5:30 PM is the exact time that that I would hear doors opening and closing down the hall in the McPherson dorm. During the Winter term, however, the symphony of doors was mostly replaced by that of doorbells; “Your pizza is here!”

In Immovable Feast, Chang-Rae Lee describes his own food-related experiences at boarding school. The detailed descriptions that the author provides makes me reminisce on all the small and almost imperceptible features (that I never gave much thought) that makes eating at boarding school so unique. As I read, “the doors opened at 5:30 PM,” a wave of nostalgia hit me, making me realize how time is such a crucial ingredient at boarding school cafeterias. There were days, for example, when athletes would end practice early and sit by the steps of Irwin, intently looking at their watches, waiting for 5:30 to hit.

Another quote from Chang-Rae Lee’s essay that greatly resonated with me was: “a cold supper, for me, is like being dipped in a melancholy sauce.” The vocabulary and imagery the author uses perfectly captures the experience of eating a cold dinner (especially in the winter) at boarding school. This quote rang especially true in my ears since cereal was the meal my friends and I had when we had to rush to class right after dinnertime, leaving us about 10 minutes to walk to and from the cafeteria. This type of meal usually felt unfinished, and made me miss the experience of cooking dinner with my mom even more. Not only did the cold milk in the cereal had little resemblance to mom’s warm soup in the wintertime, but the experience of grabbing a bowl and pouring the food with a ladle instead of with a cereal scoop felt a lot more comforting.

 

Every couple of minutes, my grandmother gets up to check on the food. Around the third time she wanders off into the kitchen, my mother calls out for her to return to the table to no avail. Sometimes, my mother and I have to follow my grandma into the kitchen and link our arms around hers for her to come back with us. She laughs at our usual antics and replies with, “the food needs tending, too.”

One of my grandmother’s favorite dishes to cook is gnocchi. Every couple of weeks, she brings the family together for one of her delicious dinners. There is a specific set of guidelines one must partake leading up to the meal. A couple of days before one of our Sunday dinners, my grandma calls us asking what kind of sauce we prefer. My mom usually tells her not to worry about it, that we can make the sauce. Their “sauce talks” always ends with a colorful spread of sauces on the dinner table. Throughout the meal, we can tell that the grandparents are following our every move, down to which sauce is the first to go. “See,” my grandma says as she turns toward my grandfather, “I knew that was their favorite sauce.”

 

Picture: Epicurious.com