For Next Time

      “Honey, I swear to god I wrote this out in ’96,” my mother sighed over the phone, digging an old slip of paper out of her recipe folder.

      "You found it?" I asked. 

My mom and I sitting on a bench. 

      “Yeah, it’s here. I can’t believe it! It’s a sign, you know? Now you have to make it.”

I had frantically called my mother Thursday night to ask for advice.  I had been assigned a paper a few weeks before where I had to make my perfect meal.  At first I had thought this would be a great opportunity.  I could eat meat!  I would have a reason to buy expensive ingredients that I knew I couldn’t afford.  I could kick my housemates out of my kitchen for an entire evening! 

      But as I flipped through my homemade composition-notebook bound recipe book for inspiration, I quickly realized this would test my indecisiveness, my lack of pro-activeness and my inability to settle for anything less than perfect. 

      I wanted to make meat. I wanted to find a way to feel good about eating a food I love, a food I believe should be consumed by humans in a healthy, moderate, sustainable way. I wanted an excuse to visit the farms in Kalamazoo, MI where I had been purchasing my local eggs from for the past seven months.  I knew where my meat came from in my hometown of Minneapolis, but I was ashamedly ignorant of my current surroundings. And really, I was just craving a delicious breakfast sausage, covered in peppers.  Or eggs benedict, made with REAL thick cut, locally raised, grass fed bacon. Even meatloaf sounded appetizing. 

      But what to pick? There were too many options. I haven’t eaten any meat—besides the occasional sushi binge—since I was home this summer when my mother could afford to purchase meat I could justify eating.  

      I called her because I couldn’t decide and because we hadn’t spoken in over two days, way longer than maternally acceptable. 

      “Don’t cook meat. You won’t be happy in the end.”

      “What? Why mom? I would visit the farms, I’d be okay with it.”

      “You’ll feel bad. You’ll cook it. It’ll taste good. But you’ll feel bad. Make something that you know will make you feel happy when you eat it.”

      “You don’t know me,” I responded, knowing that she was undeniably right. 

      “Han. Make mushroom risotto.  You’ve never made it all on your own.  And you’ll remember how to make it for the rest of your life. And there is absolutely no way you can feel bad after eating risotto. Especially if you throw in a wad of butter at the very end like the Italians do.”

      It was perfectly obvious. Mushroom Risotto was my perfect meal as a child, before I became a vegetarian. And now that meat was off the table, I found a lot of comfort eating it with my family, one of the only meatless-meals my parents and younger sister loved eating as much as any meat-based dish. 

      My mom first made mushroom risotto when she was in her early 30s, when I was just five.  She wrote the recipe down from her Italian sister-in-law Zinni who assured her it was the way real Italians made it.  Serendipitously, my mother found the piece of paper she had written the recipe down on fifteen years ago.  

      “I’ll scan it to you. You won’t understand my directions, it’s in the short-hand I use for all my recipes. But I’ll explain it to you.”

      I thanked my mom and went to bed happy that I had made a decision, and hungry for the delicious dish I had craved constantly as a child. I resolved that I would make the dinner for my housemates the following night, and fell asleep dreaming of little button mushrooms dancing on my eyelids.

      I woke up Friday morning with my throat throbbing and my nose dripping with mucous. 

      I’m not going to lie, I shamelessly cried about it. I think I was just worn out.  I had been organizing a big poetry event on my college campus and I had been getting very little sleep to keep up with my homework and my social life. But I also just really wanted to go for a relaxing walk downtown to get my groceries before cooking a meal by myself, two luxuries I’ve rarely allowed myself to experience this year. 

      Two of my wonderful wonderful housemates witnessed my breakdown and took pity on me.  Max and Emily offered to go to the local People’s Food Co-op for the majority of the ingredients and the nearby one-stop giant grocery store Meijer for the parsley and fresh mushrooms for me when they went to get their weekly groceries.  They didn’t let me resist their kindness.  Max wrote down my list of ingredients while Emily made me some tea. 

As they drove off, I drifted off to sleep for the next six hours, hoping I would wake up somewhat revived. 

***

      Sunday was a beautiful day in Kalamazoo, and the perfect day to make my perfect meal. I had recuperated from Friday’s sudden sickness, the poetry event I had organized had gone well and I was on a high from all the beautiful sunlight coming through my house’s windows.  I had invited all my housemates to my meal, but had asked them politely to stay out of the kitchen while I cooked, something that otherwise would never have happened, as the kitchen is a common gathering space for the seven of us. 

      I started to prepare my meal.  But before the actually cooking started, I had to set the scene just how I wanted it.  Our perpetually dirty kitchen had to be clean if this was going to be my perfect meal.  So I set out scrubbing down the stove, tackling the giant pile of dishes in and next to the sink, sweeping the floors and putting away the dry dishes.  

