in which I talk about food and make myself hungry!
Well! Today all the new freshmen and transfer students arrive! The excitement (and nervousness) is palpable! A word to freshmen — IT WILL BE OK. Once you move in, things start to feel surprisingly normal.
Today I’m going to talk about food — it’s one of my favorite topics, and as it is almost noon, and almost time for lunch, one which weighs heavily on my mind. If you’re looking at college, it’s also probably a question that’s on your mind! Which cafeteria has the best food? Will I be able to cook for myself? Where do I get snack food? How do I deal with special dietary concerns like staying a vegetarian or vegan? What are my meal plan options?
Here at Messiah, there’s Lottie Nelson Dining Room, where most of the freshmen and sophomores eat every meal. Every meal has a vegetarian option, whether that be tofu to put on your salad, stuffed shells instead of chicken fingers, hummus, bagels, peanut butter, etc. Sometimes it’ll take you a little ingenuity to put together a fully-balanced meal, but so does cooking for yourself. Being a vegan is more complicated, and it’s harder for me to tell you that there are fully vegan food options at every meal (a friend once told me that even saltine crackers, seemingly so innocent, were out of bounds for a vegan. Who knew?). There’s certainly things like the hummus, peanut butter, the option of soy milk, and lots of vegetables (cooked and fresh) and fruits available.
The Falcon Express, on the lower level of Eisenhower Campus Center, is a convenient breakfast-and-lunch joint. It also deserves the word “express” in its moniker; it’s the best place to get a quick bite in between classes. They just rennovated it, and re-wrote some of its menu options. Now it has panini! And espresso drinks! As well as a “Fresh Home Made Soups and Bread Bar,” which features vegan and vegetarian options.
Larsen Student Union is open almost any time you can think of — except weekend mornings. When I know I’ll be stuck in the studio working until 1 or 2 a.m., I’ll swing by the Union Cafe before it closes at midnight and grab some pizza or a sandwich. Their burgers are delicious (and they have mushroom burgers which are really quite yummy as well). They have shakes, smoothies, ice cream, half gallons of milk, snack foods, cookies, every beverage you can think of, deli sandwiches — well, I’ll stop the list there. It’s a big place, ideal for studying with a group and eating at the same time. It’s also a great place for game nights, since you can check out games from the upstairs student programs desk. There are also good odds you could hear a concert at least once a week while you eat!
You will have a kitchen on your floor if you’re in a residence hall, so yes, you can satisfy those brownie-baking urges. Just be sure to label your food and wash your dishes! I hear RAs have instituted a no-mess-tolerance policy, and might throw away your plates. The C-Store on campus stocks pasta, boxed mixes, microwaveable foods, some vegetables, oil, single eggs, cookies, snack foods, and beverages ranging from soda to half gallons of milk. If you don’t need a full grocery trip or don’t have a car, it’s a great option.
Your standard meal plan at Messiah will give you “flex dollars” that you can spend anywhere, in addition to all your main meals in Lottie. But for upperclassmen in particular, there are alacarte meal plans with a certain balance that can be used at either the Falcon, the Union, or the C-store, and it is very convenient. I have a smaller alacarte plan that serves as a supplement to the dinners I cook for myself in my apartment.
Which brings me to cooking for yourself. Particularly if you’re a vegan, a vegetarian, have crazy lots of allergies, or are just super concerned about eating locally or organically produced food, the Messiah area is a great location. And the kitchens in the apartments are good kitchens! So those of us who are getting interested in cooking really good food can have a hay day.
There’s a Ten Thousand Villages about 5 minutes from campus where you can buy fair-trade coffee and chocolate. Or if you’re interested in broadening your taste horizons with tea or coffee, there’s One Good Woman about 15 minutes away.
The West Shore Farmer’s Market is a great place to get produce and meat, honey, coffee, and lots of other surprising things for your grocery list. It also houses bakeries, places to get sandwiches and soups, and some craft-ish shops upstairs. Not everything is local or organic, but if you ask around, you’ll figure out which products are. The people with stands or shops there are generally very communicative, friendly, and helpful. I find delicious cheese from Lancaster there and unusual things like ground lamb, which I can’t find at my local Weis or Giant.
