BBWs, Dining, Romance ~SWG -- more than academic lesarning is gained in College
(An adaptation by Marci of a story suggested by Anon)
[This story began as a progressive revenge tale proposed by Anon. Several posters suggested that another genre might be more appropriate. Several requests to Anon to utilize his original material went unresponded. I then decided to forge ahead, developing a different direction. ]
Monica Hartman, magna cum laude in physics and captain of her college's women's soccer team, was off to culinary school.
She had loved cooking from the day she learned to crack open an egg; she had fantasies about becoming a chef even in elementary school. But she also had a competitive streak and familial expectations that tended to influence her choices.
Monica's father was a doctor; his father was a doctor. And when Monica's younger brother David declared his intention to go to med school at the family's Thanksgiving dinner at the tender age of twelve Monica made a decision. She dropped the ladle back in the soup, walked out of the kitchen, and promised herself that she would go to college and study math and science to prepare for med school too. No way was her brother going to outdo her!
Now she was done with all that. She had proved to herself that she could go to med school if she chose, but there was something else. College had also taught her that she had a right to choose her own career, and that money and prestige were not the biggest determining factors. She followed through and got a math degree, but a minor in financial management reflecting a sideline of working as an intern in her Uncles investment banking firm during the summer.
But none of this athletic or intellectual success brought the satisfaction of her favorite pastime. ,What she enjoyed was cooking, and she had a guaranteed $ 40,000 per year income (as did her brother) from a trust fund set up by her grandfather. It had helped put her through college and could now finance what she wanted to do.
So, with her Mother's approval and her Father's somewhat perplexed consent, she was now in her room, packing for her first term at the New England Culinary Institute just outside Montpelier, Vermont. "If it doesn't work out; I can always get into medicine or business later, she had reassured them.
Her brother David was sitting on her bed.
"You'll get fat," he predicted.
Monica smiled. "Not a chance," she said, although in the back of her mind she knew her lithe frame hadnt always been such.
She was still wearing her running outfit from this morning's run. Tight black spandex pants fit her like a second skin. A gray T-shirt that said "Harvard" in red letters. She had run her usual six miles, but abandoned the wind sprints she used as a way to build endurance. Se looked like a cross between a super hero and a super model in her running clothes. She looked sleek and athletic, muscular but somehow fragile. Her Mother at times worried about her being underweight, but her husband had assured her that no one with Monica's appetite and love of food could be anorexic or bulimic.
"You going to run?" David asked.
"Ran," Monica said. She didn't look up from the box she was packing.
"You ran? Can't tell. You're heart rate must be lower than Sting's," David said. "Here, let me take your pulse. I know how, you know. I'm going to be a doctor."
"Buzz-off," Monica told her brother. She was smiling.
"You know, cooking school can be pretty cut throat," David said.
"That's what the knives are for," Monica smiled back.
This was a girl who knew something about competition--and discipline. She had been all county in middle school soccer; then she went on to lead her high school girl's team to the state conference. They came in second, but Monica was named MVP in what turned out to be a grudge match between Newton and Cambridge townships. What few knew was that she had been a very chubby child it was her competitive drive than had made her decide to lose forty pounds of pre-teen baby fat.
She had led her college study groups at Harvard and served as managing editor of one of the student newspapers. And through her four years at college, she never missed a chance to rock climb the granite of New Hampshire and Vermont. Monica prided her self on her competitive spirit, her ability to take on any challenge.
Now she was leaving for Vermont and the Culinary Institute. That was where she would encounter Janet Medvine.
Janet Medvine was in her last year at the Institute. She was smart, and not unattractive. She had great hair and piercing blue eyes. But the word everyone used to describe Janet was simply "average." She was an "average student," her teachers said. She was of average height. And, for the most part, she was of average weight. But that was not always the case.
Janet used to be fat. She had been fat for most of her life. She was a fat kid, who loved to eat for the sheer pleasure of tasting something sweet or sour--or new. She ate in part because her mother, a widow of limited education in a poor neighborhood, working in the sweltering back room of a dry cleaning establishment, allowed it, but also because it was the only enjoyment she knew as a latchkey kid..
As she went from being a fat child to a fat teen, Janet somehow forgot the pleasure of eating and it just became a habit. She cooked the supper each night for her Mom, ate a lot herself, including after school, mostly because she was bored. Until she decided to become a chef, she had no real ambition, no real interests. But she did well in home ec, and it impressed her Mom. When offered a chance to attend culinary school as part of a grant program she began to remember the forgotten taste of the foods she had loved. She decided, with a nudge from her mom, that wanted to bring that to people. She wanted to feed the world.
