DS has applied to a "no cooking" university. He loves cooking. This is madness, isn't it?

[Thesearepearls]

Just that really. DS's first choice university (we've just done the application for halls) is a no-cooking university. The cooking facilities comprise a toaster, kettle and microwave. There is no cooking allowed for the entirety of his university course.

If you'd asked me what DS would do in a future life I would have given you two choices. The first is singing (he was a cathedral chorister and loves classical music). The second is that he would be a chef. He is absolutely gutted that he won't be able to cook. He cooks for us all the time. He's really keen on it and he is beyond disappointed that the next three years of his academic career will involve zero cooking.

It's total madness isn't it?

well i think he sounds great op good luck to him and i'll pop round when hes doin g one of his recipes!

Is he allowed to have a toaster oven or an InstantPot or something of that nature? You can use a toaster oven as a regular oven. That's why we have one rather than a plain toaster.

Salting aubergines is not at all weirdy but it makes remarkably little difference in fact. It's just an old tradition with little bearing on the cooked dish.

ok so..

if you dare say ANYTHING positive about yourself or your family - you are infact boasting.

if you dont jump right in and say it straight away, but then mention it on page 5 after many posters ask you - its a STEALTH BOAST!

jesus christ mumsnet

Salting aubergines was done because they were often very bitter.

You don't need to do it now.

The bitterness in aubergines has been bred out so the need for salting them for that reason isn't required. However, salted aubergines absorb less oil when being fried. So, salting them these dsys isn't entirely unnecessary.

This thread is making me crave moussaka

The food in Cambridge does not sound amazing TBH. It doesn't sound good at all although of course I have not said this to DS. He's a cook. an honest bona fide cook and he was totally dismayed by not being able to cook. Plus he has to eat the rubbish on offer. And he's a cook. He loves cooking (did I mention that) and he's not very happy about his eating prospects

Kids at Cambridge are not allowed to work in termtime so there is no prospect of DS working at a nice restaurant and getting his food thrills from there. Ditto at a homeless charity.

I still stoutly maintain that a university in this day and age should allow its undergraduates to cook. And it is flipping ridiculous that they can't

I bake my aubergines in the oven so they don't get so greasy

There is no 'food in Cambridge' - this is a college by college thing. And if it's such a big deal to you (and I think it's a bit weird that you're still looking at the menus and deciding if it's good enough for your baby, like it's primary school dinners) then it should have been something you prioritised when picking a college.

OP, is it explained why anywhere? Are all the halls in listed buildings where they can't install extractor vents?

The reason living in and eating in halls is encouraged in Oxbridge colleges is also the reason part time jobs are not allowed. The terms are short and intense so the students are supposed to focus on their studies and not get distracted by menial tasks.

Incidentally this is also why Cambridge station is a little way out of the centre. They wanted to make it more difficult for students to swan off to London and get distracted mid term.

Anyway I did my undergrad in Oxford and post grad in Cambridge. You can live out if you really want to.

Other than that, I still live in Cambridge so he can come cook for us if he really feels 8 weeks is too long to be out of the kitchen.

Oxbridge?

If so, he'll only have 3 x 8 week terms per year - which are notoriously short. He'll be home for a surprising proportion of the year and will be able to cook then.

You haven't said which college he's be hopefully attending but he doesn't necessarily have to live in for all three years. I did but one of those was in a college house, which was still not very well equipped, but better than the older parts.

Finals year he'll be really glad of having them cook for him.

Alternative is not to go at all and go to another uni. Depends what his priorities are.

At Cambridge, the set up is that they look after you so you can focus on academic study. That's the ethos.

Thesearepearls I can usually spot a stealth boast from a different thread they are that obvious - I think the majority of posters have mistaken pride for boastfulness and have launched upon you for no good reason.

For what it's worth, I definitely think its a bit batshit to not have any decent cooking facilities, or the opportunity to leave the halls in second/third year - but it IS a prestigious University, and the focus IS going to be on academia rather than 'boring' extra-curricular (getting a job, cooking meals etc.) Where do they stand on cleaning/washing, or is this also done in-house?

