Spaetzle, Spumetti & Sushi

On Sunday evening in the basement kitchen of Laughlin Hall, Megan Wong '11 is making spaetzle from scratch, while Val Shin '11 prepares the kielbasa, potatoes and cabbage for an Oktoberfest-themed meal.

"None of us has ever made any of this stuff before, but sometimes we make stuff that we're more comfortable with, like Asian food," Wong says.

As the peppers and onions sizzle in olive oil, Wong slices apples to make dessert for the International Food Co-op's dinner. The overflowing fridge stores a medley of leftovers from previous meals: citrus salsa, potatoes and soy sauce, kimchi and an ambiguous "mafia mushroom chicken." Co-op members waiting for their dinner grab cookies from a container labeled "sugary nutty goodness" (spumetti, an Italian meringue).

"We've had French, Italian, Greek, Chinese," says Shin, stirring the potatoes in the frying pan. "I've tried a lot of foods that I've never tried before just by coming to the co-op."

The chefs must make some improvisations to the recipes, which Wong obtained from allrecipes.com. The kielbasa, for example, is actually a Polish dish replacing the bratwurst they didn't have in the fridge. Wong invited Katharina Roesler '12, whose family is German, to help with the spaetzle noodles.

"It'll be delicious --- it just won't be German to the 100 percent," Roesler says, adding Parmesan and mozzarella cheese to the noodles instead of Swiss.

Roesler, along with guests Javaria Najeeb '12 and Qiaochu Yuan '12, is considering joining a co-op for her upperclassman meal plan. All three visitors help in the kitchen and get a taste of co-op cooking.

By 6:45 p.m., the small dining room is filled with hungry co-op members as diverse as the dishes they prepare. According to Mike Wang '10, one of the co-op's founders, the 24 members represent 14 different nationalities. About a quarter are vegetarians and international students. Some were previously in eating clubs, while others were in residential colleges or independent housing. All are the first to join the co-op.

"I've really been obsessing on building culture, building a really strong sense of community among members here," Wang says.

Wang hopes to create a communal environment in the co-op through the themed dinners and special events. The previous night's Italian meal included a game of mafia, in which members had cards with the name of someone they had to "assassinate" by winking across the table. Each card also included five "fun facts" about their target, so the members could get to know one another.

The cards are still lined along the wall of the dining room, where everyone is digging into the kielbasa and cabbage, while a few co-op members are searching for the definition of spaetzle online.

Jason Huang '11, the co-op's intramural captain, and Jason Yun '10 revel in retelling the group's victory earlier that day.

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"We smacked on psych at IM frisbee," Huang says between bites, referring to the team's 2-0 win against the psychology department.

Others discuss future co-op undertakings, such as remodeling the dining room or compiling an archive of recipes, and Wang takes out a camera, continuing his effort to photograph every meal. He wants to create a collage to decorate the walls.

The conversation eventually circles back to the food, reminiscing on the Greek dinner and Deborah Chang '10's Mongolian hot pot, laughing over Becky Bae '11's "miso soup-udong noodle hybrid" on an eclectic night of noodles, quiche and coffeecake when they didn't have the ingredients for the Yom Kippur meal they had planned.

Bae simmers over her shrimp-miso sauce-seaweed-shitake mushroom improvisation of the udong stock, coupled with the quiche they served. "That quiche was the eggiest thing I've ever eaten. It had, like, 20 eggs."

Meanwhile, Chang shakes her head. "Don't believe her impression. It was delicious."

But Bae has the next night's dinner already planned out. The beef for Korean bulgogi is already thawing as the members finish the apple cake and savor the last morsels of their trip to Germany.