Home Cookin'

After months of the same routine of takeout, takeout, takeout, (ooohhh look: groceries! Oh wait, they’re gone), takeout, takeout, takeout…I run home to mommy. Well, it’s not so emasculating in real life, but essentially that is what I do. I can’t take the starving, the constant spending on takeout. It adds up. I’m still a hungry college kid, but taking the out and returning to the woman who fed you for eighteen years before you packed up and decided to try it on your own isn’t giving up. It’s just giving up for the holidays. Now is the time everyone should be with family anyways, so why shouldn’t I get a nice meal out of the deal? The cat is still at the apartment, so I don’t have to deal with him trying to eat my food for a week, I get to sleep in as late as I want, and the best part: I get fed. I don’t even have to work for my food, it comes to me. It’s like being in a restaurant where everything is free.

When I set foot in the door of my mother’s house for the first time I get critiqued. I am too skinny, I don’t eat well enough (that one’s true), you need more of this, and you need more of that. She might be right on most counts, but her nagging has me at two minutes in and remembering why I moved out in the first place. Then the smells bring me back. She is baking cookies. The little round chocolate Christmas cookies, the ones that make you cough if you inhale all the powdered sugar when you go to put it in your mouth. There are two dozen or so laid out across the counter, and another batch in the oven. In every corner I look there are little dishes filled with candies or chocolate covered pretzels or peanuts. I can’t help but eat a candy and a couple of the fresh cookies, the warm chocolate melting in my mouth behind the sweet overtones of the sugar, all before I unpack. Her excessive baking has me back on team mom, and happy I returned.

Dinner that night was baked macaroni and cheese, with small cubes of ham diced throughout and a crunchy bread crumb topping. She took it out of the oven boiling, bubbles popping from every corner of the dish and the cheese rolling like ocean waves. The smell was delicious, like every great mac and cheese concoction to come before, with a strong aroma of the cheese and the subtle tones of the ham, gently hidden within mounds of the shell pasta used instead of elbow macaroni. A steaming pile sat on my plate, far too much than I could normally eat but circumstances called for me to try. As I dove headfirst into the sea of cheese and ham, I realized why I came home in the first place. A mother’s home cooking is always better than anything I can make, or order. A mother’s cooking brings everyone who eats it back to their childhood; it sucks them out of their adult life with their concerns and their bills and their deadlines and puts them in the moment, in front of whatever dish was rolled out today—her meals are my ghosts of Christmas past, Christmas present, and Christmas future—they bring memories of my childhood, the meal in front of me, and the fantastic food yet to come.

Real Food! For a Little, at Least...

Over the next two days we eat like champs. I get bagels with cream cheese for breakfast, or waffles with a little bit of butter, maple syrup, and whipped cream on top with three or four microwavable breakfast sausages on the side. Lunch is cold cuts, usually turkey on a nice roll with mayonnaise, lettuce and a lot of hot sauce on top (which is to my taste, I love hot sauce on everything). Dinner can be whatever I want. Thursday night it is chicken breast on the grill, with salad on the side, or in my case, chicken breast on top of the salad with a strong dose of Italian dressing.

I eat healthy when I have groceries, I keep reminding myself. After weeks straight of scrounging around or ordering takeout a full meal makes me feel emaciated. It makes it hard to get down, as if I was a stranded survivor from a deserted island or something. Despite this, I eat. We all do. Five guys eating full meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner suddenly turns a full kitchen into a not-so-full one. I can see this happening, as where there were two pounds of cold cuts there is only a couple slices of hardened roast beef, the bag left open a little too long in the back of the fridge. The bagels? Gone. All the bread, for that matter. Before we could even truly enjoy food in the apartment it is all gone again. I begin to lean gingerly back towards the Christina’s menu again.

Before I know it, it is Friday night again. The kitchen is as empty and barren as it was only a few days ago, as all the food has been eaten. A budget of twenty dollars a person gets groceries, but it does not guarantee it will last. I sit down to eat my old favorite, a large Chicken Kabob sub. I have already caved in, converted back to the old ways. It is easier. I will now live on takeout for the next few weeks, until groceries come again. On second thought, it might be longer than just a few weeks. I better get my can of Spam ready.

