Sunday, 31 January 2010

"Mystery vegetable mush"

I just wanted to post a close-up of what I feel is one of the worst meals I regularly have no choice but to accept here in catered halls... I hate this meal.

Day Three (27/01/2010)

Pasta again. Mashed potato. Parsnips. I barely touch any of it.
The pasta seems to be covered in bits of spinach, and tastes awful, but ofcourse being vegetarian I have no choice. Cucumber and black olives make up my side salad as my trust for the lettuce is diminishing. Rhubarb crumble with custard makes up my dessert but is very disappointing. The custard is watery and tasteless, and does nothing to compete with the sourness of the rhubarb. Ryvita, again, is the highlight of this meal.

This is why I am sometimes glad I don't touch the meat here. This meatball (which by the way is leftovers from yesterday's meat option) is clearly undercooked. I don't understand how, after being cooked twice, this is still pink inside.
Dinner time. "Mystery vegetable mush" is what my friends and I name this odd-looking meal. The sweetcorn is overcooked and unsatisfying, but the potato slices are acceptable when with copious amounts of mayonnaise. 'Thick' vegetable soup is supposedly in the bowl, and isn't half bad after generous amounts of salt are added to give some sort of taste, and is almost enjoyable. Again, watermelon for dessert.
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Week One (of this blog) 25th-31st Jan 2010

25/01/2010
Day One: The one and only vegetarian option for dinner is some sort of poorly cooked vegetable mush with strangely textured cheese on top of a greasy pitta bread. Side of potato chunks which are dry and taste rather earthy. For dessert is a small slice of watermelon; the highlight of the meal. And to drink, a cup of tea. One sugar. Semi skimmed milk.
 26/01/2010
Day two: Lunchtime, and the veggie option of the day is pasta, and chips. To be completely fair, I do like this as I am pretty sure this is pasta you can buy in a packet at any supermarket. It is some sort of cheese (ricotta?) ravioli in a tomato sauce which I always add some tabasco sauce to in order to achieve some sort of taste. However, my side of the day is chips and this makes the meal rather dominated by carbohydrates. As you will come to learn, the vegetable options are usually avoided due to previous encounters proving them to be tasteless and undercooked.
To compensate for the unbalanced main course, I get a side salad of lettuce, cucumber and black olives, covered in Thousand Island dressing. It is rather disappointing and I am unsure whether the salad is ever rinsed, but I eat it none the less.
Dessert is some sort of chocolate pudding/cake in chocolate custard. It is edible but sickly.
Ryvita with butter appears to be the highlight of the meal.

Day Two (cont.): Dinner consists of onion soup (which was actually acceptable once salt was added), and vegetable samosas on poorly cooked rice with a side of lumpy mashed potato and potato wedges. Again, carbohydrates are all I am given, and the contents of the samosas are so unappetising that I just nibble on the edges before giving up. The rice goes uneaten as does the mashed potato, but the wedges are well cooked for once so get eaten with a small helping of mayonnaise. Dessert appeared to be an attempting bread and butter pudding with custard. However this was burnt in places, and was far too sweet and chewy. Unfortunately yet another attempt at making pudding from scratch fails.
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