I’m sure almost all of us have experienced living with a roommate or at least sharing our living space with other people. I have heard my fair share of roommate horror stories before but nothing will ever compare to my current roommate who can’t cook. We have other problems with each other, other than the fact that his refusal to use salt mildly peeves me. I have tried to introduce him to the concept of using his taste buds but have been facing some resistance to this concept. He claims that he does not care how his food tastes and only eats it for sustenance, but to me, it sounds like he is scared that he will forever be in my debt when I change his life by introducing him to spices.
By far the most appalling thing I have seen was his attempt to make pasta on the second day of us living together. It started off innocently enough with him just boiling water. He didn’t salt his water, but I can look past it because I have forgotten to add salt to my water from time to time. Then he added pasta, and all was well until it came time for the pasta to be strained and eaten. Instead of using a clean colander that we had, he proceeded to pour out the water from the pot and failed miserably at attempting to keep the pasta in the pot. After getting most of the water out of the pot, he grabbed a fork and just started eating it right away right out of the pot. No salt, no sauce, not anything on this poor pasta.
It was a similar experience to the time I witnessed him attempting to make a hamburger. The premade patty was thrown bare on the pan with no oil or anything. He then let it sit there until it was mostly cooked then flipped it and let it cook until rubbery and tough. All of this happened without the use of any salt, pepper, or any other spices to make this rubber beef palatable. The next egregious action was when he then put the burger, if you can even call it that, on a bun with no condiments on it whatsoever. Now as a self-proclaimed sauce hater, I could usually look past this but at least I put cheese or a little bit of ketchup on my burger. This is just unacceptable.
All of this debauchery raises an important question, why does someone who has the ability to upgrade the quality of their food easily and for free continually refuse to do so? When I asked him this question, I was given a shrug. If I had more time and was qualified to do so I would attempt to psychoanalyze him. But alas, I am but a mere college junior with little motivation to do anything above the bare minimum needed to succeed. So maybe one day in the future, I can explore and get to the bottom of this, but that day is not today.
