By JOE WALKER

New college graduates may be entering the worst job market in decades, but there are still some majors that pay off—and all of them are in the applied sciences.

A new report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers finds that eight of the top 10 best-paid majors are in engineering, with petroleum engineering topping off the list at $86,220.See Table.

“Petroleum engineering has been at the top for the last three years,” said Edwin Koc, director of strategic and foundation research at NACE. “The oil industry for the last couple of years has been a bit more active and a bit better off than some of the other sectors. Texas had a better employment picture than other locations, and a lot of the [petroleum engineering job] offers came out of Texas schools.”

Computer science was the fourth most lucrative degree, with graduates starting at $61,205 on average. The average salary for computer science majors has increased by at least 5% each year since 2007, said Mr. Koc.

The other non-engineering major in the top ten is information sciences and systems, with an average starting salary of $54,038. According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, this field will add 155,800 jobs between 2008 and 2018, an increase of 53.4%, the second fastest growing career in the data the BLS offers and well above the average job growth for all professions of 10.1%

The BLS projects biomedical engineering jobs to increase by an astounding 72%–the top-growing field–from 16,000 in 2008 to 27,600 in 2018. The NACE survey did not record enough offers for jobs in this field to include it in the top ten, but Mr. Koc said that the major commands a salary comparable to chemical engineering, $65,142.

Not only do engineering majors earn the most, but the field is expected to grow at a fast clip over the next eight years with 178,300 jobs added by 2018. The BLS report expects growth in civil engineering to be particularly large “as a greater emphasis is placed on improving the nation’s infrastructure.”

Still, even specialized, in-demand graduates like engineering majors are finding it difficult to find employment in this economy. NACE found that only 42% of engineering majors found jobs in 2009, versus 70% in 2007.

This is the first of four quarterly reports that NACE will release on the class of 2010, but so far things are not looking good for liberal arts majors, whose average starting salary has decreased 11% since last year, down from $36,445 to $32,555.

Recent college graduates have been hit hard in the current recession. Their annual unemployment rate in 2009 was 9.1%, the highest it has been since 1982.

NACE’s salary figures are based on 1,558 job offers received by college seniors at about 180 colleges and universities nationwide. Both December 2009 graduates and May 2010 graduates are included. This is the first of four quarterly reports that NACE will release on the class of 2010. A major had to have at least 20 job offers to be included in the top ten.

By SUSHIL CHEEMA

Ian and Barbara White-Thomson are selling their dream summer house, an oceanfront five-bedroom on Peaks Island, near Portland, Maine.

They bought it only three years ago. But it’s become a 4,208-square-foot burden.

Maine Dilemma

The couple, who make their home in Pasadena, Calif., sunk nearly $1 million into renovations–on top of the $1.8 million they paid for the home in 2006. They gutted the kitchen and redid the living room. They opened up views to the Atlantic Ocean by removing a fireplace that separated the living and dining areas, putting a glass screen in its place.

They say they’re still smitten with the place. Nevertheless, last June they listed it for $2.5 million and have since cut the price to $2.3 million.

“The house is really too big for us,” says the 73-year-old Mr. White-Thomson, who retired as CEO of Borax, a borate technology company, 10 years ago. “The house is terrific for the one week a year when we can get all of our family and grandchildren there,” he adds. He and his wife have three adult children and five grandchildren. “The rest of the time, it’s too big, and when we are not there at all it has to be heated and it has to be gardened.”

The White-Thomsons aren’t the first couple to get stuck with a too-big house in a far-off locale. But now their problems are compounded by the downturn in the luxury home market.

Prices for high-end houses are the lowest they’ve been in some time. A good time to buy certainly, but also a good time to get swept away in a less-than-ideal transaction.

Here are some mistakes to avoid when you’re looking to buy a summer house:

1. Buying on impulse: “There are residential brokerages with beautiful places on their windows hoping you make that mistake. Don’t,” says Glenn Kelman, the president and CEO of real-estate site Redfin.

2. Befriending the Realtor: Since many second-home buyers are new to town, often their only ‘friend’ is their real-estate agent, “who is going to make a boatload of money when they buy,” Mr. Kelman says. “Work your connections to find somebody who knows somebody who already lives there.” Those people can provide insight into the realities of living in the area and even about a particular property. “There are so many times where the only guy who would buy that house is the only one who has no idea what its history is,” he adds.

3. Forgetting maintenance costs: “Often, [second homes] are in extreme places,” says Mr. Kelman. “It’s expensive to heat the pool in Whistler, British Columbia, and it’s expensive to keep the locusts off in Costa Rica.” Regardless of location, the costs of landscaping, mowing and pool maintenance must be considered. As the White-Thomsons learned, you’ll have to pay those costs even when you’re not there.

