Posts Tagged ‘self-deprecation’

The Covid Cooking Club: Chapter 8: Dessert

Tuesday, May 4th, 2021

The Covid Cooking Club

Chapter 8: Dessert

Chocolate Cake - Preppy Kitchen
The Cake is a Lie! And other sayings from 2008.

Dessert is the least important and therefore best part of any meal. A good dessert will make up for a meal full of bland “healthy” garbage, while a bad dessert won’t really affect anything because you can just choose to not eat it. Unfortunately, I have literally no dessert-related advice to give. I was told to outline my series of blog posts before writing them, and I chose dessert as the last topic because I think I’m much funnier than I actually am. The fact that I did not actually have anything to say on the subject escaped my mind until the last moment. I figured I could buy myself some time to experiment by creating a low-effort fake chapter for last week, but after doing that I forgot about it until right now. The only dessert I know how to make with any degree of competence is cake, and I can’t actually do that because I only have an oven. Also it tells you how to make it on the box. Honestly there’s no reason to even make dessert when you live right next to a Trader Joe’s. They have these great ripoff Tim-Tams with a complicated name that I can’t actually remember because they stopped selling them. That’s a good thing because I would absolutely have given myself diabetes if I had unlimited access to them. Honestly I’ll probably end up doing that anyway, but at least it’ll be name-brand.

Looking back on it, this was a pretty stupid idea for an article series. For one thing, I’m pretty sure I’ve only genuinely contributed two recipes anyone can’t find immediately online, and one of them was literally just “put some bread in a bun.” And for people to reach those recipes they would have to put up with my exaggerated obnoxious authorial personality, which is a feat few can manage. Actually, this entire column is counterproductive to the very idea of this website since you can’t even use the coupons for home cooking. Fortunately, Andrew Cuomo agrees with me and has decided to unilaterally end the lockdown starting Wednesday, which he apparently has the power to do or something? Anyway seeing at how masterfully he managed the nursing home situation I can guarantee that we’ll all be fine, which is why I’m switching over to restaurant reviews next week. Because let’s be honest, you don’t really want to cook, do you? (“You” here refers to a genericized reader and not you as a person. Don’t feel insulted. I love you.) Cooking is messy and takes time and you usually fail. Most people who cook that aren’t professional chefs only do it because they can’t afford to eat out. The rest do it because being unable to provide for yourself is one those embarrassing social qualities that causes reasonable people to look down on you, like not washing your hands or voting Republican. In my case I do it because it’s easier than resolving my crippling sense of inferiority towards my family by actually talking to them. I’d be shocked if even a single person used any of the advice I’ve given, and I’d be even more shocked if it actually helped them in any way. If you actually enjoyed reading these, I’d like to apologzie for tricking you into wasting your time.

You should still totally read my restaurant reviews though.

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Alexander Rose studies satire at NYU Gallatin and wishes he was actually just Oscar Wilde. He is interested in writing, roleplaying games, and procrastination. Describing himself in the third person like this makes him feel weird.

For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC,  from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services.  


At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.

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The Covid Cooking Club: Chapter 2: Meat

Wednesday, March 17th, 2021

The Covid Cooking Club

How To Cook Steak In The Oven - Best Perfect Oven-Steak Recipe
A generic picture of steak. Mine actually looks kind of like this, but less tasty.

Chapter 2: Meat

Meat. The manliest of all foods, according to people who don’t understand how chemicals work and think eating soy will invert their gender. I don’t think eating meat will make me any less of a wimp, but it’s filling and tastes good. The meat I eat the most is canned tuna fish, because it’s cheap and requires zero preparation aside from opening the can and chowing down—though sometimes I drink the fish oil first like some sort of absolute barbarian. The problem with tuna is that it makes your whole room smell like fish. I don’t find it that irritating, considering the other things my room could smell like. Sometimes I mash it up with a fork and mix it with mayonnaise to make tuna salad, but my most successful attempt has been boiling it in oil with garlic and parsley to create a less messy pasta sauce (which wasn’t in last week’s article because I did it this Wednesday).

I call it Pasta Ala Xander, because I like making puns more than I like names that don’t suck.

I’ve cooked whole fish as well, covering it in flour and frying it in oil on a pan. The result is a relatively bland white mean that falls apart faster than a South American republic that refuses to export bananas to the US in the early 20th century when touched with a fork. I could probably get more flavor out of white meat by cooking chicken, but I’m also scared shitless by anything involving raw chicken. I’m a bit of a hypochondriac when it comes to food—though not enough to wash my hands for the full recommended duration each time when cooking—so whenever I try to cook chicken it ends up getting totally burned because otherwise I won’t touch it for fear of contracting salmonella. In theory, I have more success with red meat. I can cook sausages okay, since I just need to cover them in oil and pan fry them. The real issue here is steak. I love steak, and I’m not terrible at making it. The trick is to add a completely excessive amount of salt and pepper on both sides to build up a big crust, then fry each side in oil until it looks like it’s burned. It ends up being too crispy on the outside and too soft on the inside, but it’s still tasty. At least it would be if I didn’t keep comparing it to my dad’s steaks. Honestly, I’m probably the worst cook in my immediate family. My sister is a naturally gifted cook, and my mom and dad have essentially been trying to one-up each other in cooking skills since their divorce. I’ve only just started trying to make food since last March when going outside became the equivalent of taping an “eviscerate my lungs” sign to your back. So even when I enjoy the steak, it just reminds me of how crappy of a cook I am compared to the rest of my family. That still doesn’t stop me from making it, it just means that once every few weeks I subject myself to feelings of deep inadequacy in exchange for a burst of cholesterol. There have been worse tradeoffs in history.

