A Perfect Meal

On Saturday at noon hundreds of shoppers came out to the supermarket, many stocking up on chips, dip, and beer in preparation for Superbowl parties the next day. I, too, was preparing for the big day, planning to make homemade pizza and cookies for friends who knew nothing about football. "Is that when everyone fills out those charts?" Becca asked me, "Can I knit during the game?" I pretended to be surprised by their ignorance, and they pretended to listen when I corrected them or taught them about the rules.

In Meijer, carts creaked along the aisles, soulless drones behind them. "Pardon me," I would say, narrowly avoiding cart collision. No response, no head nod, no eye contact. Customers looked through me to scan the products on the wall: Enriched flour, unbleached flour, whole wheat flour, organic flour. What did it even mean? My guide, Gabriella, was sore from ab workouts the night before and had retreated to my car. I tried calling for help but Meijer is a dead zone. Where each product came from, how they were processed, and which one was best for me was a mystery. The carts behind me expected me to move along, and Gabriella was waiting for me outside. Whatever. Grab what's on sale, get the hell out of there.

Back at the car, Gabriella was bawling, her tears purple from the mascara. "I just got off the phone with 911, they're bringing an ambulance. I think my appendix burst." All I could think to say was, I hope you're wearing cute underwear, but I knew better than that, so I rubbed her back and told her it would be okay.
Three hospital visits later, I was watching the first quarter of the game in the waiting room in Bronson, discussing penalties and drives with strangers who didn't look through me.

"But Alexis, your perfect meal. The game. Go home," a heavily-drugged Gabriella half-groaned, half-slurred to me.

"Don't be silly, lady, it wouldn't be perfect without you."

With my only notion of "homemade" pizza as Jack's—or Red Baron, if I was lucky—I had asked Gabriella to help me prepare my meal. When Gabriella was well enough to eat again, we started preparing the pizza. My idea of a perfect meal involved as little planning, and as few rules, as possible: no one else in the house was recruited or required to help, and there were no rules about whether only those who helped make it could eat it, because everyone was welcome to a piece. Helpers came and went as they pleased, and though I had only planned on pizza and cookies, Becca and Maddie made sweet potato fries to share (baked, not fried, a good choice on their part), Emily brought her mushrooms to put on half the pizza, and Gabriella shared her Peanut Butter Tracks ice cream. The pizza itself was like a Margarita Pizza, with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil, but with red sauce rather than white because red sauce tastes better.

Surprise mini-courses appeared when someone decided to open a bag of Doritos, extra mushrooms were eaten raw, and leftover mozzarella, tomato, and basil turned into pseudo Caprese salads eaten with fingers off the juicy cutting board. We ate enough raw cookie dough to consider it another course, but don't tell my mother.

By the end of the night, my face hurt from smiling. We had sung what lines of Mary Kate and Ashley's, "Gimme pizza! P-I-Z-Z-A" we knew, and used the "put it on a pizza" joke enough that even Emily and I were sick of it. By the time we put the pizza in the oven to cook, it was past eight, and we were all very hungry. Regardless, we danced and sang and laughed for 25 minutes, at which point we were, "Going to eat that damn pizza whether it was done or not." Everyone said that the pizza was good, but I knew that it was pretty mediocre. The mozzarella hadn't melted completely, the juice from the tomatoes had spilled over the sides, and the toppings fell off the bottom crust after the second bite (Emily pointed out, however, that it provided more opportunities to "put it on a pizza"). Okay, maybe we weren't sick of the joke just yet.

Although there was a table available, we ate on the futon, the back of the couch, and the arm of the chair. No rules, remember? The cookie, too, was shaped and cut like a pizza—a last minute decision—and thrown into a bowl of Peanut Butter Tracks ice cream. The Ghirardelli chocolate chips, the expense of which was justified by their high marks in sustainability, made the cookie. "The final course is cuddling!" I proclaimed. So after half an hour or so of settling our stomachs in a cuddle-puddle, we returned to our real lives, and our homework.

Chicago Adventures

"Can I get you anything? Booze? Smokes? Porn?" the stranger said to me. Perhaps my mother had put too much faith in my 20-something-year-old cousin and her roommates. "Really though, you're in Chicago, hours away from your parents—you can do whatever you want." It was true; at 13 I had taken the train all the way from Michigan to Chicago, navigated Union Station to find my cousin Clare, and rode with her to the home she shared with her roommates Josh and Robin. Josh was unkempt, unemployed, and often referred to as the house hobo with curly, shaggy hair and an untrimmed beard. Robin and Clare, however, a doctor and a scientist, both had red hair: Robin's natural like the color of a robin's belly, and Clare's unnatural like a cherry Jolly Rancher. I had figured Josh was joking then, but the more I got to know him, I'm sure he would've given me whatever I had asked for that first night, eager to corrupt a young mind.

The next day was Warped Tour, but before heading to Tinley Park (really more of a parking lot than a park) we stopped for breakfast at Panera Bread. Although in years to come Panera would become a staple of my diet, this was my first encounter with the bakery. After ordering the pecan-covered cinnamon roll, I silently applauded myself for such a wise decision. I could handle this, I could order good food for myself in this hip café, presumably a frequent hang out of my ultra-cool caretakers. The roll was sticky, the pecans crunchy, and the bread sweet. Only when Josh offered me a bite of his egg soufflé did I recognize my mistake: my cinnamon roll was like breakfast-dessert, whereas Josh's soufflé was a main course. With cheese and spinach and mushrooms, the egg was fluffy yet substantial and filling, but my fluffiness was just pockets of air leaving me empty and yearning for another bite. These days—as a college student—I order both, because my parents are hours away and I can do whatever I want.

