Process Writing

Each piece for this class pretty much started with my personal reactions to whatever had been assigned, whether it was a reading response or one of the three big writing assignments we did. I know that I learn better when I can relate things from class to things that have happened in my life or to other things that I may know more about than the subject being discussed in class or in the readings. Then after I finished an assignment I would wait for feedback and then react to or change things based on the feedback I got.

I got frustrated when I thought I was being clear, but people didn’t understand what I was talking about. I also got frustrated with my apparent inability to control my tangents. I don’t talk very much out loud, but it would seem that I more than make up for it in writing. That’s sometimes a bad thing, because too many random tangents can take away from the point I’m trying to make, I just won’t see it because in my mind everything makes sense.

Breakthroughs definitely came when I figured out a new way to say something that I hadn’t before. For example there was a line in the first draft of my restaurant review that said something vague about smoky and spicy smells that restaurants serving Middle-and South-Eastern cuisine usually do, but then I figured out I could be more specific and people might better understand what I meant.

With each draft and workshop I tried to incorporate both the professor’s written feedback on the hard copy and the verbal feedback from my classmates. In some cases I was more successful than in others; the last big written assignment was especially difficult because it was rather open-ended and I tend to stumble a bit when things aren’t directly outlined for me in the instructions for an assignment. I realize I’m in college and that’s probably something I should work on because a lot of paper prompts are rather open-ended, but that’s just the way I work. I like everything to be laid out specifically so I know exactly what the professor wants by means of a response.

Writing for this course, as I’ve already said, has made me realize that I tend to talk about myself. A whole lot. Absolutely everything is about me, things I’ve done, my family, my friends. Frankly, I think it’s a little bit embarrassing. I try not to talk about myself out loud all that much because I think doing so makes me sound like a self-centered twerp, but apparently I have no such worries in writing. No matter what, the first thing I think of when asked to respond to a reading or an assignment is something that has to do with myself. To me that says I need to focus less on the actual personal experience and more about how the experience relates to the assignment and then analyze what that might mean. Less personal anecdotes and more analyzing the motivation behind the personal anecdote and why the assignment made me think of it.

No one wants to hear someone talk about themselves incessantly, including me, so I think it’s time I toned down the storyteller part of me and exercised more of the analytical thinking side. I might want to write fiction as a job, but that doesn’t mean I can incorporate stories in all my assignments for classes.  

Restaurant Review Assignment: Part 3

            Looking back at my pre-restaurant experience, I was expecting it to be an adventure, a glimpse into a culture I knew relatively little about. We mentioned “culinary tourism” in class, and I definitely had my metaphorical Culinary Tourist outfit on—Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, camera, and all. But on the whole, it was rather disappointing. The biggest adventure was getting there, since Thai Cuisine is tucked inside the corner of a strip mall so that it isn’t visible from the street. The food, however, really wasn’t all that great. It made me think about how we talked about “authenticity” during class. We discussed how “authentic” cultural food might be changed—in large or in small ways—to make it more palatable to a restaurant’s American audience. I think this is what happened with Thai Cuisine. They are, of course, trying to make a living here, so people have to be willing to eat their food. My thought is that if they made the restaurant food the same as if they were making it for people with cultural and culinary ties to Thailand, it would probably be very different from the dishes they served my friends and I when we went there, and they would probably lose a large portion of their customer base, because Americans used to the salty, oily, relatively tasteless junk of the fast-food industry might not like something spicy with more flavor.

            Also, I assumed that the word cuisine in the restaurant’s title was literal. I was not expecting take-out quality food. If the sign says that the food a restaurant serves is in the category of cuisine, then I’m going to think higher-end food, not something that looks like it came out of a Gordon Food Service box. Maybe this is due to the fact that I’m used to reading the word “cuisine” in the form of haute-cuisine, which is really high-end French food, or maybe I’m just weird, I don’t know.

            I do know, however, that in the future I am definitely going to take the word “authentic” with several very large grains of salt. “Authentic” really depends on the culinary background of the person eating the food—to someone who’s never had Thai food before, maybe the stuff served at Thai Cuisine really is what authentic Thai food tastes like. To someone who knows about the types of food made in Thailand, however, I’m going to guess that while the dishes might have similar names, what they make for their family is not going to be at all the same as what the restaurant makes for its customers. So I think that in all there really is no definition for any “authentic” food of a country. I can understand traditional dishes of a country, but even those can differ depending on who makes them as well, so I think my lesson from all this has been to eat what tastes good and not necessarily what someone says is an “authentic” example of a certain place’s food. 