Janet left the lower class part of Rochester, New York, for the Culinary Institute when she was just out of high school, in the fall of '95. It was now four years later, and Janet was getting ready to graduate, number 20 in a class of 60. A lot had happened during her stay at the institute. She learned about food, about how its texture could deceive, even seduce. She learned about wine, and how the right wine could trigger cravings, making a dinning experience exciting, even sensual. She learned about appetite. She learned that the right texture and the right taste and the right aroma combined could make a meal irresistible to even the most fanatical dieter. And she had also learned about love. Adult, painful, unrequited love.
Janet fell in love during her second term at the Institute. She fell deeply, even madly for a guy named Guy. Guy was an American of Italian heritage from Boston, with a certain European look, sort of like he had just woke up, but always ready with a smile. He had brown hair that was longish and sort of curly, and deep brown eyes that left Janet wondering if she could catch up with her breath.
"Your name is Guy?" she had asked when they met while he was working on a delicate crème sauce. She hoped that her smile would distract Guy from the way she nervously shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
"Guy," he said. "It's pronounce G-E-E."
"G-HEE-HEE-HEE," is what Janet said next, but followed by a feeling of awkward embarrassment.
Guy was also awkwardly embarrassed, not understanding why she was acting like a total doofus.
Guy turned back to his creme sauce, which was now ruined. Further attempts to develop a relationship were equally unsuccessful. Janet shortly concluded the problem was her weight. It was always her weight, that convenient scapegoat onto which she had learned to blame every setback. So, halfway through her sophomore year she determined to start losing. Not all of it, of course. Just the 87 pounds she thought that she should loose. She had gained 23 pounds during her first year at the Institute. She was now 212 pounds, and it made her 5'4" frame feel awkward. She would loose the weight, she promised herself, get the guy--or in this case, the Guy--and leave the Institute a successful, happy, 125-pound sous chef-in love.
She never made it.
Janet was an incredible cook, and an even better baker. But she never got her weight down under 160 pounds, and never got so much as a date with Guy. And that got the better of her. She frowned constantly; and throughout her Junior year as she continued to try starving herself she became increasingly bitter. She was an average looking girl with above average capabilities, but no one could say that she had a really great personality.
That was how Monica first encountered met Janet: frowning.
The curriculum at the Institute called for partnership. It was a sort of buddy system: upperclassmen, usually Seniors, each took one or two pair of underclassmen/women under his or her wing, with the teams grouped under the oversight of an instructor with several upperclassmen as assistants. It was done by lottery, and this year Janet was an assistant.
Monica and a Texan named Brian Saunders formed one of two teams under Janet's oversight. An attractively plump black girl named Leticia Carver and a California brunette named Melanie Hargrove were the other team.
"This is a little off-putting," Monica thought to herself. "I've got to learn from this girl?" But with her background she was essentially a team player and kept her thoughts to herself.
There was a reason. Monica recognized that she and the others would have to spend hours together in the kitchen, mixing and pouring, browning and roasting, eating and evaluating each other's work. Janet was, like it or not the Senior in charge. For the 20 or so weeks between Labor Day--when the semester began--and Martin Luther King Day--when it ended-this meant Janet would have control of Monica's day.
The first day was orientation, and Monica's initial impression of Janet was quickly given substance. Monica had formed a habit of quickly reaching out to others and seeing where their minds were by asking questions. With Leticia it was easy, for both knew the remarkable story of Leticia's namesake, George Washington Carver and his work with peanuts. With Brian it was a query about the State's Governor, George W. Bush. And for Melanie all it took was a comparison of climates to get into a discussion of the entire California culture.
But when she used George Eastman's name to she Rochester-born and bred Janet she drew an embarrassed blank.
"George who?"
"Eastman --- the man who invented the Kodak camera. I thought everyone from there knew all about him."
"Well, yeah," Janet stammered. "I guess his name is on a lot of things. But I never got into history much."
"Sorry, " said Monica, thinking to herself, "this one is in college?"
The first day of classes did not go much better.
Classes started at 6:30 am, and Monica was nowhere near the kitchen. The Senior in charge of the teams had to help team members pick its produce, its fish, its meats for the day's project from a model market set up in the campus quad. Janet was furious, and she let Monica know it when she finally showed up at 7:15, freshly showered from her morning run.
"The running stops," Janet said. "I'm not doing the market-thing by myself."
Monica just smiled, and said "oops, sorry, Ill try not to let it happen again."
This unwillingness to fight infuriated Janet even more.
But Monicas simple acceptance of the criticism, not lashing back at the over-bearing Janet, it also caught the attention of Guy, Janets one-time interest.