Groceries!

Wednesday is the first day in a long time I get to go grocery shopping. The day has finally come when all the roommates are tired of not having any food and having to resort to takeout, or in my case, Spam. Grocery shopping is a science for us. We have a routine—a concrete list—and even though it happens so rarely we’ve been doing it for two years and it runs like a well oiled machine. It works better in small groups, so two of us go—me, and my roommate Scott.

Our grocery store of choice is Market Basket. It is cheaper than a Stop and Shop and it is close by. When we enter Market Basket I feel like a runner on the starting block. We have no reason to rush, it just feels like the quicker we get in and out the less money we are likely to spend. That is another reason we only shop in twos or threes. The more people in the store, the people wandering around and trying to buy pointless and expensive snacks.

I man the cart, and Scott and I start on the right hand side of Market Basket, near the dairy products. We get butter, whipped cream (I like it on waffles), eggs, bacon, milk, the Turkey Hill iced teas (one of the few non-Market Basket brands we splurge on), and cheese. Shredded cheese, bricks of cheese, canned cheese—cheese is a popular item on the list. At the first corner we split. Scott goes to the deli to get a pound of roast beef and a pound of turkey, as well as some of those deli rolls that sit on the racks in front of the meats. We all like cold cut sandwiches, and the deli meats are some of the fastest things to go when we return from shopping.

Now that I am on my own I can basically get half the things on the list without looking. I get bottles of water, tortilla chips, those boxes of taco shells and seasoning and sauce, more drinks, frozen foods like waffles and those little breakfast sausages, frozen meats—usually just chicken breast or pork chops, as meats raise the price quite a bit—and a couple cans of Spam to replenish my stock. By the time I make it down the central isles and back to the deli, Scott has the meats and the rolls. Together we do produce, and get lettuce and tomatoes, and if a sale item catches my eye sometimes I buy a large bag of green beans, or a bag of actual cherries, the ones with the seeds and the stems. Shopping for natural foods makes me feel healthy, even though the feeling leaves after I exit the store and return to my apartment, only to see my healthy purchases relegated to the back of the fridge, where even I have a hard time bringing myself to eat them.

Our cart full of a mishmash of greens and packaged foods, with the breads piled high on top so not to get squished, Scott and I check out. This is the scary part, and we always try to predict how much it will cost. It usually falls between one hundred and one hundred and twenty five dollars, which is our goal. If splitting groceries evenly five ways reduces the price to around twenty dollars a person, we are happy. This batch costs one hundred and twenty dollars. Pleased with ourselves, we return home, finally able to look forward to an actual meal.

Spam

There is a small, narrow cabinet in the far right corner of my kitchen, where there are two shelves scarcely populated with the items we dare not use, things that have long past their expiration date or extra bottles of hot sauce in a brand I hate. On the top shelve in this cabinet above the three year old box of jelly beans sits one can of Spam. These are my emergency rations, in the event of war or nuclear fallout or a severe case of hunger. I buy it on the rare occasions I go grocery shopping, so I have it when all other foods are gone. In reality, it is just cat food packaged for humans, which I’m sure is why my cat curls up around my feet when he hears the sickening thwack of the Spam hitting the plate. This is some food I have no problem sharing.

There are a lot of ways to make Spam, and it actually isn’t the most disgusting food out there, but it certainly is an acquired taste. I have my father to thank for introducing me to the premier potted meat, as when I was a child his cooking skills extended only a few inches beyond things that came in a can. I cook it like he did. First is vigorously shake the can so the gelatinous meat wiggles out and plops on the plate. Then I lay it on its side and cut it into thin strips. The thinner the better with Spam, as it can be quite hard to stomach in thick bites.

I pan fry my Spam, with nothing to grease the pan because once Spam heats up there is plenty of grease already. Spam looks edible fried, with each side of the thin slice crisping up into a golden brown. To add to the mystique of Spam it is the only thing I eat with mustard. I feel it goes well together, yet I will never put mustard on a hot dog or anything normal mustard goes on. So my usual Spam plate consists of four or five thin slices of Spam fried to a crunchy brown outer skin, the grease bubbles popping all over its outer shell and a pile of mustard in the corner.

