The Perfect Meal Draft

The perils of college living in part involve the college cafeteria. The food can vary from weird, buffalo chicken lasagna for example, or inauthentic, like pad thai made with alfredo noodles. Sometimes one longs for food that is different, or cooked by oneself. For a sophomore seminar, I had been giving the task to create the ‘perfect meal’, no simple feat. To begin to understand what’s perfect for me in a meal involves the meals of my childhood.

Both my mother and father come from large families of five. I am an only child. Thus every Christmas or Thanksgiving, the extended family would gather at someone’s house, sometimes ours, and there would be at least twenty people, including the children. These grand dinner parties would have a whole turkey, stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole, and three types of pie for dessert. For Christmas, there was sometimes a goose, but always a chocolate cake. The meal was crowned with the largest fir tree on the lot in the background, an imposing guest in its own right. The grand dinner parties of my youth made me want to throw one of my own, but for college students.

Thus, I had to cut corners somewhere, because dormitory kitchens are a sad sight to see. One stove, and the pots and pans have to be scrounged up. I asked a friend, Clare, if I could borrow her kitchen instead, where she had two refrigerators and more than three pots. Her one rule was I had to invite all her housemates. Including many of my friends, the guest list was a staggering twenty five. To combat that, I had created a Facebook event, where if one didn't RSVP, they didn’t get food. In the end, eleven people came, where two were friends of friends.

Another friend, Emily, had a car. People with cars on campus are royalty in my mind, and she was someone I could count on. Because of the number of guests, and my desire to keep the cost of feeding people low, I wanted to go to Meijer. Thus, Emily and I had a grocery run on Saturday evening for the Monday night meal. For some reason, we thought it would be a good idea to share a split tier cart. While Emily was in the cereal aisle, I would be in the salad dressing aisle. The game of text tag that we played, Were R U?, was more fun for me than her because I had the cart. By the time I had everything I needed, and so did Emily for her Chinese dinner, the cart was stuffed to bursting, and I had to get leverage by pushing the cart forward with one foot stabilized by floor. The looks she and I received were well worth the bickering.

“Do you really need a whole gallon of milk?” she had asked.

“Of course!” I replied. “It’s for both cooking and drinking.”

I then faked a dramatic death scene, and continued to checkout. I think Emily was afraid I would embarrass her further at the conservative Meijer, so she pushed for self check. In the end the total for everything was fifty three dollars, which wasn’t too bad for eleven people.

My menu went something like this: salad starter, fettuccine alfredo with shrimp and peas, garlic bread, gelato for dessert, and milk or water to drink. The shrimp was the big ticket item, but it was part of the grand dinner plan, as chicken would be too boring. What I didn't truly think through was how much of a logistic problem cooking would be, for I had invited two vegetarians, one vegan, and and a girl allergic to shellfish, Emily.

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan states “A vice president of marketing at General Mills once painted me a picture of the state of the American family dinner...Mom, perhaps feeling sentimental about the dinners of her childhood, still prepares a dish and a salad that she usually winds up eating by herself. Meanwhile, the kids, and Dad, too, if he’s around each fix something different for themselves,because Dad’s on a low-carb diet, the teenager’s become a vegetarian, and the eight-year-old is on a strict ration of pizza... Families that eat this way are among 47 percent of Americans who report to pollsters that they still sit down to a family meal every night” (302). My perfect meal was becoming the perfect American meal, with dietary restrictions galore.

On Monday night, I got started at 5:30 for a 7:00pm meal time. I pulled the garlic bread from the freezer, and put the water on to boil. I rinsed and washed the salad packs, and put it in a pretty bowl. The salad then went back into the fridge. I knew I was going to cook the vegan food first, so it wouldn’t get ‘contaminated’ with dairy products everyone else could eat. I used vegan soy ‘butter’ and sauteed the onions with garlic, then added the frozen peas. Next, the spices went in, oregano and smoked paprika. After that was done, I put the mix in a bowl to rest, and repeated the process with real butter for the vegetarians. At that time the water had been boiling a while, so in went the fettucine noodles. I also put theveggie mix into a bowl, and put it aside. Now came the hard part, cooking with the shrimp. Onions were sauteed, and the smell of garlic permeated the kitchen. When the onions were clear, I added one bag of frozen shrimp. At this point, my friend Clare butted in to avoid doing homework. She took over stirring, while I worked on the sauce. I drained the pasta into a colander, and raised it with cold water and put it aside.

One side note, I am a fond food user of the concept of cheating. To cheat is to often substitute, when one is one a budget or a lazy chef. Sometimes I am both. For the alfredo I had bought Ragu sauce, a cheap 1.49 a can special I planned to doctor.

Into the pan went two cans of Ragu, some milk to thin the sauce, and a helping of paprika and oregano. Meanwhile, Clare was faithfully stirring, and had added another bag of shrimp. I threw the bread in the oven and looked at her.

“When do I add the peas?” she said.

“Is the butter boiling?” I responded.

“Yesss?”

“Now then,” I had said.

I then added the sauce to the pasta, after removing enough for a serving for the vegan, and mixed it together. My friends had the set the table and by then, dinner was ready, and everyone was to serve themselves family style. The concept was one would take a serving of pasta and then add the appropriate topping. The salad and garlic bread were on the table in a free for all. We settled down to eat and the first bit was good, but under salted. The changing of hands of the salt shaker made my heart sink, but the choruses of “it’s so good!” served to bolster my flagging spirits. As I looked around the table, Emily on my left and Clare on my right I realized it was less about the food, and more about the friends I had. But dinner still needed salt.