He had seen Monica drive up at the start of the long Labor Day weekend. He had seen her confidence and irreverence, his interest in her now was heightened by her ability to be humble. He was in another group, but that did not stop him from exchanging a few smiles from across the kitchen before lunch.
At lunch he introduced himself to Monica. Soon they were into an animated review of Boston heritage. He surprised Monica with his familiarity with American Stonehenge. This was a strange analomy in nearby New Hampshire Monica had heard about but never visited. Janet took note of the budding friendship and was livid. But she felt helpless as she looked at Monica's slender physique.
That evening Monica determined to get up and run super early so as not to offend Janet. And that worked for a short-term solution. But the evening conversations with Guy, plus her studies in a dorm environment, made getting up at 4:00 increasingly difficult. Within a few weeks the morning running became more and more sporadic. In two months it was history.
Guy was proving to be an interesting person indeed to Monica. He already had a side job with the catering division of Burlington's largest hotel. Once or twice a week there was a banquet or special affair that he had to work on and Monica soon joined him, not for the money but just to be together. On other evenings they exchanged "homework," practicing preparation of delicacies and even full meals on one another.
The developing romance was not invisible to others, for they openly smiled and flirted with one another across the classroom during lectures. And Janet seethed helplessly at the hopelessly slender body of her competitor.
One day, around 4:30, while Janet was locking down the freshly washed pots and pans, Guy and Monica were faking a tango down the long pantry, laughing as they knocked over a sack of flower. Janet peered in. Guy and Monica never saw her, but suddenly, Guy stopped. He looked into Monica's eyes and placed his hands at her waist. Janet watched; she didn't know it, but she was shaking. She imagined that it was her own waist that Guy was holding, and she ran her right hand along the tie that kept her white tunic tight and away from the flames of the stove top.
She snapped out of her daydream when she saw Guy pull Monica closer to him. But that's not why Janet was startled. It was Monica's waist. Her waist was still so small compared to her own girth. Guy's fingers almost touched each other as they banded it. But, there was something she at first didn't believe. Janet looked, and looked again. Yes, she was not mistaken. A slight roll of flesh peeping over Monica's belt. She was not invulnerable to calories after all, and they were beginning to show --- Guy just hadn't noticed yet, nor had Monica. Janet mumbled just under her breath "not for long, honey. Not for long."
The reduced exercise and increased calories were indeed changing Monica, but not enough to make her concerned. She had noticed her clothes getting tighter but was having too good a time to be bothered about whether she was a size six or eight. And meanwhile Guy had come up with another interest to share --- being secret shoppers at restaurants and getting paid for it. It was a marked contrast to the way Janet was spending her time.
Janet usually spent her evenings alone reading and watching reruns on television. But after the flour bag incident things began to change. Instead of finishing the Steven King novel she had started, Janet decided to read over some old recipes. From the day she started her diet, Janet hid these particular recipes away. They were none too slimming: They were mostly French, mostly creamy and mostly quite fattening.
She searched frantically for one in particular: it was a sort of pate served with a cream sauce. Each serving carried with it about 1200 calories, with more than half those calories from fat. Janet dug further. She began to sketch out a regimen that would teach Monica some of the best tricks of the trade; but if her math was right, her plan would add more to Monica day than just a few good cooking tips. There were two things that Janet knew well. The first she learned at the institute: how to feed, and feed well. The second she learned from life: how to gain weight.
Janet's plan was simple and straightforward. She knew that it was easy to gain weight when you weren't looking, so the first part of her plan was to keep the calories out of Monica's sight. Cream sauces and cream soups: They were easy to teach and an important of any chef's repertoire. Janet also knew that boredom was her ally. If she could keep Monica waiting around, and waiting around food, it would just be a few weeks until the only kiss that Monica would get from Guy would be on her no longer flat stomach--and that would be to kiss it good-bye. Or so Janet thought.
But Guy and Monica knew none of this. That evening they were at Perino's, starting their meal with an appetizer of French beignets with powdered sugar and cinnamon. She had Fettuccine Alfredo with toasted pine nuts; he had the Southwest Fettuccine which is grilled chicken on noodles along with roasted peppers, cilantro and tequila crème.. They topped the evening off by each having a chocolate torte.
The food was delicious, but that was anticipated. The point of the evening was a three-page questionnaire about the ambiance and service. Had the server been knowledgeable in explaining the menu and making recommendations? Were empty water glasses promptly refilled? Were wines and desserts suggested? All they had to do was answer the questions and get reimbursed.
Janet knew none of this as she made preparations to begin the next morning with a nice white wine and cream sauce.
