On Food
This is my last entry before watching Dr. Who and trying to sleep. I expect the Symposium people to end their party or whatever it is in about half an hour.
The dining hall is sometimes going to be open only for us, as we'll be the only group here. That seems so wasteful, as there's only about 20 of us usually. The website promises fresh sushi. Don't believe it! Haven't seen any yet.
Parts of the cafeteria are, well, not exactly shut down, but not stocked. I rather expected a salad bar and grill, but nope.
We get 3 meals a day, but only have 1 hour windows in which to go eat. We just walk in and tell them what group we're with and then we can get whatever food we want. So far the only really portable food has been fruit and bottled/cartoned juice at breakfast.
For our first meal, they offered.. let's see if I can remember.. turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, broccoli/carrots, salad. Then you could have cake for dessert. The mashed potatoes were flavored and were okay. There was too much broccoli in the broccoli/carrots and not enough carrots. The stuffing had too many onions for me, but was claimed to be vegetarian. The salad had a lot of dressing on it and included walnuts and, I think, cranberries. The cake was good.
Breakfast included scrambled eggs, french toast, bacon, sausage (including veggie sausage), and potatoes. The maple syrup was fake, not that I expected differently. You could also have cereal, toast, bagels, muffins, fruit. Oh yes, they had a fruit salad this time with melons, pineapple, grapes.
Lunch was salad again (minus the walnuts, in mine anyway), tortellini or penne pasta with a couple different kinds of sauce, red potatoes (again with the potatoes!), some sort of zucchini/tomato/yellow squash mixture that was flavored somehow. Some people got garlic bread, but I missed that somehow. I could've gone back and got some, but didn't bother. Cake and cookies. The cookies are good.
Dinner provided the first real opportunity for vegetarian choices. There was tofu stir fry, rice, veggie burgers, regular burgers, pizza, french fries (potatoes, of course), and possibly some other things I'm forgetting. I ate the tofu out of the stir fry and had some rice. I hope they have veggie burgers again when I'm more in the mood for them.
So there aren't as many options as I expected, but vegetarians won't starve. Vegans might have a slightly harder time, but there's no reason you have to eat solely out of the dining hall.
Except that, despite the presence of a kitchen (minus microwave) in all of the apartments, we're not allowed to cook.
The dining hall is sometimes going to be open only for us, as we'll be the only group here. That seems so wasteful, as there's only about 20 of us usually. The website promises fresh sushi. Don't believe it! Haven't seen any yet.
Parts of the cafeteria are, well, not exactly shut down, but not stocked. I rather expected a salad bar and grill, but nope.
We get 3 meals a day, but only have 1 hour windows in which to go eat. We just walk in and tell them what group we're with and then we can get whatever food we want. So far the only really portable food has been fruit and bottled/cartoned juice at breakfast.
For our first meal, they offered.. let's see if I can remember.. turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, broccoli/carrots, salad. Then you could have cake for dessert. The mashed potatoes were flavored and were okay. There was too much broccoli in the broccoli/carrots and not enough carrots. The stuffing had too many onions for me, but was claimed to be vegetarian. The salad had a lot of dressing on it and included walnuts and, I think, cranberries. The cake was good.
Breakfast included scrambled eggs, french toast, bacon, sausage (including veggie sausage), and potatoes. The maple syrup was fake, not that I expected differently. You could also have cereal, toast, bagels, muffins, fruit. Oh yes, they had a fruit salad this time with melons, pineapple, grapes.
Lunch was salad again (minus the walnuts, in mine anyway), tortellini or penne pasta with a couple different kinds of sauce, red potatoes (again with the potatoes!), some sort of zucchini/tomato/yellow squash mixture that was flavored somehow. Some people got garlic bread, but I missed that somehow. I could've gone back and got some, but didn't bother. Cake and cookies. The cookies are good.
Dinner provided the first real opportunity for vegetarian choices. There was tofu stir fry, rice, veggie burgers, regular burgers, pizza, french fries (potatoes, of course), and possibly some other things I'm forgetting. I ate the tofu out of the stir fry and had some rice. I hope they have veggie burgers again when I'm more in the mood for them.
So there aren't as many options as I expected, but vegetarians won't starve. Vegans might have a slightly harder time, but there's no reason you have to eat solely out of the dining hall.
Except that, despite the presence of a kitchen (minus microwave) in all of the apartments, we're not allowed to cook.