An industrial countertop sat unassumingly on the yet unspoiled burgundy carpet. I recognized the piece of equipment from the many kitchens of OSCA, but in my mind I had never placed it in such a setting.

When I first entered the blue house on South Professor, this shiny hulk was the first thing to hold my attention in the moment of heightened senses. And in this vision, I learned the story of the Culinary Program House, a patchwork co-op that resembles OSCA in every way except for its size.

The room, which I soon learned was called the kitchen annex, was a carpeted area, perhaps a former living room. Two bookshelves sat on different walls; one held dry cooking ingredients in small quantities, the other was home to cookbooks and other non-food items.

Senior Nathan Leamy greeted me enthusiastically as I entered the annex, and he gave me a quick tour before we dove into preparing a meal: the moderately sized kitchen explained the need for the annex, the dining room was made delicately pretty with wildflowers, and the bulk foods room housed jar upon jar of peanut butter and bag upon bag of flour.

While simultaneously stirring apricot jam and holding a bowl of butter cream frosting over the burner to warm it, Leamy told me the story of how the culinary house came to be.

Leamy himself was the founder. He transferred to Oberlin after some time at Deep Springs College in California, an all-male, 27-student alternative college located on a cattle ranch. Time at this service-oriented school, as well as long hours spent in Oberlin co-ops, prompted him to create a cooperative environment centered around one thing: food.

The culinary house serves a greater purpose than just feeding its six members very well. Its inhabitants hope to be an educational resource and center for the culinary arts in Oberlin.

Last spring, Leamy chose five other people through applications. Everyone cooks one night a week, as well as working one “crew” or clean up, after a meal and a “junior crew” of helping to clean for about twenty minutes. In addition, all members of the house have a special job function, such as treasurer or lunch coordinator. Breakfasts and lunches in the house are up to the individual. It is at dinner and Sunday brunch that they create their culinary masterpieces.

Although the house runs as a co-op, it is not a part of OSCA. Because OSCA has open membership, the application process to be a part of the co-op would be nearly impossible.   In addition, since the house is under Village Housing, underclassmen are at a disadvantage.

At this point, the setbacks in joining OSCA would be greater than the benefits.

“One person’s job would be dealing with OSCA,” said Leamy.

However, Leamy and the other members of the culinary house hope to work in harmony with OSCA.

“I’ve been in OSCA the entire time I’ve been here – we’re trying to build a close relationship,” said Leamy.

The value of a relationship with OSCA is more important to the house than the potential for trading — although bartering so that they no longer have 8.5 pounds of oregano might be considered invaluable. Five of the six house members have been in OSCA before, which results in understanding the process for ordering food and harboring a common language for tasks such as meal clean up.

Figuring out the logistics with the College has not been the easiest of tasks. Theoretically, the members of the house agreed to have the minimum college meal plan which other OSCA members have, alloting one board meal weekly in Stevenson or Lord Saunders.  They are also able to purchase food from the same distributors as the dining halls. Although right now, members are collectively signed up for other meal plans, they believe that they are headed in the right direction.

There are a few other glitches in the system.

“We have about 200 pounds of flour right now,” said Leamy.

Buying in bulk creates an overabundance of certain food items. However, the group does not buy everything in large quantities. They have set up a separate bank account for smaller expenses, such as purchases from the George Jones Organic Farm, West Side Market and stores in downtown Oberlin.

In addition, the house had to go on a treasure hunt for sufficient kitchen utensils.

“The only thing the house started out with was a tea kettle, two spoons, and a plate,” said Leamy as he removed the apricot jam from a glass bowl using a rubber spatula.

All the items I saw stacked underneath the countertop and in the kitchen were scrounged up after the end of last semester, at yard sales and out of piles of things left behind.

“It’s taken a lot of shadiness to get us this far,” Leamy joked.

For now, the co-op is running low tech.

“I never want to make butter cream without a mixer again,” commented Leamy.

He turned his attention to the cake he was icing while we talked. The butter cream icing he had been warming earlier reappeared in a zip-lock bag, the corner of which had been cut off in order to let out a ribbon of icing. He lined the perimeter of the bottom layer of dense almond cake in this way, then poured some of the jam into the center, spreading it out until it filled the circle of icing.

While I squeezed out the next icing ring, Leamy explained that the cake was a test run for a special event that the house was planning for the weekend. In its full form, the cake will be a tiered wedding cake.

“This is the trial version. The next time it will be six times bigger than this,” he emphasized.

