Something terrible caught the eyes of Jennifer Dorward when she entered her friend's apartment.

On the stove lounged a noxious stew of what appeared to be week-old rotten beef. The health-conscious Dorward (senior-nutrition) begged her friend to remove the brown mash immediately.

Apparently, Dorward said, her friend's roommate often would stir up a concoction loaded with ground beef and then abandon it on the stove for the entire week. For the next seven days, he would simply scoop globs of it into Tupperware containers on his way to class, she said.

Though there probably are worse kitchen tales looming throughout campus, nutritionists believe this germinating college culture can be cured without disrupting hectic schedules or burning holes in wallets.

Sibylle Kranz, assistant professor of nutritional sciences, said students need to pause and think about their food choices and sanitary procedures.

Furthermore, students often underestimate the importance of food sanitation compared with food choice.

Dorward said many health-minded students faithfully consume fruits and vegetables, but they are hardly concerned about food safety. The importance of basic safety precautions, like using a food thermometer to check meat temperature, is often ignored, she added.

Indeed, the chance of finding a food thermometer in a college apartment is almost as rare as the meat might be itself.

"Overall, wash your hands before you cook," Kranz said. And to avoid cross-contamination, always cleanse a knife with hot, soapy water after slicing raw meat, she said. If, for instance, a student swaps a knife straight from an uncooked chicken to a tomato, the surviving bacteria will proliferate onto the tomato, she said.

Additionally, store meats and eggs on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator so that their raw juices do not spill over the rest of the contents in the lower ledges, Kranz added.

But it seems that sanitary cooking processes are not always fashionable in college -- even in cooking labs on campus for students aspiring to pursue culinary management.

Elissa McFarland (junior-hotel, restaurant and institutional management), a cooking lab TA, said she noticed one student clumsily butchering chicken over a dirty sink without a cutting board.

It was frightening, McFarland said, to think that an individual who doubles his hands as a chopping block may one day manage a restaurant.

Fortunately, Anne Corr, a Penn State nutrition instructor, has been known to mold such PB&J amateurs into genuine chefs-to-be. She said she wishes cooking courses were open to all majors -- currently, the few that are available at Penn State are only open to HRIM and nutrition majors.

Corr said she thinks many non-nutrition majors would discover their hidden relish for cooking if they would only give it a chance.

In fact, Corr decided to whip out a proposal for a so-called "Nutrition 101" course that would be open to all majors. "I wanted to show people that cooking is not a rocket science," Corr said.

The course, which she hopes will kick off in summer 2006, will begin with essential cooking practices, like how to sterilize the cooking area. Most people do not realize how easy it is to sanitize their kitchens, Corr said. It only requires a teaspoon of bleach and quart of water -- expensive antibacterial sprays are not necessary, she said.

Even students who reside in clean apartments, like Adam Hyatt (senior-life science), still thought the course would be beneficial. "If I wasn't already graduating, I would definitely sign up for it now," Hyatt said.