On My Plate

As a CIA student, the question I get asked second most often is "What amazing food do you cook for yourself??"  Depending on who is doing the asking, my answer varies slightly.  In general, especially during the Associate's Program where I more or less spent 8 hours a day cooking and cleaning, I want nothing less than to break out my knives and a pan to create really anything.  I'll be perfectly honest, most days even the thought of scrambling eggs sounds like too much work. (I know you're wondering so the most asked question I receive is "Has anything ever been thrown at you?" The answer to that is no.  What is this the 1990s?)

One of the greatest things about the CIA is that the majority of the curriculum focuses on feeding the student body; kitchens of varying cuisines and service styles produce food that I use my student meal plan for.  One of the worst things about the CIA is that all of that wonderful food is not available on weekends.  Imagine a world of 2,000 food junkies starved two days out of the week and you've got the CIA on weekends.

Here is a small look at what a few meals during my week look like:

Friday Dinner

On Friday evenings, I usually stop by The Egg and use my leftover meal plan "points" to pick up a few meals for the weekend.  The class producing my dinner, High Volume Production Cookery, focuses on large-scale recipes and producing food for the masses and is the last class students take before externship.  The food itself is generally hit or miss and on Friday I was lucky to pick a hit.  I chose grilled salmon with a beurre blanc, pasta al forno, and roasted sweet potatoes with kale.  Not pictured is the Corona I convinced myself I deserved after a long week and my current Netflix obsession: The Crown.

Saturday Morning

A normal weekend treat for myself is a trip (or two...) to Starbucks especially on Saturday mornings between loads of laundry.  This Saturday was particularly warm for mid-February in the Hudson Valley and the weather inspired me to get one of my favorite summer drinks: a Mango Iced-Tea Lemonade.  In an effort to avoid cooking in the pristine, industry-grade kitchen in my townhouse, I also picked up a breakfast sandwich with a soggy "croissant," ham, eggs, and gouda cheese.  The bakers have spoiled me for three years with the world's best croissants and nothing ever compares.  Alas, a crappy Starbucks sandwich is still better than washing the dishes I would have used to make breakfast.

Sunday Evening

Before anyone (especially my mom) starts to worry that I didn't eat for 36 hours, I did.  In the interest of honesty, I actually got McDonalds for dinner on Saturday.  It's Shamrock Shake season and I am addicted to this milkshake.  For Sunday evening, however, I microwaved a meal I'd also picked up on Friday from The Egg: roasted beef top round with mushroom jus, mashed sweet potatoes, and pasta al forno. I paired it with my favorite varietal at the moment, Riesling.  This particular wine was from Bex Winery of Germany and for $9.99 was a damn good Riesling.  It's minerality and crisp acidity did a kick ass job of cutting through the richness of my meal.

Monday Lunch

One of the more underrated kitchens, in my opinion, is Modern Banquets.  This kitchen is the very first production kitchen students cook in and focuses on buffet and banquet style foods.  Between my Tuesday/Thursday classes, I always get Banquets.  The chef, Chef Reilly, does an amazing job of pushing his students to put out some pretty consistently tasty food.  Lunch on Monday was consommé, arugula salad, shrimp and grits, sauteed spinach, grilled vegetables, salmon with quinoa and rice pilaf, and risotto cakes with pepper coulis.  The only thing that could have made this lunch better would have been a glass of last night's Bex Reisling.

Tuesday Dinner 

Guess what? I cooked this!  One of the classes I'm taking this semester is Advanced Cooking.  The class is a weird combination of Chopped, Top Chef, and a CIA class where each week is either a mystery basket around a theme (offals and vegan cuisine for example) or a pre-designed menu around a theme.  This week was flatbreads and we could decide what to cook before coming to class.  We decided to make Piadina, an Italian flatbread from the Campania region.  Our savory expression included a black pepper and parsley ricotta spread, prosciutto, arugula, and a balsamic reduction.  For the sweet, we topped the Piadina with a Nutella mousse made from Nutella, mascarpone cheese, and whipped cream topped with dark chocolate and pistachios.  Not pictured is the 2 cocktails and 3 wines we drank with our feast.

To be clear, I love to cook.  Food was my first love (sorry wine and sorry boyfriend...) and I love the thrill of the line.  However, cooking fatigue is real and sometimes you really just want someone else to cook your dinner.  Really, this has all been a long-winded defense of why I'm not cooking my own damn food: I don't want to and I have spent enough time cooking other people's dinners. Eating is one of my favorite activities and I am always ready to eat.

What are some of your favorite meals for when you don't feel like cooking?