Lending a Hand (In a small way)

Meal of the week:

The beginning of this quarter started with me being properly sick of dining hall food. My remedy? Buy a box of pasta and a can of tomato sauce from Goody's Market and cook myself a meal in my electric kettle / hot pot! The cost for both was around $10 (give or take $2?) but both lasted me through three meals. I would also buy spinach and broccoli from the salad bar at OVT, steam them, and eat them salted along with my pasta. I felt rather strange walking out with less than 50 cents of "salad" in my bowl though...

In light of the earthquake in Japan, a paper crane making event was held in the OVL by Marshall College. Each paper crane submitted triggered a donation from the Bezos Family Foundation, who promised to donate $2 for every crane donated from schools and students! This web site recently stated that a total of $500,000 in relief efforts were raised ($400,000 from the Bezos Family Foundation and $100,000 from an anonymous donor), and a total of 1 million cranes were tallied.

My small contribution:

There were plenty of other orgs and fundraising events to help provide aid to Japan. I think it's amazing how much small donations and efforts can add up.
-Rosanne

Salads and Tajins

Salads and Tajines

For anyone who likes to eat healthy or at least supplement their diet of fat and sugar with an injection of salad or something healthy but not so intensely green, the dining halls occasionally have healthier meals.  I try to eat healthy and at most of the dining halls, this can be accomplished.  Sometimes at foodworx it can be a stretch to try and find something worth eating that’s not super bad for you when you’ve eaten salads for the last few days, but overall, foodworx intersperses their pizza and ice cream with vegetarian food and the weekend hummus bar.  Since I live right next to foodworx and get tired of the same salad bar day in day out, I eat at Revelle on my chemistry lecture days and have found that the salad bar at Revelle is about 100 times better.  This is mainly because of the price and size of foodworx’s salads.  Foodworx might improve their salads by allowing different portions for different prices (i.e. charging less if you don’t want the usual size) and Plaza cafe has an open salad bar that goes by weight, so if you avoid the heavier items, you can get the same salad volume for half of what it goes for at foodworx.  

Along the same lines of healthier meals, last week I had a Tajine at Pines in Muir College that was really well done.  Tajins are traditionally a North African concoction that are characterized by the type of conical dish they are cooked and served in.  In many cases, Tajines have a signature blend of sweet dried fruits or nuts, honey or some other sweetener, and some savory meat and spices.  I’ve tried a lot of Moroccan Tajines and I have to say that while the traditional Tajine is a hard thing to beat, this came super close to matching them.  So good work Pines, you’ve finally redeemed yourself after undercooking my omelets.  Eating right is something that can be easily overlooked, but it’s important to eat healthy and although sometimes finding healthy snacks on campus can be tough (especially at sixth college) it’s always doable.