By MARIA YOUNG

Charleston Gazette-Mail

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — During her first semester in college, back in the fall of 2018, George Washington High School graduate Carrie Long learned a life lesson: mass-produced cafeteria food doesn’t exactly taste like home.

“I had a meal plan and I got unlimited meals … but as the weeks went on, the quality of food really went down and I started getting really sick of it,” she said.

Carrie was enrolled at the University of Kentucky. But hers is largely a universal college experience.

It didn’t help that the cafeteria was a long hike from her dorm, in the opposite direction of her first class, and always had a long line.

“It was too early to get up and go all the way there. It was super out of my way. I was skipping breakfast … and my mom didn’t like that,” she said.

“She was a majorette and she had band practice and it was really hot, so I was really worried about her saying she wasn’t eating that much because I thought, ‘She’s gonna pass out,'” said her mom, Sarah Long.

“So I looked on Amazon and thought, ‘I’ll just find a cookbook and send it to her.'”

The problem, she found, was that there wasn’t a cookbook for college dorms — where storage space is limited, refrigerators are small and standard cooking equipment is, let’s just say, lacking.

“They do have lots of college cookbooks but they’re really like first time cookbooks for apartment dwellers. And I thought, ‘She needs like an all-in-one solution that I can just give to her.’ And there was not a book like that on the market.”

“In my free time, I’d think, ‘Okay, what can she do?’ And that’s when I thought about the Keurig. That’s a hot water source. She can make soup in there and mashed potatoes.

“Then you can add things to them. You can put bacon in the microwave, so then you make more of a meal. Stove Top stuffing. You can make Jell-O and put fruit in it for a snack. … and I started thinking about all these things that she could do with what she had.”

She started sending her daughter a family recipe here, a fresh idea there.

“Definitely the Hawaiian chicken recipe that my mom has is really good … And her little blueberry pancake in a mug. I love that,” said Carrie.

That’s right. Pancake in a mug. Pizza, too. And omelets.

The creative ideas began to grow — leading Sarah, who is also West Virginia’s chief financial officer, to author her very first cookbook.

“College Cooking 101: Fast Food Without A Kitchen” was released lastmonth by the Beacon Publishing Group out of New York.