I’m coming out of the pantry. I am ready to admit it to the world ““ I can’t really cook.
In the past 21 years, I have become an expert at half-preparing a meal and taking credit for a feast instead.
Some case studies:
In 11th grade AP U.S. History class I manually undressed 40 individually wrapped rice krispy treats from Costco and painstakingly assembled them in a circular pattern on a platter.
I then presented them to the oohs and aahs of my classmates who marveled at my exemplary marshmallow to cereal ratio.
Just recently, I impressed my fellow staff members with a Ukrainian feast of cold borscht soup, potatoes, marinated meats and honey cakes with tea. I bought a few jars of Jewish beet soup at Ralphs, boiled some eggs, threw some cucumbers and sour cream in and voila ““ I had “homemade” borscht. The fully prepared, marinated meat was acquired from my favorite Armenian deli off of the 101 Freeway, and while I really did manually peel the potatoes with a dull knife, I was more concerned with the blister I formed on my hand than properly mashing the spuds. I didn’t lie about buying the cakes though.
Since moving to an apartment last year, the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine allowed me to expand my trademark recipes from instant oatmeal and coffee to grilled chicken and coffee, but it pretty much ended there. My favorite meal has become the large Greek salad, consisting of tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, olives and feta cheese ““ all ingredients which do not require a temperature higher than room level. My roommate of three years has even accused me of being unable to cook toast (which I do argue to be an overstatement).
My fake culinary life has recently begun to unravel before my eyes, but since we’re on the topic of confession, I don’t really feel bad about my reluctance to handle an oven. I highly doubt that I am the only UCLA student who regularly cheats at making dinner or prefers to eat cereal when getting home from a 12-hour day on campus rather than slaving (and paying) to prepare a filet mignon and cleaning the kitchen afterward. In fact, I guessed that I am not unlike the majority of the busy and overworked student population at all.
To test this fact, I went out on campus and asked a few Bruins about their cooking styles.
Third-year psychobiology student Alexandra Souchkova said that she loves to cook but gets into routines of stir-fry and sandwiches to save time. Third-year sociology student Nadia Basilio is a big fan of the frozen food aisle at Trader Joe’s.
Born in Italy, she was surrounded by delicious and hearty cuisine and never really had to cook properly by herself. Right after moving to her apartment, her current home-cooked meals consist of canned green beans, frozen stir-fry, boiled yams and hard-boiled eggs (a girl after my own heart.)
Graduate students don’t seem to be in a better boat. Elizabeth Graney, a library and information science graduate student, makes batches of chili to last her for a few days. Jorge Cabrera, a Latin American and Iberian studies graduate student at UC Santa Barbara who works on the UCLA campus in the UAW Local 2865 graduate student union, said that he eats out 90 percent of the time, though he loves to cook. We talked as he was waiting for his food at the Calbi Fusion food truck in South Campus.
Maybe this doesn’t prove that everyone’s as bad as me. A lot of people legitimately love to cook but just don’t have the time for preparation and cleanup. Whether that’s the case, or that you never learned to cook, or that you have just moved out of the dorms and are panicking over the sudden absence of Bruin Café, I think we can work it out together.
For the rest of the quarter, I call to you, the reader, to send in your favorite easy recipes for me to attempt. With every detailed recipe you send in, I will mention the contributor, compile a graphic listing the prices and Westwood-only locations of ingredients I buy, and try to include a photo essay of the step-by-step process. This way, all of us who were not born “foodies” have some good, simple new recipes to make our lives easier.
I promise to keep it real. If I set my apartment on fire in the process you won’t have to read about it in Crimewatch ““ I’ll tell you. Whether I fail or succeed, you will be the first to know, and can make the decision of whether you want to try the recipe for yourself. So write in early and often, and let’s work through some inevitable kitchen fires together.