College Food

[elyse]

My first couple of years were at RISD which had a culinary department, but you couldn't tell. Freshmen had to be on the full meal plan, and there was NO cooking allowed in the dorms. They never found my toasteroven. I used to take a plastic container to the refectory, put it in my lap, and dump my second helpings into my lap. I got lots of stares. "Stealing" food was strictly prohibited, but I never got caught.

We never had all the fun stuff you people are talking about. I don't think we had ice cream or pizza or chili. I think we only had cereal in the morning.

What tommy and Mark said.

Mmmmm crunchberries! Are they multi-colored now?

[SobaAddict70]

I was a deprived kid when I grew up. Cap'n Crunch and Cocoa Puffs, those were out the window. Grape Nuts (yecch) otoh were pretty acceptable.

Is grad school a totally different experience?

Soba

[elyse]

I didn't say I had them at home.

[KateW]

At Johnson and Wales, I had this vision of eating gourmet food day and night and I was dismayed to see that the dining hall in my dorm was just like any other cafeteria. The only good part was the sandwich bar where you go up and get a sandwich made to order by some poor student who, more often than not, didn't know that you slice the pita bread in half and open it like a pocket, not roll it up. But when they got it right, it was good.

The soups were almost always overseasoned or underseasoned. A few things were good like when they did Chinese style cuisine that almost always came out well. So did the fried chicken, and breakfast. Actually, most things were decent, I guess, but not what I expected from a culinary school!

[SobaAddict70]

sorry forgot to clarify.

I dunno what they taste like, having never had crunchberries at home (or at school) so I can't relate.

I think they're multicolored....

Soba

[dhalandrice]

I actually work at the University I attended, so I can give you an up-to-date rundown. As mentioned above, a lot of institutions are moving towards food court styled cafeterias. At the University we have four food areas:

One - run by a food-service provider, Marriott, is an all-you can eat buffet style service, including a make your own sandwich bar, a grill with a variety of items and three hot entrees. Salad bar, dessert bar and beverage centre included.

Two/Three - Have similar a set-ups, also owned by the food service provider. However, both these locations attempt at a "market" feel. Open wood-fire ovens, kettles of soup, bushels with fruit and the like. "International" theme days every Wednesday of the month, as well as food events (summer dessert day was most recent). Salad bar and grill included. Oddly enough, soups are homemade at one (great lentil soup, Carribean stew, Italian Wedding, Mulligatawny), whereas the other location uses Campbells.

Fourth - (currently in renovations until fall) owned and opertated by the Students' Union, the final food area is the closest to the idea of a food court. It is populated by a few chains, inlcuding Chinese food, Pasta bar (also omlette bar), Starbucks, Greek, burgers/fries/pizza and all other 'typical' fast foods. And the best salad bar on campus.

In addition, there are four coffee shops on campus. Meal plans can be used at any location.

Wow, we like to eat. Should point out that two of these areas are currently closed due to being the off season, and the others are only offering half their menu.

As for my personal experience, I will always fondly remember my roomate insisting that spagetti (cold) and Italian dressing could be considered a pasta salad, so our dinner wasn't that pathetic after all.

[slkinsey]

If you lived in the dorms, a meal plan was 100% mandatory.

Why was it mandatory? (Sorry if this is a silly question.)

For a lot of smaller schools, such as the one I attended, residence on campus and participation in the meal program is mandatory. If the school has, say, 1,100 students it needs to provide the housing/eating facilities to accomodate right around this number of students. If half the students then decide to live/eat off-campus, the school would end up taking a significant financial hit. Also, for many of these schools, again such as the one I attended, having all the students live/eat together on the college campus is a big part of the experience/philosophy.

I was able to live in an on-campus fraternity house most of the time I was at school. The university would give us the board portion of the comprehensive fee for each of our members, so we were able to hire a cook, eat much better food than the cafeteria was serving and still have plenty of money left over for parties, beer, guests, etc. Marion cooked fairly standard Wisconsin fare for the time (heavy on the meat and starches -- her ides of the four food groups was "meat, bread, potatoes and pasta"), and we cooked for ourselves when she had the day off (usually more of the same). It was on these days off that I was able to hone my formidable bratwurst grilling skills and, somewhere along the way, almost blew my arms off starting a charcoal fire with gasoline.

