Culinary Collegiates

This is me.

This is my sophomore year roommate and good friend to this day.

Adrianna was a mutual friend, and in case you couldn't tell, it was her 20th birthday. It was April 2009, and our sophomore year was coming to a close. We decided to bake cupcakes for Adrianna's birthday, and because we doubled the recipe to make as many as possible, we had enough red velvet batter left over for a cake.

I learned three valuable lessons from my roommate Diana that day:
1. It's always okay to eat the batter as you go.
2. It's possible to bake with olive oil instead of canola oil, even if OCD-baker Andrea has a serious problem with it.
3. Always overfill the cupcakes. They're more fun when they're spilling over the cups. Also, don't skimp on the icing. The more icing, the better.

I refused to follow these three rules that day. I decided to bake my half of the cupcakes my way. But when Adrianna reached toward an obnoxiously fat, frosting-drowned cupcake for her first bite, I realized there might be something to these three golden rules. Especially when I ate one for myself.

That entire year was filled with culinary craziness. It was our first year away from a meal plan and faced with our own kitchen. We made a pact to eat dinner together and cook as much as possible. I was the pasta maker; Diana made a pineapple chicken that was unbelievable.

Those were the early days when we'd fight over who got to wash our little tie-dye Target plates. Yeah. That lasted maybe 2 weeks. And unfortunately, as the semester wore on, we cooked less and less. But we always made a point to sit down at our little kitchen table and have our separately-prepared dinners together. But my favorite memories are the ones where we attempted cooking together. We'd divvy up what needed to be done, and we'd attack it, aprons and all. It was a cooking adventure, sophomore year. And it brought two acquaintances to the brink of friendship. And we've been close ever since.

And yes, we still cook. We don't live together, but we still try to get together for lunch or dinner. I think my adventurous streak in the kitchen came from that year. I'd never cooked with anyone other than my mom before, and Diana and I, even though we both came from traditional Italian families, still had things to learn from each other.

But more than any of that, if was fun. Oh, was it fun.