            Even when I go on study-abroad, I am going to go to Scotland and eat whatever sounds good to me, no matter what people tell me. Sure, I might try suggestions, but it won't be because I want an "authentic" Scottish experience, it will be because I want to try new foods that I may or may not like. My experience in Scotland might end up being completely different from my friend Ashley's experience, even though she also wants to study abroad in Aberdeen. So then which one is the "authentic" experience? I don't think that's a question that can be answered by one broad definition, I think each person's experience is different, and they can define it as "authentic" if they choose to, or not if they choose not to. For me, I'm just going to be going to Scotland, and that's good enough for me. I don't care if it's "authentic or not, I just want to go there, learn stuff, maybe have some adventures. I don't want the "authentic" experience. I want my experience.

Perfect Meal-Final

            My “perfect meal,” as it turned out, was more of a series of challenges I had to overcome in order to make this dinner work, but in the end I found parts I could laugh at and I was satisfied with it. In the beginning I was imagining things going along the same lines as when my mom cooks dinner, where everything goes smoothly and all the dishes arrive on the table at exactly the right time, piping hot and ready to eat. But, as I was about to discover, this was going to be a learning experience.

I gave myself two rules for this dinner:

1. For once don’t worry about where the food came from; because in the time frame I had I couldn’t waste time finding better ingredients that cost more, I had to stay under a $100.00 spending limit.

2. Try to stay as close to my mom’s recipe as possible, but I could to change things if I needed to.

It began with a simple plan: chicken tetrazzini as the main dish. Chicken tetrazzini is my favorite food ever in the history of the universe because of the many happy memories attached to it and how it makes me feel every time it eat it. The first time I ever had it was in sixth grade at a friend’s house on Halloween because that was what her mom cooked for dinner before we went out trick-or-treating. It was cold, I was hungry, and I was on cloud nine because I was with my best friend for the first time in months. After fifth grade we ended up at different schools, so I no longer saw her every day. I don’t remember my costume that year, but I remember we had chicken tetrazzini for dinner. It was one of those magic moments when you taste something and go “What is this stuff? I want to eat it every day for the rest of my life!” After I split from that friend, my mom put her own twist on the recipe, which changed it from being the dish I’d eaten with the girl I wasn’t friends with anymore to being something my mom cooked when it was just going to be the two of us home for dinner or when she wanted to make me very, very happy. It became my special dish because no one else in my family liked it. And, of course, because of the fact that it’s my favorite dish and my mom makes it especially for me, it is the king of all comfort foods.

I already knew the basics of what I’d need—pasta, chicken, cooking sherry, parmesan, milk, garlic, mushroom, and onion. But other than that, I had no idea what I was doing, especially not when I was cooking for five other people besides myself. So I did what any smart chef would do when they’re out of their depth, and I called upon a better chef than myself. In other words, I asked my mom. She emailed me the recipe she based hers off of and then told me what changes to make. I already had a vegetable, since my mom had given me some squash to bring back with me after midterm break. I hadn’t gotten around to eating it yet, so I decided that would probably agree with everyone. And if my friends didn’t like squash, well, that just meant there would be more left over for me. Once I knew what I was going to serve, I thought I was all set. But my adventure as chef-for-a-day was only just beginning.

First I had to get my ingredients, a chain of events which involved a lot of text messaging and finally an out-of-the-blue offer from my friend Caitlin, who said she would chauffeur me to the store and back when I mentioned I was making a meal. I couldn’t invite her because she had something important going on the night I was planning on having the meal, not because she isn’t a wonderful person. She took me the day before I was planning on making dinner. I knew I had to get everything for under $100, so I decided that Meijer was my best shot. We got to Meijer and I found almost everything I needed—except the cooking sherry. That was bad.  The cooking sherry is what has made this dish amazing in the past. It gives the creamy sauce that’s similar to alfredo an extra twist of flavor that goes extremely well with chicken, parmesan, mushrooms, and pasta.