Monica, having been treated to heavier cuisine a few times by Guy, and eager to learn the nuances of cooking it herself, fell easy prey to Janet's plot She prepared each lesson exactly to specifications. As she mastered the dishes she tried them out at home on Guy, a fact of which Janet remained unaware. But he was delighted with such dishes as blackened rib eye steak served with Maytag blue cheese mashed potatoes and battered onion rings. Especially when dessert was a cheese blintz made with crème fraiche and loganberries.
Guy, of course, felt that he had to return the favor to Monica, but his offerings were not taken from Janet's high calorie armory. His dishes were simpler, such as chicken and spinach ravioli and country meatloaf with roasted garlic mashed potatoes and frizzled onions. She generally prepared her meals on Sunday evening and he did his on Tuesdays --- sharing them, of course with those in the respective dormitories. Added to catering twice a week and the biweekly secret shopping encounters and Monica soon began fulfilling Janet's expectations. A noticeable belly and fullness of the hips developed in Monica's spandex tights. By Thanksgiving she had stopped wearing them.
"Soon enough she'll be bursting her seams," Janet chortled to herself as she mapped out the lesson plan for December. "this should be good for about two pounds a week." But she had been overheard by Monica's friend Leticia Carver, who happened to live in the same dormitory. Leticia immediately figured out what Linda was talking about and took Monica aside the next day..
"Do you have any idea what Janet is doing to sabotage you," she asked.
"Sabotage?" replied Monica. "She has been teaching us to cook."
"Yes, but compare her menus to the rest of the class. Ours have triple the calories --- and its all so you will get fat and Guy will drop you. All last year she was trying to diet down to what she thinks he would want and never made it. Now she sees you as a threat."
Monica reached down and massaged her developing belly. "Well, I guess I've been helping phase one, but I'm not so sure she's right about phase two.
How do you mean? asked Leticia.
"Guy has never said a word about my weight - and for my birthday gave me a box of chocolate covered cherries. The only time I brought it up to him he told me not to worry --- Italian men don't mind women with some meat on their bones. Still it seems that Miss Janet does have a problem."
The next day she asked her teammate Brian what he thought about Janet's menus. "That young lady could cook her way into any man's heart," the Texan drawled. It's just too bad we don't have the resources here to draw her out of her shell and make her blossom."
"What dare you talking about?" asked Monica.
"All this fancy food is a fine hobby, and for some may even be a livelihood. But gals like her need something else - a square dance a week and a lot of recognition to stoke their blue collar ego. She's trying to compete with the likes of you, Monica, and its not possible. Its not right or wrong --- you two arent born to be in the same league. You wouldn't be a fit in Lubbock any more than she is able to fit in here here.
"But I don't understand --- I've never done anything to her."
"Nope, nor would you. Youre too classy to fuss with that kind of stuff. She does it all to herself. You are focused on a world-view of life and its challenges, just like my daddy and I. But she is focused on herself. She's not dumb --- just insecure within herself."
"You sound like you'd like to break her out of her shell?"
"Yeah, guess it shows. We've got a chain of five restaurants in Texas I'm going to be running someday and she could be a real asset as well as even a wife. But it wouldnt work unless she gets rid of her hang-ups about her weight and learns to like herself and people; she's meant to be heavier and needs to accept that about herself. Until then, she's going to be at war with herself and there's no point trying to get in."
"Thanks for sharing this with me, Brian. I have my own reasons for trying to help her come around as well. Let me think about it over the weekend."
That night Monica and Guy were evaluating one of Burlington's few fine fresh seafood restaurants, beginning with a portabella mushroom appetizer. She had gulf grouper fish baked after being crusted with sweet potatoes while he savored a plate of mahi-mahi blackened Cajun style and served with angel hair pasta flavored with key lime and tangerine sauce. As had become their custom, they each had dessert.
"You know," she said to him, "if I'm going to keep eating like this we had better make a commitment to each other. At the rate I'm gaining I'm going to grow myself out of the dating market!"
"Interesting you should mention that, replied Guy, I have been thinking, although for different reasons, that during the break it would be nice for you to come to Boston and meet my family. And don't worry about your weight --- they are likely to say you are too skinny, if anything!"
"Really? Then your family is into abbudanzia?
"I am into Monica, for her mind, her charm, and her beauty. Abbudanzia is something which comes if it wishes, and if so, I'm the happier for then there is more to hold and love; if it doesn't I am still in love. Does that settle the matter?"
"Yes, and I would very much like to meet your family. But there is something you should know about."
She then told Guy about Linda's report of Janets scheme and Brian's opinion. At first Guy just rolled his eyes and shook his head --- but then became intrigued as Monica outlined her plan for dealing with the situation.
