Intentions were good back in September that I had in regards to the foodrhombus.  I was going to post about food eaten in my cafeteria at WMU, talk about local restaurants I visited and food I made over the course of the semester. I held up half of what I set out to do, I ate food….. I just didn’t write about it. I’m back in the safe confines of S(S)P and find myself vindicated to share some of my stories and experiences regarding food in the last three months. In other words, I’m very bored at home right now.

At WMU eating in cafeteria is similar to a buffet restaurant, they have a ton of stuff, you can make as many trips as you want, you question how it was made, and how long the food has been sitting out there. My first week I was in soaking up fun (calories) as I filled a plate with pasta and tacos, there was no better side dish. After that week I started to notice that quality in the food started to go down, as well as my stamina on the basketball court; it was time to make some changes.  I’d always liked spinach leafs so every meal I incorporated a plate of that every night, until something terrible happened. TOTAL SPINICH LEAF RECALL!!!! I’ll be damned if I was going over to the iceberg lettuce, I might as well eat pencils. These were trying times for me as I started replacing the spinach with fruits, I’ve never been a big fan of fruit at dinner, so I went straight back to the leaves when the recall blew over.

You may be wondering what the best meals are and when they are served. From my experience I’ve noticed that as the days passes each meal gets gradually worse. The whole semester I was never around or up in time to be served breakfast, so not eating from the caf was the best meal they can serve me. Lunch is consistently ok, usually they have a good choice of soups and I can usually get a grilled cheese sandwich. Dinner is always hit and miss, usually miss. You’re usually greeted with choices of a stale piece of bread, and the steamed vegetables look to have been marinating in their own gross juices for three hours, and usually you have an option between a fried piece of dried out pork, or a sweaty piece of chicken. The safe out that I usually take is the pasta with meatless sauce, its ragu sauce, it’s not great, but I know what it is. When I’m eating in the cafeteria I’m mainly vegetarian, the meat I see is very unappealing to me and I’m worried about poor student preparation.

In the last month I’ve really been disinterested in most of the food that is served there. I’ve re-kindled my love for golden grahms, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The best thing about cafeteria eating is not the food, it’s the beverages. Mr. Pibb, orange guava  juice,  three flavors of iced tea, barqs, and so much more. I wish my body could just make meals out of the drinks. Surprisingly I’ve fallen in love with what I feel to be a very unpopular and underrated juice, behold the grape juice. I love to drink it a lot of ice and it is so fantastic, I have it for lunch, dinner, or whenever. If you haven’t had grape juice in some time you really should yourself a and favor and give it another try. 90% of the time I’m usually going with milk or grape juice, but I’m really impressed with the drink selection at WMU.

There were some fun times this year at the cafeteria, I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to be in the company of very competitive and gluttonous eaters. On one evening the main entrée was ribs (shit non-sandwich) and one of the people I sit with, Ted, was challenged to eat four racks of ribs. There we sat for over an hour watching him consume rack after rack before he passed his challenge. It also needs to be mentioned that the majority of my meals were shared with my roommate/ good friend/ and a man with the fastest metabolism ever. I’ve seen him this past summer take out a quad stacker from Burger King without even burping, so I was aware of his burger capabilities. I’ll just say this: I created and consumed his own octo-stacker. You might be thinking that this guy would eat anything, but you’re fooling yourself. BK is one of the pickiest and meticulous eaters I’ve ever come in contact with. Watching him grapes is a sight, as he picks up each one and rolls thing across his fingers to make sure that there isn’t a soft spot anywhere on the grape. If there is any kind of bump he tosses it aside for disposal. An odd ritual at the caf is that there seems to be a craving to watch endless mounts of Home Improvement and the Cosby Show. I really don’t know how to elaborate on this, but I think it’s funny.

So, I guess that this is an adequate look inside of what it’s been like to eat with me for the past three months. Even though I’ve bashed the caf pretty bad tonight, I still want to re-emphasize on how much I love grape juice and golden grahms now. As far as off campus eating goes, I had a terrific farmers omelet at this breakfast place not that far from where I live. I can’t remember the name, but Alexa was there so maybe you can remind me what the name was. I’ll try to get a little better with posting consistently on here, I can promise that during my three weeks off I’ll be writing a lot about the food I enjoy over break. Look for my post Christmas dinner wrap up.