This is my emergency meal, and the cat curls up next to me in an attempt to get some. I am not against feeding him this time, as I feel it would send the wrong message if I deny him people food and cat food, and seeing as Spam looks and smell like cat food, I think he deserves some. So I cut up a little corner into cat sized bites, and the both of us sit there and eat Spam, my Tuesday emergency meal plan.

Monday Grease-Fest

Monday morning for me was class, not food. I had to wake up at seven a.m. to get to class on time and my priorities then were not to scrounge around for food, but usually to try and finish up some last minute homework. This was the case on Monday as well, so breakfast was skipped, and that meant class until eleven a.m. and no food until lunch.

The best part about the weekdays as opposed to weekends was my commuter meal plan at the college cafeteria. To me, this meant food: fast, greasy, Burger King food. My commuter meal plan gave me access to several restaurants in the cafeteria along with an assortment of beverages and snacks. Only it wasn’t open on weekends, only during the week in the middle of the day. This meant I could eat today though, and at one o’clock after all my classes were done I headed to the cafeteria and got a Burger King double stacker cheeseburger, fries, and an iced tea (to be healthy, you know).

Burger King from the cafeteria is exactly what is to be expected. The burger is flat, like they don’t even pretend to use real meat. I do enjoy the fries, even though that everything there is soaked in grease. The burger is greasy, the fries are greasy, the paper to wrap the burger is greasy and the container for the fries is greasy. It makes me think even my iced tea is greasy.

But I eat it, and I enjoy it. It is my only meal of the day and it goes down great. Thank god for all that grease and fat, because I need it to hold me over until tomorrow.

Not So Much a Sunday Dinner as a Sunday Snack

Sunday began my Christina’s Pizza binge. It wasn’t unusual for me to revert to this method in order to eat—rarely was there food in my apartment besides take out. Christina’s Pizza was the little sub shop behind my apartment, and they were cheap, fast, and knew me by name (this wasn’t due to their exceptional friendliness, just the fact I’m there every day). Sunday was a bad day for food. I had no breakfast, there was nothing to eat for dinner, and my routine was to be lazy and watch football all day. So the only remedy for this, at least in my mind, was to order out. On Sunday breakfast, lunch, and dinner was one meal at one o’clock in the afternoon, just in time for football. I called Christina’s, and ordered one of my favorites, a large chicken cutlet sub with lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, and barbeque sauce.

Christina’s chicken is of good quality. It is juicy and tender and the breaded cutlets are not too over done. One of the reasons I love this sub so much is the barbeque sauce. It is thin and spicy, with a consistency more of a hot sauce then a barbeque sauce. I feel that it complements the chicken and the cold crunch of the lettuce and tomato well. Christina’s usually layers their subs mayonnaise first, then lettuce and tomato, then chicken, then the barbeque sauce. I like this order, although the barbeque sauce gets a little messy when trying to squeeze in a bite.

This sub became my three meals a day this Sunday. I ate it at one, and I didn’t eat another thing until Monday. The life of a hungry college kid can be just that sometimes: hungry.

Christina's Pizza

“Christina’s Pizza” said the familiar voice on the other end of the line, “How can I help you?”

This was how I began many a meal while living directly behind Christina’s Pizza in Salem, Massachusetts. Anyone who has been a college student has most certainly experienced many phone calls like this one, and I am no exception. Christina’s was not the first sub shop I tried when I first moved to Salem, and for whatever reason it took me a few years of sifting through the average and the mediocre before I found the holy grail of hole-in-the-wall mom and pop restaurants.

Perhaps it was the location, (Christina’s sits of a main street in Salem, only advertised by a bright blue awning above the entrance) although I doubt it was that at all. Maybe it was convenience (only recently had I moved directly behind Christina’s Pizza, previously I had lived in much closer proximity to other sub shops). I guess that was it—I am a lazy eater.