Monica Chooses a Career - Part 1
by Marci
by Marci
(An adaptation by Marci of a story suggested by Anon)
[This story began as a progressive revenge tale proposed by Anon. Several posters suggested that another genre might be more appropriate. Several requests to Anon to utilize his original material went unresponded. I then decided to forge ahead, developing a different direction. ]
Monica Hartman, magna cum laude in physics and captain of her college's women's soccer team, was off to culinary school.
She had loved cooking from the day she learned to crack open an egg; she had fantasies about becoming a chef even in elementary school. But she also had a competitive streak and familial expectations that tended to influence her choices.
Monica's father was a doctor; his father was a doctor. And when Monica's younger brother David declared his intention to go to med school at the family's Thanksgiving dinner at the tender age of twelve Monica made a decision. She dropped the ladle back in the soup, walked out of the kitchen, and promised herself that she would go to college and study math and science to prepare for med school too. No way was her brother going to outdo her!
Now she was done with all that. She had proved to herself that she could go to med school if she chose, but there was something else. College had also taught her that she had a right to choose her own career, and that money and prestige were not the biggest determining factors. She followed through and got a math degree, but a minor in financial management reflecting a sideline of working as an intern in her Uncles investment banking firm during the summer.
But none of this athletic or intellectual success brought the satisfaction of her favorite pastime. ,What she enjoyed was cooking, and she had a guaranteed $ 40,000 per year income (as did her brother) from a trust fund set up by her grandfather. It had helped put her through college and could now finance what she wanted to do.
So, with her Mother's approval and her Father's somewhat perplexed consent, she was now in her room, packing for her first term at the New England Culinary Institute just outside Montpelier, Vermont. "If it doesn't work out; I can always get into medicine or business later, she had reassured them.
Her brother David was sitting on her bed.
"You'll get fat," he predicted.
Monica smiled. "Not a chance," she said, although in the back of her mind she knew her lithe frame hadnt always been such.
She was still wearing her running outfit from this morning's run. Tight black spandex pants fit her like a second skin. A gray T-shirt that said "Harvard" in red letters. She had run her usual six miles, but abandoned the wind sprints she used as a way to build endurance. Se looked like a cross between a super hero and a super model in her running clothes. She looked sleek and athletic, muscular but somehow fragile. Her Mother at times worried about her being underweight, but her husband had assured her that no one with Monica's appetite and love of food could be anorexic or bulimic.
"You going to run?" David asked.
"Ran," Monica said. She didn't look up from the box she was packing.
"You ran? Can't tell. You're heart rate must be lower than Sting's," David said. "Here, let me take your pulse. I know how, you know. I'm going to be a doctor."
"Buzz-off," Monica told her brother. She was smiling.
"You know, cooking school can be pretty cut throat," David said.
"That's what the knives are for," Monica smiled back.
This was a girl who knew something about competition--and discipline. She had been all county in middle school soccer; then she went on to lead her high school girl's team to the state conference. They came in second, but Monica was named MVP in what turned out to be a grudge match between Newton and Cambridge townships. What few knew was that she had been a very chubby child it was her competitive drive than had made her decide to lose forty pounds of pre-teen baby fat.
She had led her college study groups at Harvard and served as managing editor of one of the student newspapers. And through her four years at college, she never missed a chance to rock climb the granite of New Hampshire and Vermont. Monica prided her self on her competitive spirit, her ability to take on any challenge.
Now she was leaving for Vermont and the Culinary Institute. That was where she would encounter Janet Medvine.
Janet Medvine was in her last year at the Institute. She was smart, and not unattractive. She had great hair and piercing blue eyes. But the word everyone used to describe Janet was simply "average." She was an "average student," her teachers said. She was of average height. And, for the most part, she was of average weight. But that was not always the case.
Janet used to be fat. She had been fat for most of her life. She was a fat kid, who loved to eat for the sheer pleasure of tasting something sweet or sour--or new. She ate in part because her mother, a widow of limited education in a poor neighborhood, working in the sweltering back room of a dry cleaning establishment, allowed it, but also because it was the only enjoyment she knew as a latchkey kid..
As she went from being a fat child to a fat teen, Janet somehow forgot the pleasure of eating and it just became a habit. She cooked the supper each night for her Mom, ate a lot herself, including after school, mostly because she was bored. Until she decided to become a chef, she had no real ambition, no real interests. But she did well in home ec, and it impressed her Mom. When offered a chance to attend culinary school as part of a grant program she began to remember the forgotten taste of the foods she had loved. She decided, with a nudge from her mom, that wanted to bring that to people. She wanted to feed the world.
