One of the great things about Burton Conner is the kitchen in every suite.  Not only can we save money from not having to eat out every day, but I think it provides an opportunity for students to become more independent.  Learning to cook and stock a kitchen will certainly provide rewards later in life.

Some people, however, aren’t really sure where to start or what to make.  Other times, we all run out of ideas and can get a little sick of eating the same pasta night after night…  To combat these problems, though, there are a number of resources that home cooks can look to for inspiration.

The Reluctant Gourmet is a site specifically devoted to home chefs.  They have some great articles on general cooking techniques that you can use with whatever ingredients you happen to have (I’ve made some delicious sauces after reading their feature on pan reduction sauces).

Epicurious.com has a huge selection of professionally edited recipes that you can search through based on ingredient, and a number of other criteria.  They also have a cooking dictionary that’s useful when trying to figure out what a term like “al Forno” means.

Finally, AllRecipes.com has an enormous number of user-submitted recipes.  The quality of these recipes can sometimes be a little spotty (since they’re user submitted), but people also rate them, so you can at least see what others have to say.