Here at DIS I am a member of a living and learning community, or an “LLC.” My LLC is a culinary community, full of people who are interested in cooking, eating and food culture. Only a handful of people are actually “good cooks” but the rest of us are here to just learn. Or eat. I’ve picked up a surprising amount of cooking skills from just watching what everyone else is doing. I am really happy I ended up in an LLC and here are a few of the reasons why:
1. It’s a great location. I can walk just about anywhere. I’m 5 minutes from my classes at DIS, 10 minutes from Nørreport (a big station with metro, train and bus stops), and 15 minutes from Nyhavn for whenever I want to feel like I live in a postcard.
2. We live in an apartment-style dorm. Although our LLC is a dorm, it only has 10 people on each floor, and it feels more like an apartment. And it’s REALLY nice. We have a big shared kitchen and common room, three shared bathrooms and laundry on our floor. People are always hanging out together in the shared spaces.
3. There’s so much free food. There’s always someone cooking, and people love to share! The other day a guy on my floor was making his own pickles, and I got to try some. That same day, my friend Cara made challah for shabbat which we combined with my Nutella for a tasty late-night snack.
4. And there’s always new recipe ideas. When I’m not busy stealing other people’s food, I’m busy stealing their recipes. When we have 10 of us sharing a kitchen and making different meals, it gives you new ideas for things to make. I saw someone making fish tacos one night, which is something I never would have thought to do, but when I heard how easy it was, I decided to give it a shot.
5. We have fun weekly events. Part of being in an LLC involves attending weekly events and workshops. Every Thursday night we have one. Our coordinator Linn is super cool and she plans great things for us. My favorite event so far has been making homemade ice cream with Danish ingredients. This week, we’re doing an event with the Arts LLC and doing “food styling.” And this weekend, we have our LLC retreat, which will involve a “food walk” through Copenhagen, cooking Danish dishes and attending a food photography workshop.
6. We’ve become good friends. Because we have so many planned activities together and we’re a relatively small community, our floor has gotten pretty close. We do non-food related events sometimes, like movie nights. So hygge.
7. But mostly, we enjoy doing food-related events together. One Saturday, our whole LLC went to a munchies festival together for fun. It was awesome to go with 30 other people who also wanted to try everything and take pictures of all the food they were eating.
8. We have family dinners. We have a rotating schedule where every Monday a different pair of roommates cooks dinner for the whole floor. They’re my favorite part of every week. It feels very hygge to sit down and relax with everyone and enjoy a great home-cooked meal. People have been going all out with the dinners so far. We’ve had roast chicken, bangers and mash, spaghetti with homemade meatballs… and rumor has it, next week might be tikka masala!
9. We get the chance to experience Danish food culture. I’m starting to recognize Danish ingredients in the grocery stores and I have tried a lot of Danish foods. I don’t love them all (some of these meat and fish combos are a bit much for my palette) but I’m happy to get to try new things.
10. I’m becoming a better cook!!! I’m trying new creations all the time, frequently without recipes. The other day, I made ramen and it was not your classic college kid ramen. I stir-fried some vegetables and soft-boiled an egg for it — highly fancy. It took me four times before I could soft-boil the egg successfully and not have to throw it in the microwave before adding it to the soup, but my friends in the LLC were a huge help. When I finally got it, I had several people celebrating the accomplishment with me.
chlo-penhagen 