The Write Ingredients

Two dreamed of cooking dinner for the president, another wanted to own a restaurant and another wanted her own cooking show.

They were the four first-place winners announced Feb. 5 in the fifth annual “Menu for Success” essay contest sponsored by Lawry’s Foods Inc. for middle school students in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Tram Nguyen, a sixth-grader at Peary Middle School, chose to prepare “fried rice, orange chicken, chowmein, eggrolls and egg flower soup” for the president. “I wanted to show the president what I eat every day,” he wrote.

Andrew Aguenza, an eighth-grader at Peary Middle School, clearly thought long and hard about his restaurant, Aguenza NBA Overtime Restaurant. On the menu: Laker Lasagna, Bull’s Burrito, Spur’s Spaghetti, Heat’s Hot Dogs, Super Sonics Supreme Salad, Shaq’s Super Sundae, you get the idea.

And Marie Molina, a sixth-grader at Bethune, was the star of “The Marie Molina Cooking Show.” “You can see me in movies, commercials, as a guest star,” she wrote. “But all that can’t ever compete with my cooking show.”

Our favorite essay, however, was from Theodis Thomas, a seventh-grader at Bethune. Here it is:

“If I had to cook for the president, I would hire some famous cooks from Europe, Japan, Africa and Spain to prepare an elegant meal for him.

“I would set the table with nice silverware and flowers and a nice tablecloth. I would put candles and flowers all around and the food will be in the middle.

“I would invite Hillary Clinton, his wife, to dinner. I will invite his bodyguards. Then I would present the president with the best dinner he ever had.

“I would serve him greens, pinto beans, macaroni, potatoes and cornbread. For dessert I would have sweet potato pie, apple pie and ice cream. The drinks would be wine and soda.

“All the food would be soul food, and the whole thing would cost about $150. During the dinner I would recite poems and songs. We would talk about my school, and how big it is. We would discuss our baseball teams and football. I would ask him about his hobbies, and I would tell him mine, as we talked and drank wine and soda.

“By the end of the day I would know a lot about him, and he would know a lot about me.

“Eventually the moon would be full and the bodyguards would be sleepy and happy. . . . All the food would be gone by the end of the night. The leftover food would go to the homeless people.”