Support CALCIUM! Drink expired milk!

I admit, I almost dashed...or I sort of did. I took a friend to get his hair cut between Cedar and Alder street on  6th avenue in Tacoma at Nani Hair Cuts. We ended up deciding to visit another friend to wait until traffic died down. I ended up cooking some frozen ground turkey. Most awkward thing ever. Not really, but when you have meat that is clumping up in long flat strips when you want it to be finely ground...just slight awkward. I never got it as fine as I wanted. This summer I learned that you don't always have all the time in the world to cook. This led to Hamburger Helper every once in a while. Tonight I made Whole Wheat Beef Stroganoff. I didn't really do anything special with it - I do have a special way to make Mac and Cheese though. There wasn't much to say about it...something saucy with some slightly rubbery meat. I think the turkey would've cooked better had it been properly thawed.

I actually got stuff from the store on my way home too. I have some gram cracker crusts, half and half, and some marshmallows. I plan to melt chocolate and marshmallows together to and thin it with a little half-and-half to make a filling to put in the cooked crust. I will then cover the pie in marshmallows and broil the it to golden perfection.

When I arrived home I went to the bakery so that I wouldn't waste my $13.75 - so instead I was charged $13.75 for less than $7.00 of over priced food ($5 for the sandwich, $2 for the chips and soft serve Ice cream). The only good thing was that I was given free milk - that expired today. The sign on them said that they were free because Tahoma Bakery supported Calcium, conveniently the expiration date did not face the people taking it. It is ok to offer free milk to people because you can't sell it when it expires and it would be wasteful to toss it, but false advertising that they support calcium isn't professional. Dining Services would offer free milk at swipe meals at the bakery if they really supported healthy decisions and calcium. Its not like the cost wouldn't be absorbed by our meal swipe we payed for.

Beef, Chicken, Sausage...what??? Mystery Meat Might be better...

 Beef Soup

• unchewable onion -
• too big of beef = tough and less flavor ---
• Surprisingly, Not too salty! +

Chicken Strip

• Cold -

Sausage Lasagna

• hot sausage +/-
• huge chunks of tomato +
• Good thing - until the entire bowl -
• slightly undercooked celery -

Chicken

• No Flavor -----
• rice masks the lack of flavor - clearly my friend liked rice +?

Stir fry kills girl...almost...i wish shed had...dashed

I actually went with Swedish Meatballs - a good solid choice. I believe that they can be improved in only one way - extra gravy. Meat balls are often too dry in the center, and gravy - no matter matter how much butter was used - is a perfect solution to the dryness. Had there been some extra gravy the meatballs would've been perfect. Ok, they could've been slightly less dense too - I mean, eating too much meat only gives you cancer. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7959128.stm 

The potatoes were fine - just too big of pieces, too large of a serving, and way too much Dill. WAY too much. The lingonberries were good - but a bit sour against the gravy's flavor. I got a little bit of the beets...quickly regretted that. Beets never taste good - but the thick sauce looked like the huckleberry sauce from my mothers and grandmothers non-bake Huckleberry Cheese Cake...how deceptive, I should've known that it wouldn't be sweet and full of the flavorful fruit.

Apparently the Peppers in the Chicken Cashew Stir-fry was dangerously horrible...I really don't wish the girl died, but a little bit of the UC love did when she chose the stir-fry chicken - I avoid it on principle that they over cook the chicken making it hard to chew.

Dining Services is Robbing us Blind

Update: you pay $13.75 for dinner. Yes, you and I are being robbed blind. It would cost you less to NOT have a meal plan and eat at the UC for dinner. Kreidler is suddenly starting to look WAY cheaper - go without a meal plan and just eat at the UC, saving three dollars a meal. Ridiculous...also shows that they care more about "visitors" then actual students.

I guess I should just spray the dirt on while I am annoyed. I got a text this morning saying that someone couldn't cut through one of their two pancakes. I don't know if this is more a comment on the fact that the butter knives aren't very effective or the fact that the pancakes were rockcakes - ok may be just really tough. I also watched another bag of soup be brought out of the kitchen today...I am not sure how it is suppose to be hot if it comes out in a plastic bag...

