By KIMBER KAY
'One stick unsalted butter at room temperature, quartered.' This line off a recipe might as well be in a foreign language for most college students -- they don't know the language of cooking.
What is it about cooking that discourages Generation X? Boiling water for ramen noodles doesn't count.
In the information age there is no lack of sources for cooking information. Several websites are devoted to cooking. There are many places where students can download free recipes and detailed instructions on how to prepare any dish. Flipping channels on a Saturday afternoon, viewers can see several how-to cooking shows. Cookbooks are numerous. Some think the problem is that no one seems to have the desire to even learn.
Becky Morley, a senior in early childhood development from Waco, Texas, survives on canned soups and burritos. She is very honest about her cooking ability.
'I'd starve to death without a microwave,' she said as she prepared another burrito for the nuking. 'I'll only eat food if it's portable.'
Snacks like baby carrots and bagels become meals for Morley because she doesn't have time to go home for lunch.
Richard Cutler, a sophomore in electical engineering, from Double Oak, Texas, attempts to make bread with his fancy breadmaker. This handy gadget only requires putting in the appropriate ingredients and waiting a few hours for fresh, hot bread. Of course, Cutler would be helped if he knew what the appropriate ingredients were.
Cutler has tried many ways of baking bread and has not quite mastered it yet. He thinks he is a fairly good cook, but besides an occasional batch of brownies, his meals all come out of a can.
'This way I don't take up space in the refrigerator or the sink,' Cutler said.
Cutler's kitchen is cramped, and he said he doesn't like dirty dishes because they take up the counter space. Many times he doesn't even bother to heat up his food.
It is not just college students who don't know how to cook. Paul Harvey, the popular radio commentator, announced this past Thanksgiving that more Americans bought their traditional holiday meal from a restaurant or hotel than prepared it themselves.
On the Internet there is a wealth of recipes at http://www.cs.smu.edu/~mjw/recipes. One recipe, 'Death by Chocolate Cake' by Dom DeLuise, even has two versions.
Version one is from scratch and contains discouraging words like ' ... Sift flour, baking powder and baking soda twice, ... fold in chocolate chips... pour into buttered bundt pan.'
Presented with this recipe, Darren Draper, a married student from Provo said he wouldn't even consider trying to make the cake. Draper does the cooking in his family, and his philosophy is, 'I don't want to wait an hour for a cake to cook. I just go out and buy one.'
He said he budgets his money well to compensate for the extra expense of buying all of his food prepared. For Darren, the ease and convenience of boxed and canned food outweigh the nutritional and economic benefits of cooking from scratch.
Version two of DeLuise's recipe is laughable. It was written especially for those who get lost in a kitchen. The first line read, 'one box chocolate cake mix ...'