The end of the semester is always the saddest time of year. It's hard to impress a date when your checking account is drier than Barbara Walters' skin. Nowadays, we also have to be multicultural to maintain a relationship.
You can't take a date to a fine American restaurant like McDonald's and expect a nightcap. But fancy foreign food is too expensive on an end-of-year budget. There is hope. Instead of taking somebody out to eat, why not create exotic dishes in your own kitchen?
Australian accents are sexy. That's why everybody loves Outback Steakhouse. They serve steak and ribs, as well as vegetarian options, like steak and ribs. One of my favorite appetizers on the menu is the Bloomin' Onion, Australia's world-famous take on heart disease.
This recipe is quite easy to replicate at home. You'll need one onion, three pounds of Crisco, flour and cocaine. Mix the flour and coke and dredge the onions to make a deliciously addictive batter. Then deep-fry in the lard for four to five hours, or until all the grease has been soaked up by each and every pore of the onion. Slice and serve.
Olive Garden is the place to taste classic Italian cooking - especially if you've never been to Italy to know better.
Its dishes even use fancy Italian words like "Primavera" and "breadsticks" to describe its immaculate deception. Try making the "Spaghetti Prosciutto." Take a pound of angel hair pasta and boil it for twice as long as the box recommends. Then, throw a piece of honey ham on top, smother in ketchup, and microwave for three minutes. Serve cold.
When I think of Mexican cuisine, I'm usually craving one of two restaurants. Since taking a date to On The Border is a guaranteed way to avoid a second date, I usually imitate the culinary stylings of Taco Bell. Deep-fry a slice of white bread. Then deep-fry hamburger meat. Finally, deep-fry a block of cheddar cheese. Combine all ingredients and enjoy the delicious taste of Mexico.
Not only are we killing ourselves with greasy food, we're doing it unauthentically! I'm sick of American restaurants masquerading around as imports. They may not fool you, the intellectual, but there's a large portion of Middle America that expects to find quesadillas in Chile and fortune cookies in China. American businessmen have reduced entire cultures to waiters in funny outfits, but it's not their fault we buy into the garbage.
It's our own.
Each of us seeks a knowledge of the world beyond what our own eyes can see. Food is intrinsically a very intimate sensation. We expect to know what the people of a given culture think of the world by tasting their cuisine, and it's very possible. But it's all too easy to be fooled. Tell a man the food he hates is Thai, and he'll tell you he doesn't like Thailand.
Why, then, do we keep eating at these unhealthful grease pits if we know it's all a hoax? Why do we knowingly submit ourselves to 3,000-calorie meals loaded with every kind of fat imaginable? I think the answer must lie in one ingredient: cocaine.
There is no other explanation for our behavior. If we're all starved for time but want to lose weight, why wouldn't we cut out the middleman and avoid the nasty fat in the first place? These establishments are so hard to avoid because we're all addicted. Maybe you won't find cocaine in your taco, but our bodies have become dependent on whatever chemicals are actually used to make restaurant food taste so damn good.
So be worldly. Get excited about culture. But for the sake of the people of the world, stay home tonight.
Kyle Cox is a junior majoring in marketing and anthropology. His column appears on Tuesdays.
