Recharging your batteries - part a

Many of my housemates would not agree, but one way that I have found this semester to recharge has been cooking for my housemates. I live in Kenwood, right on 8th St, with eight other people. We decided at the beginning of the year to try to have four meals a week and thus far have been pretty successful. Each Sunday night we decide who is cooking with who and on what night, then we frantically attempt to decide what to cook so that we can form a grocery list for the shopper of the week. My least favorite part of cooking is deciding what to make. We also have two vegetarians our house, so it has been interesting trying to figure out how to create interesting, filing meals that will either not contain any meat or will contain meat in an optional way.

One meal that I recently cooked that I felt went particularly well was called "Pakistani Kima," which is basically a hamburger curry served over rice. To accommodate my vegetarian housemates, I made a smaller amount that contained more vegetables and no meat. We get many of our recipes out of the World Community Cookbooks: More With Less, Extending the Table, and Simply in Season, which are produced by the Mennonite Central Committee. This meal was no exception. One of the reasons that I enjoyed cooking this meal so much was because it led to exclamations from my housemates about how this meal reminded them of their moms and different variations of kima that they have in their homes. I was surprised at how well it turned out.

While at times cooking for the house can be stressful because of time constraints on when the meal needs to be ready or simply because of the time that I am taking away from homework to do the cooking, overall it has been a positive thing for me. Because of the way that we schedule when we cook, I have mostly been able to pick times that are convenient for me. Also, I am someone who has a hard time just taking a break and completely relaxing, so while cooking is not something that typically requires a lot of brainpower, it still feels like I am doing something productive. Meals have been a nice time to reconnect with my housemates and eat some very good food.