Spring Break
Crash course in cooking sizzles
Angelo Lanham
Issue date: 3/12/08 Section: News
The Campus Village Building B resident-only cooking classes wrapped up its fourth and final class with an "Iron Chef"-style cook-off on Tuesday.
The rules of the contest were that every student had to use a specific ingredient - an onion for this class - to use in a snack, breakfast, lunch and dinner dish of their choosing. The dishes were rated by a panel of five judges.
As the end time approached, increasingly frantic students scrambled across the kitchen in the Central Classroom Building, looking for ingredients, provided by Jamie Kubota, a grad student in nutrition and food science who taught the class.
The judges were amazed by how far about 25 students had progressed in just four weeks.
"They walk in here - they didn't even know what a knife was," said Marjorie Friedman, assistant professor of nutrition and food science, as she sampled one of the students' offerings.
"I basically microwave everything I do," said Jessica Ottavis, 19, a sophomore graphic design major, "I grew up microwaving everything. If you go to my mom's house, everything is microwavable, like soup, or the pizza you put in the microwave, and Top Ramen, and macaroni and cheese … I've never used a stove or oven."
Raymun Kohli, a junior health care and management major, had a similar lack of cooking experience, saying he had wrongly cooked pasta in the past. He reported improvements since taking the course.
"I've been trying to cook, like, spaghetti and stuff like that," Kohli, 20, said. "It's been working a lot better since the first time I tried cooking. I've been getting the temperatures right and stuff like that."
The course was prefaced by a survey conducted by Kubota, in which students reported everything they ate during the three days before the first class in early February, Kubota said.
Kubota said the survey confirmed her theory that Americans don't know what a recommended serving is, or much about food at all, such as which products are whole grain.
"They might have said, for example, that they had two servings of breads," she said of her findings in the survey, "but they had a foot-long Subway, which is four servings of breads."
There will be one more survey in April, Kubota said, similar to the first survey in February.
As for now, Kubota said she is happy with the enthusiasm the students brought to the table.
"It seems like the students were very, very receptive," she said, "That was nice, and they all got excited about the Iron Chef competition, which was good."
Kubota said the classes have a chance of becoming a more expansive, campus-wide course, depending on whether or not it seems like there's a demand for it. She said that Jennifer Waldrop, campus nutritionist, would like to continue it through the Nutrition Education Action Team, who would teach it every semester.
"The chances are very good … there's definitely an interest," she said, noting that some students expressed that they would have liked a five-course class instead of just four.
The winner of the competition was BONGO, who took home two skillets as his prize.
The rules of the contest were that every student had to use a specific ingredient - an onion for this class - to use in a snack, breakfast, lunch and dinner dish of their choosing. The dishes were rated by a panel of five judges.
As the end time approached, increasingly frantic students scrambled across the kitchen in the Central Classroom Building, looking for ingredients, provided by Jamie Kubota, a grad student in nutrition and food science who taught the class.
The judges were amazed by how far about 25 students had progressed in just four weeks.
"They walk in here - they didn't even know what a knife was," said Marjorie Friedman, assistant professor of nutrition and food science, as she sampled one of the students' offerings.
"I basically microwave everything I do," said Jessica Ottavis, 19, a sophomore graphic design major, "I grew up microwaving everything. If you go to my mom's house, everything is microwavable, like soup, or the pizza you put in the microwave, and Top Ramen, and macaroni and cheese … I've never used a stove or oven."
Raymun Kohli, a junior health care and management major, had a similar lack of cooking experience, saying he had wrongly cooked pasta in the past. He reported improvements since taking the course.
"I've been trying to cook, like, spaghetti and stuff like that," Kohli, 20, said. "It's been working a lot better since the first time I tried cooking. I've been getting the temperatures right and stuff like that."
The course was prefaced by a survey conducted by Kubota, in which students reported everything they ate during the three days before the first class in early February, Kubota said.
Kubota said the survey confirmed her theory that Americans don't know what a recommended serving is, or much about food at all, such as which products are whole grain.
"They might have said, for example, that they had two servings of breads," she said of her findings in the survey, "but they had a foot-long Subway, which is four servings of breads."
There will be one more survey in April, Kubota said, similar to the first survey in February.
As for now, Kubota said she is happy with the enthusiasm the students brought to the table.
"It seems like the students were very, very receptive," she said, "That was nice, and they all got excited about the Iron Chef competition, which was good."
Kubota said the classes have a chance of becoming a more expansive, campus-wide course, depending on whether or not it seems like there's a demand for it. She said that Jennifer Waldrop, campus nutritionist, would like to continue it through the Nutrition Education Action Team, who would teach it every semester.
"The chances are very good … there's definitely an interest," she said, noting that some students expressed that they would have liked a five-course class instead of just four.
The winner of the competition was BONGO, who took home two skillets as his prize.
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