Thus began the frustrating but amusing Great Sherry Hunt. I looked on the shelf where it was marked “COOKING SHERRY,” but alas, there was no cooking sherry. Caitlin and I walked around, trying to think of other places Meijer might put cooking sherry, because sometimes Meijer has the same things at two different places in the store, but no such luck. So I asked one of the salespeople to help us. When he saw that there wasn’t any on the shelf, he offered to go back into the stock room and see if they had any there. Strike two. There wasn’t any in the back. So he thought maybe there might be some down the liquor aisle, which I guess makes sense, but Caitlin and I kept getting weird looks from adults because were both too young to be buying any alcohol. We looked at each other and had to bite our lips to keep from laughing.

There wasn’t any cooking sherry in the liquor aisle either.

I thanked the man for his time and then Caitlin and I went to check out. By that time, it was past six. I was getting a little bit cranky and very hungry, plus Caitlin needed to get back because she was late for a practice, but in a last-ditch effort, I asked her to stop in at Target to see if Target had any cooking sherry. Voila, Target had exactly…three bottles. Fortunately, I only needed one.

When it finally got around to the night I was planning on making dinner, I quickly learned that cooking enough for six people in a college dorm is an immense amount of work. First I had to transfer my ingredients and cooking utensils from my room to the kitchen before I could do anything else, which in itself took fifteen minutes. What did I learn from this? Start earlier. I had planned for dinner at 6:30 or 7 in the evening, since that’s when my family usually eats dinner, but it was quickly becoming obvious that everything was going to take longer—or at least seem like it would take longer to accomplish—because I was on a time constraint. It also didn’t help any that I was doing this all on my own. I’d told my friends that I was cooking dinner, so they took me at my word, but I was used to having several family members at my disposal to do things like chop onions and garlic and mushrooms, so it was harder than I was expecting.

The kitchen itself wasn’t all that welcoming. The cupboards were empty and the fridge was mostly empty as well. The microwave and the oven were brand new, so that was nice, but then I noticed the stove. The stove was electric, and I hate electric stoves. They’re like an evil younger sibling: annoying and difficult. Trying to control the temperature of them is next to impossible unless the person trying to cook something knows the quirks of the particular stove they’re trying to work on. I did not know this stove, which immediately told me I would have to watch things extra carefully so they didn’t burn. Added to that was the fact that I was tripping myself up over how long different things were taking to do—the onions didn’t get soft fast enough, the mushrooms took longer than the recipe said to get brown—and the abrupt arrival of two Chinese girls, chattering away in Mandarin and looking around at the mess I’d successfully managed to make within ten minutes of beginning to cook. I’d bet money on the fact that they probably thought I was a little bit nuts. They then proceeded to take over two of the four burners on the stove, but fortunately that was no problem to me because I was only using one.

Now, I’m used to smelling the progress of dishes as they are prepared. In mine I had started with sautéing onion and then adding garlic and chicken, and the smells kept combining into something delicious. Until the other girls started cooking. To be honest, their soup clashed horribly with the beginnings of my sauce on the stove. There was a sharp, almost fermented smell that I didn’t recognize, plus raw tofu and fish. None of those go particularly well with chicken tetrazzini. And all the while they were talking in Chinese. Since I was excluded for the most part from their conversation, I felt a little bit like I was invading someone else’s space without permission, which was odd because it was a public kitchen.

Trying to share the kitchen was like a circus clown act, or a movie scene where everything goes hilariously wrong but comes out okay, because I was getting in their way just as much as they were getting in mine. There wasn’t enough counter space for the both of us, so we kept having to dodge each other on our way back and forth from the counter to the stove. At least one of them could speak English, because a couple of times she had to ask me to move so she could get to one of the cupboards. Then the stove itself began causing problems. One of their pots would boil over, or I would accidentally spill some of the tetrazzini sauce because my frying pan was too small. That added a layer of burnt smells to the kitchen. Eventually they left, which gave me some room to breathe while I finished cooking the pasta that would be the base of the dish. I had to make two boxes, because I knew that one of my friends—Marquise—would eat three times as much as everyone else. He’s a weightlifter, so he always eats a lot. My friend Stephanie showed up early, so I employed her help making sure the second batch of pasta didn’t boil over while I warmed up the squash my mom had given me in the microwave. It took slightly longer than I was expecting, but I eventually got everything onto the table in the third floor lounge of the dorm. As my friends and I all sat down, I apologized for the horrendous smell, and said it wasn’t my fault. They laughed and Andrea said: “It’s fine, Rachel, the food will taste good anyway.”

