I’m standing in my grandma's kitchen the night before Thanksgiving. I’m in elementary school, chatting excitedly about the latest happenings in 5th grade while Osie, as we granddaughters call her, pulls a fresh container of CRISCO vegetable shortening from her wooden pantry. I eye the hodgepodge of ingredients on the counter: a bag of unsweetened frozen pitted cherries, raspberries, sugar, and everything we need for the creation of a perfectly flaky pie crust. This sacred pie-making process is tradition for the two of us, and I’ve looked forward to it all year. As we get started, I'm already thinking about how excited I am to share it with everyone the next day.
What I don't know at the time is that Osie has spent days tracking down those specific frozen cherries, driving to what seems like every grocery store in the Chicago area to find them. I'm sure she could have done without this scavenger hunt, but I know she loves making the pie with me. And every Thanksgiving when I was little, Osie would take her first ceremonial bite, wave her fork at me, and declare, “That's one dang good pie, Molly Claus,” as if she hadn’t practically baked the whole thing herself while I danced around the kitchen eating the filling straight from a spoon.
Osie isn't the only person in my family who has shown her love through food. My mom is a fantastic cook, and growing up, many of my favorite moments with her happened around the kitchen counter.
In high school, I counted down the minutes until swim practice ended so I could rush home to whatever delicious recipe she had tried for dinner. I’d sit at the counter with her, ravenous after a long and harrowing two-hour workout, recounting our days while enjoying her lovingly assembled meal. You name it, my mom has probably cooked it for us: shakshuka, stir-fry, risotto, chicken tikka masala, and just about everything in between.
At the very top of this list ranks my mom’s Zucchini pie: a hearty, cheesy vegetable quiche so famous that the garden center where I worked posted the recipe on their blog in hopes people would buy zucchinis from their market and experience a bit of the magic for themselves.
After years of being spoiled by my family's cooking, moving into the dorms freshman year was a bit of an adjustment. Admittedly, though, I was relieved to have a dining plan. Not having to think about what to cook for myself every day while adjusting to a new home and a new normal was refreshing. As someone with an allergy, while I worried about finding quality gluten-free options, I was even more nervous about finding people to sit with at meals. Luckily, after meeting my first college friends (and now roommates!) on a whim on Bascom Hill, we quickly established a tradition of nightly "family dinners" at Four Lakes Dining Hall. We'd take over the same table, spending hours recounting our days over plates of semi-warm dining hall food. Looking back, those dinners were some of my favorite moments of freshman year.
By sophomore year, my mom had caught on to the fact that I wasn't exactly following in her culinary footsteps. She correctly suspected that I gravitated toward Trader Joe's frozen meals and quick sandwiches rather than elaborate home-cooked dinners, so she decided to take matters into her own hands and take a trip to Madison to cook for me, my roommates, and my friends. One afternoon during finals season, she knocked on my apartment door carrying coolers of food: pans of roasted vegetables, quinoa, salad, grilled chicken, chili, and cupcakes. Everyone went back for seconds, and nobody left without leftovers. She's brought us a meal every finals season since.
Between family dinners at Four Lakes and my mom's finals-week visits, some of my favorite college memories were already taking place over meals. When I joined WASB at the end of Sophomore year, that list only grew.
I applied to WASB because I was looking for community on campus. I'd tried on many different student orgs, but none of them fit quite right. No matter what I joined, campus still felt HUGE, and I struggled to find my place in the crowd. On top of that, I wanted to give back to a school I felt so passionate about, feel part of something bigger than myself, and help plan events that celebrated the student experience here. WASB's mission of connecting Badgers past, present, and future seemed to check all those boxes. What I didn't realize was that applying to WASB would be, hands down, the best decision I've made in college. The people I met through this organization have become some of my very best friends, and I can't imagine my time in Madison without them.
Shortly after joining the org, I was invited to dinner alongside two other new members in my member class and a few WASBies from the executive director team. We sat around a table by the lake and ate dinner together, simply chatting about our days and our interests. We walked to WASB General Meeting together, and I remember sitting in a room with all these new, cool, kind people and realizing that, for the first time in a while, I'd found a place on campus where I immediately felt like I belonged.
During my second semester on WASB, I decided to be a Badger Buddy for a new member. Enter Cooper! We became fast friends after chatting over coffee and quickly made plans to cook dinner together at my house. Conveniently forgetting that I don't really know how to cook, we decided to tackle a vodka pasta recipe. For Cooper, this was probably a pretty straightforward task. For me, it was a helpful lesson in how to properly chop an onion, taught by a new friend who quickly noticed my questionable knife skills. We spent far longer in the kitchen than anticipated, but eventually sat down to enjoy a pretty delicious bowl of pasta.
This same semester, I planned Food for Thought with my co-chair Mary Popkey. This event happens once a semester in collaboration with Slow Food, with the mission of delivering a sustainably sourced, free, home-cooked meal to students. In addition to the meal, WASB coordinates a panel of experts on topics surrounding food systems and sustainability. From the energy in the kitchen as the meal comes together to the conversations students and panelists share around the table, Food for Thought reminds us how much can come from sharing a meal. It's an opportunity to enjoy good food, learn something new, and connect with others. And Food for Thought isn’t the only WASB event that surrounds food. Whether you want to learn about food systems from a panel of speakers, chat with a professor over a home-cooked meal, learn about financial independence over Ian’s pizza, or grab a free breakfast while saying hi to Bucky, WASB has something for you.
I've come to realize that sharing a meal is about so much more than the food itself. It's the time spent making it, the conversations that happen over it, and the people who make you want to linger a little longer. Now, as a senior on WASB writing this blog, I can't help but feel lucky to have found so many people to share those moments with. More than anything, I'm just happy I've had the chance to have a seat at the table.