The Experience

I read somewhere recently that you should spend money on experiences, not material goods. Well, today I tried.

See, a while back, I did what every poor college kid does, and bought the cheapest stuff I could find at the grocery store. I bought corn tortillas, which ended up being a baaad decision really. What can you do with corn tortillas? They're dry, flaky, and mostly flavorless. Anyways, after a few failed food attempts, I decided I would worry about them later and just focus on my crazy week. So the weekend rolls around, and my mind drifts back to those tortillas...

I started researching recipes, finally landing on taquitos. It felt like a perfect opportunity to cook for the house--and an opportunity to try out a new recipe after my brilliant success with Thai peanut sauce the other day. Because I'm cheap, I decided to go with the corn and black bean recipe and forego the chicken. I already had black beans, so voila! I was in business.

Well, I had to go grocery shopping to pick up some extra stuff: corn, cilantro, garlic, onion, cheese, and guacamole. I also bought a dessert because why not? Family dinner deserves a dessert. I splurged a bit. Anyways, my roommate Alicia and I started our marathon in the kitchen, chopping the onion, garlic, and cilantro. prepping the corn and beans, sweating the garlic and onion, etc. Well, we get to the step in which we had to roll the taquitos and my tortillas just are not cooperating. No matter how hard we tried, they wouldn't hydrate or would just pathetically split. I googled technique after technique and didn't have any luck. Laid out in the pan, they were kinda hideous. Here I had spent all this time and money to try to make a nice dinner and I thought it would be ruined by a bunch of stupid tortillas.

During the prep, I kind of taught Alicia how to dice onions and prep garlic for the first time. We had a lot of good laughs at being domestic. And when I started freaking out, Alicia simply told me that we still had dessert and that McDonald's was just down the street. She even insisted on setting the table, lighting a candle, and putting up the flowers that Katelyn brought home from work. It was a full blown family dinner.

So the taquitos come out of the oven, and while some of them looked a bit rough, they tasted pretty dang good. We also had salsa, sour cream, and guac which helped. After serving after serving of taquitos and a strawberry cheese danish, we agreed that it had all worked out. Not to mention the sheer hilarity of the things that are said when you sit us all down together at one table. Afterwards, Alicia and I cleaned up and did all the dishes, all while joking that perhaps we would not completely fail in being able to complete domestic tasks in our future.

Hell yeah I splurged. Hell yeah it was nerve wracking to think that dinner would fail. And hell yeah it was an awesome experience. To be entirely honest, tonight was one of the best days of my summer so far. Forget my frustrating morning at work, the exhaustion, the tough week ahead. Today I watched a lot of soccer, drank a lot of tea, and spent a lot of time over onions, a hot stove, and a hotter oven.

The experiences are what we want. It's not necessarily the food, but the people you share it with that make a perfect meal. It's not the movie, but the people you get to lean into during the scary parts. It's not the financial cost of taking a trip to Scotland, or moving to Seattle, it's the thrill, the sights, the sounds, the adrenaline, the feeling you get when you hold up that pair of hiking boots that took you 98 miles across the West Highland Way along Loch Lomond.

Spend money on the experiences? don't mind if I do.

Be well. Share your happiness. Live the epic life.

-Megan