College cooks face a dilemma in their kitchens

There’s a downside to coming out from under your parents’ watchful eyes and into the college… There’s a downside to coming out from under your parents’ watchful eyes and into the college world of freedom — the necessity of feeding yourself.

This might not seem so difficult until you’re staring at the empty shelves in your pantry or fridge, daunting displays in the grocery store or pricey restaurant menus.

It can be tempting to buy entirely pre-made or fast food, but cooking for yourself might be cheaper, healthier and certainly yields a certain satisfaction.

Still, stocking a new kitchen from scratch isn’t easy, cheap … or impossible. Acquire a few basic provisions and you’ll be well on your way to preparing a myriad of simple and delicious recipes, requiring only an additional ingredient here or there.

A few spices and sauces are worth having — garlic can enhance almost any savory meal, steak seasoning is more multipurpose than its name implies, teriyaki is the transformative ingredient in turning vegetables and meat in a wok into a veritable stir-fry, and pasta sauce is self-explanatory. Don’t bother going all out on a full set though. Items like tarragon, bay leaves and other more obscure spices aren’t necessary for most day-to-day cooking.

If time, space and money are at a premium in your kitchen, by all means enjoy fresh fruit and vegetables, but for others, canned and frozen foods are an accessible and nonperishable option. For occasional fresh splurges, there is a farmer’s market in Oakland at Sennott  and Atwood streets every Friday from 3:30 to 6:40 p.m. until Nov. 19, and other farmers markets can be found around the city.

As for carbohydrate basics, rice and pasta are good to always have in stock. Bread’s shelf life can be increased by freezing it, which still leaves it perfectly usable for toasting or thawing out for sandwiches.

And for the time-crunched students who need to stock their cupboards, a few cans of soup won’t go amiss in a city with an intense winter like Pittsburgh, but be on the lookout for outrageously high sodium contents.

A way to save big is to use memberships to wholesale stores like Costco and Sam’s Club. There, you can buy meat or poultry in bulk and freeze it. It will last longer — although, take heed, not forever — and make your weekly grocery shopping easier. Wholesale stores are also a good place to buy snack food in bulk rather than shelling out for bag after bag of chips at QuickZone or other retailers.

One thing to be cautious of is that food sharing, or lack thereof, can be a major point of tension in roommate relationships. Consider having a frank discussion with whomever you’re living with sooner rather than later.

There are plenty of options. You can keep your food totally separate by storing it on separate shelves, initialing it or even using color-coded stickers — if you like going overboard. You can share just the basics like milk and eggs or divide the entire grocery bill between you. The key advantage to the last option is the ability to cook for each other, say, once a week. Wouldn’t it be nice to come home from a long day in the classroom to a home-cooked meal?

Of course, most of this only applies to kitchens with cooking apparatuses and space for various appliances, with which not every student living space is equipped. If you’ve got a kitchenette — basically differentiated from a kitchen by the lack of a stove and from a random nook by the presence of a sink — your options are restricted, but all is not lost.

A sink leads to messier creations requiring immediate rinsing of dishes, like oatmeal. Check with your RA before setting up any additional appliances — you don’t want to be the kid who got written up for having an illegal hot plate.

Then the last living accommodation possibility: The classic bed-and-desk set-up dorm with only a mini-fridge and a microwave for food preparation if you’re lucky. You’re going to have a hard enough time storing your clothes and belongings, let alone food, so enjoy your meal plan and the occasional Easy Mac or ramen noodles.

It’s not that culinary creativity is impossible in a dorm room — I’ve seen microwaved lava cake — but it can be unsafe and is almost always unpalatable. For instance, the lava cake: an unsettling creation that tasted vaguely all right but strongly resembled a lunar landscape in aesthetics and had the consistency of chewy cardboard. So make microwave cooking and baking dishes at your own risk.

No matter where you might be living this year, fear not, your options for eating are not as limited as you might think.