cooking made simple: a student cookbook featuring the campus food pantry

At Edmonds College, we understand the struggles that come with cooking for yourself for the first time, and we're committed to supporting our students in meaningful ways. That's why the Continuing Education department has teamed up with the Food Pantry to create a free cookbook specifically for students. This cookbook is a simple, practical resource meant to help students create easy and nutritious meals with ingredients they access through our food pantry.

Recognizing that students have varying levels of kitchen experience, this project focuses on creating an easy-to-use cookbook featuring ingredients commonly found in our food pantry. Our goal is to make nutritious meal preparation straightforward and accessible to all students, removing potential barriers and fostering a comfortable relationship with cooking and available resources.

Jake Slade, the Director of Continuing Education, saw this as a chance to make a real difference. The goal is simple: help students learn how to cook with what they have, while also focusing on more affordable ingredients. This led to the development of the student cookbook over the past 18 months. 

“Clearly many students don’t know how to cook,” he explained. “Why don’t we create a free tool for them that is relevant to their needs and equips them with basic kitchen skills?”

The cookbook will launch on May 2 and is free to any student. The first launch will include 200 copies with extras available at the food pantry and in dorms. 

The recipes in the cookbook are designed to use ingredients available at the food pantry. The pantry, located in the Olympic Building, provides a variety of non-perishable food items like canned goods, pasta, grains, dried fruits, and other shelf-stable options. With these ingredients, students can easily follow the cookbook’s recipes to create meals at home. The recipes are designed to be simple and approachable, with an emphasis on nutritious, affordable meals that don’t require a lot of cooking experience.

This initiative is more than just a cookbook. It also collaborates with Seattle Reconomy, which hosts the Shoreline Tool Library, providing students with access to essential kitchen tools. The cookbook includes a QR code that links to the Tool Library, showcasing the available inventory. Students can easily reach the Shoreline Tool Library, located at 16610 Aurora Ave, by public transit to borrow the tools they need. This approach allows students to rent the necessary kitchen equipment instead of purchasing it, reducing costs and removing barriers to meal preparation.

While the cookbook is designed specifically with our food pantry and our students in mind, its universal appeal makes it an ideal resource and model for other food banks as well. Many of the ingredients found in food banks are widely available, so this project will serve as a model for other institutions to adopt and adapt to their own communities. 

If you're a student in need, be sure to be on the lookout for the free student cookbook starting May 2, copies will be available at the food pantry and in student residence halls. It’s an easy, accessible way to take control of your meals, no matter your cooking experience.