A whole foods market about half an hour away provides options for vegans, vegetarians, or organic-vores. I haven’t been there yet, but it’s definitely on my list of things to explore.
The local Karns, right across from the West Shore Farmer’s Market, carries milk from Trickling Springs Creamery, which is located about an hour away (and their cows are grass-fed and aren’t given antibiotics or hormones, so it’s very organic). I haven’t found a place that carried Trickling Springs’ eggs, yogurt, cheese, butter, or ice cream yet, but I’m hoping. Maybe if enough of us ask about it at Karns, they’ll start carrying it!
And if you’re interested in eating free-range or grass-fed meat, this is a good area, too! Although you’ll have to figure out how far you’re willing to drive, and probably ask around a lot. Some professors have friends who sell free-range eggs, for instance. I like to get eggs and chicken from a farm near my fiance’s house in Lebannon. That’s further away, of course, but for us it works out — his family stocks up on the food, and when we visit, we get it from them.
If you’re simply interested in one-stop shopping, the promised land of groceries, including lots of foreign food you can’t find anywhere else (for instance, supplies to make your own sushi-with-cooked-fish, edamame, and seaweed salad), there’s also a Wegman’s about half an hour away.
Can you tell I’m really passionate about good food? I think I inherited my grandmother’s Mennonite urge to feed people a lot of the best food I can make.
4 days until classes start!
Filed under general | Comment (0)“the mockingbird says, hallelujah, coreopsis, i make the day bright, i wake the night-blooming jasmine”
– Barbara Hamby, brought to you by my daily dose of the Writer’s Almanac
One of the best pieces of practical advice about surviving as a creative person in college is this: sign up for the daily Writer’s Almanac e-mails. If you have time to read it, then read it, and if you don’t, then don’t.
I think that was almost four years ago, and I’m still receiving these e-mails and loving it.
During the insane times of the semester, I have deleted every Writer’s Almanac e-mail without opening it and moved on to more important things. During the slow times, however, like this summer, it’s really delightful to take five minutes to read a poem and then read through what happened on this day in the past that’s of literary importance.
Often times, I’m not even interested in the poem, but it always broadens my mind a little to read it, and sometimes I fall in love with one, like the opening of Barbara Hamby’s poem “Thus Spake the Mockingbird,” which is the title for this blog post.
And sometimes I just like having a little impromptu party for the birthday of an author or the anniversary of the publication of one of my favorite books of all time.
One time, the Writer’s Almanac mentioned Hiroshima, and got me started thinking about nuclear power, which had me reading wikipedia entries for hours, as well as checking books out of the library and reading as much scientific information about the current state of the Chernobyl countryside as I can find. I’m still on that jag, as a matter of fact, and the e-mail that sparked it came about two weeks ago.
It’s a way for me to educate myself a little bit (unless I get really interested, in which case it becomes a lot a bit) with hardly any effort, in a way that can be crammed into almost any e-mail reading session, but can be opted out of without guilt on days when I’m overwhelmed. And then it’s back, the next day, reminding me to take five minutes and think about a poem.
How is that not a brilliant plan to help maintain a practice of meditating on your craft?
Because as much as I think of myself as a disciplined person, it is so easy to let thinking and reading — since they don’t have a deadline or immediate benefits — slide to the back of the shelf of the pantry of my creative life. You know, where all the mold grows. And then before you know it you’re 40 and haven’t written a poem since college (or so my imagination constructs it. I haven’t even graduated yet).
And it’s not just limited to poetry, either. NPR does a Song of the Day that you can either listen to on their website or sign up for as an e-newsletter.
Nice, right? Now if I could only find a “monologue of the day” for theatre practitioners, I’d be convinced that the interwebs really is the best thing ever invented. . . .
13 days until school starts
Filed under general | Comment (0)in which I begin another count-down
There are 18 days until classes begin again. Wow. I am already the proud owner of nearly all my books, thank goodness, but have not yet begun to deal with the homework I must accomplish by September 2. By which I mean, I have not yet begun to write a short story for my fiction writing class.
