Everybody needs a change, a break in daily routine — it’s a fact of life. You swipe your meal card for breakfast, lunch and then again for dinner. Although the food Sodexo provides is perfectly satiating, it can get boring. An alternative to your daily dose of the dining hall is cooking in the dorms.

Every residential hall has a kitchen, just like the one at home. It is fully equipped with an oven, a stove and a microwave and it is available 24 hours a day for any student to use.

“I don’t think that the kitchen gets as much use as it should,” said Ashley Czechowski, a senior English major and a resident assistant in Hinman College’s Cleveland Hall.

However, there are students who spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Marcanthony Giannone, a junior Italian and economics major, likes to cook the food of his homeland, Italy. “I make a lot of pasta,” he said.

In his dorm room he keeps his own cooking utensils, including an electric pot, a few pots and two different sized strainers. He also keeps a wide variety of ingredients including olive oil, Parmesan cheese, shallots, pasta and an assortment of spices.

The hall kitchen is also very popular for baking, especially cookies. Czechowski said that the most interesting thing she ever saw a resident cook was a giant cookie. “It was on a pizza platter,” she said, “and it was a foot and a half in diameter.”

Many students find ways to cook in their actual dorm room as well, however there are quite a few restrictions. According to the University Residential Life housing license “open-coil hot pots and hot plates, deep-fat fryers, charcoal burners, gasoline stoves or open-flame cooking appliances” are not permitted in the dorms. Yet, despite these limitations, students are allowed to have a number of appliances, including microwave ovens, toasters and toaster ovens.

There are a great deal of meals and snacks that students make in the dorm, but Czechowski says that macaroni and cheese and grilled cheese are the most popular. “It is because they are simple,” she said.

She also said that students would cook more if it were easier.

“The people that do cook are people who don’t like the food on campus,” she said. But for some students, she said it could be too difficult or they just don’t have enough time.

Czechowski highly encourages becoming a dorm room chef or making use of the residential kitchen. “It is healthier than the dining hall,” she said.