Like Laverne and Shirley, Only With Penises

One of the perks to living off campus I was looking forward to most was being able to cook real food instead of eating the “food” on campus, which is so repetitive and unhealthy, it defies description. Just imagine taking a stick of butter, frying it, pouring maple syrup all over it, then adding a layer of vanilla frosting, and calling it a Garden Fresh Wrap; that’s pretty close to what was consumed five days a week eating in the dining halls.

So far this year, I’ve eaten teriyaki stir fry, tuna casserole, Hamburger Helper, and other things that I wasn’t able to cook on campus. However, I’ve realized that these things are usually prepackaged, and aren’t really what you define as cooking. However, the other day, Silva decided he wanted some seafood badly, went to the supermarket, and came back with a hundred clams in a big sack; the idea was to sauté them in a butter, oil, and white wine sauce and serve them over some angel hair pasta.

Since neither of us had much experience in preparing seafood, we tackled the task together: Silva’s got a huge pan with butter and white wine and a ton of garlic in it, I’m putting an entire shaker of salt into this huge pot to steam the clams in, he’s got clams in the skillet at some point, it was chaos. It looked a lot like those old Muppet shows with the cook with the big moustache and no eyes flinging fish all over the place.

Finally, we got the whole dinner prepared. We both sat down to a meal we cooked ourselves, which actually turned out pretty okay. Silva goes a little overboard with the garlic in everything, but it was still good. (He's got this thing for garlic and onions; he wants to put them on and in everything he eats. This kid eats the smelliest foods of anyone I know. Every time I go down to the station, he's stinking up the studio with some awful salad smothered in a disgusting dressing, or a sandwich that's soggy from all the vinegar and shit he gets on it. It's enough to gag a maggot. But I digress.)

We decided that every Sunday we are going to take turns cooking a meal from scratch. That’s such a college roommate thing to do: switching cooking duty every week and preparing a new dish for the both of you. Besides, I’ve always wanted to get a little more skill in the kitchen; I feel like if you’re at someone’s house one night and you just start whipping up a meal, people will think you’re some kind of successful Renaissance man.

I decided I wasn’t just going to wing it and make it up as I went along like Silva did, so I went online and looked for recipes for college students who have limited culinary knowledge and limited resources. The recipe I found is called Drunken Sausages with Peppers on Hero Rolls. I figure any dish with beer in it has to appeal to the college palette.

I’ll follow up with any disastrous meals we have. I’m figuring we’ll either poison each other or someone will be scalded severely before the year is out.

You don't know what I'd do to get my hands on one of those hats.