Life is not just about studying

A like eating a lot! I take that many people have this 'problem' as well, however, if you are a student in a foreign country, you have basically two options how to solve it: either you go to good quality restaurants, cafes and bars, or you have to cook. As the first option is quite money consuming and student like me does not have the money to scatter, logically I had to choose the second one.

Big advantages of Scottish student accommodation are large and usually very well equipped kitchens. It is a bit weird though, because Scottish and English people usually do not cook much. Actually, microwave is often the only thing they use in the whole four years. In British supermarkets there is a large selection of pre-prepared or ready-to-cook meals. Stuffed chicken, very nice lentil soup or even a lobster - just put it in the boiling water or microwave for one minute to heat it up and dine as a posh lord. I do not sympathize with such an idea. Of course, if there is not enough time for cooking, this is quite a good option, however, to eat such food everyday - not knowing from what exactly it is made of - is not my cup of tea.

And so I cook. And so I bake. And it is going well. Usually… I have started with very simple recipes which I already knew from home - simple soups, eggs prepared in many different ways, pasta salads and similar. Then I started baking my own bread. I missed our family home-made rye flour bread, because it is to die for and you cannot get it here in Aberdeen. It was not easy to find the right flour, however, I succeeded - I found great quality rye flour in one near Polish shop. From that time on I am making my own bread almost every week.

Soon I started discovering new tastes and ingredients, watching cooking shows and reading new recipes. And once I liked something, I ran to the supermarket, bought everything I needed to prepare it and tried. I was preparing Scottish mussels, salmon, beef cheeks and a duck - I have never worked with these things any time before. Of course I ate it once or twice, but there is (as I discovered later) a big difference between eating something and making it. Not everything was brilliant, but most of it was pretty delicious. At least for me… Well, I do not like liver - and although Gordon Ramsey’s recipe looked awesome, I could not eat a bite. But beef steak, aubergine puree, roasted pork shank, roasted rack of the lamb or duck with sauerkraut came out excellently.

I do not write this to boast myself. Although I am proud of my cooking achievements, I am writing this mainly to encourage other students to cook more and not to be afraid to do so. Because it is only important to start and not to stop after the first failure. The reward is not only a healthy and tasty dish, but also a good feeling from creating something that makes sense. Food is always meaningful and always will be. And I have a feeling that it is still more and more difficult to find and do something what makes sense just by itself, in its very own existence. And even just because of this, it is a really good idea to stop for a while between studying the partial integration of Riemann Integrals and group determinants and cook something. Bon Appétit!