Perfect Meal, Harmon style

           As a child, my favorite meals were often ones eaten away from the regular dinner table, whether this meant on trays near the Christmas tree or outside in our screened patio.  Even now when I go home, I demand a few meals away from the confines of the dining room; it gives a simple meal such a celebratory quality.  My birthday dinner has always been outside, as it is in June, and most often I demand that we have hamburgers or sweet potatoes.  So for my perfect meal I decided to prepare avocado burgers, sweet potato fries and a nice salad. 

Being a very scant meat eater, I was a little worried about how my preparation of the meat would go.  I was also nervous about making sweet potato fries from scratch, and doing all of this in the “comfort” of the Harmon Hall kitchen.  Most of all I was thinking that this was the perfect day to host the perfect meal because I had just received my acceptance to the Australia long-term studied abroad program.  Even if I lost a finger or burnt the food, it would still be perfect to me.

As I went to Meijer to pick up the things for my dinner, my mind was focused on preparing a meal that was both substantial but not heavy.  Luckily, my roommate is an avocado expert and was able to pick one that was just ripe to top the burgers.  I snagged a box of Earthbound’s well-known Spring Mix and organic vinaigrette dressing.  Unfortunately, I can only imagine that the Meijer meat I purchased came from a factory firm but it was lean and cheap enough so I purchased it.  I bought to packs of meat seasonings, each with six different spices to choose from and whole-wheat buns.  Lastly, I grabbed a bottle of natural Simply Lemonade to complete the atmosphere of a summer picnic.

I planned to begin preparations at 5pm on Friday in order to serve my guests at 6pm.  I started the process by cutting and peeling my sweet potatoes.  This was probably the most terrifying part of my cooking experience as it was the one place where I could lose a finger.  Uncooked sweet potatoes are surprisingly woody and hard inside so with my little upper body strength I had a bit of trouble splitting them into fry shaped pieces.  What I ended up with were a bunch of similarly sized trapezoidal, rectangular, and circular pieces of sweet potato.  My execution rating on a cooking show would have been very low.  I put the potato bits into a bowl and tossed them with olive oil, paprika, salt, pepper and sugar.  Then laid them out on a pan and stuck them in the oven.

At this point, both of my guests arrived and pulled chairs into the kitchen in order to make sure I was doing things correctly.  They had very low confidence in my cooking abilities, and I don’t really blame them.  Intimate gatherings are always the most meaningful to me, places where you can really discuss non-superficial things.  Due to this, I kept my party down to only two guests, my old roommate, Raven and my best friend, Katherine.  Katherine is leaving for spring term study abroad in Spain so I was very aware of the few opportunities I have left to see her and now that we no longer live together, Raven and I have a hard time finding time to see one another.  These are two people here at Kalamazoo College who know me best, and it was vital that they both be there in order to make it perfect.  Katherine and Raven had met each other a few times but I was interested to see how they would interact with each other in such a personal setting. 

As my friends settled into their chairs, I mixed garlic, onion, salt and pepper into the ground chuck and shaped them into patties.  Then I threw them into two small heated pans and let them sizzle.  As I was cooking the burgers, my friends helped by setting the table and cutting the avocado.  By 5:45 I was ready to sit down at the table when Raven reminded me of the fries I had stuck in the oven almost thirty minutes ago.  Rushing to the oven I pulled them out and they were not yet burnt, in fact, they were perfectly cooked!

We sat down to eat at a table in the lounge and decked out our burgers with avocado, ketchup and mustard.  The burgers had cooked all the way through and I relaxed into the atmosphere.  The sweet potato fries were soft with a sweet taste, no too much of any one spice.  The burgers were juicy and hot, fitting perfectly with the soft whole-wheat bun.  The avocado and salad were fresh and provided a nice compliment to all of the starch.  Even though it was raining outside, the room was cozy, with a fireplace going at one end.  Raven and Katherine bantered back in forth and it felt pretty close to perfect.  The three of us talked for well over an hour and then they helped me to clean up the table and we said our farewells.

Reflecting on the experience, this meal was something I needed after the toughness of the quarter and the things going on in my life.  It reminded me that I do have a real connection with some people here and that they are here for me.  I think that even if I had received a rejection letter for study abroad, this meal could have consoled me, but with the future opening up in front of us it meant a lot more.  I am so happy to have been able to share this learning experience with two of my closest friends and the fact that no one got food poisoning and I still have all of my fingers made it just perfect.