<p>What are your cooking skills like? Are you planning on cooking/do you cook?</p>
<p>Obviously meal plans discourage the development of culinary skills.</p>
<p>Most of the time I eat ready meals, or packet tortellini, or carton soups, or toasted sandwiches. But if I feel like it, I can easily follow simple recipes. I bought a 'student cookbook' and it's pretty good - but to be honest you can find good recipes online.</p>
<p>The BBC Food website has a large catalogue of recipes and a nifty search engine to find exactly what you want. (I promise I'm not just advertising, I really do use this website xD)</p>
<p>Some of the dishes I've repeated include prawn curry, beef chilli, spicy meatball pasta, lamb broth, and sweet and sour pork.</p>
<p>My cooking skills are low. I will have to develop them in college, though. Some colleges, especially, expect me to cook for myself. One has a cafeteria more akin to a snack bar.</p>
<p>When I’m at home and my parents are footing the grocery bill (and I have good utensils and people to actually eat it), I cook all the time, usually fairly elaborately. When I’m at school, I end up surfing epicurious, all recipes & food network looking for ones to try out when I’m at home.<br>
My favorite things to make are desserts. This summer I have a request for a cake made in the shape of England. I’m looking forward to the challenge:)
Cooking really isn’t that difficult. You just have to start simple and work your way up.</p>
<p>I think one of the best cookbooks to buy if you’re learning how to cook is How to Cook Without a Book. It doesn’t focus on exact recipes. Instead, it deals with ratios and basic ideas for how to cook different kinds of foods. It makes all the recipes you see in other books become a lot more open since you can realize where substitutions can be made and how to modify recipes when you’re missing various tools/ingredients.</p>
<p>I do all my cooking from scratch, including baking my own breads. It is not easy to cook in college when you live in the dorms, but since I developed my food allergy last year it became a must. The only difficult part for me now is finding kitchen space. It’s annoying when I have to wait three hours to cook my dinner because a group of girls want to bake cookies and beat me to the kitchenette.</p>
<p>I plan to cook. My college it’s cheaper to stay in a near by apartment with a kitchen, than it is to live on campus without one. Most of the students do it, so it’ll be like living in the dorms, but with more freedom. I’ve cooked for years by myself, though. My mom cooks me supper maybe one a month at best, the rest of the time, I’m making my own meals and shopping lists. I can do some decent stuff, although I’m not as good as I’d like to be.</p>
<p>I love cooking. Some of my favorite things to make are tiramisu and lasagna. On a day to day basis it’s usually more practical to just make tacos or chicken or pasta, though.</p>
<p>I’m actually quite good at cooking, but since there’s no kitchen in my dorm, I only get to do it now when I go home or visit friends. I miss it.</p>
<p>It’s not hard, if you find some easy recipes, just follow them and you’ll be fine.
I find it pretty hard to actually mess anything up when Im cooking (although I always forget to turn the stove off afterwards)</p>
<p>But the easiest and my favourite thing by far is salad.
I bake a chicken breast, cut it up then toss it in a huge bowl with veggies, cheese cubes and pasta.</p>
<p>MGSinc, I disagree. Dry cereal is way easier than a salad. Who needs multiple ingredients? :D. </p>
<p>On a serious note, I’m going to be living by myself in an apartment all summer. All I’ve ever really cooked by myself is simple stuff (i.e. kraft mac and cheese, hamburgers/ hot dogs, you get the idea), so its going to be either a bit of a trial by fire this summer, or lots of ramen!</p>