COLUMN: Attack of the dorm stove
I don’t cook much. It’s one of those things that is pretty low on my list of priorities throughout the day.
The funny thing is my lack of cooking has nothing to do with my ability to prepare food. I consider myself a decent cook. On a scale of Jill Taylor from “Home Improvement” to Masaharu Morimoto from “Iron Chef” I am probably somewhere in the Vince LaSalle from “Recess” range – at least the episode where he successfully takes over for the lunch lady – which is pretty impressive for a columnist who once thought “caramelizing” a dish just meant serving it with Rolos.
My life of seldom cooking stems from a much different motive. It’s not that I feel I can’t cook or lack the time. I, in all honesty, am simply afraid to use the cooking facilities in my apartment.
If you saw my stove you would understand. It is something that looks as if it should new and fully functioning, but sounds as if it hasn’t been used since “Aah Real Monsters” was still on Nickelodeon. In fact, it often sounded as if the stove was where the show was filmed. There are unpleasant bangs, unsettling hisses, and sometimes – no lie – something that sounds like a small child shrieking for their life, though that only occurs when the oven is preheating.
Of all the things to cause a stir in my place of residence, this is the worst for me. But, since nobody on record has been known to perish from using it and my roommate Hunter – who I’d rank in the Tito from “Rocket Power” tier on the cooking scale – has often made his famous orange juice cake inside the white, cubed gorgon, I figured I’d gather up some courage and give it a whirl.
I self-commiserated throughout the day on what to whip up and settled on ravioli. I figured if I were to do this, I needed to go all out. Pasta requires at least two burners, and the use of the oven, if I had enough intestinal fortitude to heat up garlic bread.
Things began somewhat smoothly, as I strategically got up from my couch every two and a half minutes to stir pots. It was during stir trip 11 that I began to hear a strange whirring noise, and noticed a stream a smoke rising from the burner. It seemed as if someone didn’t clean the burner after preparing their cream of wheat.
What made this odd wasn’t the fact that the stove was acting funny, that was Busch League. What threw me off was the fact none of my roommates seemed at all concerned about the matter. They all glibly attended to their current activities in the living room, passing off the current situation as an indoor bonfire or “Steve making soy cookies.” I guess their demeanor calmed me down a little, as it was a symbol everything was going to be OK.
That was… until the burner caught fire.
I panicked. I scrambled. I did everything I saw John Travolta do in “Ladder 49.”
My roommate Jess tried to render assistance by commenting, “Hey, I think there is some baking soda in one of the cupboards.”
I replied, “OK, which one?”
“I don’t know, somewhere in the kitchen.”
If the rising flame accompanying my noodles hadn’t made things serious enough, my roommate proved to be less-than helpful.
“Jess, just help me find it,” I said.
He looked at me, looked down at his plate of chicken he was eating on his lap, looked back up and said – I’m not fooling here – “I can’t.”
I was stunned. “You can’t? There is a fire.”
We stared at each other and did the only thing we knew to do. We laughed, shuffled our way across the apartment and put our conversation on a quote wall, somehow forgetting the fire on the stove. Hey, we’re a college apartment. We know a priority when we see one.
Luckily for us, the panic moment subsided as the stove flame put itself out only the way a haunted stove can, and I was able to enjoy my well-accomplished dinner in peace. We had somehow survived.
It’s just a good thing I decided not to caramelize anything. Then all bets would have been off.
– Steve Schwartzman is a junior majoring in marketing and minoring in speech communication. His column runs every Wednesday. He loves sports, comedy and creative writing. He encourages any comments at his email steve.schwartzman@aggiemail.usu.edu, or find him on Facebook.