That is one of the things that make Christina’s great: convenience. Nestled behind the high counter inside the one room restaurant littered with only a few refrigerators for drinks and three tables for the less than eloquent dine-in experience (no public restroom) is a family that occupies the space from ten in the morning to ten at night. The attraction here is the food, and the convenience is how quickly it is served. You ordered one sub? Five minutes. Two? Ten. Three subs, a small calzone, small pizza, and a chicken ziti dinner with broccoli and alfredo sauce with melted cheese and a loaf of garlic bread? Ten to fifteen minutes. One might think that with speed this quick the food must be sloppy, half-prepared and hastily cooked. Wrong. The food at Christina’s is superb, a veritable triumph in delicious subs and pizzas, with everything offered made to its crest of perfection and served rapidly and hot, not to mention always with a smile.

The Christina’s Pizza menu in my apartment has been relegated to the back of a drawer, albeit proudly displayed on top of the countless other menus never touched, as Christina’s is the only one I need. It is torn and battered, as oft beaten as a raw piece of chicken breast; creases and wrinkles line its face. I don’t have to read it anymore. I know each page, inside and out, and I have eaten almost everything offered and seen everything else.

My favorite is the Chicken Kabob sub: large and with everything on it. It is bursting from its sides with ingredients—from the hot, moist chicken to the small chunks of feta cheese that crumble in your mouth beneath the layers of lettuce and tomato—all topped with a homemade Greek dressing that perfectly complements the whole spectrum of flavor; from the crisp, the soft, the hot and the cold, the Kabob sub fits every need I have when eating.

Roast beef on the North Shore is a touchy subject. Each place offers the best, and everyone has an opinion on it. Christina’s does it well. I frequent the roast beef sub, obviously a large but usually plain. This is where I differ from the average self-proclaimed roast beef connoisseur—I eat my beef plain. I like the flavor, what can I say? There is something special about a tender, thinly-sliced cut of prime beef, perfectly seasoned with salt and excellently cooked to a barely-there brown with a hint of the raw reds that makes my mouth water. The extra cheeses, sauces, lettuces and tomatoes that many add may work for them but not for me. I like mine plain. I like to taste the beef—just the beef. Perhaps I also carry around a sense of roast beef cleanliness, as eating it plain reveals only the taste of the beef and not the taste of the overwhelming toppings. I guess I consider myself a pretentious purist as well as a lazy eater. The roast beef at Christina’s fits my high standards. It is fresh and perfectly sliced, not overdone but still hot and juicy. It is everything I could ask for.

Another dish on my regular menu is the chicken broccoli pizza with alfredo sauce. The alfredo sauce is what helps set this pizza apart, as the white creamy sauce is a beautiful compliment to the crisp outside and tender inside of the generous pieces of chicken perched gently on top of the bubbling alfredo, mixed in between the sea of green broccoli, miraculously still edible after being baked on top of a pizza. The alfredo sauce at Christina’s is one of the best I have ever tried, as the rich flavor of the butter and cream delectably compliment the subtleties of the spices. Very often have I tried an alfredo sauce far too seasoned, where the flavor of the parsley, garlic, or other green spices have over powered the entire sauce. A good alfredo remains in the back of the palate while the main ingredients power the meal forward, yet covers the whole dish without enveloping. Christina’s alfredo sauce does this, as when I eat a slice of their pizza I taste first the hot, juicy chicken followed by the broccoli, and then the alfredo, omnipresent but never in front. I have burned my mouth one too many times on these slices.

The crust at Christina’s is fantastic. It is light and airy while retaining the firm, crisp, crunchiness that should (in my opinion) accompany any bite into a slice of pizza. Cooked to perfection, the crust is hard on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside. It sits wonderfully beneath any number of toppings, as Christina’s serve up any number of great pizzas, from normal cheese to buffalo chicken to the Grecian special, with spinach, feta cheese and red onions. Christina’s also won’t hesitate to add any of their offered toppings on top of the already excellent specialty pizzas, as the buffalo chicken pizza with bacon is a particularly greasy heart-stopper that requires as many napkins as slices.

Christina’s Pizza is definitely one of the pizza and sub shops I have tried in a long time. The service is quick and friendly, the food cheap and well done. Every item on the menu has never disappointed me, and I frequently expand my usual selection just because I am so confident in a quality meal from Christina’s, where as in other places I tend to stay with the same thing, over and over again. Christina’s is as four star as any sub shop could be. From the kabobs to the alfredo sauce—they constantly deliver one hot, delicious meal after another.