Single Servings

Here's something about living in Leiden that I hadn't thought of before I actually experienced it:

Cooking for one.

What can I say about it, except that... it sucks?

I've forgotten, over the years I spent in the best house at RA (that would be Bagijnhof 14), what it was like to cook for one person. I did that in my first semester at RA, when I lived in a different house, one in which no one ever cooked together. The last two and a half years, though, I had dinner with my housemates four nights a week. That usually meant:

Three nights a week I didn't have to cook; food was provided for me. This was usually a complete meal, although sometimes low on vegetables - but not usually. (My) favorites included stamppot, David's delicious, simple, lentil soup, Anouk's tortellini with cheese and bell peppers, Dana's pasta with salmon, spinach, and mushrooms... etc.

One night each week, I cooked for 8 or 9 people. Usually it was fun, although it could be difficult to accommodate everyone's tastes and diets. (Like the boys who wanted meat every single night, and later, the vegetarian.)

That left three nights to provide for myself. No problem. Make something easy on Friday, like pasta with tomato sauce (people started to think I ate nothing else, but it's not true, I swear!). Eat half on Friday and save the other half for Saturday. Sunday was the lazy night; since you had procrastinated all weekend, and probably not left your room on Sunday, a bit of rice with butter or some simple easy vegetables was usually enough.

But here, in Leiden... I'm on my own. Seven nights a week.

Which means that last week, I had the same thing for dinner on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night: pasta with bacon, wilted spinach, and parmesan. Not bad at all, but anything gets repetitive by the third night. I changed the menu on Thursday to polenta with tomato sauce with sausage, but had a repeat on Friday. Saturday I took a break, but just ate salad and some bread and cheese, which isn't exactly a hearty meal, and now that it's pretty much fall, I like the idea of a hot meal more often.

Wanting to save the two portions of Thursday's tomato sauce that I froze for Monday and Tuesday (when I have class until 5), I decided to be creative and simple tonight. I browned some onions in olive oil with some "Italian herb mix" and made polenta. When the polenta was almost done, I put the onions in the polenta and wilted some arugula from yesterday's salad in the oil. I served the arugula half on top, half on the side of the polenta with lots of salt, pepper, and chopped (this house has no grater!) parmesan.

Not bad. Plus, I made plenty of extra polenta to refry for lunches during the week.

But this kind of ingenuity is exhausting. Those three thoughtless days each week at RA were really an amazing thing, and I am going to miss them - but not only for the food.

Here, after making my little plate of food for one, I climb backwards down the stairs (they're stereotypically steep) to my little room, and watch an episode of something, or the Red Sox game. I'm done within 15 minutes, for sure, and then I go back upstairs and do the dishes.

The end.

In Middelburg, dinners could last two hours, if the conversation was good. Everyone in my house got along, and most of us liked most everybody else as a friend, not just as a housemate.

I was so lucky.

Now my ex-housemates keep trying to engage me to go back to Middelburg and cook them a Thanksgiving dinner, as I have the past two years. I'm holding out a little, still hoping I might make some friends here who I could share the holiday with. But if I'm not lucky, I'm pretty sure it'll be a traditional Middelburg Thanksgiving, once again.