Food 101

Dean Tudor is a journalism professor at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute and founding editor of the CBRA.

This guide should be a boon to every college student in Canada — or to anyone else who is young and single — away from the dorm. It is a basic cookery course for those concerned with both the budget and nutrition. All of the preparations are simple, and they are uniformly presented. Each recipe has preparation times, cooking times, equipment checklists, hints, and serving ideas.

At the beginning of the book there is elementary but needed information on the general art of cooking, equipment kits needed, a basic pantry list, and the technique of shopping for one person. Typical recipes include: spaghetti sauce, meat loaf, hash, chili, beef stew, swiss steak, chop suey, supplemented with soups, salads, desserts, and even some vegetables. Just about every recipe here that requires use of an oven gives instructions to preheat the oven. In some cases, such as for the mock soufflé or for chocolate chip cookies, the preheated oven is preheating away for at least half an hour before it is needed. Unfortunately, too, many references are given here to “mom” as being the one to see if you get into cooking difficulty, or for an explanation of advanced techniques. Too often, though, “mom” doesn’t know, nor does she even care. And there might not be a “mom” (sad to say) or she could be thousands of miles away. Do young students know how much a collect long distance phone call is? Nevertheless, the book is useful.