Janet left the lower class part of Rochester, New York, for the Culinary Institute when she was just out of high school, in the fall of '95. It was now four years later, and Janet was getting ready to graduate, number 20 in a class of 60. A lot had happened during her stay at the institute. She learned about food, about how its texture could deceive, even seduce. She learned about wine, and how the right wine could trigger cravings, making a dinning experience exciting, even sensual. She learned about appetite. She learned that the right texture and the right taste and the right aroma combined could make a meal irresistible to even the most fanatical dieter. And she had also learned about love. Adult, painful, unrequited love.
Janet fell in love during her second term at the Institute. She fell deeply, even madly for a guy named Guy. Guy was an American of Italian heritage from Boston, with a certain European look, sort of like he had just woke up, but always ready with a smile. He had brown hair that was longish and sort of curly, and deep brown eyes that left Janet wondering if she could catch up with her breath.
"Your name is Guy?" she had asked when they met while he was working on a delicate crème sauce. She hoped that her smile would distract Guy from the way she nervously shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
"Guy," he said. "It's pronounce G-E-E."
"G-HEE-HEE-HEE," is what Janet said next, but followed by a feeling of awkward embarrassment.
Guy was also awkwardly embarrassed, not understanding why she was acting like a total doofus.
Guy turned back to his creme sauce, which was now ruined. Further attempts to develop a relationship were equally unsuccessful. Janet shortly concluded the problem was her weight. It was always her weight, that convenient scapegoat onto which she had learned to blame every setback. So, halfway through her sophomore year she determined to start losing. Not all of it, of course. Just the 87 pounds she thought that she should loose. She had gained 23 pounds during her first year at the Institute. She was now 212 pounds, and it made her 5'4" frame feel awkward. She would loose the weight, she promised herself, get the guy--or in this case, the Guy--and leave the Institute a successful, happy, 125-pound sous chef-in love.
She never made it.
Janet was an incredible cook, and an even better baker. But she never got her weight down under 160 pounds, and never got so much as a date with Guy. And that got the better of her. She frowned constantly; and throughout her Junior year as she continued to try starving herself she became increasingly bitter. She was an average looking girl with above average capabilities, but no one could say that she had a really great personality.
That was how Monica first encountered met Janet: frowning.
The curriculum at the Institute called for partnership. It was a sort of buddy system: upperclassmen, usually Seniors, each took one or two pair of underclassmen/women under his or her wing, with the teams grouped under the oversight of an instructor with several upperclassmen as assistants. It was done by lottery, and this year Janet was an assistant.
Monica and a Texan named Brian Saunders formed one of two teams under Janet's oversight. An attractively plump black girl named Leticia Carver and a California brunette named Melanie Hargrove were the other team.
"This is a little off-putting," Monica thought to herself. "I've got to learn from this girl?" But with her background she was essentially a team player and kept her thoughts to herself.
There was a reason. Monica recognized that she and the others would have to spend hours together in the kitchen, mixing and pouring, browning and roasting, eating and evaluating each other's work. Janet was, like it or not the Senior in charge. For the 20 or so weeks between Labor Day--when the semester began--and Martin Luther King Day--when it ended-this meant Janet would have control of Monica's day.
The first day was orientation, and Monica's initial impression of Janet was quickly given substance. Monica had formed a habit of quickly reaching out to others and seeing where their minds were by asking questions. With Leticia it was easy, for both knew the remarkable story of Leticia's namesake, George Washington Carver and his work with peanuts. With Brian it was a query about the State's Governor, George W. Bush. And for Melanie all it took was a comparison of climates to get into a discussion of the entire California culture.
But when she used George Eastman's name to she Rochester-born and bred Janet she drew an embarrassed blank.
"George who?"
"Eastman --- the man who invented the Kodak camera. I thought everyone from there knew all about him."
"Well, yeah," Janet stammered. "I guess his name is on a lot of things. But I never got into history much."
"Sorry, " said Monica, thinking to herself, "this one is in college?"
The first day of classes did not go much better.
Classes started at 6:30 am, and Monica was nowhere near the kitchen. The Senior in charge of the teams had to help team members pick its produce, its fish, its meats for the day's project from a model market set up in the campus quad. Janet was furious, and she let Monica know it when she finally showed up at 7:15, freshly showered from her morning run.
"The running stops," Janet said. "I'm not doing the market-thing by myself."
Monica just smiled, and said "oops, sorry, Ill try not to let it happen again."
This unwillingness to fight infuriated Janet even more.
But Monicas simple acceptance of the criticism, not lashing back at the over-bearing Janet, it also caught the attention of Guy, Janets one-time interest.