      I’ve started becoming more and more like my mother since I’ve started living on my own, and I’ve stopped resisting it.  I enjoy cleaning now, I find it relaxing. My mother cleans before our cleaning lady, Dasha, arrives.  I also couldn’t start making my perfect meal without opening the small kitchen window a crack, grabbing a handful of berry scented candles and some music to play in the background.  When my mother cooks, it’s an event.  There’s James Taylor and Carole King playing, a fire in the fireplace, flowers on the counter, and my father steps in for a dance every now and then. 

      I wanted that. I wanted to be at home with them while I cooked. 

I lit the candles, turned on some music, poured myself a small glass of boxed wine and started to cook. 

Filtering the liquids. 

      Risotto is a lot harder than I remember as a kid. The ingredients are simple: arborio rice, unsalted butter, olive oil, a large onion, wine, chicken broth—which I substituted with mushroom broth—white wine, cream, Parmigiano-Reggiano, a little bit of parsley, dried porcinis and fresh mushrooms.  But the process is rough.  

      “Risotto is always the same, except for the liquids and how you finish it,” I remembered my mother telling me as I sauteed the chopped onion in the butter and olive oil in my housemate’s beautiful red pot. I added the rice and coated it in the buttery mixture.  I poured in the white wine and stirred the golden-mixture for several minutes. Then I started to get anxious. 

The arborio rice starts to absorb the liquids.

      The liquids need to be hot when you add them to the risotto, that’s the key. That’s where the patience comes in.  I had started heating the mushroom broth, but I didn’t know if it was quite hot enough.  The risotto was supposed to stay just short of boiling, my mother had told me.  I hesitantly added a cup of the broth to the rice.  I was shocked at how quickly the rice absorbed the liquid.  I constantly stirred the rice with one hand while the other scooped the almost-boiling liquid into the pot. 

      Then I realized I had forgotten to reconstitute the mushrooms! They needed to boil in water for twenty minutes in order to be ready to add to the risotto. As I reached for a new pot, three of my housemates walked in to the house. 

      The sun was setting and my candles were not sufficient lighting.  I had to turn on the fluorescent lights I hated so much. I have nightmares with bad lighting.  I felt my perfect atmosphere slipping away from me as Max started stirring my rice, Emily danced to the music, and Ryan stared at his chili heating up in the microwave. And I needed to add liquid to the rice!

      “Guys, I’m sorry to be a bitch, but I really need you all to leave the kitchen.”

   

The re-constituted porcini mushrooms. 

   I was even more like my mother than I thought. I had kicked people out. I felt horrible. My I couldn’t add the liquid fast enough, I had been rude to my housemates, and I was getting sweaty from all the stress. 

      But suddenly, the risotto started tasting right.  It was slightly creamy, yet a bit al-dente, just like I remembered it.  I was getting close. 

      I pulled the porcini mushrooms off of the burner, strained them, and gave them a rough chop. I added some of the leftover liquid to the risotto like my mother instructed and was feeling pretty good about my dinner. 

      I had forgotten to saute the fresh mushrooms. 

Delicious rustic country bread from WaterStreet. 

      I was so disappointed.  As I watched the fresh mushrooms saute into beautiful brown clumps, I felt my risotto going from that perfect al-dente to a mushy, sticky consistency. 

      Pissed, sweaty and hungry, I added the mushrooms, cream, cheese, salt, pepper and parsley to the pot, threw in a clump of butter for good measure, and called my housemates down for dinner, embarrassed by what I was serving them. I wanted them to taste my childhood, and I was certain this wasn’t going to be it. 

      I set the table with some tulips I had bought from my favorite local coffee shop, Waterstreet Coffee Joint and lit some candles on the table.  I pulled the bread out of the oven that was also baked and purchased from Waterstreet and we sat down to eat.

As Max, Emily and Melissa ladled heaps of risotto onto their plates, I started passing the bread.  They all thanked me for inviting them and I shrugged, hoping it was edible. 

      It may not have looked like my mothers, but it sure tasted like it. 

Setting the mood with candles and tulips. 

     It was just as creamy, just as mushroom-filled as I remembered it. I had been freaked out for no reason, and my friends loved it.  It was then I realized how silly I had been.  In search of my perfect meal, I was searching for perfection, something I now know I cannot achieve. But what I found was friends who care enough about me to buy my groceries for me when I’m sick, who get out of the kitchen when I ask them to, who put up with my silly love of good-lighting, and who take the time out of their day to eat my mush of a meal. 

      We laughed throughout dinner, finishing all the bread and all of our piles of risotto.  As the meal ended, we turned up the volume on my speakers and danced in our living room until our stomachs hurt from too much cream and just enough laughter. 

      The next day was Valentines day, and just as lovely as Sunday with the sun and the birds out from hiding.  I got a text from a friend saying I had a package in the mail center. It was a Valentine from my mother. Inside was a package and a plastic bag full of dried morel mushrooms and a card that read, “For next time.”