Saltines, yeah and rice and beans, yeah

Camp song for the win

This is a post about me being vegetarian. I'm guessing if you are reading this you may have already known but if you didn't know... I am a vegetarian. To me this means I don't eat any animals. Yes fish are animals. Yes chickens are animals. Yes chicken broth is meat. Now that that has been said being vegetarian in college was no where near as bad as I thought it would be. Now it isn't good but it's way easier than it probably was 10 or 20 years ago.
I eat most of my meals in the dining center. Breakfast is usually coffee and a granola bar or a bagel or bowl of cereal in my room. For snacks I usually have goldfish, wheat thins, potato chips, apples (I always try to have some in my fridge). Lunch and dinner I go to the dining center. WSU is pretty cool in that all of their dining centers have a "chefs creation" part where you can get food that looks (and tastes) like what you would get at home. The chef's creation always has a vegetarian option and they always have at least 1 vegetarian soup. The grills in the dining centers all make grilled cheese sandwiches (American cheese and tomato is my favorite!) and carry veggie burgers. And they cook the veggie burgers on a separate surface than the meat! At the beginning of the year they had really good veggie burgers, apparently they weren't vegan so they changed to these gross "green abominations" so that isn't really an option I choose now. All of the dining centers also have cheese and veggie pizza.
Now you are probably wondering why I haven't mentioned the salad bar, here is why:
1) Salad isn't my thing, I love veggies but prefer them cooked
2) Cross contamination is very common in the salad bar and I don't like meat in my veggies, thanks.
3) Bad salad dressing, all premade cheap brand.
4) Sometimes it makes me sick, don't know why.
So usually if I utilize the salad bar it is a rare occasion and I bring the veggies back to my dorm and cook them. I was going to make a burrito/fajita thing for lunch but they didn't have any peppers. So I made stir fry and ate it in a tortilla instead :P Pretty tasty
The downsides of relying on the dining center, I'm probably not getting the complete proper nutrition (I take vitamins, no worries) but most things in the chefs creation have cheese in them and as I listed above with grilled cheese sandwiches and pizza that is a lot of cheese. Cheese isn't good for you, it's high in bad fats and calories and personally I only like it melted and in small quantities. I also can't control what is going into everything which I don't like, things are under spiced always and not always made with fresh foods (read they use frozen veggies a lot!).
In conclusion while it is convenient to eat in the dining halls I am definitely looking forward to cooking all of my own meals when I am out of college (or the dorms?)