The Herald Online

Issue date: 12/3/09 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: Tricia Mullen Amalie Benjamin, a sophomore nursing major from Cabot, and Rachael Gittings, a freshman early childhood education major from Richmond ,VA enjoy some "cafe-made" ice cream sandwiches.

By your second or third hundredth meal in the cafeteria, it becomes difficult to choke down another bite of mass-produced spaghetti or self-tossed lettuce, cheese and croutons from a salad bar that sits on the bar from open to close.

Of course, there is always old faithful: cereal, but that is never the most satisfying meal, especially not three times a day. So the monotony of the same options day after day for four years haunts you, extinguishing your appetite every time you enter those glass double doors and scan your i.d.

There has to be another way. How do the hundreds of seniors graduate each year having lived off of cafeteria food for their entire college careers?

They get creative.

Take the childhood experience of whipping up crazy concoctions in your mom's kitchen, mix it with the new-found motivation to rediscover edibility in the cafeteria and take up the art of mixing and matching. See, for example, how resourcefulness has saved the taste buds and appetites of other ASU students.

"For me, if there is nothing that appeals to me at first glance, I'll improvise," said Michael Miller, senior biology major from Paragould. "Most times I do this because it is cheaper for me to eat in the cafeteria instead of buying food elsewhere. On rare occasions, however, the stuff I throw together tastes really good to me."

Some of Miller's favorite concoctions include peanut butter and banana sandwiches, adding rice from the international line or cheese from the salad bar to soup, stopping by the grill and using the grilled chicken to make a wrap at the sandwich line, and mixing milk, ice cream, and crushed Oreos to make a milk shake.

Another student, Edie Maver, sophomore English education major from Heber Springs, agrees that the cafeteria could use some spicing up.

"The food in the caf is gross 99 percent of the time," Maver said. "They serve meat loaf, turkey loaf, pork loaf, any loaf all the time! It's gross!"

One of Maver's favorite ways to change things up is chili cheese fries.

Continued...

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