[Rachel Perlow]

We had a broccoli endowment from a very former student (ex-girl's school, iron in broccoli, get it?) so there was broccoli at every meal, fried, boiled, soup, anything but steamed and crunchy! .... When they added the salad bar in my senior year it was great, it wasn't the best stuff, but at least it had not been cooked to death!

I would take broccoli (and other veggies like carrots & cauliflower) from the salad bar. Put in a bowl with a pat of butter. Cover with a napkin and nuke in the microwave for a minute or so. Vastly better than the mushy steam table "veggies."

[SobaAddict70]

, somewhere along the way, almost blew my arms off starting a charcoal fire with gasoline.

Now there's a story there, waiting to be told.

How on earth...?!?

Soba

[tryska]

actually this thread made em remember my room mate in college's older sister went to an all-girls junior college in Mass. they got to request whatever they wanted for their evening meals, and it was not unheard of to get lobster thermidor, or beef wellington, and tortes for dessert. man was i jealous!

[Foam Pants]

I was pretty satisfied with the food at Iowa State. They are big enough to have their own food service and they did a really good job. The fruit freaked me out, though. They were losing a lot of money on fruit that students were throwing away half eaten so they cut most fruit in half. The banana halves were great in the morning, gross by supper.

My favorite was to get up for breakfast and then go through the sack lunch line. You got a sandwich or a salad and about 6 points which you could use on all kinds of lunch fare like carrot sticks, pop, cookies, you name it. The breads were pretty good and I found my affection for Sally Lund at school.

I wasn't allowed sugar cereal at home so the breakfast cereal bar was a freakin' revelation. I would have a mixture of Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs, and Fruity Pebbles just to see the milk turn black.

We had a system where dorms were split into houses and you had brother and sister houses. Your house got so many meal exchanges which you could use to host another house. This meant you got a meal served to you in a private room with your brother house and you could flirt over your burritos and ice cream. It was a really neat experience.

[KNorthrup]

It's funny how many of us had similar cereal experiences. We also weren't ever allowed sugary cereals as kids, or most any other sort of junk food, so for my first semester at college, breakfast most every morning was a bowl of Froot Loops plus tater tots covered with cheese sauce. Also went on an extended kick of sandwiches of Wonder Bread, Miracle Whip, and Kraft Singles. Very rebellious. But my mother knew what she was doing -- after a couple years of getting it out of my system, I went back to healthy eating.

[KateW]

Oooh, I forgot about the cheese sauce machine. 90% of the time, it didn't work, but oh boy, when it did, everyone had a field day. Nice hot fresh fries, salted and covered in that stuff...Mmmmm.

[hannahcooks]

My freshman year in Cambridge I lived almost exclusively on three things: Whopper Jr.s or BLTs from the food court or falafel from the falafel truck on Mass Ave, still the best falafel I've ever had.  ......

Mass Ave. ? Where ? circa which yr ?

MIT, 95-96.

Edited to add that the Falafel truck was right in front of 77 Mass Ave. There were two, and I believe still are- I used to eat there when I moved back to Boston in 98-00, though I sadly can't remember which one was the better one.

Edited August 19, 2003 by hannahcooks (log)

[slkinsey]

MIT, 95-96. 

Edited to add that the Falafel truck was right in front of 77 Mass Ave. There were two, and I believe still are- I used to eat there when I moved back to Boston in 98-00, though I sadly can't remember which one was the better one.

Rock on. What were you studying at MIT? My father was faculty there for around 25 years, so I know the school and a lot of the faculty quite well.

The falafel truck, BTW, has been legendary for years. I can remember hearing about it perhaps as early as the late 70s -- certainly by the mid 80s.

[jackal10]

Ah, but what happened to the tram-car diner? (Summer Intern 1965, AI Group)

[hannahcooks]

Well, I declared Course 9 at the end of my freshman year, around the same time I realized I hated math, science, and computers and decided to transfer elsewhere to study film. I did take a few Media Lab classes that were pretty cool, though.