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By: Alexander Rose

Alexander Rose studies satire at NYU Gallatin and wishes he was actually just Oscar Wilde. He is interested in writing, roleplaying games, and procrastination. Describing himself in the third person like this makes him feel weird.

For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC,  from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services.  

At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.

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The Covid Cooking Club: Chapter 1: Pasta

Tuesday, March 9th, 2021

The Covid Cooking Club

Do cooks have to wear masks?
A very professional-looking chef, who is definitely not me.

Introduction

With the current pandemic making venturing outside your room an act equivalent of walking across the street blindfolded, it is more important than ever that college students learn how to effectively prepare food on their own in order to decrease the possibility of getting permanent lung damage without even experiencing the questionable joy of nicotine. Ideally, this information would be given by a professional chef or at the very least someone with any sort of culinary talent. Instead you’re going to be getting it from a conked-out liberal arts student whose only knowledge of gastronomy comes from how far his head is up his own ass. God help you.

Chapter 1: Pasta

Homemade Marinara Sauce Recipe - Cooking Classy
A delicious and generic plate of pasta with red sauce, made by someone who also is not me.

Pasta. It’s the classic college food for a reason: that reason being most college students are deeply in debt and can’t actually afford anything else. (If only there was some sort of magazine that offered discounts on food products to help them out! But such a radical idea could never come to pass.) The humble cup of ramen has become an icon among undergraduates less for any inherent nutritional or taste value and more for being their best hope of avoiding complete bankruptcy long enough for their debt holders to be lined up against the wall and shot during the inevitable populist uprising. As someone who has the prospect of postgraduate financial stability through an accident of birth, I am not obligated to prostrate myself before the rapacious god that is instant ramen. This has the practical result of the pasta I make being named in Italian instead of Japanese. Pasta has a long and storied history, most of which can be condensed down into “it’s easy to make and tastes okay.” The cooking setup in my dorm consists of a microwave and a gas stove with two cookers with enough room for exactly 1.5 pots, so ease of preparation is appreciated. Also, I’m very lazy. All anyone needs to prepare pasta is a pot, some water, some salt, and a stirring implement. Put the water, salt, and pasta (preferably but technically not necessarily in that order) in the pot, and then boil until it is ready. After an amount of time totally unrelated to whatever it says on the packaging, the pasta will be ready. This can be tested by eating some of it and seeing if it triggers your gag reflex; other testing methods exist but they all sound as if they were dreamt up by lunatics. This will give you something that is edible. Making something good will require a lot more thought and I am not sure if I am actually up to the task. Sure, I enjoy a lot of the pasta I make, but that’s because I like my food to be as carbohydrate-dense as my writing is linguistically dense, not because I achieved any great success in preparing it. My most frequent failure occurs early. The pasta I prepare most commonly is spaghetti, because I have fond memories of eating it as a kid. I probably ate other pasta as a kid, but spaghetti is the only one I remember. It’s also a terrible choice since I inevitably put too much in, then stir too hard before it gets soft, causing the noodles to snap into pieces and defeat the entire point. I usually have better luck with tortellini and macaroni, yet I make them less because I apparently value nostalgia over competence. Fortunately, any pasta can be saved through use of a good sauce. Unfortunately, I am both too lethargic and too ill-informed to make any so I always use canned sauce from the store (or from my parents when I can swipe some off them). I eat mostly red sauce, which inevitably burns and creates an incredibly annoying brown crust on the pot whenever I try to heat it up. There are many instances where I nearly surrender to the dishes instead of cleaning them, and 75% of those come from red sauce. At least it usually tastes decent, though I somehow managed to always spill some on my shirt. Good pasta ultimately requires good sauce, and not having any saucing skill I am utterly unqualified to instruct anyone in its creation. And let’s be honest, you could figure out how to make it adequately without me telling you.

https://www.campusclipper.com/new/popup1.php?CUP_COD=4023

Click below to get access to and redeem all Campus Clipper Coupons; coupons are updated weekly


By: Alexander Rose

Alexander Rose studies satire at NYU Gallatin and wishes he was actually just Oscar Wilde. He is interested in writing, roleplaying games, and procrastination. Describing himself in the third person like this makes him feel weird.

For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC,  from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services.  

At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.

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