4. Not thinking about the weather: In some areas, such as Florida, extra insurance for events like hurricanes is an added factor. Storm damages can add to upkeep costs, as well.

5. Buying in a popular spot: A weekend home can pose a problem if it’s in a very popular place, like New York’s tony Hamptons. Traffic out to Long Island’s east end can be a bear on a Friday–and not everyone has their own helicopter. “All of a sudden Friday at 6:00 comes along and they are piling everyone into a car,” says Kathy Braddock, a co-founder of Charles Rutenberg Realty. “You spend the entire time talking about what time you should leave on Sunday to avoid the traffic,” she adds.

6. Buying in the boonies: If air travel is required to get to the second home, it should be reasonably close to the airport, Mr. Kelman says. “You don’t want to fly there and then rent a car and drive there for God knows how long,” he says. “If it’s in the boonies near where you live, you don’t want it to be so far away that you can’t get there without ducking out of work at 4:00.” For the White-Thomsons having a second home closer to their primary residence in California may have allowed them to use it more, but they made a commitment to use the home at least two months a year. “If you don’t use it, it’s a tremendously expensive hotel,” Mr. White-Thomson says.

7. Forgetting that you might have grandchildren: Empty nesters who buy a second home may outgrow it quickly when grandchildren start to arrive. “I hear lots of stories of people buying, say, a condo in Florida that they plan to retire in,” says Amy Bohutinsky, a vice president of communications at real-estate site Zillow.com. A condo sounds great when the kids are in college, but soon enough you have grandchildren. “What used to be a family of four is now a family of eight and kids running around and all of a sudden you can’t fit.”

8. Forgetting that you might not want to see your grandchildren: On the other hand some empty nesters don’t want to accommodate the entire family. “It’s kind of a chance to cleanse” after years of needing ample storage space and extra rooms to accommodate a family, says Ms. Braddock. Rather than maintaining a larger home, it might make more sense to rent hotel rooms for extra guests, she says.

9. Not checking out the rental rates: Those people who use a home only for a few weeks a year and want to rent it the rest of the time should look into the property’s rental history before buying, says Jim Oxnam, a broker with Brown Harris Stevens in the Hamptons. “If someone needs the money to pay the mortgage or to improve the house, it might be nice to rent the house for a season,” he says.

10. Thinking you want a summer home: “A lot of people get very caught up with the idea that a weekend home would be a lovely thing to have, but I don’t think they put a lot of thought into if they really want to go there every weekend,” says Ms. Braddock, who lives in New York City.

When her children were young, Ms. Braddock and her ex-husband had owned a second home where the activities revolved around the kids. More recently she rented a cottage in Staatsburg, in New York’s Hudson Valley, paying about $2,700 a month on a year-long lease. This time around her oldest was in college and the other in high school, and she and her partner were pretty bored. Looking at antiques, reading the paper and walking around nearby Rhinebeck take up only so much time, she says: “It was the greatest validation that I don’t want a weekend house.”

Write to Sushil Cheema at sushil.cheema@wsj.com

By SARAH ROSE

As the season of farm-fresh vegetables arrives, gardeners, farm-share subscribers and green-market shoppers often find it hard to keep up with the bounty. Too often, an overload of vegetables winds up rotting.

Donna Alberico for The Wall Street Journal

Purple Kale Kitchenworks chef and cooking instructor Ronna Welsh in her kitchen.

The vegetable onslaught “can feel like a terrific, privileged burden,” says Ronna Welsh, who runs Purple Kale Kitchenworks, which offers cooking classes in Brooklyn, N.Y. But home cooks can use the same strategies that help professional chefs manage kitchen inventory, says Ms. Welsh.

A raw vegetable carries with it a daunting list of tasks: It has to be washed, chopped, cooked and then slotted into a recipe with other items. “When you come home from work, exhausted, that is exactly when you shouldn’t try to cook a meal with your fresh vegetables,” she says.

Restaurant kitchens manage ingredients with “holding points,” in which each item is prepared and cooked to the last point at which it is most versatile. That saves on work later and helps extend the life of vegetables. For instance, roasting raw beets to their holding point will give you another week of utility for them (or, if you freeze them, several months). Rather than looking at a bundle of kale and trying to imagine a single recipe for it, Ms. Welsh suggests sautéing it in olive oil and leaving it in the fridge cooked where it will “hold” for up to a week.

