Correction: This article has been modified from its original version. The "She said" perspective has been added. The Collegiate Times regrets this error.
He said:
Delicacies are a funny thing. When you were a kid, it was a hamburger and some greasy fries that looked like the meal you get for saving the president's life. Things, of course, change with time. We all learned this, when we could no longer get children's tickets to movies or play in the ball pen at Chuck E. Cheese's without getting weird looks. Our appetites may have become a little more refined (Chipotle, anyone?), but the second your confused little eyes molested all the selections of food in D2, what you cooked for yourself made little difference.
If you look at it from the beginning, a college freshman's cooking habits pretty much fall underneath what can fit in a bowl and be put in the microwave or be wrapped in a paper towel and be put in the microwave. There are the staples: ramen, Hot Pockets and the edible mystery boxes that are hotdogs.
This food is more of a means of immediate sustenance when you have the mental capacity of a 4-year-old during the late night hours -- which is pretty much the only way to justify eating Hot Pockets. Cooking when you're a freshman really isn't that high up on the list of priorities, but the food just keeps coming.
Once the move off campus happens, the necessity of cooking becomes more the case. This is when the differences of the sexes really take form. Guys are sentimental creatures; we like to hold onto the past and celebrate it. That is why we generally cook foods that remind us of our childhood. Chicken nuggets, taquitos, pasta, pizza or mac and cheese -- what more could a boy want? Some jazzercise, perhaps?
A man's main cooking apparatus is the grill. It is probably the most appealing method of cooking there is to the male gender, unless there's a microwave out there that plays Gears of War and can recite all of "Fear and Loathing" verbatim. Guys love grilling because it combines all of their favorite things.
In a world without TRL, standing outside surrounded by your friends and an ungodly amount of lighter fluid, beer and dead cow meat makes everything seem a little more sensible. Not to mention that it tastes great with mustard.
Girls like cooking things that might have one or two steps more than throw on fire and wait till pink. In particular, girls always seem to always be especially more excited about baked goods than guys. Guys don't spontaneously pop off the couch and announce "I'm making cookies, should they have sprinkles?" It's not really in our DNA to make such statements. We may consume the cookies like we went to Belgium and imported the chocolate chips for that specific batch, but screw the exodus to Kroger. Girls, on the other hand, will race each other into diabetes with mountains of cookies, brownies, cakes and stuff that contains apples, yet is still completely unhealthy.
In theory, girls seem to like the process of cooking. They love the planning and preparation, the time it takes to add flavors and that personalized touch. They like to have side courses and things such as Waldorf salads that aren't really salads. The concept of side courses never really comes up when guys are cooking; why else did God make chips? It's more about the eating than it is the cooking.
So maybe guys could afford to expand their cooking repertoire past the different selections Oscar Mayer has, but all the familiar terrain has been conquered. Men crave a new breed of food, which is what takes place when the person with the mental capacity of a 4-year-old on late nights moves off campus. Suddenly, cream cheese, raisins, Doritos and a bagel looks like something the Food Network delivered. The insurmountable problem being that they forget the recipe come morning.
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