Warped Tour itself was sweaty: parking lots full of hooligans running around in the summer heat. I will never forget the stench. The tour features around a 100 bands that play on 10 different stages around the park over the course of three days—pure chaos. Here began the list of, "Things Not to Tell Your Mother:" losing each other in mosh pits, avoiding attacks with condom balloons, screaming swear words. Clare's brother Jake joined us for our adventure but didn't participate in the shenanigans, assuring us that he was rocking out on the inside. Clare and I were doing the opposite. There I first learned proper punk-concert etiquette: helping each other lift people on top of the crowd, yanking someone up when they fall, and the strangely kind ritual of drinking a sip of water from a bottle and passing it to your neighbor (until some jerk throws the water bottle over the crowd, showering everyone below the line of trajectory and eventually hitting some poor fellow in the head). The water, though surely full of backwash and saliva, was a refreshing reminder of concert-goers' altruism. At the end of the day, Josh had deemed me the coolest 13-year-old he knew, among the highest of compliments I could have ever asked for.

After recovering from Warped Tour, a few nights later we went to a different kind of show: theater. We stood outside for what seemed like hours—reserved tickets weren't offered for this show—and passed the time with riddles and games of 20 questions. When we finally got indoors, one man charged us each $9 plus whatever we rolled on a die and another man wrote a different phone number on each of our hands. No one had warned me of the extent to which this show would be unconventional. The Neo-Futurists' signature, "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind" production involved 30 plays in 60 minutes, each written by a cast member. Here, I got popcorn thrown at me, saw a grown man naked, and called a state representative to voice my opinion on important issues. The phone numbers written on our hands were for that purpose; unfortunately, at 13 I couldn't vote, nor did I have any interest in or idea about anything political, making me especially aware of my young age. "Everything about that show," my cousin Clare said to me, "Goes on the list of Things Not to Tell Your Mother."

Later in the week we ate at a local pizza place and ordered two gigantic Chicago-style pizzas. "This should be number one on your 'Things to Tell Your Mother' list; she'll be very proud we ate Chicago-style pizza." Proud though she was, no one was more pleased than I. Standing three inches tall, contained by buttery crust, our pizza had at least two layers of both cheese and sauce, with pepperoni swimming somewhere in the middle. It was the best pizza I've ever had. The sauce had just the right hint of sweet and the whole wheat crust—giving the illusion of health—was delicious without being distracting. Afterward, stuffed, I pleaded for a nap, but to no avail; instead we went shopping, leaving no opportunity to keep leftovers.

The second—and final—week was less fun. Clare and her roommates had to resume normal adult life and return to work, so I spent my days in the back yard of Clare's brother Jake, pulling weeds and undoing the damage of his twin Akitas. One day Jake's hired help came to clean the home, bringing along her adorable approximately-6-year-old daughter, Angelica. I remember her name because of the Rugrats character, although she looked more like Dora the Explorer. For most of the morning, Angelica and her mother avoided me, a stranger to them. Yet, around lunch time, Angelica brought me a fruit I had never seen before. I thanked her enthusiastically but still she stood staring up at me, so I took a giant, juicy bite. Gross. I had never tasted anything so disgusting in my life. The skin was like fuzzy, poisonous rubber, but I choked it down, following quickly with my Monster Chaos energy drink. After what felt like an eternity, I swallowed and looked back down at the little girl by my feet: her expression hadn't changed. Another bite, more suffering, more Monster, same expression. Eventually, by some miracle Angelica retreated back into the house and left me to my work.

Later, I discovered that the fruit handed to me was a mango, and that normal people don't eat the skin. For a couple more years I continued to make trips to Chicago, but the visits were never as long, exciting, or memorable. Later, Josh and Robin got married and moved to North Carolina, Clare moved out to the suburbs, and I became too busy to take a vacation, anyway. Instead, my 15-year-old cousin Erin and I go to local shows at the near-by venues or basements in Kalamazoo. She's the coolest 15-year-old I know.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Conspiracy

Not only throughout high school but especially since coming to Kalamazoo College, I've considered myself fairly environmentally conscious. Canvas grocery bags and Sigg water bottles are so trendy, after all, these days it's hard to avoid being "green." After reading the first part of Omnivore's Dilemma, however, I've realized the truth: I didn't know a damn thing about the issues that plague this country. Furthermore, even now I'm sure I don’t know the half of it.

What I wonder most, though, after having read this, is why the public isn't more aware of such issues. After all, the United States is infatuated with conspiracies: the JFK shooting, Area 51, Watergate. So how is it that government control and manipulation of food slipped past us? It's conspiracy theory gold! Even my mother, who believes that the government cuts down "Japanese beetle-infected" trees in order to more easily spy on the public via satellite, couldn't get on board the food-conspiracy bandwagon: "What do you expect us to do, Alex? Move to a farm and grow our own food? I don't know how to farm, the grocery store is where I get my food. And really, why are you wasting your money to go to a school to become an activist? Learn something relevant."

Perhaps the public isn't willing to play into a conspiracy so complicated: we can't solve the problem by wagging a finger and sending some people to jail. Releasing the government and big business's hold on food standards would require a complete overhaul and reworking of the food system, and most importantly, involve higher food prices. "That's too hard," we would whine, "I've got other problems."

However, my favorite section, that about the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (or CAFOs), made clear that many solutions aren't too far-fetched. Reducing the new acid-resistant strands of bacteria in a cow's stomach could be reduced by 80% if farmers (or really, operators) fed their cows grass just for three days before slaughter. And additionally, the problems of overproduction of corn and overabundance of unusable cow manure could be solved completely if only farmers went back to the old-fashioned system of crop and livestock on a single farm. Still, larger solutions would require immense public support. How long could it take?