A students guide to cooking – A romantic meal for two.

So you’ve been in some sort of third level institute of learning  for a while now. Somehow, in between drinking contests, watching reruns of The Simpsons, and occasionally sauntering in to class you’ve managed to find someone who might, just possibly want to rub pasty bodies against your’s. It was wonderful, eyes meeting blearily across a crowded room, filled with drink and drug addled people. They smiled, you were pissed, and with the courage of Bacchus flowing through your veins you asked them out. Better still, with the idiocy of Bacchus flowing through their brains, they said, yes.

The thing is that you told that person, who you just asked out in a drunken moment of bravado, “Why, yes, I’ll make up a wonderful romantic dinner for us both.” The problem now is that the only thing you know how to cook is Detonated Potato. Well never fear Auntie Amanda is here to help. So just follow the simple steps below for as romantic an evening as our mutually pathetic cooking skills will allow.

1. Go to the local pharmacy and buy condoms. Odds are you’re going to screw this up and end up alone, curled tight around a pillow sobbing, but better safe than sorry.  Buy the extra strong “You won’t be feeling anything at all through these wellies” kind. That way you’re less likely to catch anything and frankly you (or he) will last a whole lot longer.
2. Find someone to explain how to put one on. Odds are there’s a peer educator somewhere on campus who can help. I don’t recommend asking the chaplain, any members of the institutes executive team, or your housemates.
3. Inform your housemates you have a date/are getting laid and in order to seal the deal you need the gaff to yourself. Don’t worry if you don’t actually know what the word “gaff” refers to. More than likely neither will they but everyone will assume you mean the house you share.
4. Clean up the kitchen.
5. Clean up the living room.
6. Incinerate every living thing in the bathroom.
7. NOW clean the bathroom.
8. Clean your bedroom, including changing the bed linens which have been on it since you started your third level education.
9. Decide what you want to cook for dinner.
10. Come to the realisation that you actually won’t be able to cook anything apart from Detonated Potato.
11. Consider making some Detonated Potato.
12. Remember that you read this step-by-step guide a few weeks ago, and re-read it.
13. Follow the next step.
14. Find the cheapest Italian/Chinese/Indian/Thai take away in your locality, who deliver. (This is important, there’s no point in wasting precious energy you might need later in the evening.)
15. Order only the main course, arranging delivery 15 minutes before the arrival of your potential partner in jiggy-jiggy-wah-wah!
16. Remind your housemates that they need to go elsewhere tonight.
17. Have a shower, and shave which ever bits seem most important.
18. Smell your way through your laundry basket, and wear the pieces of clothing which combine smelling the best, have the least number of suspicious stains, got together appropriately.
19. Pop around to the local shop and buy 1 carton of ready cooked custard, along with one raspberry ripple swissroll.
20. Heat the custard in a CLEAN sauce pan, this way you can semi-legitimately claim to have cooked the meal.
21. Slice the swissroll into a large bowl, pouring the custard between and over each layer of slices.
22. Place in the fridge.
23. Remind your housemates that they need to leave, and that the dessert in the fridge is off-limits.
24.  Answer door to the delivery man.
25. Pay the delivery man. (Important step, they tend to take offense to not being paid.)
26. Place the main course on plates and put in the oven set to a very low temperature to keep it warm. Put a cup/glass of hot water in with it to help keep the food moist.
27. Put the microwave garlic bread on, and then place in the oven on a separate plate with the main course.
28. Lay the table with knifes, forks, and spoons. If you have one put a table-cloth over it first to hide the burn marks and blood stains.
29. Light candles in both the kitchen and living room.
30. Physically kick your housemates out. Using only the level of violence appropriate. For example if they’re 4’10” tall you should simply pick them up and deposit them outside, however if they’re 6’11” and play rugby you may need to use a hurley and a carving knife.
31. Lay the still hot food on the table.
32. Panic when you realise the take-away containers are still on the kitchen counter.
33. Run outside and shove them into the bin.
34. Turn around and come face to face with your intended conquest.
35. Sputter, hiccup, and generally do you best impression of Hugh Grant in one of his horrific romantic comedies. (Don’t pretend you haven’t seen one, we all have!)
36. Take them inside, and serve dinner.
37. Find out that they work in the take-away you ordered from. Laugh it off.
38. Discover that they’re diabetic and that the dessert you made will make their foot drop off.  Recover from this set back by suggesting your body for dessert.

At this point depending on your gender/sexuality one of four things would seem most likely happen.

Female Straight –

1. Get physically dragged upstairs to your room.
2. Tear each others clothes off, somehow forgetting to remove each others underwear. (No-one actually knows why this happens, but I personally blame pre-watershed sit-coms.)
3. Struggle to get into the condom packet, in the end using your teeth in what you hope is a sexy manner.
4. Pull down his pants.
5. Wonder what the hell that 2 inch long mushroom is.
6. Remain single a while more.

Female Bi/Lesbian –

1. Buggered if I know. Seriously if you figure out how this one works out please let me know. After a lifetime as a lesbian I still suck at getting from “I like you!” to “Boom Shaka Wah Wah!”, usually it happens by accident.

Male Bi/Gay –

1. See previous statement, and adjust language accordingly.

Male Straight –

1. Well, I can only go by what television has taught me, but to judge from episodes of Scrubs, and the fact that if you’re reading this then odds are you name is not Charlie Sheen, it ends with the chorus of this song, and a very soapy shower.

So there you have Auntie Amanda’s guide to the perfect third level romantic evening. Please remember your own experience may vary, and that despite your own best efforts you will probably have lost your virginity by the time you re-enter the real world, three years from now.

Next time I really will get around to explaining the  preparation of non-crunchy porridge. So something for all you starving college student types to look forward to.