University is for such a very short time in the grand scheme of things, a passion for cooking can be indulged at any age, through many circumstances - and is a great hobby to fall back on, but I don't think it would put him off cooking forever to have term times away from it - on the contrary it could make it more 'special' when he has time to create something, rather than thinking of an adventurous meal he could make with 38p, some dried noodles and 3000 words of exam to write by the morning

Oh, and I put dark chocolate in both bolognese AND moussaka.

He can make frienda with people at other colleges and cook for them in their kitchens. Robison have decent kitchens. Most colleges put students in houses with real kitchens in 2nd or 3rd year so he just needs to make a wide circle of friends. There may even be cooking based clubs. Not all colleges are weird.

He may find that, although his official cooking facilities have only a microwave, toaster and kettle, there is an oven and hob hidden somewhere within the college that can be used for occasional cooking.

My college didn't (and I think still doesn't) have any kitchenettes at all, but there was one full kitchen that you had to sign the key in and out for. It was only ever used for hosting dinner parties.

I am just picturing DS in his first week

"Has your college got a cooker" No don't be daft we're at Cambridge we have lots of really clever stuff in our heads and of course we don't cook, Cooking is for menials

"Does your college have a hob? Just a little hob. I cook a mean risotto dont you know. All I need is a hob"

Fuck off and get back to Einstein and all the rest of the theoretical physicists

That's how the conversation could go. All my DS wants to do is cook!!

I went to Cambridge. For 2 years I was in college with only the gas hob/grill in the staircase kitchenette, I was very resourceful cooking as were all the other students. I didn't cook a huge amount during the week due to workload and availability of the canteen but on formal hall nights didn't always want to be sociable. Although being in choir got you a free meal twice a week. It's an experience going to Cambridge, he will manage.

Going to university revolutionised my brother's eating. He'd always had a very limited range of things he would eat, a lot of meat, practically no vegetables and nothing in a sauce and so on. But being on a tight budget and wanting to socalise meant he got creative with what he cooked and ate. My mum nearly fainted when he came home for his first visit and set about making curries! He remains an enthusiastic cook and even has an allotment.

He didn't go to Cambridge though. It sounds like that was just as well!

What does no cooking allowed mean? Splash out and get him a thermomix if it would be allowed , he can dish up cordon bleu

What he needs to do is make friends with someone who has a kitchen where he can cook and then go over there and cook for a small group. I suppose that while this has the added bonus of making him very popular, he may have to have weird conversations with people to suss out their kitchen status. I imagine him sidling up to someone during fresher's week and muttering, 'know anyone with a hob?'

But seriously, Cambridge will be good for him. If he doesn't want to do theoretical physics, he will come out having done a lot of thinking and meeting a lot of new people. (This is a plus of the meals-together part--the food may be crap, but the conversation is good.) He can become a chef after, if he wants.

I bet it is totally that none of the "gyp rooms" conform to any safety regulations for a kitchen. So they are only officially drink/toast areas now.

I went to an Oxford college which didn’t give people cooking facilities for the full three years. Well, you could be one of the ~2% who lived in the halls where there was a kitchen, but if you didn’t want to be socially excluded then you had no choice. Plus thos halls only had space for a handful anyway.

I am really bitter and resentful about it. In order to get dinner at the canteen you had to turn up at a specified time, and if you missed it by one single minute (because of an overrunning tutorial, perhaps, or a broken down bike on the way back from lectures) then you weren’t allowed in to the dining hall. You were then charged £4 or so, but had no way to prepare your own meal to replace it.

The posters who are saying “oh it’s only for six months a year and it’s all because of the intensity” presumably don’t realise that it’s extremely important to have access to meal provision. It must be nice to be able to afford to waste £4 on a meal and then spend another £7 on a takeaway pizza just so that you don’t starve in the library the following day. But I didn’t have that, so the intensity of the course means nothing to me in relation to my meal provision.

Ugh--errant apostrophe. Apologies.

Yes the cooking can come afterwards if the physics gets a bit dull

TBH I cannot imagine a life where physics is more interesting than food but there's no accounting for kids :)

Now I've started thinking about the lack of catering facilities the more I think about it the more I think this is another aspect of inequality.

So it's ridiculous right? DS cannot even scramble an egg the whole time he is at University (he's good at scrambled eggs, although he also likes his eggs fried or poached. Not that this helps because he has not the wherewithal either to scramble fry or poach an egg). This is utter madness.