My perfect meal

(well, here it is! tell me what you guys think. Two questions i have, is there enough tension through the piece to keep it intresting, and it's just a bit long, sod does it work at this length or should it be shorter? Oh! and i've had the damnest time getting pictures into this piece. I add them to the word doc and the entire comp freezes. I add em to the blog and firefox freezes, and then the comp freezes. X-X i've downsized the pics quite a bit, but still can't get them in. if anyone knows a way around this tell me, but might just be due to this being an old, and crappy comp.)

    The perfect meal

            It is common to hear, read, or talk about a “perfect meal.” Everyone has an opinion, and that is perhaps what makes it both such an interesting and such a difficult topic. The perfect meal for one person might be unappealing and inedible to another. To one person, the perfect meal might not even be food dependent, but is be more effected by with whom and where it is eaten. Other people might feel that the food is the only part that matters. So when challenged to make my own perfect meal, the question was not actually the making a perfect meal, but deciding in the first place what the hell I consider to be a perfect meal.

            It came down to two qualities. The first involved the food I would have to make, and in this regard it was easy enough to decide. The food would have to put forth a variety of flavors and at the same time be very satisfying. It would have to be first a meal that left you full and warm inside. Secondly, as for the feel of the meal itself, and who I ate it with, that took a little more thought. I grew up with a family that practiced a wonderful tradition: we ate together as a family. For me, there couldn’t be a lot of fuss and showiness.  It had to be a simple meal, with the family, in a casual manner.   And that is what I achieved, for more than one reason.

            With this much decided, next up was the menu. I chose to ignore the synergy between foods. I am well aware that some foods go better with others; I just don’t particularly care about that myself. Food is food is food.  With this in mind, I picked four very different and very good foods to have together. The first choice was easy- bread machine bread. I grew up with the stuff; it’s infectious and delicious scent, and wonderful fluffy warmth. Now it would be my turn to make it. Speaking of childhood favorites, my mind quickly turned to broccoli with melted cheese. This mix had been a long-standing favorite of mine, and also was healthy! Halfway there, I needed now only a dessert and a meat.

            Picking which meat I would use for this meal was complicated. I’m a great lover of meat, and a self-proclaimed carnivore. Would it be tender pork chops, or simple and delicious chicken legs? There were far too many choices, so I decided to go in another direction: fish. With fish it’s much easier, since I really only like tuna and salmon, and salmon won out in the end. One more item, dessert. For the longest time I’ve enjoyed making dessert. Be it cookies or cake, it was one of the best parts of baking for me. When I found out we had a box of red velvet cake, I dropped the idea of making chocolate cake to try the red velvet, something I’d never made before. The menu was set. But a bigger question now loomed before me.  It’s been a good while since I’ve last cooked. Would I be able to make this meal?

            Once Friday came around, I rolled out of bed and got to work answering that rather scary question. It started early, as the bread machine bread takes a while to cook. I got a ride home and went about figuring out how to do this. For the longest time I’d considered the bread machine to be some big, complicated process. From what little I knew, making bread by hand was far from simple, and even with the aid of a machine, in this case, I thought it would be rough. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Much to my delight and enjoyment, it became a simple task. All that was needed was to add the ingredients: flour, yeast, water, salt, oil, and a few other things all put into the machine and then left to bake. There was a touch of disappointment that it wasn’t as complex as I thought, but that was easily overcome by the calming simplicity of it. I liked that it wasn’t some large arduous task to make such good bread, but instead an act that merely required a few moments, the right ingredients, and the will to do it.

            Returning to college, I went through classes, my mind back on the bread churning away in the machine, being baked to perfection. That had gone smoothly enough, but what I was really worried about was the other three components. Broccoli can be touchy, and gross when over-cooked. Salmon burns easily, and I’d never attempted red velvet cake. It wasn’t long though, before I ended up confronting all three. But before I did, one other task remained. Upon returning home I pulled a fresh, warm, fluffy loaf of bread from the bread machine. One part down, three to go.

            The cake came next, the mix asking for the usual suspects: eggs, water, and oil. I don’t use a set of beaters to mix batter; I do it by hand with a spoon. It takes longer, but just feels right. It’s while I’m mixing that I see something unusual. For those who haven’t had red velvet cake before, it’s called “red” velvet for a reason. I looked down and was stirring a mixture that was unsettlingly blood red. Into the pan the batter went, and into the oven the pan went. Better to not ponder on just what it looked like at that point. What came out of the oven was a fluffy, incredibly rich, dark red cake, which more then made up for its initial appearance.

            The salmon was easier, thankfully, and less disturbing. It simply was plopped down into the pan, lathered with olive oil and broiled for ten minutes, poked and cut a bit, and then cooked for another ten or so. It was by far the simplest part of the meal to make. The broccoli on the other hand, was a bit more interesting. First, having washed and separated the pieces, I needed to cut and chop it into manageable bits. Being the adventurous soul that I am, I found the butcher’s cleaver and went to work. Despite the overkill of using that knife, it actually worked quite well, requiring only one or two quick chops. The cut broccoli was then tumbled down into the pan with some water, covered and left to cook. Timing here was essential, and at the critical moment, the pan was pulled from the heat. Now a rich, vibrant green, the broccoli was drained and put back into the pan, then mixed around with copious amounts of cheese and margarine. The meal was ready.

            So then we sit, just my parents and I, with my sister away at a cake decorating class.  She’s getting quite good at this art. The meal certainly didn’t disappoint. The bread was incredibly fluffy on the inside, and crunchy/crumbly on the outside.  The salmon came out wonderfully, flavorful and soft, unburned in most places. Finally the broccoli mixed well with the cheese, making a tasty combination. One plateful fills me up with ease, thanks in part to the filling properties of the bread.

            Last comes the cake, which is beautiful both in color and taste now. Thick, incredibly rich, and with a rather unique flavor, it requires little with it. Sitting back, very full, very satisfied, and very happy, I question myself. Is this what I wanted it to be? Was this meal indeed perfect? By the criteria I set it certainly was. It was homely, close and simple, eaten with just my parents and me. It filled us all right up, and offered several different and good tastes. Yet, more importantly for me, perhaps then any of those categories, I’d made it myself. I found then, sitting and resting after this perfect meal, that what made it more than just a good meal was that I’d made it myself and shared it with my family. That pride in having managed to cook an entire meal, with the instruction and help of my parents to be sure, but still, to have cooked it myself, was wonderful. A sense of responsibility and pride, these spices made the meal perfect.