cook and know how to portion things. Cause now, I really want to know what people think of the food that I cook. I wish there were a way for people to be more vocal about what they think. Having something like VOC’s for cooks or something like that, that could be good.10 Max: I know I really like rich foods and a lot of people don’t. Actually, I don’t know if I want people’s feedback. Meggie: We used to do that at Hoyt during tempweek for cooking workshifts. Heather: Davis does that too. Meggie: The kitchen managers would take feedback on every meal and would make decisions on who the cooks were going to be based on the feedback. So if people really didn’t like it, they would voice their opinion. Heather: Have a little competition. Max: People just have different styles of cooking. I could make really light vegan food but I’d rather not cause I couldn’t cook it as well. And when I’m co-op cooking, I like cooking for myself too. Meggie: When I cooked at Hoyt, I remember I was so giddy about making food. It was just a chemistry with my cook kind of thing. We just tried to make really strange meals. Every meal had a theme. Our most famous meal was called “topsy turvy”. It was very complicated. It was so hard to explain that we stopped explaining it to people and we’d just say, “Just come to the meal.” We would put all of the forms of different things with different dishes. It’s like genre versus instruments. We took the pasta, the lasagna, and put them into cupcake tins. We served a salad like meat, like slabs of cabbage.11 Adam and Heather: Okay. Meggie: It was so bad. It was so bad. But we did shit like that all the time. Wicked stupid things. Heather: Haha, I love doing that. But it does depend on who you’re cooking with and how down they are. I like coming up with more experimental things but it totally depends because some people are “Yeah!” and some people are expecting a more balanced dinner. Meggie: Yeah, that’s the thing. Stop with the fucking fanciness! My final opinion on it after living through this for 2 ½ years is: Do not fuck with my dinner. Just give me good dinner. I like the experimental stuff but if I had me as a cook two years
ago, I would say, “Get out of the kitchen! What are you doing? What are you doing right now?” Heather: Did you ever get any feedback? Meggie: It was a house of girls. I don’t really know. I don’t really know what was going on. Adam: It was just Hoyt. Meggie: It was Hoyt. Meggie: If people didn’t like your food, they would just straight up not get in line and make a bagel and put like cheese and ice cream on top of it and leave. They would eat it in their room. They would not even give a shit if you saw them. Meggie: One time I put salt instead of sugar in a bread pudding… All: Oooohh, haha. Meggie: …everyone was all crowded around me. When you take something out of the oven, everyone gets so excited. Everybody has their spoon, they’re eating it, and everybody who tries it makes this face… I’m thinking, “Oh my god, what?” They’re like, “It’s suuuuper salty.” And I’m like, “Fuck....” Meggie: …and I start freaking out and by the time I look up to see what’s happening next they were all crowded around the ice cream. They didn’t give a shit and I was like, “What?” 1 Castro: A 56-person co-op on the south side of campus 2 Ben: Max’s co-cook at Castro, summer 2012 3 Shirin: Opinionated eater and Castro resident, fall 2010 and summer 2012 4 Shane: Impatient eater and Castro resident, spring 2010 - fall 2012 5 Nico: French foreign exchange student and Castro resident, spring - summer 2012 6 Kingman: A 50-person co-op on the north side of campus 7 Eliya: Heather’s co-cook at Castro, fall 2011 8 Cloyne: A 149-person co-op on the north side of campus 9 Michael: Heather’s co-head cook at Cloyne, fall 2010 10 VOC = Vote of Confidence. Online polling system used to give house members the ability to dish out anonymous feedback to house level managers. 11 Hoyt: A 60-person all women’s co-op on the north side of campus 136