Cooking with Herr Hobi

This is R writing again!

On Tuesday I got on the train to school and my friends came up to me and said, "Oh, R, you know you have to meet the class at Stadelhofen today at 5:15, don't you?" I said no, and they explained that the math teacher, Herr Hobi, was having us come to his house later to cook. They didn't explain what we were cooking, who we were cooking for, or why we were cooking with the math teacher. I assumed that we were having a cooking competition for extra credit. The last class is math, so I was in suspense all day.

When we got to math class the teacher explained what was going on. We were going to get into groups and cook a pasta dinner for ourselves. The jobs were: the pasta itself, tomato veggie sauce, mushroom cream sauce, chicken sauce, a dessert (non-specified), and setting and clearing the table. We were to meet outside Stadelhofen station at 5:15 and walk to the house where we were cooking.

After school ended I had about an hour to kill before 5:15 came rolling around. So naturally I called home and asked if I could go. Daddy wasn't much of a help, so I had to call Mama and she flipped. She was really worried and wondered why they were bringing the kids out after school to their house. She even asked if it was just me personally. I explained that it was the whole class, since he mentioned it in the class, and explained what was going on. She said I had to go to the meeting spot with friends as well as come home with friends since the thing ended "around ten" and she thinks the station is dangerous after nine. I wasn't really worried, though, because this is Switzerland and they let the kids stay out past midnight going to parties and expect them to go on the train home alone.

When I got to the meeting point everyone was given sheets of paper with ingredients and we went down to the Coop under Stadelhofen to shop. We checked out and headed towards the cooking house. It looked like a normal apartment, but I think that it might be a house they use for after school activities because one of the doors was labelled, "büro" and the bathrooms had stalls.

We then got out the knives and cutting boards and were put to our own devices to cut the vegetables, with some tips from the teacher, who later said that his hobby was cooking. Then the pots and pans came out and the kitchen was crowded. My group was making the tomato sauce, so we were the first to be let on the stove since ours takes a while. In our group was my friend Alyssa, who cooks herself dinner every night because her mom isn't there much, so she was a big help to the group. We cooked it like it seemed it should be done, then we all taste tested it and it was way too bitter. We spent about twenty minutes adding seasoning and sugar, suggested by Alyssa, to sweeten it. The thing is, we had a bit of a tussle over the sugar, as one of the four of us doubted that it would work and kept insisting it would make it gross. Eventually Herr Hobi came, threw in some tomato paste an sugar, we threw in a bit more salt, and it was perfect. Then we played foosball while the others finished up.

I noticed while we were cooking our food that the mushroom sauce next to us was having wine put it. When the girl in charge put in a little bit and asked the teacher if it was okay, he took the bottle and dumped in enough to cover the bottom inch of the frying pan. It surprised me because we are a class of thirteen and fourteen year olds.

When we finally sat down to eat our dinner, the tables were surprisingly nicely set. There were mini candles scattered over each one as well as a big candle. We were set to light them ourselves, which resulted in a lot of sore thumbs and nearly burnt fingers because none of us could get the lighter working properly. First the salad came out, then the pasta was a self serve kind of thing. The biggest table went first, which made my all girls table mumble, "Ladies first." We were a pretty big table, though, because we took the small table and pushed it out from the wall and added four more seats than we should have. There were so many of us that one table had to wait for the next batch of pasta. The math teacher had no seat, so we added even one more for him to sit.

Then we all took a break while dessert was being prepared. Some of us went to foosball, some of us just chatted, there was an intense connect four game, and there was a girls only book that we shouldn't have taken out. Dessert wasn't my favorite because I didn't like the flavors, but it was still nice to talk. We wanted to light the candles again, but there were two of us who would immediately and insistently blow them out. So we stopped trying. Then we left for Stadelhofen and went home. I snuck in the back way so as not to wake anyone up.