That simple sautéed kale can then quickly become the filling for an improvised frittata or a sandwich, part of a pasta dish, garnish in a soup, a stand-alone side, or an ingredient in a grain salad. With a variety of vegetables all individually cooked to their holding points, home chefs have a paint box of flavors and ingredients to use.

As the growing season progresses from the tender lettuces of early summer to the woody root vegetables of autumn, cooking methods and holding points should adapt, says Ms. Welsh. If you’re overwhelmed with salad greens, fill your sink up with water and wash and dry everything all at once, Ms. Welsh suggests. Spread paper towels across the counter with the dried greens and roll the entire bundle together, like a jelly roll, to hold lettuces in the fridge for up to a week. No need for a plastic bag or bin.

When it gets too hot to turn on the oven and it seems as if there is more produce than there are family members to eat it, many home cooks turn to canning and pickling to preserve vegetables at their peak. If you don’t have experience in preserving, cook August’s tomatoes into a quick sauce and freeze it for future pastas.

By autumn, root vegetables and squash might linger in a vegetable bin for weeks with little loss of quality. Rather than accumulating a root cellar of uncooked starches, slice squash in half, roast it face down on a cookie sheet, then scoop out the flesh to hold as a purée or mash. It might then become the filling for a pasta or the base for a soup.

Getting produce to a holding point doesn’t require obsessive attention, says Ms. Welsh, who might poach garlic, which she uses in other dishes such as pasta or a flavored butter, or braise a Jerusalem artichoke while opening mail, playing with her two children or chatting on the phone.

Many farm-share subscribers and greenmarket enthusiasts are discouraged by leftover stems, stalks, leaves, tops and peelings. Even without a compost bin, Ms. Welsh says these need not go to waste. Stems and leaves can be pulverized in a food processor and boiled in a five-minute vegetable stock for risotto or put away in the freezer. Stalks can be chopped and dropped into a “pickle bank,” a casual brine of vinegar, salt, water, sugar and spices that sees constant replenishment. The stalks can then be used in salads or as a side dish.

Labeling is important, says Ms. Welsh, who keeps masking tape and a marker handy so she can quickly inventory items. “Let the labels cue you.”

Poached Garlic

Because the garlic is cooked, it can be added at the last minute to soup, pasta, risotto and a vinaigrette. It makes a delicious spread for sandwiches, too.

6 heads garlic, broken up into cloves, unpeeled

2 to 2½ cups water

In a small saucepan, combine cloves and water, making sure that the cloves are submerged. Cover and simmer until the garlic is very tender, about 15 minutes. Remove cloves from water to cool. Reserve the garlic cooking water to make garlic stock, or keep it for cooking pasta or rice.

Once cool enough to handle, squeeze out garlic cloves, discarding any rough ends, but reserving peel for use in garlic stock or tomato sauce.

Store poached garlic, covered with olive oil, in the refrigerator for up to 10 days. Freeze for up to three months.

©Purple Kale Kitchenworks, 2013

Stalk Stock

Likely, this won’t be the stock you warm up for a brothy, restorative soup, although you could. Alone, it is acidic and tastes, well, a little grassy. However, combined with grains, used as a soup base, as a stock for risotto, or to build a lovely sauce for fish, it is surprisingly elegant.

Be precise about preparing your ingredients. A little white pith from the lemon rind or a few dark green celery leaves could turn the stock surprisingly bitter.

Stalks and fronds from one fennel bulb

Stems from one bunch of parsley

Ends and yellow leaves from one bunch of celery

peel from one lemon, white pith scraped away

¼ yellow onion, sliced

6 cups water

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

4 cloves garlic, finely minced

½ teaspoon, or more, salt

Combine fennel, parsley, celery, and lemon scraps, and the piece of onion in a food processor. Process until finely ground. Transfer to a medium pot. Add water and white wine vinegar. Bring to a quick boil and simmer for a few minutes, just until the herbs darken. Strain immediately. While broth is still very hot, add garlic and stir. Let sit until completely cool. Strain once more. Add salt.

Store in refrigerator for up to five days, or freeze for months.

© Purple Kale Kitchenworks and 2minutestodinner.com

Pappardelle with Young Garlic and Fiddleheads

Yield: 4 servings

8 ounces pappardelle

2 tablespoons salt, plus extra for seasoning

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 small red onion, sliced

1 bunch of garlic greens, chopped (including leafy stalk)

1/3 pound fiddlehead ferns, ends lightly trimmed

1 tablespoon cold butter

pecorino cheese, grated

In a large pot, add 8 cups of water and 2 tablespoons salt. Cover and bring to a boil.