At first I didn’t believe her. I was really nervous but also excited to see what my friends would think. I had invited everyone was closest to here at college, which added up to all of five people: Stephanie, Sara, Andrea, Ashley, and Marquise. But because they were my closest friends, I started worrying about things that could go wrong. What if they weren’t hungry? What if they didn’t like what I’d made? Then I told myself to stop it; they were my friends and they loved me. So I sat them all down and started serving. Marquise was late because I’d sent him to go get milk, but everyone seemed genuinely impressed with the food. Andrea, Sara, and Ashley each said it was delicious at some point during the meal. I scarfed down a first serving and then I just let them talk amongst themselves while I dashed in and out checking on the brownies I was baking for dessert. I don't actually remember tasting the food all that much, because my brain was so occupied with everything else. Later I realized that while it hadn't tasted as good as my mom's—nothing ever could—I'd given it my best shot, and though I had been nervous in the back of my mind, I had enjoyed myself. I was probably nervous because I’m a perfectionist and very little involved in getting this meal together had been perfect, but it had been fun. Not as relaxing as I had hoped, but fun. After we finished eating, we talked about Ebonics and code switching between when we went home and when we were at school. We kept trying to get Marquise to speak Ebonics, but he couldn’t. He kept laughing and protesting, saying “it’s difficult to do when I’m not among other people who speak it too!”

Though it was fun, it didn’t feel the same as sitting down to a dinner with family. This meal was an assignment for a class, so I somehow felt that my friends were going to be judging my cooking skills. I was cooking not because I needed food or because I wanted to, but because I was supposed to cook something “perfect” and this really hadn’t been perfect. I can see how professional chefs would end up yelling things if their kitchens didn’t work like clockwork, because having to do things within a certain time period where people are expecting a certain level of proficiency from you definitely adds a stress that wouldn’t be there if, for example, I was baking bread at home on a Saturday morning during the summer.  If I had to deal with that stress all day every day as my job that people were paying me to do, it would make me want to yell and throw things too. I guess I see it as kind of like someone asking me to read them every single poem I’ve ever written, whether I like it or not. I see cooking as an art form, one that apparently I’m decent at, because my friends finished everything except the squash, and that was only because my mom sent me a heck of a lot of squash. Three of them asked for the tetrazzini recipe.

Sara and Ashley offered to stay behind and help with dishes, so that was nice. That’s what I’ve always hated about cooking: I have to clean up my own messes. But I didn’t drop anything and break it, and nothing else went wrong. It was actually rather enjoyable, because we gossiped about boys while we cleaned up together.

When I got into bed that night I felt the same kind of tired as I do after I’ve finished six hours of work editing, proofreading, and expanding a story or poem: an accomplished tired. I had done what I set out to do successfully, despite the problems that arose. Still, I couldn’t help thinking that getting everything on the table at the same time hot and ready to eat was either much harder than my mother made it look, or I just wasn’t quite proficient at it yet. Next quarter I’ll try again, and because of my experience with this meal, it will work better and be less stressful for me. It won’t be the same as if I was at home, but I am determined, so maybe next time I will be more successful at bringing a little bit of home to college.

Restaurant Review-Final

            Tucked away into the corner of a strip mall off Drake Ave. in Kalamazoo, MI Thai Cuisine is a medium-size restaurant that has similar characteristics to the Isla de Muerta from “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.” Going there is a bit of an adventure, and “it cannot be found except by those who already know where it is” (or people who have a computer or a Maps app on their smartphones).

Keeping with the Isla de Muerta theme, the place was as eerily empty as a cave in an island of the dead containing a stone chest full of cursed Aztec gold. There is enough seating for forty or fifty people, but only two tables were occupied at around six on one particular Friday evening; an older couple speaking quietly enough to each other that their conversation just sounded like vague mumbles sitting on the opposite side of the room from a group of four girls. The girls were easily the largest source of noise, yet it was still quiet enough in the restaurant to hear the traditional flute music coming from the speakers in the ceiling with the volume turned down low. Of course restaurants are allowed to have off nights, but it seemed a bit odd that one of this size didn’t have more people eating there.