He had seen Monica drive up at the start of the long Labor Day weekend. He had seen her confidence and irreverence, his interest in her now was heightened by her ability to be humble. He was in another group, but that did not stop him from exchanging a few smiles from across the kitchen before lunch.
At lunch he introduced himself to Monica. Soon they were into an animated review of Boston heritage. He surprised Monica with his familiarity with American Stonehenge. This was a strange analomy in nearby New Hampshire Monica had heard about but never visited. Janet took note of the budding friendship and was livid. But she felt helpless as she looked at Monica's slender physique.
That evening Monica determined to get up and run super early so as not to offend Janet. And that worked for a short-term solution. But the evening conversations with Guy, plus her studies in a dorm environment, made getting up at 4:00 increasingly difficult. Within a few weeks the morning running became more and more sporadic. In two months it was history.
Guy was proving to be an interesting person indeed to Monica. He already had a side job with the catering division of Burlington's largest hotel. Once or twice a week there was a banquet or special affair that he had to work on and Monica soon joined him, not for the money but just to be together. On other evenings they exchanged "homework," practicing preparation of delicacies and even full meals on one another.
The developing romance was not invisible to others, for they openly smiled and flirted with one another across the classroom during lectures. And Janet seethed helplessly at the hopelessly slender body of her competitor.
One day, around 4:30, while Janet was locking down the freshly washed pots and pans, Guy and Monica were faking a tango down the long pantry, laughing as they knocked over a sack of flower. Janet peered in. Guy and Monica never saw her, but suddenly, Guy stopped. He looked into Monica's eyes and placed his hands at her waist. Janet watched; she didn't know it, but she was shaking. She imagined that it was her own waist that Guy was holding, and she ran her right hand along the tie that kept her white tunic tight and away from the flames of the stove top.
She snapped out of her daydream when she saw Guy pull Monica closer to him. But that's not why Janet was startled. It was Monica's waist. Her waist was still so small compared to her own girth. Guy's fingers almost touched each other as they banded it. But, there was something she at first didn't believe. Janet looked, and looked again. Yes, she was not mistaken. A slight roll of flesh peeping over Monica's belt. She was not invulnerable to calories after all, and they were beginning to show --- Guy just hadn't noticed yet, nor had Monica. Janet mumbled just under her breath "not for long, honey. Not for long."
The reduced exercise and increased calories were indeed changing Monica, but not enough to make her concerned. She had noticed her clothes getting tighter but was having too good a time to be bothered about whether she was a size six or eight. And meanwhile Guy had come up with another interest to share --- being secret shoppers at restaurants and getting paid for it. It was a marked contrast to the way Janet was spending her time.
Janet usually spent her evenings alone reading and watching reruns on television. But after the flour bag incident things began to change. Instead of finishing the Steven King novel she had started, Janet decided to read over some old recipes. From the day she started her diet, Janet hid these particular recipes away. They were none too slimming: They were mostly French, mostly creamy and mostly quite fattening.
She searched frantically for one in particular: it was a sort of pate served with a cream sauce. Each serving carried with it about 1200 calories, with more than half those calories from fat. Janet dug further. She began to sketch out a regimen that would teach Monica some of the best tricks of the trade; but if her math was right, her plan would add more to Monica day than just a few good cooking tips. There were two things that Janet knew well. The first she learned at the institute: how to feed, and feed well. The second she learned from life: how to gain weight.
Janet's plan was simple and straightforward. She knew that it was easy to gain weight when you weren't looking, so the first part of her plan was to keep the calories out of Monica's sight. Cream sauces and cream soups: They were easy to teach and an important of any chef's repertoire. Janet also knew that boredom was her ally. If she could keep Monica waiting around, and waiting around food, it would just be a few weeks until the only kiss that Monica would get from Guy would be on her no longer flat stomach--and that would be to kiss it good-bye. Or so Janet thought.
But Guy and Monica knew none of this. That evening they were at Perino's, starting their meal with an appetizer of French beignets with powdered sugar and cinnamon. She had Fettuccine Alfredo with toasted pine nuts; he had the Southwest Fettuccine which is grilled chicken on noodles along with roasted peppers, cilantro and tequila crème.. They topped the evening off by each having a chocolate torte.
The food was delicious, but that was anticipated. The point of the evening was a three-page questionnaire about the ambiance and service. Had the server been knowledgeable in explaining the menu and making recommendations? Were empty water glasses promptly refilled? Were wines and desserts suggested? All they had to do was answer the questions and get reimbursed.
Janet knew none of this as she made preparations to begin the next morning with a nice white wine and cream sauce.
