The Foodies

I am a man that enjoys food. Not in the 'I love wings and hotdogs and lite beer' sort of way that men normally enjoy food. I love cooking food, exquisite menus and unprocessed, whole foods. I love the different tastes and textures and colors and smells. I love the process of turning different ingredients into one amazing meal.

And I love doing that with friends.

This past weekend, me and two of my closest friends got together and cooked dinner for our significant others. We all love food, and we all love creating and cooking food together. Each of us are food snobs in our own way, which makes the menus we come up with intriguing.

This collaboration of foodies took place in a house out in the country where we set up a table for six outside under the sky - which was amazing. One of my foodie friends decorated the table with several miniature pumpkins and strawberry maize. We began the meal with hot apple cider, infused with cinnamon, cloves, and lemon - traversed into a delicious butternut squash soup - proceeded onto broccoli-and-cheddar-stuffed chicken with sweet potatoes and sauteed broccoli - continued with slow-cooked apples stuffed with pecans and raisins and covered with brown sugar and apple cider accompanied with vanilla ice-cream - and finished with home-made hot chocolate.

The night was gorgeous and the moon was bright, so we talked and laughed and ate and ate and ate. Stuffed, we collected ourselves, cleaned the kitchen, collected our belongings, and made our separate ways home.

Food is magnificent - food with pleasurable company is something else entirely.

Oh Good, You Made It! Oop... Sorry, No You Didn't.

I know... I complain about formal education A LOT. So here's more!

When I chose my major (Health Science), I thought, "Hey, the health care field is really a great thing to get into right now. I mean people always get sick, right?" And I was right, health care really is a great place to find a job. That being said, a health science degree is NOT  a good way to get into the health care field.

"What?" you may ask, "how can a degree in 'health science' not get you a job in health care? I mean, you must be able to be a Medical Assistant?"

"No."

"An opthamologist assistant?"

"No."

"Dental Assistant?"

"No."

"Hospice Care Assistant?"

"No."

"Pharmaceutical Technician's Assistant?"

"No."

"Well, surely you can be a lowly phlebotomy technician."

"No, I cannot."

"Well, at least you can work behind the desk answering phone calls for the lowly phlebotomy technician."

"No, I cannot. While they do not require a degree, they do require two years of experience as a phone answerer."

"You reeaalllly picked a bad major."

"I know. Hey, will you drop me off by that new Full Monty club so I can drop off this application to be a stripper?"

Prostrate to the Higher Mind

The college that I attend requires every student to partake in an exit examination before they are allowed to graduate. So, I called the testing facility and made my appointment. When I arrived to take my test, I was told that I had to leave my cell phone in a little cardboard box in an administrator's office. I was then led to a huge empty room that could fit 200 people, was told to leave my bag by the door, and was given a test and a #2 pencil. I asked if I needed a calculator for the test and was told, "no."  I sat facing a giant, wall-sized 2 way mirror; the kind you would expect to see in an interrogation room "downtown" at the police department.

I filled out all the first page of the exam with little bubbles that are required in standardized tests like these (Name - J. o. n. a. t. h. a. n. *bubble bubble bubble bubble*, et cetera).  I opened the exam and discovered that the so called "College assessment exit exam" was nothing more than opinions rated 1 - 5 (1 being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree) of questions like "Has this college provided you with an adequate level of interaction with various groups of people?"

My favorite question was "Has this college increased your creative capacity and individuality?"

"So," I thought, "what you're asking, on your standardized test (that you dispense in a large, empty, 2-way mirrored room that doesn't allow any personal belongings) that you force everyone to complete by filling in bubbles and rating questions as 'strongly agree' or 'strongly disagree' instead of actually allowing people to express their opinions, is 'have we cultivated individuality and creativity'?"

In order to answer this question to the best of my ability, I trekked back throughout my college career....

I remember American Literature opinion papers that told me to express what I thought about the novels that I read; I also remember how my teacher told me that I was incorrect in my opinions. I remember in Art Appreciation how my teacher told me that what I thought was a beautiful piece of art was, in fact, NOT art, but instead a huge waste of money. I remember every test question that I answered correctly but was marked as incorrect because, instead of regurgitating exactly what the book said, I actually learned the material and explained it in my own terms.

I remember teachers telling me how to write, think, believe, dress, walk, eat, socialize, drink, feel, listen, read, sit... I remember every unique, individual characteristic being devolved into a processed, mechanical, bland version made to resemble every teachers opinion of what it means to be correct.

I thought about the Indigo Girls and what they say about higher education:

I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper
And I was free. 

So, I decided that this institution had not cultivated me to be an individual or to be creative in any way. I would NOT stand for this, not this creative, unique individual! So, with a flick of my pencil, I marked down a very dark bubble under "1 - Strongly disagree."

.............

'Did this college provide you with adequate opportunities to become involved in extra-curricular activities, such as sports or clubs?' 

*5 - strongly agree*