A taste of family

It's 5 p.m. on Wednesday, and the Ting Ting's "That's Not My Name" is sounding out from the kitchen in Brown 216. Candice Chow '09, Jason Harper '09 and Julio May-Gamboa '09 are preparing dinner for 22 of their fellow members of the Brown Co-op.

The kitchen door is propped halfway open, and the scents of rosemary and garlic fill the hallway. With room draw coming up, I've been curious about alternative eating options available to upperclassmen. I was invited to dinner to get a peek into life at the co-op. I approach the door and knock.

"Come in," a small voice calls from inside. I enter, and I immediately notice the long wooden table chaotically covered with pans, spoons and bowls. Candice appears, warmly introduces herself and offers a tour.

In addition to the long table, the "L"-shaped main room houses two large refrigerators, a meat freezer, two mini-fridges and a large bookcase stocked with dozens of cookbooks ranging from the traditional "Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook" to the less conventional "I'm in the Kitchen, Now What?!"

Dinner is well underway. Candice tells me cooking begins at 4:30 p.m. everyday, and the group arrives to eat at 6:30 p.m. Every member of the co-op is assigned a night to cook with two or three others.

Despite an increase in popularity over the past few years, the co-op only has room for 25 new members who sign up and are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. The co-op expects all open membership slots to be filled for the coming fall, and a waitlist has already been made.

Jason and Julio are Candice's Wednesday night cooking partners. On the menu is macaroni with a savory beef sauce that Julio is busily preparing at the stove, roasted carrots with herbs, a mixed-greens salad with tomato and avocado and a honey spice cake with vanilla ice cream for dessert. Jason is at the table preparing the cake from scratch while reading from "The Gourmet Cookbook."

Candice puts me to work finishing the side dishes. She has already sliced five pounds of carrots, and I help her measure out the rosemary, pepper, olive oil and sage that we'll mix with the carrots before putting them in the oven to roast.

"To make a good dinner, you can't just throw random things together. Everything must go well," Candice tells me.

"Uhhh," says Julio, questioning Candice's assertion and gesturing to his meat sauce simmering on the stove. She laughs him off.

"We go all out for Thanksgiving," she says. "And Elkins Oliphant Day!" Julio adds. He points to an old, tarnished bronze plaque on the wall across from the sink engraved with the words "In this room lived Elkins Oliphant, First Lieutenant 119th Infantry. Killed in action in France. October 18, 1918."

Every year on the day he died, the co-op members feast and celebrate the life of Mr. Oliphant ‘17, who lived 91 years ago in the room they now call home. One member suggested they contact the Oliphant descendants and invite them to dinner. She thought it would be cool. Some of the others thought it was creepy.

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Once the carrots are in the oven, I'm relieved of my cooking duties and begin to roam around the room while Jason pours his cake mix into rectangular pans, Julio measures out pasta and Candice tosses the salad. Old issues of Time magazine and The Economist are strewn about, caught under table legs and forgotten in dusty corners. A "Twister" game box peeks out from a shelf behind "The Joy of Cooking," next to another cookbook filled with vegetarian recipes.

Brian Geistwhite '09 is the next member to arrive. A Sunday night cooker, he is a self-described "vegetarian-in-training" and has been in the co-op since the beginning of his junior year. His special chore in Brown is "general co-op improvement." He points out that the new coat rack and chalkboard are his latest acquisitions.

I notice a picture frame on the mantle of the fireplace of smiling undergrads in formal wear linked arm-in-arm. Brian catches me looking at the frame, and he tells me he is not sure who those students are, that they graduated a while ago.

"Brown relies on the oral tradition," he says. "We have no formal record-keeping system, so we don't know who was in the co-op five years ago or what it was like."

He hands me a copy of the co-op's constitution, a special version used at the recent inauguration of the group's new president, Paul Nehring '10. The document contains clauses on "cheese storage" and a "zombie attack contingency."

"We're informal and family-like," Brian says. "We are goofy and joking most of the time." He also tells me that the group is active in the intramural scene and is the current B-League champion in both indoor soccer and broomball.

"There are a lot of outdoorsy people, OA leaders and former Varsity athletes," he explains.

"Not to mention," Brian jokes, "the largest ratio of any campus group of people from North Dakota and New Mexico."

Just then Paul shows up with the outgoing co-op president, Gordon Scharf '09. Paul joined the co-op after coming back to campus from a three-year leave.

"Joining made sense for me. Here you get to know people you normally wouldn't and in a way you normally wouldn't," he says.

As Candice and Julio pull trays of sizzling pasta out of the oven, other members are beginning to arrive. Jason switches the music to the Foundation's "Build Me Up Buttercup."

My half of the dinner table is filled with Brown regulars Brian, Paul, Gordon, Jessica Lander '10 and Chris Yarnell '10. Candice, Jason and Julio are at the other half with six friends from Spelman. The co-op has an informal unlimited guest meal policy, meaning members can invite friends whenever they want.

"The best night to invite people is the night you cook," Paul says. "We love the chaos and lots of people coming in and out." I tried to keep track of who was coming and going, but after a while it got too difficult.

"Since I've been here we've had seven people drop out of eating clubs to join us and zero people drop the co-op to join an eating club," Julio tells me. "It feels like a home, and we like that it's a big family dinner every night."

The "family" dinner conversation that night ranged from topics like inflation in Zimbabwe to what happened in the recent episode of "The Simpsons."

As everybody chatted, my attention was drawn to the atomic clock resting on the fireplace mantle, another one of Brian's recent acquisitions. It's supposed to set itself, but the group speculates that Brian comes in every night and secretly winds it.

Paul jokes that on the night daylight saving time begins, they should have a party and stay up to watch the clock set itself forward.

Quirky parties are common to the co-op. In May, when many flock to the Street for Houseparties, the folks at Brown head to Poe Field for "Homeless Parties" and a tasty barbecue.

People finished eating soon after, but not before many head back to the buffet for second helpings. Jessica led me to the sink so I could wash my plate. Afterwards, as I went to grab my coat, I realized that I was, at least for tonight, part of the family that congregates every evening at the dining table in Brown 216.

Brian made sure I took a slice of Jason's spice cake for the road. It was delicious.