The pandemic may have kept residents across the Gallatin Valley at home, but it hasn’t kept them quiet about their gastronomic adventures.
Review of: Oliver’s pasta dinner
Review by: Bailey, age 5
Mommy worked extra late at the pharmacy because of the virus, so my brother Oliver was going to make pasta dinner. Oliver is fifteen. I said I didn’t want red sauce and he said then you can have your pasta with butter. I said OK but then I saw that the pasta was GREEN. I said I didn’t want green pasta and he said what about a peanut butter and honey sandwich. I said you have to cut the crusts off. He cut the crusts off. It was a very good pasta dinner. He wants to know why I’m not giving five stars. It’s because he got more ice cream than me for dessert.
Review of: My roommate’s sourdough
Review by: Drew Patterson
My roommate, Chuck, decided he was going to use the pandemic to bake bread as good as, like, Wild Crumb. He watched about fourteen YouTube videos on getting a sourdough starter going. The morning his starter bubbled he woke me up to make me smell it. I said it smelled like feet. He said it was supposed to smell like feet. He said, “What should I name it?” and I was like, “What should you name it?” and he was like, “You’re supposed to name your sourdough starter.” So I was like, “What about Amber?” “Haha,” he said. Amber is his ex. But the name stuck. He made two loaves with Amber. One was sort of flat and the other was sort of burned but, I mean, they were OK (which is why this review is two stars instead of one).
When the weather improved, he decided to master slacklining and forgot about Amber. I felt bad, watching her turn gray in the fridge. So one night I fed her. I just poured flour and water in and stirred and screwed the lid on. Then I wanted to tell the other Amber what I did, because she was pretty cool and honestly she could do a lot better than Chuck.
So I texted her, hey so we named our sourdough starter after you and Chuck was going to let you die but I revived you haha. She wrote back, lol. I wrote back, how are you holding up? I imagined telling her stories over Zoom, our romance blossoming in the midst of the chaos. The next morning when I opened the fridge I saw that Amber had exploded everywhere, and before I could recover from my shock Chuck strolled into the kitchen picking his wedgie and looking at his phone. “Amber said you texted her last night?” he said, and so, yeah, no, I can’t say my sourdough experience has been all that positive.
Review of: Brownies
Review by: M.
My neighborhood pal J., who is nine, made brownies with some parental support, and the whole family— including one very enthusiastic dog—walked over to drop them off. We sat on the porch at a safe distance and swapped stories about what life was like now. Even before I had a bite I thought, What a treat to have a few minutes of chitchat as the daylight fades. What a treat to savor the connections we have, to get a taste of company, and to remember that there will be opportunities, eventually, to gather at a table for a multi-course meal’s worth of winding conversation and belly laughs.
But also, the brownies were awesome.
