The other night I made myself some grilled cheese for dinner, and I can tell you'without exaggeration or hyperbole'that it was the finest grilled cheese sandwich that has ever existed on Earth.
I took two extra-wide pieces of country white bread, slathered them with a liberal spreading of real butter, delicately placed two slices of finest American cheese between them and pan-fried the entire creation until the bread took on a rich amber color. It was, in short, the perfect sandwich. If I died tomorrow and went to Valhalla, I would fully expect them to be serving sandwiches such as these at Thor's dining table.
You may think it odd to so appreciate the artistry of grilled cheese, but you ought to remember I am a college student. Like many college students, my meal options are somewhat constrained by a limited budget, a busy schedule and a lack of culinary know-how. I cannot prepare a delicious turkey dinner with all the fixings, nor is eggplant parmesan a feasible option. Hell, I'm lucky I can grill hamburgers without setting fire to my building.
Eating out is an option, but it is a course fraught with peril. I, for example, live across from a McDonald's. I've not yet seen 'Super-Size Me,' but I don't need a documentary film to tell me eating a double cheeseburger every day would not exactly turn me into a decathlete, no matter what their advertising partnership with the Olympics might suggest.
We students therefore retreat to simpler cuisine'very often the staples of our childhood diets. The aforementioned grilled cheese sandwich is king. We eat Chef Boyardee and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Old friends like Count Chocula and Cap'n Crunch, who we may have forsaken as we got older for more sophisticated early-morning fare, retake their places at our breakfast tables; sometimes they stay for lunch and late-night snacks as well.
As a five-year-old, there was nothing finer than coming home from the playground to an exquisite peanut butter-and-jelly lunch. The same is true of our current selves, except 'playground' has been replaced with 'stats midterm.'
Such simple cuisine, then, is not just something easy to make and quick to eat, but also a reconnection with our childhood roots at this transitional period in our lives.
However, there is something even more interesting happening here. There comes a time when we start to spruce up these simple recipes. One college student may start to add rosemary and thyme to further enhance his Tombstone frozen pizza. Another may add Cajun seasoning to her noodles to add some kick. We students are world-renowned for our creative approaches to solving the problem of bland ramen.
And, of course, there is my exquisite sandwich. In my grilled cheese artistry, I dress up my youthful tastes with adult sophistication. Is this not what college is for? No longer children but not yet adults, we are fabulous strange hybrids, formed by our increasingly-receding high school lives and cultured with a taste of the adult world. Why, the near-gourmet macaroni and cheese you cook up between your 11 a.m. lecture and your 1:20 p.m. lab is a metaphor for your own existence!
So enjoy your refined peanut butter-and-jelly days. But at the same time, don't be too worried about one day turning into a sensible turkey dinner. Because, after all, turkey is delicious too.
E-mail comments, responses and recipes to Justin at morrisonbass@yahoo.com.