The event he mentioned will be a tea party hosted this Sunday at 3 p.m. by one of the other members of the house, senior Sophia Potter. As her specialty is dessert, Potter plans to have all sorts of sweets at the gathering. Twenty tickets to the gathering will be sold at TGIF today for $5, and an additional ten tickets will be sold at the door Sunday. Attendees will be treated to all sorts of delicacies, including Leamy’s cake.

While Leamy put the dessert in the refrigerator to solidify somewhat, I began to peel onions for another part of the meal: beer battered onion rings. While the two of us cried over the potent vegetable, Leamy told me about his discovery of a new technique for making thin crust pizza.

While he was studying abroad in London, Leamy took advantage of a ten-dollar plane ticket to Italy for spring break. There, he and a friend visited what Italians call their first pizzeria. Ever since, he has been looking for a recipe to make thin crust just as he had there.

Leamy is an avid reader of Cooks Illustrated, a popular cooking magazine that is known to test recipes several times to achieve the best effect. In exploring the options for thin crust pizza, the magazine discovered that the use of high gluten pizza flour in conventional (non-industrial) ovens caused the dough to be chewy, whereas if cake flour (which has a much lower gluten content) were used, the effect mirrored that made in professional ovens with pizza flour.

To this end, I pressed garlic and grated cheese, sliced tomatoes (for which I learned that it is infinitely easier to use a serrated knife) and mushrooms, and peeled roasted green peppers. When it came time to make the actual dough, Leamy was able to give me a whole tutorial in how to make bread, down to specifics about flour types and the importance of cutting dough in half instead of ripping (it is less destructive on the gluten bonds formed). Last year, he was a bread maker in Keep co-op.

After explaining this, Leamy dashed across the lawn to Russia House to find his laundry, which included the cloth napkins, needed for the meal. I continued to chop mushrooms as he went on this brief escapade, to the tunes of Paul Simon’s Graceland, a standard for Leamy while he’s cooking his meals.

Upon his return, Leamy had me fry the mushrooms in a skillet with ample butter. Leamy and his housemate, junior Dan Lesser, have an on-going friendly feud regarding nutrition. Leamy believes that as long as one uses fresh, unpreserved ingredients that the meal is wholesome enough, while Lesser believes heartily in the value of vegetables in one’s diet.

“Butter is fresh by my book,” Leamy argued.

Later, senior Deb Galaski admitted that she sided with Lesser.

“It’s harder to eat my version of healthy here,” she said, admitting that it was mostly an issue of self-restraint.

The other members of the household began to trickle in as the hour approached seven.

While we threw together the final bits and pieces of the meal, a symphony of fire alarms went off at varied pitches, most likely responding to the frying of the onion rings.

“This never happens,” they all assured me in a staggered chorus that resembled the varied beeping going on in the background.

Review photographer and senior EmilyKate McDonough and I watched the smoke detector madness, amused. Senior Miki Kawasaki poked her head out of her room to figure out what was going on. Things settled down, and the meal began.

The dinner conversation was themed, covering Martha Stewart’s roll out version of icing, the benefits of instant yeast, Julia Child’s pronunciation of “bouillabaisse” and the number of pounds of butter used in the dessert (only just short of two!).

Over thin crust pizza, beer battered onion rings, roasted corn, salad, and finally, the wedding cake, the group commented on their reasons for joining this special culinary community.

Many of them, former OSCA members, wished for a more intimate co-op environment.

“I wanted to be able to cook without having to cook for 80 people,” said Galaski.

The number of people in co-ops often makes it hard for chefs to focus on quality.

“It was always, spice, spice, spice, then stir, stir, stir,” said Lesser.

In addition, they find the financial situation more flexible than those in co-ops.

“Having a larger food budget was attractive,” said Potter. “And I wanted to live with people who are as unhealthily obsessed with food as I am.”

Junior Jason Eck has never been in an OSCA co-op. Growing up, his family did not focus on fixing fancy meals. Pizza and spaghetti were staples in their home.

“I never got the chance to cook anything exciting or fancy,” said Eck.

So despite all the references to OSCA, the overall mission of the house is different than OSCA at large, as its central focus is not at-cost housing and dining. The house is more oriented towards dreams of carefully prepared cuisine.

The house hopes that this flexibility will appear to the public in the form of ExCos, social events such as the tea party and educational opportunities for kids in Oberlin in the future. Eck has ideas for a murder mystery party.

In order to hone their skills, the group critiques each other at meals. To learn and expand upon the art of cooking, they make a detailed list of all the foods served so that they might reference it later on. Eventually, the group hopes to create a cookbook of what they consider to be their best recipes.

In the meantime, the housemates bond over Netflix copies of Julia Child. The cozy cooking clan loves the low stress atmosphere of their home.

“One thing I enjoy is that you can have a real sit-down meal and relax,” said Lesser.