[slkinsey]

Well, I declared Course 9 at the end of my freshman year, around the same time I realized I hated math, science, and computers and decided to transfer elsewhere to study film.  I did take a few Media Lab classes that were pretty cool, though.

Ah... my father is a physical chemist, so I doubt you would have crossed paths with any of the people I know over there.

Growing up as the son of two academic research chemists, I was lucky enough to figure out at a very early age that I hated most math and science (although strangely enough I have come back around to an appreciation of amateur science). Just recently I was reminded of how I developed my befuddlement with and hatred of math when my father attempted to explain to my 9 year old nephew what was so cool about doing the proof showing that the square root of 2 is not a rational number.

[Callipygos]

NYU class of '92.

Our rule of thumb was that if the main meal in the dining halls looked inedible, you could always fall back on a cheeseburger at the grill. So if you walked in and everyone else was having a cheeseburger, you were in trouble.

Periodically, the dining hall offered a dish called "Grandma's Chicken Pugliese." For four years I wondered what THAT meant. Finally, my senior year, I ended up with a weekly column in the school paper dealing with dorm life issues -- and for one of my columns, I made an appointment with the head of dining services specifically to interview him for the purpose of explaining just what the hell "Grandma's Chicken Pugliese" was once and for all. (Turns out it was the winner of a long-ago recipe contest the dining hall held -- Pugliese was the winner's last name and it was her grandmother's recipe.)

[Sandra Levine]

Cooper Hall was where we had our meals, at Douglass, the women's college of Rutgers. For my first two years, all three meals were served by student waiters (a work-study job.) By my junior year, breakfast and lunch were served cafeteria-style. Everyone had to take the meal plan and there were no appliances of any kind in anyone's dorm room, except for maybe an immersion heater. Before sitting down, there was a sung grace, led by a music major, standing on a chair at one end of the long dining room. THIS WAS AT A STATE UNIVERSITY!!! (It may have been only on special occasions.)

Skirts, rather than pants, were required at dinner. While jeans and other pants were permitted at breakfast and lunch, you were not allowed to enter Cooper at any time in riding clothes. Students were known to stash skirts in hidden corners, roll up their pants and slip the skirt over them in order to be seated at dinner.

The food. Lots of mystery meat, most memorable of which was something called Veal Marengo that had olives strewn about. Dessert was always something like rice pudding or squares of cake that they somehow baked stale straight out of the oven. The breakfast of oatmeal, biscuits and bacon, however, was good enough to get me out of bed early enough to eat it whenever it was on the menu.

The night before any school break we were usually served an acceptable roast beef dinner, so that when we could answer, "roast beef" to the question, "What did you have for dinner last night?" the parents would feel that they were getting their money's worth.

Douglass was adjacent to the Ag School (now Cook College, which specializies in environmental education,) where there was a plentitude of ice cream. It's hard to believe that all this happened as recently as the mid 1960s.

Edited August 19, 2003 by Sandra Levine (log)

[slkinsey]

The food.  Lots of mystery meat, most memorable of which was something called Veal Marengo that had olives strewn about.

This is a variation on Chicken Marengo, which is a classic dish. According to legend it was created on the battlefield on June 14, 1800 after Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Austro-Hungarian army at the village of Marengo in northern Italy. It is chicken sauted in olive oil and braised with garlic, onion, tomatoes, olives, white wine or brandy, and sometimes garnished with crayfish or eggs ("Italian poached eggs" -- eggs poached in olive oil -- if you're lucky).

[Sandra Levine]

I should have said "something they called Veal Marengo" because, believe me, it bore no resemblance to the original.

[slkinsey]

I should have said "something they called Veal Marengo" because, believe me, it bore no resemblance to the original.

Oh, I know what you mean. It's just not the same unless the air smells of blood and gunpowder, and there is some guy two tents over having his leg sawed off before gangrene sets in.

[elyse]

sorry forgot to clarify.

I dunno what they taste like, having never had crunchberries at home (or at school) so I can't relate.

I think they're multicolored....

Soba

Dude, you're an adult. Go buy some!

[SobaAddict70]

heh. not unless I can get some of those tasty cheese thingies.

I'm still dreaming about them...

Soba