Food is always a challenge in uni life. I know students who have managed to never cook a day in their life and others who subsist on noodles alone. I frequently tell people about the first meal I ever cooked in my own flat which was possibly the spiciest and most inedible chicken I have ever tasted. Even yesterday, when I made cookies, the first batch burned to a crisp in the oven, and the second is undercooked. Cooking and baking is an art!! Experimentation has seemed to be the best way to figure out what works well and what doesn’t work at all. I now use recipes as reference. Take the dish pictured here, I definitely missed out half the ingredients listed in the original recipe, probably overcooked it a little and made a ton of substitutions but it was delicious! What I have really learned is that even if I don’t have the special chutney or spice the dish calls for, it is worth it to try it out anyways, and that maintaining a few basics (ham + cheese + toasted bread = my life, but pasta always a good backup too) really helps. You don’t need to make an elegant dish everyday (especially not if cooking for other. See the chicken reference above), but try something new and you may surprise yourself. Fear not the kitchen! You can only improve on your blackened cookies.