<p>I'm big on cooking and such and my parents and I are trying to figure out what I would want to bring to school so that I'd be able to cook in the dorms. </p>
<p>When I stayed there this spring, I saw a small and basic kitchen with a 4-burner electric stove , presumably with an oven. Are there any pots, pans, etc lying around for common use?</p>
<p>Also, where would one go to buy groceries that is accessible by bike (and is within short enough distance that i could carry stuff on a bike)--both for at the top of the hill on campus and towards the bottom (since I don't know where I'm living yet).</p>
<p>Yeah. . . this might be one dream you’ll have to give up. I love cooking, so when I lived in the dorms I just dated older women and used the kitchens in their apartment. Most dorms only have 2-burner electric stoves, and your presumption of an oven is wrong, unless you meant microwave oven. Some dorms have a common pot or pan, but I wouldn’t trust them. I bet they’re gross.</p>
<p>Do you know what dorm you’re staying in? Some are better equipped than others; but it would be extremely challenging to be able to consistently cook in any dorm.</p>
<p>Make friends who have apartments. Alternatively, a lot of campus organizations have facilities that their members can use. Language houses, diversity-theme houses, the arts house, crafts house, religion houses, etc. all have kitchens. Some, like the Interfaith center, will let anyone use their facilities without having to be a member.</p>
<p>As far as convenient daily cooking, though, you’ll just have to wait til you get an apartment.</p>
<p>This did seem to be one of the big drawbacks to Tufts - most colleges had much nicer common spaces in the dorms. I’m really surprised about the lack of ovens. It never occured to me there wouldn’t be an oven in the dorms.</p>
<p>I haven’t been in every dorm’s kitchen, but I’m pretty sure (not completely) that the dorms that I’ve lived in (Lewis and Houston) both had ovens. Neither of the kitchens were all that impressive, though,</p>
<p>Before I offer (modest) dissent, can I just say how much I love Snarf’s posts?</p>
<p>Reslife lists an oven amongst the amenities in Bush (and in all the other dorms as well), so either Snarf or Reslife needs a fact checker - I’m not sure which. I am sure every dorm I lived in had a kitchen with an oven (South, Miller, Hill, Wren), and although I’d ascribe ‘workable’ to those kitchens, ‘impressive’ might be a word I’d avoid. </p>
<p>Personally, I think the best kitchen in the first-year-livable dorms is in South. It might be worth a phone call/email to one of their staff seeing if you can press for South Hall accomodations (it would be unusual for them to acquiesce, but not impossible). And you should definitely look into the food co-op at the Crafts House, which would require you to cook at least once a week for a community meal. The co-op is, however, vegetarian so you wouldn’t get to practice your steak-browning with them.</p>
<p>How can you be in college without making brownies or making Sunday night dinner for friends?!?!?!?</p>
<p>I remember seeing ovens listed in all the dorms. There was one college that was crossed off the list when the tour guide sniffed that there were no kitchens because THEIR students did not cook for themselves. (It was a school where they didn’t have to clean their rooms, either.)</p>
<p>Dan – are there BBQ grills on campus?
Snarf – you are a riot!</p>
<p>Public grills? Not that I know of. But you can get grills from Dining Service for events and the like. I did that for South Hall a couple of times while I was an RA.</p>
<p>Hmm, I distinctly remember a sad empty space below the stove burners in Bush Hall where an oven should have been. Maybe the oven was out for repairs that year. I recall now that Hodgdon did in fact have a kitchen, it was just in a separate wing of the building, two floors up from me and past a set of doors you need your fob to get through, so doing any cooking in it would have been challenging. Even granting an oven, prospects for daily cooking are bleak.</p>
<p>IBfootballer: I realize no one answered the groceries question: where you should get your groceries sort of depends on what you’re willing to spend. The nearest big-box supermarkets are Johnny’s Food Master, which is quite cheap (I suspect due to a policy to never buy fresh produce with money, and instead trade crack for whatever food that junkies can steal out of dumpsters) and Shaw’s in Porter Square, which leaves something to be desired in terms of quality and freshness, but is easier on the wallet than small local merchants. I get frozen foods, canned foods, rice, dried pasta, and beverages from Shaw’s (or Costco, if I find someone to drive me). I get fresh produce and fresh fish from Dave’s Fresh Pasta (and occasionally fresh pasta as well) which is very conveniently located in Davis Square. I get poultry and meat from a butcher: Savenor’s in Beacon Hill is on my way home from work in downtown Boston so I usually stop by there, but McKinnon’s in Davis Square has a great selection of quality meat products, inexplicably price-competitive with what mega-marts charge for far worse meat, as well as a limited selection of fresh veggies.</p>
<p>Thanks for the kind words, all. I love you too. Except for one of you. You know what you did.</p>
<p>Snarf – thanks for the really useful info! Just what the chef ordered!</p>
<p>Dan – S likes to indulge in carnivorous gluttony from time to time and is more than glad to cook for a crowd. Sounds like a Iron Chef Jumbo competition may be in order!</p>
<p>Wow! I always liked Snarf too (though I’ve been perplexed about some posters’ ability to mangle his name). Now I know that he really knows his grocery stores too–Savenor’s Cambridge store was a favorite of Julia Child’s.</p>
<p>Snarf, I’d think that anyone of any age or gender with a kitchen would gladly trade you kitchen privileges for a home-cooked meal. :)</p>
<p>I can’t find the article, but I remember reading about a college student at, I think, one of the Claremont colleges. The guy came from a restaurant family in Berkeley and loved cooking. He set up a monthly?weekly? restaurant co-op at college, making fantastic food far above the usual dorm quality. It took some finagling with dorm management to get access to the kitchen facilities.</p>
<p>SlitheyTove, he was at Occidental. I remember that article and showed it to my son because I thought it might be a good place for him to consider. (It was actually a Claremont College we visited that was so snarky about kitchens!)</p>
<p>I think Hillel is catered and I’m not sure that they’d let students help cook (I think just serve), but you could definitely help make Shabbat dinner at Chabad.</p>
<p>ok, so perhaps i should bring some cookware for myself… (basic set of knives, a frying pan and saucepan, flexible cutting board, maybe a little food processor).</p>
<p>How evil is it to lift food from the dining halls?</p>
<p>I consider at least a 2-burner stove to be somewhat of a necessity, as well as an oven. I realise that doing dishes myself might be a bit of a pain, but I’m sure that I can get some help with that and paying for groceries in exchange for some gastronomic gratification :-)</p>
Sounds like a Iron Chef Jumbo competition may be in order!</p>