The Perfectly Imperfect Meal

“Cook the perfect meal.”  Wait, what?  When first venturing into this assignment, I was a little overwhelmed!  My mind raced through freshly pressed apple cider, hot goat cheese from Mattawan Artisan Creamery bubbling on a stretch of homemade dough smothered in garlic and marinara sauce made from ripened tomatoes picked from a small garden.  As for people, I wanted everyone to come!  I wanted a group of 25 people gathered around on a patch of green lawn, a red- and white- checkered blanket in our center displaying enough fragrant and home-cooked food to go around. 

What I described above did not happen.

Instead I took a hint from Michael Pollan and allowed for some mistakes.  As much as I wanted apple cider that had been pressed only hours before, I had to acknowledge that it is springtime and pressing apple cider is an activity to be done in the fall.  So instead I made hot chocolate.  With non-organic or local milk.  With highly processed not good-quality chocolate chips.  I had also wanted cheese from the Food Co-op, but seeing as I had little time and I have no car, I did not make it to the Co-op and had to settle for Spartan-brand mozzarella and a package of shredded cheese boasting Authentic 5-Cheese Italian Blend.  Now for the people.  As much as I wanted to share a meal with many people, I was not about to cook all of that food.  So I invited the people who have been with me since the beginning—my suitemates. 

After all of these modifications, here is what I got.

At 12:03am on Friday night, my phone timer went off, indicating that my small white cheese pizzas were ready to come out of the oven.  Throughout my cooking session, various residents of Crissey Residence Hall came into the kitchen exclaiming how good the food smelled.  I opened the oven and a fresh wave of roasted garlic, crushed red pepper, and perfectly-baked (if I may say so myself) homemade pizza dough.  I had gotten up early that morning to prepare it and let it rise all day.  It was some of the best dough I have ever made.  I placed the hot mini-pizzas on some paper towel and took the boiling hot chocolate off of the stovetop, which I had added a pinch of cayenne pepper to in order to give it the slightest kick. 

I haphazardly carried all of my ingredients plus my final product from the basement all the way to the third floor.  After nearly dropping everything down the stairs on not one but two occasions, I arrived to my room sweating and tired.  I went to work setting out plates and cups, lighting a few candles, and putting the food in the middle of our tiny dorm-room table.  There were five of us total.  We gathered around the table and I described what we were about to eat. 

I LOVE carbs.  I also LOVE chocolate.  Add those together, plus five college students late at night, and you get my version of the perfect meal.  The hot chocolate was made with milk, chocolate chips, cinnamon, and a little cayenne pepper.  Actually a lot of cayenne pepper—there were some complaints about it being too spicy.  The white cheese pizzas I made by drizzling an olive oil, garlic, and red pepper mixture to each pizza, topping it with mozzarella and the Authentic 5- Cheese Italian Blend, and adding a little lemon juice on top.

The meal was so much better than my initial vision of a group of people singing Kumbaya and eating a plethora of locally- raised and organic food.  I mean, it would have been nice, but it wouldn’t have been my perfect meal.  Actually, many of the sacrifices I had to make didn’t even matter when it came down to sharing an awesome meal with some truly awesome friends.

The point I am trying to make here is that I had to narrow my focus.  Was it really important for me to have a lot of people, or to have an intimate gathering with people who would truly appreciate and honor the food I presented?  Did I want to have the creamy, sizzling goat cheese from Mattawan Creamery?  Ok, yes of course I did, but was it more important for me to have the goat cheese or to spend more time preparing homemade dough that would taste like it came right out of a brick oven in the heart of a small Italian restaurant—and let me tell you, IT DID.