Huize Melkinrichting
‘Are we gonna get high or drunk?’
Door Tim van de Vendel
By Tim van de Vendel
Tim van de Vendel
Pancakes for twelve
4 boxes of complete pancake mix
Butter
Cheese slices
Bacon strips
Powdered sugar
Syrup (Dutch treacle or maple)
Cane sugar
Mix the pancake mix with 2.7 litres of water in a large pot or bowl.
Melt some butter in a large frying pan. Add the batter (the more you add, the longer it will take to cook, and the fewer toppings you can put on your pancake), bake it until the bottom is brown and the top is dry, then flip it. You get extra points if you can flip the pancake in the air.
If you want cheese pancakes, add the cheese after you’ve flipped the pancake. Wait for the cheese to melt, then fold the pancake in two. If you want bacon pancakes, first add bacon to the pan and pour the batter over the strips.
Serve with syrup, powdered sugar, or cane sugar. Other potential toppings include jelly, chocolate spread, spinach and cream, salmon with sour cream, pesto, pineapple, etc. The possibilities are endless.
Daan, Jasper, and Lars are on the front stoop, smoking a cigarette. They’re in no particular hurry. ‘We’re having pancakes tonight’, says Daan. ‘Nothing too difficult.’
Once they’re finished, they cross the enormous hallway to the common room, passing a large blue and pink mural of their house logo. ‘This used to be a milk factory’, Daan says. Besides that, the front of the house says ‘Melkinrichting’. ‘Hence the name.’
The common room is cosy: the small room is filled with two couches, a dining table, a kitchen unit, and a ‘throne’: a large armchair on a stack of beer crates. ‘There’s no real story behind that’, says Taco. ‘We just ran out of space.’
Three houses
Now that everyone’s inside, it’s time to start cooking. ‘How many people do we have for dinner tonight?’ Joep asks. Romy, who was responsible for getting groceries, refers to the list in the house group chat. ‘I got an extra box of mix anyway, just in case there were any people who didn’t add their names to the list.’
‘Should we do two floors, then?’ Daan suggests. He’s referring to the other kitchen on the second floor. ‘Technically, we’re three houses stacked on top of each other’, Romy explains. Every floor has a couple of rooms, its own bathroom, and a kitchen. ‘But this is the one and only common room, so this is where we get together for dinner every Tuesday.’
Lars and Marieke leave for the upstairs kitchen to make pancakes there, while Daan, Marion, and Joep start them downstairs.
‘Are we gonna get high or drunk tonight?’ Joris asks. This sets off a heated debate about what they need and most importantly: who’s going to get it. In the end, Daan loses. Although he’s not going out to get anything: ‘I’ll order two crates of beer’, he says.
House party
While drinking the beer they still had, the residents talk about their annual house party. ‘Last year, we had two DJs and free beer’, says Jasper. Every housemate was allowed to invite fifteen people, so the house was filled to the brim. ‘I think there were around 150 people’, he estimates. ‘The cover was only five bucks, which attracted people.’
Then, Taco walks in, fresh from the gym and holding a bag of food from the snack bar. ‘Oh’, he says, surprised. ‘I thought you’d be done with dinner by now.’ Nevertheless, he sits down and starts eating, watched by his slightly envious roommates.
Taco has just started telling a story about his stolen bike and how he finally got a new one when Joris walks in, preening in a nice button-down shirt and a tie. ‘We’re having fancy pancakes, right?’ His housemates are laughing at him. ‘You’re seriously wearing that for dinner?!’
Treacle with sugar
‘Is it time for the first round of pancakes yet?’ Julian yells from the other side of the kitchen. He is impatient with hunger, as is the rest of the house. Just then, Marieke and Lars walk in with a large stack of pancakes.
Jasper and Marion set the table with plates, cutlery, and toppings, while Joep distributes the pancakes. ‘Who wants one with cheese?’ Joris takes the pancake and starts adding large amounts of sugar. ‘Oh my god, that’s insane!’ Jasper exclaims.
At the other end of the table, Marieke, Joep, and Lars are also having a heated discussion about the toppings Lars is putting on his pancake. He’s spread treacle syrup all over it and is now adding sugar. Joep thinks it’s awful, but Marieke doesn’t have an issue with it. ‘Treacle is pretty much sugar anyway, right? So it’s fine.’
Films
When everyone’s finished eating, it’s time for a discussion on what’s next. Which film are they watching? Many of the house’s residents are film lovers. ‘After dinner together we either get drunk or we watch a film’, says Taco.
People start suggesting classics: What about Reservoir Dogs? ‘That’s such a slow burn’, says Lars. How about Se7en? ‘We just watched that’, Romy protests. In the end, the settle on The Pianist, a drama set during World War 2. ‘Let’s get high first, though’, says Taco.
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