This past Spring I worked part time as a substitute high school teacher while taking classes. The district I worked in, like most across the world, was short-staffed and struggled to find teachers before vaccines were available, so they hired a bunch of college students in the area. My school was only in person for the first half of the day; we couldn’t accommodate the spacing required for students to be mask-less indoors for lunch time. So lunch and afternoon classes were online, which I didn’t teach. This meant I didn’t have to give up my leisurely, home-cooked lunching habits on workdays. However, on Tuesdays, I did have to rush. I would arrive home around 12:30 and my first Emory class started at 1:00. So I created “Tuesday Noodles,” a dish that’s not so much a recipe, as it is a combination of a few simple cooking techniques, which use pantry staples and allow me to add almost anything I have in my fridge. I chose this dish because it is a product and representation of the transitional period of my life this Spring, as my world began to cautiously inch toward reopening.

In addition to speed, this dish had to be a complete meal, including a protein and a few different vegetables. I generally have Italian sausage in the freezer. I’m able to take out a sausage the night before and have it defrosted and ready for Tuesday. I don’t think I’ve ever made this without spinach, a refrigerator staple in my house. I’ll admit, I don’t love spinach here. It goes limp and is almost slimy. I’m reminded of Lin Yutang’s spinach lamentations. But it’s so easy to add and so good for me that I just accept it. A far more welcome vegetable is mushrooms, which I don’t always have. Slicing a few white button mushrooms and sautéing them adds about 7 or 8 minutes to the total time, so I don’t always do it, even when I do have them. But when I do, the savory flavor and meatiness of a browned mushroom is delightful, especially after it takes on the seasonings of the sausage. When I made this dish for the midterm, I didn’t have any mushrooms, so I didn’t include any. I had a scrap of a white onion, so I diced and included it. This dish works well as a fridge cleaner, which is especially helpful for a mid-day item, allowing for a more streamlined fridge come dinner time. The flexibility is additionally important during Covid, since I don’t go to the grocery store more than I need to.

Since the dish is based on a technique derived from being in a rush, it’s easy to scale up and feed a crowd. I have done this to make upwards of about a dozen portions, enough to feed all my roommates and a handful of folks we have over regularly. In some ways, this is a completely different dish. Sure, my bowl of noodles is identical: the pasta is finished in a tomato paste-based sauce with sausage, spinach, and mushrooms. But the experience is entirely different when shared with friends, all packed into the kitchen with mismatched bowls waiting in line. But in some ways, this preparation for feasting together-- perhaps a convivia to Vergil or a convivio to Javi and his family, or just a Friday night to me-- carries the hurried and flexible spirit of the Tuesday Noodle. I only cook this for us all when we’ve forgotten to prepare for a crowd. We always have tomato paste and vegetables, so some form of this dish is always minutes away. When I cook a large batch in a hurry because I’m hungry and my friends are too, it feels like my thirty-minute window between my commute home and impending class. Although, when I leave the kitchen to eat with my friends, the dish becomes something different.

The time crunch that was the impetus for this dish is a product of the transitional nature of the past semester. As my life reopened, I found myself missing some comforts I had established during quarantine. I recognize that being able to be comfortable during the worst of Covid is quite a privilege, and it is one that shaped many of my day-to-day behaviors. I greatly valued having a well-prepared lunch, which sometimes rivaled my dinners. There are behaviors I hope to hang onto: masks in stores, spending weekends inside with my closest friends, and cooking every day (this last one is a bit of a paradox since I love the act of cooking, but also enjoy eating restaurant food and supporting local restaurants; however, that dilemma isn’t for this essay). These fast-paced Tuesday Noodles are therefore an expression of my desire to hold onto the comforts of working-from-home in a partially reopened world.

In reflection, I greatly enjoyed this project, every step of the way. I think it’s safe to say every one of us enjoyed cooking and eating a comforting bowl of noodles. But I additionally enjoyed being able to practice food writing, a skill my sister has long been encouraging me to try. I always have a narrative in my head as I cook, and I always try to understand the processes and science behind every culinary step. It was a delight to practice putting those ideas and understandings into words and expressing them clearly for others.