Summer is the ideal time to start new adventures, and the kitchen is the perfect place to begin. For students, cooking is typically limited to ramen noodles and Easy Mac. You don’t have to stop there —with the right foundation, cooking at home can be highly beneficial for your health and your wallet.
1. It’s cheaper.
Let’s face it: Eating out in Oxford can be pricey, no matter how generous your budget may be. Even fast food joints can ring up to over $10 a person. Students living on campus typically have meal plans, which is an easy solution to avoid frequenting expensive restaurants. For those living off campus, however, avoiding pricey eateries requires a little more than swiping a student ID.
To start eating cheaply at home, stock up on essentials to make a well rounded pantry. Items such as salt, bread, butter, and eggs are necessities to any kitchen, but are often overlooked by those not accustomed to cooking at home.
Stocking a kitchen may be slightly expensive at first, but will lead to extremely inexpensive meals. Homemade meals can cost as little as under a dollar per serving!
2. It’s healthier.
Recently, Subway was under fire for adding a chemical found in yoga mats and shoes to its breads. Subway claims to have since removed the chemical from its food, but one must wonder what else fast food chains are hiding from their customers.
By cooking yourself, you have full knowledge of the ingredients being used. Cooking at home also means fewer processed foods, which in turn means less sodium, sugar and unhealthy fats.
3. It’s an easy way to bond with roommates and friends.
Cooking may be fun, but cooking with your friends and roommates is even better. Throughout history, food has been used to bring people together. Everyone pitching in with the preparation of a meal makes it even more rewarding — and tasty!
Cooking with friends is a perfect way to spend a hot afternoon indoors, while doing so with roommates helps establish team building skills much needed for living in close quarters.
4. There are plenty of options.
The key to adding variety to your diet is the Internet. Going online means access to unlimited ideas for meals. With the multitude of excellent cooking blogs available (The Pioneer Woman is a personal favorite), along with recipe-laden Pinterest, virtually any recipe is only a few clicks away. Even better, many recipes only need staple items that can usually be found in an average pantry.
By turning to your own kitchen for food, you can also explore new food and drink options. Want to try juicing? It’s more than possible at home. A unique quinoa recipe? Sure thing.
With the right mindset, cooking at home can exponentially increase your options concerning food.
Although going out to eat can be convenient, cooking at home is worthwhile and builds lifelong skills (just ask Grandma). Don’t let anything hold you back — start cooking tonight!
