It was the
late 1960’s and we were college roommates. First Sammy and Janie roomed
together in a dorm. Then Janie and I became best friends and wanted to share a
place. The following year the three of us got a shotgun house off campus. It
cost $20 each a month for rent, not including gas to run the stove and the
freestanding heater in the bedroom. There are many funny stories about a year
in the life of three crazy college kids away at university.
Sammy
was the one with the vast social life. Janie was the glam gal. I’ve always been
bookish and introverted. I was the one with the cookbook.
Sammy
liked to entertain. She could burn water. No one cared who the cook was unless
some guy was shopping for Mrs. Right to cook and clean for him in the future. I
don’t think anyone ever thought that about red-headed, freckled, wild-child,
Sammy.
I
remember there was a dinner she invited her folks to. They were driving up from
Boise to Pocatello, Idaho and we’d feed them and they’d assure themselves we
were not tearing up the town. The menu was fried chicken, homemade biscuits,
and canned green beans since Mom had just sent me a case. It wasn’t unusual to
find a case of canned food on our doorstep – it was Mom’s version of a CARE
package.
Nowadays
people would run out to KFC and get a bucket of chicken with sides. There was
no such option in 1968. It was me getting the supplies ready: raw chicken I cut
up myself, flour, salt, pepper, oil, butter, and milk. Everything for the
dinner was made from scratch.
When
I cooked, I wanted people out of the kitchen. This was not an easy task as our
shotgun house had a bathroom and walk-in pantry at the back. The eat- in
kitchen was home to the front door. Visitors had to walk into the kitchen, then
turn left to get to the living room. The bedroom with our three army cots in it
was on the other side of the living room. Someone was always running through
the kitchen for something.
We
had an ancient gas range and an antediluvian frying pan. It required copious
amounts of oil to do its work or food would integrate itself into the metal.
The
first sign my day was not going to go well was an eruption of smoke. I was
still making up my dredging flour with salt and pepper while the frying
pan was heating. Suddenly, we had what smelled like a three-alarm fire. Sammy
had tossed two pieces of raw, flourless chicken onto the hot, oil-free,
frying pan.
The
chicken promptly adhered to the metal with the intention to stay. I had to pry them
out, then cool the pan, scrub charred chicken bits off with steel wool, and
start over. Sammy wisely vanished as the air around me turned blue.
Janie
was busy neatening our tiny home.
While
the dredged chicken bubbled in a thin layer of hot oil I got to work on the
scrumptious biscuits. There has never been a canned biscuit that could hold a
candle to these beauties. Hand mixed, rolled, and cut, they were baked until
they were golden – crisp on the outside, warm and moist on the inside. They’d
break open like magic and melt in your mouth. Best biscuits ever.
Being
starving college students we used cheap home goods. The green beans were on the
stove warming and a small plastic bowl stood ready to receive them. We had a
variety of bright plastic bowls in various sizes used for serving. There
was a larger plate for the chicken to go onto. I have no idea where we got it.
Our dishes were probably from the Salvation Army because I don’t think any of
them matched. Jam jars for glasses. Silverware mismatched, but we had enough
for a serving spoon for the beans. You get the poor college kid routine in the
late 1960’s.
Janie
set the Formica table and found chairs to seat Sammy and her parents. Janie and
I would eat in the living room.
As
soon as the biscuits were out of the oven and off the rack I wrapped them in a
thin cotton towel in the red plastic bowl. This was the only bowl big enough for
them. The green beans were in an orange bowl. I put both on the table.
Just
as I was ready to start heaping fried chicken on a platter Sammy's parents
arrived. But where were the biscuits? I glanced over at the table and realized
they were missing. I put them on the table, didn’t I? Right next to the beans.
The beans were there.
I
dashed into the pantry, which was too cold for keeping biscuits warm.
“Janie, where are the biscuits?” I called, thinking maybe she’d moved
them into the living room for some reason.
Sammy
waltzed into the room and answered me. “I put them in the oven to keep them
warm.”
Thin
plastic bowl. Oven. Noooooo!
Jerking
open the oven door I beheld a red plastic sculpture. It draped itself over the
towel and the biscuits, running down into the openings in the towel. More red
plastic was drooling down, dripping off the oven rack and gathering on the sizzling
hot floor. Grabbing another towel, I pulled the melted mess out and tried to
peel the plastic off the towel and my precious biscuits. Not happening.
If
her parents had not been there I might have tried sticking Sammy in the oven
for a little warming. Janie was sent on a secret mission to the local Quik-Stop
for a can of biscuits. It gave me time to peel the plastic off the inside of
the oven, swearing a quiet blue streak so Sammy’s mother couldn’t hear. After
that I slid in the plate holding the chicken to keep it toasty and put the
beans back in a pan on a burner.
In
the end, it came together. We ate the sad, canned biscuits. Her parents didn’t
care. It was food. For some reason, they attributed dinner to Sammy’s culinary
skills, of which she had none.
By
the time everyone had eaten I was no longer ready to go all Baba Yaga on her. I
did threaten to remove her fingers with a sharp knife if she got anywhere near
my edibles in the kitchen in the future. I don’t think she believed me.