I can’t decide how I feel about my last semester here. On the one hand, I feel tremendous excitement because it is my last semester. But I’m sad because I’m a super senior — the majority of my friends have now graduated, and my last semester here will be a little less familiar because of it. I have a great schedule lined up, including my one and only elective thus far in my college career (glee!) and the lightest credit load I’ve ever taken. I only have two hours of class on Tuesdays and Fridays! How great! And I don’t work on Fridays! But I’ll be filling the extra time with things like being an editor for the Minnemingo Review (which I’m also super excited about! And nervous!).
Also, I’m scared of my classes! I know that’s silly, but every year it’s true. In the back of my head there’s always the thought that I might fail a class this semester — even though I’ve had a great GPA for the last four years!
I’m moving away from my art-dominated semesters and into an English-dominated semester, which will be incredibly strange. And I’m taking my one last, sad, gen-ed course. Probably it will be filled with first-years and sophomores, and I will feel old!
I wonder, do professors feel that sick-nervous feeling in their stomach when they contemplate walking into a classroom of new faces and conducting the first class of the year? Is it just students? And do they feel a sense of excitement at the thought of all the things to be learned and taught?
Filed under general | Comment (1)“the making of these differences is the making of the world.”
– Wendell Berry
I really want to be green. It’s been my favorite color since I was tiny, and has come to stand for ideals I respect, ways of living that are balanced and sustainable for the individual and for the community.
But let’s face it, it’s complicated! I’ve been reading some of Wendell Berry lately, as well as Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” and I’ve got more questions than answers. Just like buying organic may mean shipping your food farther (sure, no pesticides, but you’re using up a lot more gas and creating more pollution!), every bit of “going green” is complicated.
Wendell Berry advocates living on a farm, attaching yourself firmly to the land, not moving, caring for and husbanding the land so that it’s fertile throughout your lifespan, your children’s lifespan, and their children’s lifespan. But what does that mean for someone like me, who has always grown up thinking that being able to move and being unattached from one’s possessions and land is a good spiritual attribute? We’re pilgrims, right? Not of this world?
And what does that mean for the wonderful benefits of world traveling? Is going to see Japan for a week bad for the environment? Or do the benefits of widening my mind and experience outweigh the gas I use for the flight? Or does that mean I should seek to live abroad, rather than just travel, sustaining myself the same way I would in the United States, with green living practices, so that I can recoup the cost of gasoline to get there with contributions back to the community? Can you get a visa for that?
And what about living within our means but also living green? In a lot of ways, sure, living green is cheaper. You’ll use less electricity. But what if you want to be really green and use solar panels to power your home? Is it better to go into more debt to put solar panels on your house, or to use more electricity until you can pay the solar panels’ cost in cash?
What about green clothing? There are lots of organic clothes out there, but one is faced with the same dilemma as organic tomatoes — they come from ungodly far away, using up a ton of gas in their transport. Not to mention they are without question more expensive than your average I-heart-Wal-Mart t-shirts. What’s a fiscally responsible and hippie-minded college student to do? I can’t afford organic clothing, I don’t like the gas that’s spent transporting them, and I refuse to enter Wal-Mart.
Going to vintage clothing stores, making one’s own clothing, and frequenting salvation army stores come to mind as possible alternatives, none of which really solve the whole dilemma. Making one’s own clothing does not by any means guarantee organic or local fabric, just good labor. Vintage clothing can be expensive and difficult to maintain, although the fact that I’m recycling what I wear is a plus. And, as much as I love the salvation army, it is prohibitively difficult to clothe oneself entirely from their racks, since frankly, most of the things they sell do not fit well (not to mention they are ugly — being an extremely aesthetically aware person does not help me fulfill my green leanings). In addition, the salvation army generally doesn’t sell things like underwear, so you’re left buying that at some other, not-eco-friendly store, too.
What if I raised sheep and spun my own thread and wove my own clothing? I do, actually, have the expertise to do the spinning (well. . . my thread is totally lumpy, but for the sake of argument let’s pretend that I can spin really well), weaving, and sewing (we’ll assume access to a sewing machine to speed the process), but I don’t know how to raise sheep, and — oh yeah — I currently live in a dorm. So even though I have the knowledge to make my own clothing, my location and the time costs associated with the idea are enormous problems.
