It’s Sunday, the last day of spring break. Friends are coming back from every direction on the compass, travel weary and hungry for something more substantial then the bag of chips they grabbed at the last bathroom stop. Everyone knows the feeling.Hugs and stories are exchanged. Who drove the farthest? Who got the least amount of sleep? Who threw up the most? Who made the biggest mistake of their life?

After the excitement of camaraderie wears off, the hunger still lingers. No one has money to spend on dinner, no one is ready to go to the caf. It’s a dismal existence.

This week a new character joins my crew, the one and only Maximilian Kochinke. Ana and Dan gave in to the whims of responsibility and did school work all day. The Max’s, however, would not participate in such diligence. This was the last day of spring break and we were determined to continue living as we had for the past week: in glorious academic stagnancy. If Dan and Ana helped cook, I’m not sure why you mention the homework stuff, makes it seem like they’d be absent from the process. Confusing.

Ingredients were apprehended from various freezers and pantries. A can of black beans and some rice that had been “in there forever,” Dan said. Ana conjured up a bag of frozen mixed veggies. Max had some frozen shrimp and about half a bag of frozen chicken. It may not seem like much but we figured that combining said ingredients would produce a colorful, palatable meal. Or it would be really disgusting. I’m told cooking is about taking chances; plus, even if the food sucks, I can still write about it.

I stir-fried the frozen veggies back to life and picked out all five pieces of celery, at Ana’s request. Dan took a short break from his reading to help us with his confounding rice cooker. Trust me, pouring rice and water into the machine and setting it to “cook” is so much harder than it sounds. He also showed me how to use an alien can-opener apparently designed for safety, but in reality designed for keeping me from the contents of a can of black beans.

Meanwhile, Max got started on the chicken. After throwing in a couple spices (garlic powder and curry), he showed off by “bourbonizing” the chicken, which involved pouring Early Times Whiskey into the pan and lighting it on fire. He pulled it off brilliantly and only later confessed that he had no idea what he was doing and could have blown up Dan’s kitchen.

Next we added the shrimp to the pan, not realizing that they had the shell on, providing us with the later joy of peeling hot shrimp. After adding some more garlic powder and salt and pepper we eventually had an impressive pile of shrimp and chicken. The beans and veggies were ready and waiting. All that was left was the rice.

If you haven’t noticed yet, dear reader, rice is becoming the bane of my existence. And this week would be no exception. Sick of playing the waiting game with the rice-cooking unit, we deemed it edible and decided to stir-fry in some soy sauce to hide its undercooked flaws. The only problem is, in order to fry the rice we had to strain the water out and then get it from the cooker to the pan, a task of monumental proportions [awkward sentence, seems like you left a word or words out]. Max held the lid on tight while I carefully tipped the pot over the sink. Surprisingly, very few grains were sacrificed in the pot-to-pan transfer.

We fried the rice with soy sauce, a risky decision considering we were to mix in a can of black beans. Finally, we mixed in all of the pans of food: rice, beans, veggies, chicken and shrimp. It looked. interesting.

We gathered around the table and ate the concoction, retelling spring break highlights and collectively dreading the next day’s classes. It was good, each component had a distinctive taste of its own but also mixed well with the others. Plus, we had salt. And it was free (because all the ingredients were purchased so long ago no one remembered how much they cost). And spring break was over.