What They Like

Laurel doesn’t eat anything. This used to terrify me when we first started living together. Her dinners would consist of instant ramen and a single egg. Soft, small bowls of pasta with canned tomato sauce. Frozen ravioli. Peanut butter and jelly. These meals were put on repeat. I watched them, day after day, mildly appalled but still too shy to offer her my own cooking, feeling that any criticism of her diet would be presumptuous, and not wanting to make her uncomfortable in having to refuse anything she didn’t like. I didn’t really know what she liked yet. 

Over time, she began to have stomach problems. She had problems with eating food and with her appetite. Anxiety roared in my chest, I seethed with worry. I felt self-righteous and overwhelmingly protective. Immediately, I began to connive a plan. I would do what I could. I started cooking again, I finally started cooking. Weaponizing my concern, I was able to learn what she liked by asking her, bulldozing through my previous anxiety with this new, more powerful one. This illness (which is still unresolved, much to Laurel’s consternation and my red-hot fury) is what led to me cooking for everyone from time to time. And from time to time, the others cook too. This is how I discovered what they like. 

Laurel likes pasta and bread, potatoes and rice. She likes salted butter and scrambled eggs. She will eat meat, if it is presented to her in small pieces. When she is feeling sick, fruit is easiest for her to eat, and she has only recently started liking soup. She dislikes cake and likes pie. In ice cream, she likes caramel. In tea, she likes honey. The vegetables she will eat include peas and carrots and sometimes spinach, and corn and I can’t remember what else. She doesn’t eat pork. Sometimes, when she is feeling ill, she finds it easier to eat if she doesn’t prepare the food herself. 

Amy came next. She is Vietnamese and American and so she eats like any non-American does. In other words, she eats wonderfully. Her parents (by which she means, and so I mean, her Mom and her Aunt) collectively provide for her. Her aunt cooks for her, having a long history of cooking, and her Mom drives food down for her every other weekend. Tupperwares filled with brilliant red, creamy chicken curry, with potatoes that starch up wonderfully, soaking up the broth. Caramelized pork that we eat with bananas and rice and soy sauce. Chicken and green beans and long, thin noodles with tiny quail eggs and quivering curls of pink shrimp. There is often fruit too, a grocery bag heavy with a dozen plums, or a package of lychee, artfully demure and royal red. 

I used to be unspeakably jealous of this display of riches. What struck me most was the orange juice. Her parents would, sometimes, provide her with a plastic water bottle filled with freshly squeezed orange juice. The pulp would separate from the liquid as it sat in the fridge, a brilliant, bouncing orange on the bottom, languorous and half-clear on top. The first time they brought it, a well of emotion rose inside of me. I almost cried.

They would have had to juice oranges, probably four or five or maybe more, because oranges don’t actually have that much juice. They'd have had to save a water bottle, keep it for this purpose. They’d have had to use a little cup, or a spout, to pour the juice into the water bottle. They would have had to clean up the pulp and the rinds and the bits of spattered juice. Then drive with it for two hours. For their daughter to have a bottle of fresh orange juice. 

Growing up, I was the one who cooked for, and not the one who was cooked for. I thought I had let bygones be bygones, but when I saw that orange juice, I realized that I had not. Even now, as I write about that orange juice, I grow a little sad. 

But I am proud to say I am no longer nearly as jealous of Amy as I once was. Envy being one of my most prevalent vices, I would call this a remarkable accomplishment. It is no small feat for someone who has always adored food to not be jealous of a friend provided with copious amounts of skilled cooking on a biweekly basis. It also helps that Amy shares, easily and graciously. But I am steering us too much in my direction. 

Amy likes salty foods. Her snack of choice is a little metallic pack of dried seaweed; she likes shrimp chips and crackers, olives and fries. She likes large amounts of garlic, and sweet and salty things, like chocolate covered pretzels. She drinks coffee, but only sometimes. She would like to know more about tea, and drinks it whenever it is offered. While she is sustained by the tupperwares of her aunt’s cooking, she loves being at home and eating it fresh off the pan, or out of the pot, or from the oven. I cannot think of anything she will not eat. That doesn’t mean that she eats everything, but it does mean that she eats most things. This is a trait I find most congenial in a friend. Some of Amy’s friends are also Vietnamese and American. They also eat wonderfully, and it is nice having them around when there is food involved. 

Audrey was the last arrival in our apartment. I knew Laurel’s taste first, and then I met Amy’s, and finally I met hers. My taste bears some similarity to all of theirs, in various ways, but I think Audrey’s is the closest to mine. This is because she cooks, and cooked before coming to live with us (Laurel cooks too, but she started after). There is a special place in my heart for people who cook. 

One of the first things Audrey made for us was a chicken chili, with beans and green peppers and sour cream. It was thick with flavor, rich with cream, substantial, skilled, and delicious. I was touched, and it is difficult to explain why. On the surface level, she had made dinner after we had all agreed to take turns making dinner. She was simply fulfilling this quota. But below the waters, my heart stirred. Laurel’s cooking, tentative and new, that was fulfilling the quota. Audrey’s cooking had heart, history, and interest. Growing up, no one had ever cooked for me in this way. It is the same way I cook.

Audrey is allergic to nuts. She likes her tea plain, like cheese pizza, with no toppings (hold the milk and sugar). Her favorite foods are lasagna and chicken pot pie. She taught me to like spam. When she shops at Trader Joes, she buys the coconut macarons, and eats them two or three at a time. She makes sandwiches for lunch, grilled cheeses with American and ham, or toasted bread with turkey and lettuce and tomato and mayo. She makes these sandwiches for me, sometimes. I have always held packaged, sliced bread under heavy disdain, because the European in me does not trust bread with distant expiration dates. But I like her sandwiches, questionable preservatives and all. 

When I cook for my roommates, I plate the food before putting it on the table. To a casual observer, it may simply look as though I am putting equal amounts of food into four bowls and setting them in front of each person’s seat without discernment. But I will let you in on a secret, since you have graduated to not-so-casual observer. You can’t split a meal perfectly into four parts. So the bowl in which there are a few extra chunks of chicken – I’ll set that in front of the person who has an exam tomorrow, who’s going out later tonight, who had the most classes that day. The bowl into which a few more green beans happen to slip in won’t go to Laurel, she doesn’t like green beans that much. The sandwich that’s a little crispier, that’ll go to Amy. I couldn’t tell you why. The prettiest looking plate usually goes to Audrey, because she gives me compliments on my cooking the most reliably, and flattery will get you everywhere. Of course, I’m not a saint, sometimes I take the biggest portion for myself because I made it and I’m hungry, goddammit. But I do what I can. I’m wrong sometimes. Even now, I’m still trying to puzzle out what they like.