campus can be a piece of cake, and if culinary delights are any student's cup of tea, cooking for themselves in the dorms might just be their dish.