On a positive note, dinner was actually good tonight. I enjoyed a really tender chicken leg from crave with Mashed potatoes, gravy, and green beans. I also had the Cheese Tortellini with pesto sauce. The actually mixed the sauce with the tortellini before they served it. It was WAY better than it has ever been before! The basil garnish  provided a fresh complimentary flavor to the pesto - which is basil. I actually dived into the tortellini - leaving everything else to get a little cold...not a good plan. I felt like the green beans were perfect but the coldness distracted from the quality. I didn't feel like I left them that long either...I did do a rotation between everything after eating half the tortellini. So I am not really sure if they lost heat really quickly or they were served warm. The mashed potatoes were good! Needed more flavor even with the gravy but it wasn't anything a little salt and pepper couldn't improve. I also asked the server for a very small piece of fish, just to compare to the Salmon. I had to confirms my past experiences since things

Dessert was good too. Think blueberry muffin made into a bread form. It also appeared to have small chunks of what I believe was butterscotch chips. SO GOOD. Moist and absolutely delicious. Oh, how sugar makes the world go round...

Apparently the beef Fajitas were amazing. I may have missed out, but I am more than content with what I had!

What the!? You call this dinner? Should've dashed...

September 27th

Ok so maybe I am being dramatic, but the bakery would've been the better choice, I mean, I am starving now and I WENT to dinner at 5:30! I got general Tso's Chicken - I might add this seemed to be the ONLY line. The line reached all the way to the entrance of the commons when I got food. Tso's Chicken has been one of my favorite dishes the last two years. The brown rice tonight was nice, not sticky or dried out. The chicken was cooked fine, there was only a little bit of pink on the inside...and I am not puking...yet. In the past there was the problem that the chicken became soggy from being mixed with the sauce and waiting around for people to eat it. This year they have switched to pouring the sauce on top. Maybe its just me, but it seemed like a thinner sauce this year, water thin. Also, when having it poured on I thought the idea was to get it on the chicken. My sauce got poured all over my rice, leaving my chicken dry. Not really an ooo ah moment for me. Apparently the tofu version was great - of course my friend Sam also asked for extra sauce...fail on my part.

I also had the raspberry and rice pudding. LOVED it. Most of the time it is too sugary or not sweet enough or the rice is overcooked, ect. Instead everything was almost perfect. There were a few grains of rice that weren't fully cooked but it wasn't like I had to crunch my way through the bowl. During this wonderful bowl I got to listen about how the Stuff Portobello Mushrooms were way too salty -immediately qualifying it a mention in my blog. Another girl heard and immediately passed me some of her Grits...ok all of it...stabbed by a fork...and it a solid play-dough mass. For a dish that is suppose to be ground corn and have the consistency of oat meal, this was not appealing. As for taste, there really wasn't much of anything. It was just had a thick and rubbery texture.

Oh how I wish I had dashed!

Dash to the Sea

Although I didn't make it to the sea, I did make it to Costco, and that was good enough for me. Really, I broke down and decided I wanted salmon. The UC has never been good at cooking fish in my opinion. The fish they serve generally looks good but it is always dry and hard to choke down...maybe that is the true reason we waste so much food at PLU. We are attracted to the food by how it looks and shortly after we sit down and start eating we realize that the beautiful food has deceived us and is inedible - in which case I wouldn't even feed it to the raccoons that walk past the Common's windows. We then go back and to the lines to get something else. Again, a quarter of a dish is eaten when it gets to the point that it is unbearable to eat. Some of us settle and go for another dish, some of us leave discontent, and others of us, like Davey Fisher, go and eat four bowls of cereal. Ok, Davey is different and smart enough to not fall for the false advertising of the food - he goes straight to the cereal.

Taking our half eaten dishes of food we go and place them on the conveyer belt. Dining services then makes the conclusion that we are being served too large of potions. Slowly, this mentality that we are wasting food spreads until we are served smaller servings during every meal including lunch. We then over paying for even smaller meals. Its vicious cycle. The solution is easy enough. Serve food that people are willing to eat the whole serving and then no food gets wasted and cost can go down because less money is being spent on half eaten food.

