Confessions of a Cooking Fanatic: Season of soups
By Elizabeth Foster | November 29As the season of gift-giving begins, I urge you to consider giving the gift of good soup.
Elizabeth Foster is a writer for the arts section at the Tufts Daily. She is a fifth-year master’s student majoring in computer science. She can be reached at Elizabeth.Foster635086@tufts.edu.
As the season of gift-giving begins, I urge you to consider giving the gift of good soup.
I must confess that while I adore cooking, I am a computer science major. I don’t see cooking as a future career. I do, however, see a career with enough of a work-life balance and extraneous funds for exploring cooking as a hobby. But I argue that there is much overlap between these two interests. As a software engineer, I am constantly breaking down big problems into smaller, more manageable problems. As a project manager, I perform the same tasks but further consider timelines and resource allocation. And as an amateur cook, I am breaking down the most notable meal of the year in the same way.
My cooking origin story begins with the first phase of the COVID-19 lockdown, between March and June of 2020. As a high school senior, I was (very validly) going through a bout of self-isolation. I barely left my room during those first few months of the pandemic. What was I doing with my time? Watching cooking videos: primarily Bon Bon Appétit’s YouTube content.
As a senior, I’ve seen the wide range of what Tufts Dining is capable of and, more specifically, what the Tufts administration is willing to provide students with for their meal swipes (and how that has decreased over the years). But you know what doesn’t decrease over the years? The effort-to-yield ratio of a sheet pan meal.
I find it hard to justify the time I’ve spent cooking if the food I’ve cooked cannot be spread out over multiple meals. This usually means doubling a recipe, or doubling the protein component and scaling everything else to preference.
I pride myself on cooking good food. I tell this to my family when I return from college and take over cooking a few dinners a week — tripling everything to account for my “lax-bro” brother and STILL having leftovers. I tell this to my manager when, during my corporate girl summer, he asked if my lunch was homemade (it was). I tell this to myself when I question if my grocery bill could be (should be) any lower for the week.
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