The cost of cooking

I eat poorly. And I don’t mean eating poorly in the typical college sense. I don’t generally OD on Munch ‘Ems and “utility”-sized bags of chocolate Twizzlers while staying up late writing a paper on Machiavelli. No, my problem is much worse than the typical 2 a.m. dorm room dilemma. \nMy problem is that I try to cook. \nThere are things I cook and eat that I would never, ever serve to another human being. Except for maybe a mortal enemy or my eighth grade life science teacher. She made me stand in front of the whole class with a smoky, charred face as an example of how not to handle a Bunsen burner, and for that she most certainly deserves the handful of the soggy granola I enjoyed for breakfast this morning. But no one else does. \nSo, if Ms. Beterman is the only person I know who deserves that granola, why did I eat it? \nSimilarly, one might ask why, last week, did I consume the most disgusting grilled cheese sandwich ever. It was burned and then put in the microwave to try to melt the cheese, but then all the cheese oozed out so that nothing was left but two pieces of burned bread and slimy American cheese with weird inexplicable air bubbles in it. \nI’ll tell you why I ate that grilled cheese. I ate it for the same reason I eat stale granola and mealy apples and suckers that have that weird gummy film around them from being old and in someone’s pocket. I eat these things because I bought them. They are mine, and I paid money for them. \nDon’t get me wrong. It’s not like I eat when I’m not hungry. I’m not the type of person who will throw the entire bag of freezer burned stir fry into the frying pan just because it’s about to go bad. I must draw the line somewhere and I’ve got no desire to put on 10 pounds of nothing but guilt and stale things. So instead, I’ll eat the freezer-burned stir fry two nights in a row and have a stomach ache two nights in a row. Still gross, but worse than extra weight? That’s debatable. \nIn any event, I feel that too many college kids, myself definitely included, fall into the trap of feeling obliged to make use of every little thing they buy. Being in college changes us in that way. We start to think about things completely differently. It’s one thing to pour Mom and Dad’s milk down the drain when it’s a day over the expiration, but it is most certainly another thing to pour our own $3.29 down that drain. Or, you know, bathroom sink if you live in the dorms. \nI could say that we should stop this. That it’s gross. That “life’s too short to drink cheap wine.” But the fact of the matter is it’s kind of picturesque. It kind of seems like something one should go through in college, along with other character building necessities like onenight stands. \nSo go ahead, eat that stale bread and drink that flat soda. Do it in the name of character building. Personal growth. Experience. And don’t think twice about it, because in the end, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. \nExcept for E. coli. I hear that can actually kill you.