Where was I...oh yes, Salmon. So I bought two pounds of Coho and Sockeye. I really didn't know the difference between the two so I thought it would do a comparison. I cooked them exactly the same way so that comparing them would be easier. I took long pieces of aluminum foil and then placed the fish on them.  I put onion under the whole fish. I seasoned them with a bit of salt, pepper, dill, and Montreal Steak Seasoning - my favorite season for meat. I then put onion and lemon slices on top. Folding up the sides of the tin foil, I squeezed lemon juice over the salmon to guarantee that it would stay moist. I then gave it another dash of dill and Montreal SS.

We cooked a pot full of wild rice from Costco as well. I loved it, but I definitely added butter to it. One of my favorite dishes that my grandmother cooks is a wild rice soup. It warms the soul. The last thing I made was plain old french bread. There is nothing like a fresh loaf of brown hot bread with butter melting on it. I also had the Cougar Gold cheese out as well. My friend really wanted to get this salad kit from Costco. Salads have never been a strength of mine so I didn't mind. When it comes to salads I turn to Kate Miller or Lynsey Tveit. Last night the salad was Dole's Cherry Almond Bleu. Bleu cheese crumbles, dried cherries, sliced almonds, and white balsamic vinaigrette over butter & Red Leaf lettuces. It was SO good. I am not really a fan of bleu cheese's but I didn't notice it at all.

Did I mention I had milk?

Everything worked well together. I actually had a piece of the Sockeye and was so content that I didn't take a bite of the coho until after I was stuffed. The sockeye had a darker pink color and was firmer than the coho, leaving the coho feeling mushy in my mind. If I had started with the coho I think it would be a different story. All in all I was happy with the meal. As for cost, I only spent around $42. For an expensive meat, we payed $5 each to cover all costs. A full well balanced meal - less than half the cost of an All-you-care-to-eat dinner at the Commons.

Dash to the Quiche

Quiche - it never really made a strong impression on me as a kid. I think i had it once...maybe twice...I have this crazy aunt which I love - I love all my aunts, crazy or not - but she was the first one who made it that stuck in my memory. She also made the most amazing scones - another ground breaker in my mind. My aunt is a really good cook. Of course my childhood memory was apparently killed until after I tried a quiche again my sophomore year. I had a friend who was slightly obsessed with them. Tonight he made it, which means it was taken down to the Best Basics Ever! (sorry - I couldn't stop orientation from coming out) Swiss cheese, eggs, half-and-half, nutmeg, salt, butter, and...BACON! Food that is reminds me of my childhood tend to be my favorite. Bacon falls into that category of home food. When cooked well, it reminds me of saturday mornings with my Dad making breakfast. There was extra half-and-half in tonight's quiche, making the eggs extra fluffy and light. When I cook quiche I always feel the need to add diced tomatoes, green onions (shallots), and sometimes even mushrooms. Extra nutmeg and a little pepper and cinnamon make a good addition of spices.

To change up the night we tried some of WSU's Cougar Gold cheese. The cheese comes in a metal tin can with bright yellow stipes. I actually bought it because of a childhood memory. When I lived in Moscow, Idaho, I went over to WSU and toured the creamery where they made the cheese. My mother bought it once because I was so excited that I had seen the same cheese being made. This white cheese is made of only pasteurized milk, cultures, salt, and enzymes. The longer the cheese ages the more liquids are drawn out of the cheese and the more crumbly it becomes. Also a hard white crystal forms from the amino acid tyrosine The cheese we had was aged two years. I actually spilled the liquid from the can all over my pants and the crystals definitely needed to be scrapped off. I couldn't place the familiar taste until another friend named it straight off, parmesan. Parmesan only softer and less crisp.

I don't really like lying, so I will tell you the truth. I had two deserts. The first was some fresh raspberries from Costco. The berries didn't have that sun ripened flavor but it was a nice change considering I actually didn't buy raspberries this summer - one of my favorite fruits. The last desert was sour patch kids. They have actually been in my backpack for weeks, a product of a Winco run. Nothing makes a contrast like cheese and sour patch kids. Now if you will excuse me I am going to get another piece of the quiche that my friend referenced as his personal crack.