The Perfect Meal (Revised)

Cody Howrigon

The Perfect Meal

    "Look at the grease dripping off of it! Could you have possibly made something more unhealthy?" My cousin complained with her usual outrage and gusto.

    "You mean could I have possibly made anything more perfect? The answer is no." Was my sarcasm-laden response.

    These were the words my older, health-conscious cousin and I exchanged at our Uncle's lake house before embarking on what I hold to be the most perfect of food experiences. Since this was supposed to be my idea of the perfect meal, and I was the one who bought and prepared the ingredients, I had very little interest in listening to the usual complaints of my mostly well-intentioned cousin. Health is of very little concern to me when I'm trying to indulge expertly. Sure, one should enjoy all of life's pleasures to some degree of moderation, but a life robbed of these pleasures completely is the life of a monk, and I have no interest in monk-hood.

    Backtracking several hours, as I sat in my room pondering the idea of “the perfect meal,” I came to understand a few things about myself better, and they resulted in a small set of criteria by which my perfect meal would be realized. These three criteria were and I think will always be my three requisites to food perfection. They are as follows: (1) it has to take place on a Sunday (2) those I love most must be present (3) the food has to possess fresh, quality ingredients, and the cook’s focus must be on taste above all else (such as health, presentation or any other worthless detail). These three criteria may be simple, and perhaps even easy to achieve. This does not take away from the beauty of the experience, however.

    In my quest to create my idea of the perfect meal, the first thing I did was address the first of my three checkpoints to food perfection – the meal had to take place on a Sunday. Sunday has always been an important day to me. This is not because I am religious. In fact, I’m the furthest one can be from religious. Sunday is and always has been a special day to me, because it's the one day of the week where the world seems to actually take a break, and where my mind can be at ease. It’s a day known in the Howrigon family as a day to stop whatever it is we’re doing, forget all the stress accumulated from the past six days, and come together as a family to enjoy one another’s company around the dinner table. This strong trend in my family’s history makes it impossible for me to imagine what a perfect meal would be, if it weren’t taking place on a Sunday.

    The second criterion I had to meet was ensuring that my family would be with me to enjoy the meal I was to prepare. Reading this, one might make the argument that this is the same or very similar as the previous criterion, but this is not the case. They are two exclusive, essential parts of what it is I define as the perfect meal. If for example, my family were to meet for a meal on a Friday night as opposed to a Sunday, this would still be a fantastic meal. It would fall short of the status of perfection however, as it would be missing that last crucial ingredient of the day in which it took place. The reasons this criterion is important to me is more obvious than the last, and probably needs the least amount of explanation. My family has always been close. I love them all more than life itself, as the cliché goes. There is nothing I consider perfect in this world that doesn’t include them.

    The third bullet point on my recipe for gastronomic perfection, is the all-important question of “what the hell are we going to eat?” This one was difficult, as there are a seemingly infinite amount of possibilities to choose from. Creativity is not my strong-suit, nor is cooking. The genius of it though, is that my lack of culinary expertise is irrelevant really. This is MY idea of the perfect meal, isn’t it? Assuming the first two of my three bits of criteria are met, and so long as the ingredients are of high-quality and fresh, I don’t really give a damn what we eat. With this in mind I left my room and my state of culinary contemplation, and made my way to a favorite local food store – Harding’s Friendly Market – where high-quality, fresh products have been the theme the store has built its reputation on for decades. Well-aware of my cooking deficiencies and lack of patience, I scanned the aisles of the store looking for something that was both simple and temporally expedient, but also tasty. A light-bulb went off when I came to the meat aisle: burgers. Who doesn’t like a burger who's actually had one? As I stood there in aisle 13, searching through the assortment of severed animal parts, my mouth began to water. A sudden flood of excitement welled up inside me as I began to formulate the monster of a burger I was to concoct. No, a normal burger just wouldn’t do. The initial apathy my journey began with had turned into an obsession with creating a pile of ground-beef, cheese, and bacon that would turn any vegetarian to the dark side. 
    Choosing one product over another was difficult for me. I admittedly have very little experience or natural savvy for spotting out bargains or "good deals." My food-buying logic was more along the lines of, "if it's expensive, it must be good (so buy it)." The price tag on the buns I bought could only be explained if they were the tastiest, most outstanding burger buns mankind has or ever will create. The meat had to be of the highest quality (which I could also only decipher by price), and the bacon had to be apple-smoked, and the primest of cuts Harding’s Friendly Market had to offer. Your typical American Cheese wouldn’t do either. I had to get the brick-sized mammoth of cheddar cheese instead (also obscenely expensive). Tomatoes and romaine lettuce were also in my cart, but were there mostly to compensate for the guilt many in my family would be experiencing for having eaten such an artery clogging dish. Oh yeah, I would throw in a side salad, too.

    After I had all my ingredients accounted for and bought, I headed to my Uncle’s before-mentioned lake house where the rest of my family awaited my arrival. Everyone was there: my mother and father, two sisters, Grandparent’s, Aunt’s, Uncle’s, and a whole slew of cousins. The calendar on the wall read Sunday, November 13. The two most crucial aspect of the meal were in place, now all I needed to do was follow through on the third. They all assured me that they were hungry, and predictably blamed their hunger on my “always taking forever to shop,” even though I can count on one hand how many times I've shopped alone for a family meal. With that, several of my family members and I got to work on the meal. My 15 year-old cousin Scott was to watch the patties on the grill and flip all of them once every five minutes for 15 minutes. My dad was watching the simmering bacon, ensuring that they were taken out as soon as the right crispy-to-soft ratio was achieved. I chopped all the tomatoes and set out the onions and romaine lettuce. I also threw together a nuts and berries salad: mixed greens, extra-large walnuts, dried raspberries, feta cheese, slivered carrots, and balsamic vinaigrette were the ingredients. I also had the joy of cutting the brick-sized block of cheese for 15 people, many of whom would be asking for seconds. I did this by flipping the block of cheese vertically, and cutting as many two-centimeter-thick slices that I could. The result was more than enough for everyone. The patties and bacon surprisingly were finished at approximately the same time, and the moment we were all waiting for had finally come. I laid out all the fixings in a line across the island countertop in my Uncle’s kitchen, and we took our spots standing around the food, hand-in-hand, as my grandmother prepared the pre-meal prayer. As everyone stood with heads bowed and hearts full of the holy spirit, I can't help but wonder how many slices of bacon I should top my burger with.

    Once the prayer came to a close and everyone was finally seated at the dinner table with their mountain of meat before them, the long-awaited moment began. The burgers were immaculate. The XL burger and the half-dozen strips of bacon were infused together by a thick layer of melted cheddar cheese between them. This, coupled with the always fresh Harding's romaine lettuce and tomatoes, as well as the fluffy beauty of the bountiful buns, helped make this more than an enjoyable meal. I think this had a lot to do with my total disregard for the amount of money I spent on the ingredients, and the sheer unhealthfulness of the creation. Mostly though, as I sat in my chair at the table, listening to my Aunt giving her usual stories of awkward social encounters and everyone laughing hysterically at the punch-lines, I realized that it was because of them and the state of mind we all shared, that I enjoyed it so much. This was the perfect meal. Its perfection laid not in the exquisite quality of the food (don’t get me wrong, the food was great), but in the fact that the food was an excuse for us all to come together, and to enjoy one another’s company. Like the great Anthony Bourdain once said, “it’s not about the food you eat. It’s about who you eat the food with.”