Day Two: Ginger Tofu
After a series of misfortunate events (stomach viruses, unexpected closings, derpy meetings), I took to the depths of Shafer for a new dish to try. I wasn’t too optimistic about Fried Chicken Mondays yielding any results, but the Vegan/Vegetarian section saved the day! (Props to Kat for the swipe.)
Tofu strikes me as the perfect diet snack: bland, virtually tasteless and filling. After finding out that it’s low in calories and relatively healthy for you, this only makes more sense. Soaked in ginger sauce and served with vegetables, I could hardly complain. Going vegetarian would be a whole lot easier with this, which makes the fact that you can get almost anything made as a tofu-substitute totally awesome. Being a diehard carnivore, this wasn’t really my slab of meat, but it wasn’t intended to be, and that’s perfectly alright.
Also, as a bonus to make up for the fact that I didn’t get any of Tori has stashed away (at least not today, anyway), I also had a few slices of Shafer’s Baked Ziti pizza. Granted, throwing a few reject noodles on a really nice looking slice of cheese hardly counts as inventive cooking, but I’m always down for a slice.
Day 7: Garbanzo Beans w/ Acorn Squash and Zucchini
Every single second of this was a bad idea. These looked terrible, smelled terrible and tasted terrible. I don’t know what possessed me to get an entire bowl, but I was done in less than 30 seconds. There was no way I was sticking that out. I managed a whole three bites before I came to the realization that the shame and remorse were nowhere near worth it.
Vegan section of Shafer, I back you most days. I get mystified at all your quirky names for things and exotic hummus flavors. I always wonder what it would take to officially feel like I belonged walking away from you with a plate of roots and protein-addled good for you food. Yours is a realm I hold in high regard, but this piddly nonsense deserves some explanation. How does it work? What does it do? Why can’t my bull testicle-conquering stomach even stand to be in it’s presence for more than a minute? Explain this tomfoolery, I beg of you.
Day 12: Matzo Ball Soup (Now with added Matzo!)
Honestly, the most sound piece of wisdom I’ve heard all month was when Kat pointed out the ignorance of the alarming amount of people asking “How was your Easter?”. After all, Christianity isn’t the only major religion in the world that celebrated a major holiday last weekend (and, thanks to my new knowledge, still is for another two nights!) So, as amends for the Passover-derp that most Christians are guilty of committing every year, I decided to pay my respects to the almighty bubala mainstaple: matzo!
Conveniently available to me in both soup and cracker form (we are a country that loves it’s choices, after all), this dish made me forget about my mountain of pizza located just inches away. As you know, my friends, that is a damn-near impossible feat for anyone or anything to achieve. The flatbread accompaniment was quite dry/tasteless, but since Wikipedia informs me that is indeed the point, I’ll venture to say that it was the DRIEST bread I’ve ever had the fortune to have! (If you’re gonna have a niche market, you might as well get extreme with your sentiments, right Rick Santorum? oh wait that’s right how did that work out for you again?) Soups are meant to be more than your typical brothy fanfare. Chicken Noodle being the exception, a bowl of specialty soup should stand out as more than the average go-to sickness suppressor. In this case, the bar has been set, and I’m looking at you Progresso/Panera/soup places of everywhere. If you haven’t stepped your game up to this or something as righteous in comparison, your soup is no friend of mine, and that’s some advice even the Soup Nazi would back.
Day 17: Red Rock Sushi (Crabmeat, spicy tuna, cream cheese, fish eggs, wasabi, a whole bunch of ridiculous other stuff)
Unlike most students this time of the semester, I only have a few swipes left. Dropping 3 of those precious last meals on a plate of quality sushi was not originally in my agenda for today, but thanks to the generosity of those who used their mealplans less abundantly, I was able to cop a plate from today’s Sushi Extravaganza free of charge!
You may be able to call me out on never having experienced a few things, but no amount of heckling can undermine the fact that I’ve never tried caviar. You just don’t see that stuff around anywhere. That generic scene in movies where the rich guy breaks out a small jar of caviar while he pish-poshes about frivolous hoighty-toighty nonsense? Forget it. We’re too busy ruining the world with Transformers sequels and by still letting Eddie Murphy be in things to have the budget for that stuff (I’ll give it to the dude though, he kicked ass in Dreamgirls.) As far as I’m concerned, caviar hasn’t been around since J. Jonah Jameson sent it away in Spiderman 2, and even that’s a stretch. Therefore, it’s the logicial conclusion of the universe and the film industry today that I would jump on the chance to eat fish eggs, even if they were strewn across a plate of sushi. Man, I couldn’t even tell it was there for a minute, and when I did, that stuff tasted so good. Like woah, I didn’t even know where that was coming from for a second.
The rest of the sushi was quite delicious. I couldn’t remember ever having had tuna, so that was a bonus. Bring on the tunafish casserole, Grandma. I finally get it. Otherwise, pretty much everything was spicy in a way that made sense, but still felt out of place. The cream cheese was barely even noticeable flavor-wise, though that’s all I could really think about. In the end, I just couldn’t argue with free fish eggs.
