Keep -- some good food, some good times

Keep co-opers seem something like a large family. Walking into the exceptionally large "cottage" you pass half-clad youth napping on the porch and women lounging indoors over the Review and their homework, all to the backdrop of Ella Fitzgerald tunes.

The kitchen and its adjacent rooms are the focal point of the co-op. The rooms are cluttered and busy: barrels of butterbeans and chickpeas clutter the floor of the dry foods room, while the aroma of an open vat of honey dominates another.

Amid sacks of overflowing flour and rice, some co-oper always seems to be peering into a refrigerator, pouring a glass of cider or soy milk or swiping an apple from the wooden crate.

All in all, Keep is a place of haphazard grazing and inconsistent quality where co-opers carry out tasks with the lax devotion of a large family, and serving a sizable quantity of reasonably palatable food - in some variety and on a daily basis - is a triumph of student over stress.

Last Saturday's special meal was an example of delinquency. The meal was pasta primavera, Greek salad and garlic bread. "It's a family recipe," said the cook. "My mom's from Sicily. The meal is simple because there's only two cooks, instead of the usual four."

At 5 p.m. the cooks were chopping tomatoes and tearing lettuce on the two industrial-strength tables that dominate the kitchen. Above them, flies buzzed in and out of pots hanging from a rack papered with cheddar cheese labels. On the wall a sign warned against abusing the appliances: "Treat your appliances as if you were taking them on a date," it read.

As the cooking progressed, onions, garlic, tomatoes and a generous pouring of olive oil went into a wok-behemoth to stew. "Smells like tomatoes - wonderful!" said a passerby.

Soon it was time to boil the pasta and the cooks cranked up the industrial-size range. The burner's violent spark sent a startled scream around the kitchen. "It takes more gas than that to burn all the face off your hair," said one of the cooks.

Unfortunately for diners, the pasta, hardly recognizable, was served as an overcooked, thick, starchy mass. Added to the tomato mixture, the cooks salvaged it in a sort of paste de provence.

The side dishes, thank goodness, were more successful. With onions, tomatoes and briny feta, the Greek salad was delicious, and the cheesy buttery garlic bread was very satisfying.

Cooperation: Members of Keep co-op demonstrate the co-op philosophy of just that, cooperation, as they collaborate on the evening meal. Keep is only one of the eight dining co-ops on campus, which present students with an alternative to Campus Dining Service. The food, however, is not always necessarily preferable to CDS options. (photo by Heidi Good)