Monica, having been treated to heavier cuisine a few times by Guy, and eager to learn the nuances of cooking it herself, fell easy prey to Janet's plot She prepared each lesson exactly to specifications. As she mastered the dishes she tried them out at home on Guy, a fact of which Janet remained unaware. But he was delighted with such dishes as blackened rib eye steak served with Maytag blue cheese mashed potatoes and battered onion rings. Especially when dessert was a cheese blintz made with crème fraiche and loganberries.
Guy, of course, felt that he had to return the favor to Monica, but his offerings were not taken from Janet's high calorie armory. His dishes were simpler, such as chicken and spinach ravioli and country meatloaf with roasted garlic mashed potatoes and frizzled onions. She generally prepared her meals on Sunday evening and he did his on Tuesdays --- sharing them, of course with those in the respective dormitories. Added to catering twice a week and the biweekly secret shopping encounters and Monica soon began fulfilling Janet's expectations. A noticeable belly and fullness of the hips developed in Monica's spandex tights. By Thanksgiving she had stopped wearing them.
"Soon enough she'll be bursting her seams," Janet chortled to herself as she mapped out the lesson plan for December. "this should be good for about two pounds a week." But she had been overheard by Monica's friend Leticia Carver, who happened to live in the same dormitory. Leticia immediately figured out what Linda was talking about and took Monica aside the next day..
"Do you have any idea what Janet is doing to sabotage you," she asked.
"Sabotage?" replied Monica. "She has been teaching us to cook."
"Yes, but compare her menus to the rest of the class. Ours have triple the calories --- and its all so you will get fat and Guy will drop you. All last year she was trying to diet down to what she thinks he would want and never made it. Now she sees you as a threat."
Monica reached down and massaged her developing belly. "Well, I guess I've been helping phase one, but I'm not so sure she's right about phase two.
How do you mean? asked Leticia.
"Guy has never said a word about my weight - and for my birthday gave me a box of chocolate covered cherries. The only time I brought it up to him he told me not to worry --- Italian men don't mind women with some meat on their bones. Still it seems that Miss Janet does have a problem."
The next day she asked her teammate Brian what he thought about Janet's menus. "That young lady could cook her way into any man's heart," the Texan drawled. It's just too bad we don't have the resources here to draw her out of her shell and make her blossom."
"What dare you talking about?" asked Monica.
"All this fancy food is a fine hobby, and for some may even be a livelihood. But gals like her need something else - a square dance a week and a lot of recognition to stoke their blue collar ego. She's trying to compete with the likes of you, Monica, and its not possible. Its not right or wrong --- you two arent born to be in the same league. You wouldn't be a fit in Lubbock any more than she is able to fit in here here.
"But I don't understand --- I've never done anything to her."
"Nope, nor would you. Youre too classy to fuss with that kind of stuff. She does it all to herself. You are focused on a world-view of life and its challenges, just like my daddy and I. But she is focused on herself. She's not dumb --- just insecure within herself."
"You sound like you'd like to break her out of her shell?"
"Yeah, guess it shows. We've got a chain of five restaurants in Texas I'm going to be running someday and she could be a real asset as well as even a wife. But it wouldnt work unless she gets rid of her hang-ups about her weight and learns to like herself and people; she's meant to be heavier and needs to accept that about herself. Until then, she's going to be at war with herself and there's no point trying to get in."
"Thanks for sharing this with me, Brian. I have my own reasons for trying to help her come around as well. Let me think about it over the weekend."
That night Monica and Guy were evaluating one of Burlington's few fine fresh seafood restaurants, beginning with a portabella mushroom appetizer. She had gulf grouper fish baked after being crusted with sweet potatoes while he savored a plate of mahi-mahi blackened Cajun style and served with angel hair pasta flavored with key lime and tangerine sauce. As had become their custom, they each had dessert.
"You know," she said to him, "if I'm going to keep eating like this we had better make a commitment to each other. At the rate I'm gaining I'm going to grow myself out of the dating market!"
"Interesting you should mention that, replied Guy, I have been thinking, although for different reasons, that during the break it would be nice for you to come to Boston and meet my family. And don't worry about your weight --- they are likely to say you are too skinny, if anything!"
"Really? Then your family is into abbudanzia?
"I am into Monica, for her mind, her charm, and her beauty. Abbudanzia is something which comes if it wishes, and if so, I'm the happier for then there is more to hold and love; if it doesn't I am still in love. Does that settle the matter?"
"Yes, and I would very much like to meet your family. But there is something you should know about."
She then told Guy about Linda's report of Janets scheme and Brian's opinion. At first Guy just rolled his eyes and shook his head --- but then became intrigued as Monica outlined her plan for dealing with the situation.