Meanwhile, wash fiddleheads and garlic greens in a sink or bowlful of ice water, swishing around well. Lift up the vegetables to remove them from the dirty water and rest them on paper toweling to dry.

When water comes to a boil, add fiddleheads and blanch for one minute. The baby ferns should turn bright green and crisp tender. Remove them with a slotted spoon to a small bowl. Cover pot, turn off heat and set aside.

In the meantime, place a large sauté pan over high heat. Add olive oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Immediately add the onion and turn heat to medium. Cook, tossing occasionally, until onions are translucent, about 12 minutes. You may let them pick up a bit of color, but not too much. Salt them cautiously at this stage.

Bring cooking water back to the boil and then add the pappardelle.

At the same time, add garlic greens and fiddleheads to the onions and continue to cook, tossing frequently, until the fiddleheads are tender and the vegetables begin to cook as one delicious mess, 2 to 3 minutes. When pasta is al dente, scoop out a ladle of its cooking water, and then strain the noodles. Add the pasta water to the fiddlehead sauté, turn the heat to high and cook about 15 seconds more. Add the cold butter and cook still, tossing together until the sauté becomes a light sauce. Taste for salt. Add the pasta and toss together until the noodles are coated and have absorbed the flavors of the pan. Plate pasta and top with freshly grated pecorino cheese.

Delicious warm or cold.

Copyright, Purple Kale Kitchenworks, 2013

A version of this article appeared May 9, 2013, on page D2 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A Bonanza of Vegetables Prepped and Ready.

By AMY HOAK

When unemployment is high, job-seekers may need to go where the jobs are, “to make ends meet, to get on with their lives,” says John Challenger, CEO of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

But don’t move with the herd.Before workers decide to relocate, career counselors advise making sure they understand the local economy they’re going to, and what they’d do if the new job doesn’t work out as planned.

Also, make sure you understand what kind of help, if any, your new employer is prepared to give you for moving costs.

Companies typically have standard relocation packages. Often, companies will provide lump-sum assistance to employees or help in selling a home.

“Make sure you completely understand the policy,” says Rich McClure, president of UniGroup, parent company of United Van Lines and Mayflower Transit. “It’s important for [employees] to understand exactly what they’re getting.”

“Our very recent experience has been that companies are less likely to enhance offerings related to selling real estate, overcoming deficit equity or loss on sale situations, or offsetting the cost of temporary living/duplicate housing expenses as a means of capitalizing on this trend,” he says.

Before accepting a position in another location, make sure you do some homework on your new home, and know what you want out of the new job. “People react and grab anything … I don’t think it’s bad to relocate for a good opportunity, but understand what you’re trying to do first,” says Deb Bailey, a transition coach in New Jersey Understand how this move will advance your career, and also think about what you would do in the worst-case scenario: You accept a job in another place, move, and for whatever reason, the job doesn’t work out, she says.. Ms. Bailey’s advice: Ask yourself, are there other opportunities in the area? Or would it be worth it to stay in your current town, perhaps selling your home for a loss or living with a roommate and accepting a lower-paying job until the local job market improves?

On the other hand, “You really have to be in a career-management mode. If you’re unemployed and the opportunity is in Oshkosh, if it’s a good opportunity go to Oshkosh,” says Dale Winston, CEO of Battalia Winston, an executive search firm in New York. “Otherwise, you want to base yourself in a center of opportunity.”

And if it’s only a home holding you back from a job that could move your career forward, it might be time to cut your losses. “If you made an error in judgment in terms of overleveraging yourself, get out of it and move on. It’s like credit-card debt… pay it down and don’t do it again,” she says.

When conducting a national job search, your willingness to move should be made clear upfront, says Tim Johnson, managing editor for Relocation.com. Today, that also may mean indicating that you’d make the move with or without a relocation package.

To keep costs down, get at least three quotes before hiring a moving company, and have each actually see the items you need moved, Mr. Johnson says. “It’s the only way to get a precise quote.”

For the average cross-country move with full moving services, including packing, loading, driving and unloading, the cost is roughly $6,000 to $8,000, Mr. Johnson says.

“If you choose to do packing on your own, it’d cut the cost to roughly $3,500 to $5,500,” he says. In that example, the movers would load and unload the truck, as well as drive it to the destination.

A self-service move would be roughly a third of the cost of full moving services, or about $2,000 to $3,000, Mr. Johnson says. That would require the individual to pack, load and unload items, leaving only the driving to the movers.

Write to Amy Hoak at amy.hoak@dowjones.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A21