(Photos by Mitchell Kohles, '12)
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The best part of house meetings: study break.
I should never have told them that I'm RA. They won’t stop asking me questions. With good reason, actually, my editors want to hear more and more about the life of an RA. The question this week is about study break, the (usually) home-cooked snack, savory or sweet, that marks the end of house meetings in DelGiorno House, the 100-resident house in South Campus where I live as a Resident Assistant. How do you make it? When do you make it? What’s the best study break you’ve ever made? That last one is the same question that is asked in every RA interview ever, so I’ve had my answers ready since second-year: cake-batter pancakes, crêpes with Nutella and PB&J, and chicken chili with garlic bread made from hotdog buns, to name a few recent creations. The range is pretty broad, and each year the head RAs assemble a cookbook of recipes submitted by past RAs so that the newcomers have some ideas to fall back on. Occasionally an RA will dig deep and make something incredible for their first study break of the year: gluten-free lemon-blueberry scones made from scratch, individual mushroom-and-cream-cheese tartlets, mango-basil curd with meringue. These have actually been done—I’ve seen them, tasted them even. But in a world where macaroni and cheese is par for the course, those guys are really making us look bad. Of course, we trade anecdotes from the other side of the spectrum. There are legends—campfire horror stories, really—about past RAs who arrived at a house meeting with nothing but a jar of peanut butter, some jelly, and a few loaves of bread. Or a box of Oreos and a gallon of milk. Regrettable, to say the least, although, speaking from some experience, I can imagine that behind these shortcomings lies a midterm, a job interview, or maybe even an emergency RA call. In fact, one of the first pieces of advice I heard as an RA was that there exists no correlation between effort in and enjoyment out. And it makes sense: as long as you’re not lactose intolerant, what resident is going to scoff at mac and cheese? I also heard that your residents will love whatever you make them, so who knows. The time spent in the house kitchen has inspired cooking in my own, although as an RA I get the meal plan, so I need an excuse to cook for myself. My browser sports a deep pool of food blogs, which either generate future study break ideas or get bookmarked for later. I’ve certainly spent time during the holidays testing out recipes at home. Some of the trickier recipes need a trial run. How else to learn that a raspberry babka is out of my league? For Valentine’s Day last year, my co-RA and I teamed up to make chocolate covered strawberries and pretzels as well as heart-shaped white/dark chocolate brownies (I stole the idea from Smitten Kitchen). Keep in mind that this was a collaborative project; I can’t be relied upon for that sort of kitchen wizardry, and certainly not on a biweekly basis. This week I made a recipe from my mother’s cookbook—something terribly simple to make and morally questionable to feed to a group of people that, for the most part, I like having around. It also tastes of the essence of study break: thrift. It’s homemade caramel poured over a bed of Saltines and then covered with a layer of melted chocolate chips and sprinkled with chopped up almonds before sitting in the fridge overnight. My mom calls it poor man’s almond roca. It’s basically a heart stopper.   Unfortunately, in the wild stampede that followed this past Sunday’s meeting, I failed to get a picture of the (positive) student response. I was just lucky enough to catch Ben on his way through the lounge and offer him the last remaining bite. After he finished chewing, he said what he always says: “Is this poor man’s almond roca, or did an angel just give birth in my mouth?” Thanks, Ben.