I’ve lived on campus for the past seven semesters, including the transition from in person to remote learning in the spring of 2020. I’ve lived in the traditional dorms with a roommate, as well as in an apartment with three other roommates. My experiences have put me through the motions of learning to live away from home, to cope with home-sickness, identity crisis, living alone and the challenges of being on a university schedule and budget while far from home.

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The pandemic, while sending many of us home and far away from those we love and putting unbelievable pressure on all aspects of life brought many of us closer to what we feel is important. For me, that was learning what had been missing in my new life to make myself at home, and to make myself feel good emotionally and physically. When I was sent off campus from the university in March following the initial COVID breakout, I was still not able to return home for risk of exposing my parents to the virus. Some friends and I moved into a loft together and built a new life trying to get through our classes and pooling resources for meals and chores. Regularly cooking for myself again for the first time since I was in high school, I rediscovered my connection to home through food, and the practice of cooking with others to share a sense of home. Returning to my university in the fall and living in an apartment with a kitchen on campus, I’ve been able to bring home with me and make this extended period of isolation more like home and care for myself better in the process of it.

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This site offers stories and experiences of loneliness in the pandemic and from living far from home, with recipes that can get you started on bringing yourself closer to home right in your own kitchen. I've included a selection of meals that I’ve made and that are easy to make on a budget and that can give the necessary start for developing your own collection of recipes and fostering cooking skills and food knowledge. These recipes are all relatively simple and based on both the lifestyle of living alone or in close quarters and with the intention of being fast, easily pre-prepared or stored, and flexible to your needs. 

This is far from a comprehensive guide to food, cooking or living alone. Think of this as a starting manual for learning the skills to build your own daily food experience mindfully put together with personal stories and experiences that address many of the initial challenges of living alone or away from home for the first time. You might not like all of the meals offered here, but they might inspire you to make something that reminds you of home or give you a feeling of how therapeutic cooking for yourself and others can be especially in times of isolation and uncertainty. The experience offers a cognitive pallet calibration of sorts, where you can start to identify what might be missing from you so that you can bring it to where you live or learn to make all the comforts that give you a sense of home wherever you are with whoever is around. 

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In addition to short stories and recipes, there is a resources tab that offers references to other helpful sites for learning or developing more specific cooking skills, understanding the specific issues of sustainability and mindful self care, and other information for orienting yourself to the world that exists outside of your immediate bubble when you're glued to a screen for most of your time. 

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Hopefully, this site can help you learn what home is to you, and how you can carry it and cook it for yourself wherever it is that you go. 

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