While I wheeled the cart, which was in desperate need of a front-end alignment down the aisles of the Super Stop & Shop down the road, I had an epiphany. Living by yourself is different. Not necessarily awful, but it's definitely different. Especially when it comes to food purchase.
I realized this because without thinking I took a hard left down the "Weekly Specials" aisle. Though no one wants to admit, "Weekly Specials" translates directly to: "Supermarket Layaway." This was the aisle where, if needed, you could get anything from 2-for-4 spaghetti sauces, a five pack of aluminum baking trays and individual VitaminWater cans for a $1.08 each. For the record, I've never ever seen anyone drinking let alone deciding to buy one of them. This was the aisle you wouldn't see anybody else on and if you did there was never any eye contact. You didn't want anyone seeing the financial troubles you suffer as you pile eight boxes of Capri Sun onto your cart.
But what was I doing here? I wandered aimlessly down each aisle. A few granola bars here, a 12-pack of Funyuns there, I had no list, no direction. What did I want? Who the hell knows? I found myself in unfamiliar territory, a place I didn't belong, a gang neighborhood wearing the wrong colors. What purpose did I have in the Mexican foods aisle? I wasn't intending to make tacos or drink the Grape Goya soda. One aisle to the next I wandered aloof, haphazardly throwing food into my cart. A 12-pack of Cheetos bags, a bottle of an energy-infused Cranberry juice aptly named "Cranergy" (Weekly Specials aisle), three different boxes of granola bars, discount pasta/pasta sauce, two eight-packs of mini Butterfingers, two-for-four protein bars and three containers of cottage cheese.
To my credit, cottage cheese was actually something I intended to buy. But I hadn't been off campus since five days ago, I needed some outside stimulation and what better place to go to than a grocery store?
But that really got me thinking about the last two and a half months or so. This was my first time on my own, granted I have the option to eat virtually every meal at school, never paying for food stuff, but my apartment, its cleanliness, my laundry, the cable bill, was all in my hands. As the weeks went on, the food began to wear on me a bit (and my toilet), so the inevitable came to pass: buying food. Now, my college years weren't what you would call a 'culinary exploration', but I had been known to occasionally fire up the dirty stove-top, clean a pot that had been sitting untouched in the sink for the past two weeks and make some food. My thoughts on cooking were these: I knew I enjoyed eating food, but I would like to know how to prepare it too. Not enough to open my own diner, but just enough where I could chew without grimacing.
I became enamored on the Food Network after reading Anthony Bourdain, the popular chef/writer's memoir Kitchen Confidential, Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. I'm not exactly sure how, but it got me thinking about food in a different way. Though I don't want to be a rebel chef who snorts coke off a filet knife, I did begin to think how I should have a modicum of cooking experience to show that not only was I prime boyfriend material, but, for my impending job search, I would be able to survive on my own in the wilds of Adulthood.
Going back to my college years, though my times in the kitchen were sparse at best, due mostly to the overflowing blue garbage barrel in the corner and the stagnant, bacteria-infested water sitting in archaic, unwashed dishes, my experiences were purely trial and error. A group effort proved to be too much at times. Too many cooks in a college kitchen and someone will get hurt or something will set on fire. Cooking was difficult especially when your partner was my six-foot-six roommate Rick. One false move and boiling water was now all over your feet protected only by the leather strap of your sandals. Now, though people claim that they "can't boil water" or make a PB & J sandwich, I have serious doubt that there is anybody who can't cook pasta. I mean come on, you boil water and put in the fucking pasta. So that was, and still is, what my repertoire consists of. I'm not sure how but we managed to get a hold of an industrial size dented tin pot that, I'm imagining, was last used to feed platoons of soldiers in WWII. This would be filled with water, a process that took around 10 minutes and put on the stove to boil, which took another, oh, 50.
Once the water was boiling, we'd throw in a pound or two of pasta, let it cook, drained it without burning our flesh and cooked chicken in a separate frying pan to add to the bottled sauce we had heating up in the pot we stole from the girls next door. This, essentially, was it. And it passed muster for a long time.
Of course the part my roommates and I had trouble with was not just the preparation, but the ensuing clean up. Thanks to a variety of grease buildup from frying chicken (another skill I learned in college, but hadn't employed in Adulthood) and other cooking endeavours, I was the proud recipient of the Most Fires In the Townhouse Award. The first time came when put the WWII pot on to boil. After several minutes, the electric burner provided the catalyst for the gunky buildup and I sniffed the air in confusion, seeing the black smoke and eventual flames climb up the edges of the pot.
SHIIIIITTTTTTTTTT!!!!!
My longtime neighbor in New Hampshire is a fire chief in a nearby town, so I'm guessing my firefighting skills came by way of osmosis. I sprinted around the corner, grabbed the extinguisher, pulled the pin and unleashed a fury of bottled dry chemicals onto what was supposed to be my dinner and everything else in the kitchen. Adrenaline flowing, smoke alarm beeping, I regained myself. My roommate Tom came downstairs to investigate on account of the smell and the loud beeping basically to laugh at how much of a moron I was and spray more dust into my already monumental cleanup, giving the excuse: "Well I've never used one, so..."
Another cooking folly came junior year, the night when I was a date to the women's lacrosse formal at a bar in downtown Albany. I needed a quick meal and decided to go with the Townhouse 42 classic, pasta in a heavy cream sauce with chicken and garlic. Now that may sound appetizing, but trust me when I tell you it was anything but. The garlic and chicken were fine but the 'heavy cream sauce' was just that, heavy cream stupidly dumped into the pot. We foolishly ate up, assuming it would magically transform into something you pay $12 for at the Olive Garden.
It did not.
It sat like garlicky concrete in my stomach and I did all that I could not to throw up on my way to the bar. This involved little conversation, which my date enjoyed I'm sure, heavy breathing and numerous Tums. Like falling off when learning to ride a bike, this was only a minor setback. A couple trips to the toilet later and it was now a chilling, but distant memory; forever relegated to the "Never Eat/Make Again" list.
So that brought me back to my directionless stroll through the Super Stop & Shop where I would throw random eye-catchers into my cart, eventually spending $61 dollars on stuff I largely didn't need. But this is all part of the learning curve. My experiences as a bachelor living alone are have all yet to come and this was merely one of what will soon become a litany. And this has taught me a good lesson: prioritization. I'm in survival mode. My monthly check warrants me drinkin' dough, gas money, toilet paper cash and other minor expenses. I'm learning to determine what I need from what I want. In the end spending $50 more than I should have taught me to be prepared with a comprehensive list before I go because I don't want to be the guy I saw spending a little too much time deciding whether or not to buy the tube of AstroGlide he was holding.
No comments:
Post a Comment