Oh, and here’s a dilemma: I’m getting a great college education that’s making me want to be as eco-responsible as possible (a good thing, right?). But it’s a residential college, so I (like the majority of students) live in a dormitory. I can’t grow things, except one or two potted plants (Messiah does have an on-campus garden that sells food to Lottie and other students, employees, and faculty over the summer. So yay! Our on-campus space is at least being utilized well, even though we can’t all have our own little gardens). I can’t can or preserve my own food, because there’s no space to store it, and precious little space to prepare it in (speaking of which, you know what class I would totally take, were it offered? A small-scale agricultural course: how to plant a garden, maintain one without pesticides, save seeds and preserve heirloom plant lines, prepare food for the winter, and have a balanced diet even when eating only foods that are in season). I don’t even have control over the level of air-conditioning in my residence hall. There’s no space for a clothes line, so while I use a drying rack for about a quarter of my clothing, the rest gets put in a dryer and uses a lot of electricity.
And as much as it pains me to say it, some brilliant eco-friendly ideas are complicated by my vocation. And I’m not just talking the artists’s dilemma of paints containing heavy metals also often produce the best and most long-lasting colors. I’m talking about a more general Christian life vocation.
I read about these tiny houses that are so cool. For one adult, you can apparently live comfortably in less than 100 square feet. But what if I believe my Christian vocation is to live in community? I’m getting married. I’ll probably have children at some point. I want to have a home which is always open to friends and family, where they can come visit and sleep over and be fed and hang out. When it comes to hospitality, 96 square feet only stretches so far.
Maybe the answer is to get a hundred people interested in tiny houses (maybe 3-400 square feet in size instead of 100 — there are certainly plenty of blueprints for tiny cottages of 500 sq. feet in size available), line them all up in a neighborhood somewhere, and have larger common areas together where friends and family could be hosted for overnight stays. Everyone could chip in for laundry rooms and play areas and gardens, lawn care equipment, clothes lines, etc. Workable, but not by any means a simple solution.
So how do you negotiate the many costs and complications involved in living green? That’s all I’m wondering. Not a lot of authors acknowledge complications. They’re persuasive, but they’re not in the business of making you think about how complicated an effort it really is. Worthwhile? Absolutely. But complicated? Heck yes!
Maybe I’ll start small: Seventh Generation laundry detergent, buying as much food as possible from within a 60-mile radius of where I live, and trying not to kill a potted plant in my on-campus apartment this winter.
Filed under general | Comment (1)an ode (forget the urn)
If you would like to see something funny, you should totally check out Food Party. It’s pretty much the funniest, weirdest, most creative set of videos I’ve seen in a long time (besides Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long blog, previously brought to the interwebs by a bored Joss Whedon).
It’s a spoof of a cooking show, basically, except all puppet-ified and. . . well. . . unique. Very, very unique. It took me a while to get into it. But I think what won me over was the ice cream cone giving a tour of the set, and how detailed and gorgeous (in a quirky, weird way) the set itself was.
Food Pary made so much more sense when I found out that its creator, Thu Tran, was a college student (and an art student at that) when she started filming it.
At Messiah, students display the same kind of collaborative creativity. In just my four years at Messiah, Theatre for Social Change has performed all over campus in weird ways; students started up a gang of Vikings that tagged along on admission’s tours, raided Lottie Nelson Dining Room for ice cream (and temporarily carried away a Lottie worker), and staged combat in the parking lots; a semi-secret organization called the Grantham Gentleman’s Society helped plan a yearly Garden Gala, complete with croquet, tea, and old-timey costumes; students gathered together a horde of zombies for halloween, staggering all over campus covered in fake blood, banging up against the windows of Lottie Nelson Dining Room and the Larsen Student Union; students built snow forts and fought in them for days in the winter. . . I’m sure the list goes on.
In my super-senior-dom (which might equal wisdom?!) let me tell you, ham it up while you’re in college. It’s so much fun, and probably even teaches you things.
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