Cooking Adds Up (3/3)

Part One

Part Two

"Let's get started" we simultaneously shouted. We had been unprepared and untimely during the first course and were ready to not make that mistake again. I was on vegetarian stir fry and taco duty while my friend tackled spaghetti and burgers. The first thing we did was create a loose time web in our minds for each meal. We would start boiling the water for the pasta right away because that was our largest order and hence needed a lot of water and pasta. I would start organizing the ingredients for the stir-fry, giving the spaghetti water just a little bit of time to start boiling before I began using the stove. My friend would wait a tad to put the burgers on because we wanted them to be warm when they were served. Organizing the stir fry went better than expected, successfully getting the large variety of food on the kitchen table ready for cooking. I started with the sauce, putting in some sugar, soy sauce, and lime juice. I put it on the burner while whisking away at it. After a few minutes, I added some tofu to saute in the sauce, being vigilant to take it out after a few minutes. The stir-fry would start with the tofu, then it would be removed to allow the heavier vegetables too cook, with lighter ones coming in later, only for the tofu to be added back. My first problem came when I was taking the tofu out, my soy sauce based sauce kept boiling down despite me whisking it. At first, I thought it was because I forgot to add oil to the pan beforehand, but this had no effect when added. What hindered my process, even more, was my lack of educated planning. Despite getting out all of the foods, I had not prepared them for being cooked. My carrots were still whole, garlic still clothed, and scallions still standing tall. With the sauce boiling, and me having nothing to put into it right away, I decided to discard the first sauce and to remake it. During this time, I also prepared the vegetables so that they would be ready to be thrown in. As I remade the sauce though it continued to boil despite my whisking of it. Thankfully, a friend who was helping my friend and I clean the kitchen, and overall with logistics, showed me that the heat was on way too high, and so I was able to put the stove top to low and the sauce finally stabilized. I started making the rice right about now too, with some quick and easy store-bought stuff that only needed water on a stove. As I threw in each ingredient I felt relief wash over me as the hardest part of my cooking was done. My friend waltzed into the kitchen saying "try this". A fork instantly appeared over my mouth with a piece of hamburger stuck on it. I was hesitant, not loving hamburger, but eventually gulped it down. It tasted ready to me and so I gave him the go ahead. Right as I thought about how far we made it, the anvil dropped on the perfect picture. I had completely forgotten about the tacos and so had not even started cooking the meat yet, let alone get the food for it in order. It looked like another room temperature meal was upon our guests once again. To further hurt the warmness of our food the spaghetti had finished cooking a long time ago, slowly cooling in its pot situated bath. I quickly oiled a pan up, putting some ground beef over it, and let the stove burn on high. To my glee, ground beef does not take all that long to cook and so winter was slightly averted, giving our food more of a middle spring type of feel. We dished everything up, not worrying about appearances at this point, and started to carry it out to people. It could not of course go perfectly though, as we had forgotten to make the gluten-free pasta we had, leaving one of our awesome eaters out in the cold with an empty stomach. I quickly scrambled to the basement to find some popsicles so they could at least have some things. In the end, everyone was given some food, and they enjoyed it enough to never have complained. At this point, my friend and I were exhausted after a day-long setup and cooking festival. We ended up sitting outside for a while just enjoying the time with our good friends. This feeling of rest was something that we could not covet for long because we both knew there was one more thing to do, desert. Desert was a lot easier than everything else, with us not being hamstrung by any time, with the choices of chocolate fondue, ice cream, and strawberry shortcake being easy to organize. We started to melt the chocolate with the help of some of our friends, laid out whip cream barren strawberry shortcakes, and cut up fruit for the chocolate fondue. Letting the ice cream continue to sleep in the freezer, we got everything including whipped up shortcakes ready to be served. By this point, everyone was in the basement and so we brought all of our tasty treats down there with some helping hands. In short order we unleashed the ice cream as a finishing touch, letting it be self-serve, and our day of cooking was finally done. In the end, this day was a lot more hectic then I thought it would be. While I thought it would be hard to pull off, I never really contemplated the time issue, especially timing hot foods so they were okay. While some stuff, like spilling the tomato bisque, we could not have predicted for, if we do it again making a thorough plan for when things should start being cooked is key. It was an amazing night, a blast that could only be done with something this monstrous. Every person there helped out and their prescience made the evening feel every bit warmer, despite our slightly cool food. Some of our friends really saved us, as they cleaned a lot of dishes that would have made the cooking evening, turn into the cooking "morning". I can only hope I get to try to do something similar to this again, especially with my great co chef!