The restaurant has large windows, warm lighting, and an interesting mix of decorations. Waist-high golden statues of Chinese-style spirits and dragons stand guard on either side of the door, next to the fireplace in the center of the room, and at various other places around the restaurant. Nothing looks particularly unique to Thailand. The statues shared their decorative purpose with several potted plants, which gave relief to the mostly red, gold, white, and black color scheme.

Red silk-like wallpaper with a gold pattern on it that could either be an Indian goddess or Buddha serves as a backdrop for poster-size pictures of the same model in what are assumed to be different traditional Thai costumes that look down from nearly every single wall. Upon entering, one takes in the unmistakable smoky but spicy smells of paprika, pepper, and cumin. The tables are covered in white tablecloths with paper over them, presumably to make it easier to keep the cloth underneath clean. The chairs are comfortable and look well cared for; all in all this is a place that caters to all types of diners; families with children, couples on casual dates, groups of friends together for a night out.

In general, the food at Thai Cuisine is filling and fairly good, if a bit salty and not quite as flavorful as some might like. For the price—around $12 per person, not counting the tip—it’s decent food, but not the greatest.  

The chef at Thai Cuisine either has some magical power that can speed up cooking times, or makes the food prior to the dinner hour and simply keeps it warm until someone orders it. Here’s hoping it’s the former, not the latter. The waitress returned with food for the customers in what seemed like too little time, even for the beginning of the dinner period when some things are made in advance in preparation for the dinner rush. Perhaps East-Asian cuisine like Thai, Chinese, or Vietnamese cooks quickly, but less than ten minutes between when the food was ordered and when it arrived was not even enough time for diners to get a conversation going.

The hostess was polite but not overly-friendly, and was apparently the only member of the staff present besides the chef in the kitchen, as she also acted as the waitress. While prompt, she disappeared for the most part after bringing diners their food, returning only once to briefly check on them and refill their drinks before disappearing back down whatever rabbit hole she came out of.

She also reappeared for customers who come into the restaurant to order take-out, so this restaurant probably makes a good portion of its money that way, as it has been open in Kalamazoo for several years. What was slightly confusing, however, was that as soon as the waitress noticed that one diner at a table was done eating even though the others were not, the check soon followed, along with an offer of boxes for leftovers.

Though each dish looked and smelled slightly different, all had the same undertones. The peanut curry with chicken, which had a nice sneaky-spicy hot flavor that warmed the mouth but didn’t burn, had little to taste besides the spice, salt, onion, and whatever oil they used to cook it in. The chicken had no flavor whatsoever. A different peanut curry dish with tofu was slightly better than the first. Same warm-hot flavor, salt, onion, and oil, but the spice was tempered by the tofu and vegetables in the dish: green and orange sweet bell peppers, zucchini, broccoli, and pea pods. Surprisingly, this dish came with rice instead of the noodles that appeared in several other dishes.

Curry Pad Thai, an odd mix of Indian spices with Thai ingredients, was in all honesty the best of the bunch. The chicken didn’t have the consistency of a dry sponge, the sauce was creamy and complemented by a bit of egg, the amount of spice was good and the noodles behaved like noodles instead of sticking together in the chewy, slightly dry clumps that they turn into when left to sit out for too long. It had the same elements of oil, onion, and spice, but was less salty than the others, which let the other flavors come through better.

The drunken noodles, however, a traditionally Thai dish, were if not the worst of all the different dishes, somewhere near the bottom.  They tasted mostly of salt, spice, and oil; the noodles were chewy and dry in some places, and the whole thing was overloaded by onion. There were other vegetables as well—undercooked carrots and pea pods—but there was double the amount of onion than the rest of the vegetables put together. The “special basil” mentioned on the menu as an integral part of the drunken noodles was either absent or drowned out. As for dessert, diners didn’t need to worry about having to choose between something low-calorie and something delicious. There were no desserts on the menu.

             The restaurant has been open for several years, so they do not appear to be lacking for customers however, the slightly unnerving feel of eating in a mostly empty restaurant might lead diners to simply order take-out. And perhaps this is best, because the quality of the food is more along the lines of what one would expect to arrive in a white cardboard take-out box than on a white ceramic plate.