The Perfect Meal

Libby Dulski

11/19/16

The Perfect Meal

“Exsqueeze me!” “You’re Exsqueezed”

“Noah, sit down. Everyone’s waiting to eat dinner,” Noah’s father Tim said as he eyed the stir fry in front of him.

He is probably wondering if it will poison him, send him running to the bathroom, or even cause him to never speak to me again.

            Noah walked slowly into the dining room with two open Stellas in hand. He was the last to sit down at the table at which seven of the eight seats were occupied. That is correct, I cooked for six freaking people. And not just any six people, I cooked for Noah (my boyfriend), Noah’s parents (no pressure?), Noah’s two sisters Emma (a high school frosh) and Lena (currently experiencing senior slide in high school), and Lena’s boyfriend Matt (also senior sliding). Oh, and a black puppy, Millie, sat underneath the table.

The seven of us sat around a cherry wood table in an aqua blue dining room, at Noah’s house, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A few minutes earlier “Hard” by Rihanna bounced out of the sound system in the small  kitchen as Noah, Emma, and I finished preparing dinner, and Matt and Lena set the table. I had never been in this home before, let alone cooked for all of these people. Yet I found that I was surprisingly comfortable with the gas stove as it is like the one at my own house, and I adapted easily using whatever pots and pans I could unearth.

I am from Boston, Massachusetts and find that I feel rather out of place in Michigan; however, at Noah’s house I felt completely comfortable, it felt perfect. This meal was important to me because I do not have my own family here to cook for, so having a family away from home made the experience special. Everyone was also more than willing to help prepare the meal which made me feel grateful for the extra chopping hands (except for the parents of course, I did not want them near the kitchen for I was far too nervous that I would stab someone with a knife or set the kitchen on fire).

            Noah sat down next to me and gave me one of the beers in his hand as everyone said “Danke” or “thank you” in German quickly before eating: Noah’s mother is German and the entire Thornton family speaks German.

            Good thing I can totally speak German… Oh wait, no I do not! Damn…

A giant bowl of rice the size of a soccer ball sat in the middle of the table, made from the Nishiki Japanese sticky-rice I grew up with. Because my father is Japanese, stir fry has always been part of my life. I wanted to share one of my favorite meals with a family that had never experienced stir fry before. Besides Noah, I had made him stir fry once previously.

I know right! I was just as surprised that they had not had stir fry ever before. I mean, how can an entire family go without stir fry?

“So this election went to shit didn’t it? Libby, could you pass the salad?” Noah said.

Beside the rice was a smaller bowl of Thai salad with peanut dressing. The salad consisted of shredded cabbage, grated carrots, red bell peppers, cucumber, edamame, scallions, and cilantro. All of this was mixed with a peanut dressing made from creamy peanut butter, rice vinegar, lime juice, vegetable oil, soy sauce, honey, sugar, garlic cloves, ginger, salt, red pepper flakes, and cilantro leaves.

            I hope everyone likes the meal… God, why is everyone speaking in German, am I really that uninteresting? Do I try to speak? I can count to ten in German… No, stay quiet, just eat the food. Smile, remember to smile. Oh god, someone is asking me about the meal. Speak. Move your mouth!

            “Why did I decide to make stir fry? Well, I wanted to make something that you guys had never eaten before and that was familiar to me and reminded me of home. My father would always make stir fry for my brother and me. I thought I would make something that was close to my heart that I could make myself and share with you all.” I said while nervously folding my napkin over and over in my lap.

            Good job! You managed to speak without stuttering! I think that answer should satisfy the parental units.

Of course, the best part of the meal was the red 14-inch skillet that was sitting towards the head of the table. Filled with a whole red and white onion, two green bell peppers, one yellow pepper, two red peppers, a whole package of mushrooms, three handfuls of sugar snap peas, and a third of a cup of canola oil to let the veggies cook. It also contained a half bottle of teriyaki stir fry sauce: I did not make the stir fry from scratch because Noah loves the House of Tang sauce that I had used when I first made him stir fry. Oh, and the stir fry had chicken; however, the chicken was added last and a single vegetarian plate was prepared for Emma before the chicken was mixed into the skillet of vegetables.

“Can we play Monopoly after dinner? Or Apples to Apples? Oh man, let’s play Uno!” Emma said.

“We can’t play Uno; it ruins lives. It rips friendships apart and it destroys morale; the draw four card always gets me!” Matt responded.

For dessert, there were three dozen cookies piled onto a platter. My signature “crack cookies” used four sticks of butter, two cups of white granulated sugar, another cup of brown sugar, baking soda, salt, five cups of flour, vanilla extract, four eggs, and four freaking cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips.

            A few hours earlier Noah and I had driven to Arbor Farms Market to pick up all of the ingredients for the meal and dessert. Arbor Farms is like a local version of Whole Foods Market. The small grocery store sells local and organic produce like fresh Michigan grass-fed beef, pork, lamb, and poultry.

Noah’s mother had suggested we go to this store because she knows I like to support local businesses and buy organic food even if it costs a little more because I feel better about it going into my body and fueling me if I know where it comes from. While there, we hit up that fresh poultry section and picked out two pounds of boneless breast and rib meat. From the chicken to the stir fry sauce, everything that we bought for the meal came from Arbor Farms Market and it all cost a total of about $70, and Noah paid which was an unforeseen bonus. For feeding six people, it is not a bad price. (Except the beer, the beer was not from Arbor Farms; it was supplied by the parental units.)

            Even before heading to Arbor Farms, Noah and I had taken the 350 Wolverine train from Kalamazoo to Ann Arbor; we needed a proper kitchen for this meal and not a dinky college kitchen. On the two hour and eight-minute train ride, we had prepared a list of ingredients we needed to gather for our “perfect meal.”

            Was this meal perfect? Stir fry, a Thai salad, a ton of rice, a mountain of cookies, and a decent amount of beer, does this measure out to perfection? Well, when we made the cookies they were too doughy; Emma got cookie dough all over her stomach (she claims that Lena put it there; correction, she does not claim, she knows). The cookies were supposed to take ten minutes to bake per batch, the second batch took over an hour… we forgot to close the freaking oven, which is surprising because the kitchen is small and got uncomfortably warm before any of us noticed it was open. Only two people ate the salad, but at least everyone ate the stir fry (Noah’s parents included, thank goodness). And everyone had at least half their weight in cookies.

            So, I would not say this was the best meal I had ever cooked, but it was definitely one of the most fun meals to prepare because I was making it with people who make me feel safe, as they are like my family away from home. Emma cut all of the onions for me and only cried a little, Noah was a professional pepper chopper even though he tended to leave a bunch of seeds, and Matt and Lena did a stellar job getting cookie dough all over the floor (but do not fret, puppy Millie saved the day and lapped up any dropped pepper pieces and sugar grains). Thank goodness the chicken cooked all the way through and was not dry, and praise the lord the stir fry came together nicely courtesy of a team effort. I would also like to give the stereo system in the kitchen a gold star for being a life saver, as we were bunkered down in kitchen for about two hours. Britney and Rihanna continuously saved our morale as we fretted over the state of the cookies.

            But a year from now I probably will not remember how I burnt the bottom layer of the rice, or how the stir fry was a little too strongly flavored like teriyaki, or how some of the cookies were a tad undercooked. However, I will remember how Lena kept asking to play Monopoly, and how Dorothea’s smile made me feel more confident about the meal, and I will never forget the devastation and hysterical laughter that followed after realizing we had left the oven open.