Food Glorious Food

I’ll be trying to update about once every other week. At least until school starts. Or I run out of ideas. Whichever comes first. You can also use the RSS feed feature to check up for when I update.

One of the biggest concerns for most people is what you’re going to eat when you go away. First, let’s get something straight. Your mom and dad are no longer around. So, you’re not going to get your favorite lasagna dish or fresh soup or favorite sweet and sour pork chops. If you’re a regular on-the-town kind of junkie, well, feel free to run rampant in The Village or a quick trip down to any of the other food joints around.

As for the rest of us who prefer food that doesn’t come off a menu or waiting in a giant line for reservations, we have the dinning halls. You might still have to wait in line to get your food, but at least you’re not paying gas to drive out. Convenience is nice and sometime people shy away from going down to Pomona to eat because it’s too far. See how lazy you become when you get to college? OK, to be fair, it might also be because you don’t have time to spare due to that giant project that is due tomorrow, but usually it’s because we’re lazy.

The meal plan is a required part of your life at Harvey Mudd College with the exception being if you live in Sontag or a special Atwood suite, and are not a freshman. Basically you choose a number: 8, 12, or 16. Bigger number means you pay more. It also corresponds to how many meals you get per week and how many Flex dollars you get. Please note there is NO rollover, so on midnight between Saturday and Sunday your amount gets refilled. This leads to a phenomenon knows as “Flexing out” where you go down on Saturday night somewhere and check how much Flex you have left. Then you try to spend as much as you can. Be sure to get there at least before 11:30pm, or else the line might be long enough for you to not Flex out in time. Flex dollars are usable for a variety of things, including snacks, drinks, more meals at dining halls, muffins at the breakfast cart, chocolate on Scripps, etc.

Meals are used one per meal, and only up to one per meal. Since all meals in their eyes are created equal, breakfast costs less Flex than dinner but both are worth a single meal. So, if you plan on using Flex to supplement your meals, use it on earlier meals. The meals themselves are actually pretty good. They do have a tendency to be a little greasy or over flavored, like how their idea of Asian food is throw as much soy or teriyaki sauce at it as you possibly can, but it’s better than a lot of colleges. It’s also buffet style, which is a blessing and a curse. Be very wary of the Freshman 15 here. They also have a decent rotation of foods and a few staples that you can fall back on if nothing appeals to you. I have seen some people eat cereal for dinner. One of my friends eats nothing but white bread, chocolate chip cookies, bananas, milk, and vitamin supplements. I’m not sure why, but the guy isn’t diabetic yet. They have served stuff like hamburgers, pot roast, curry chicken, soup bread bowls, lasagna, gyros, Swedish meatballs and noodles, and turkey cutlet to name a few. Don’t worry if you miss a dish, it’ll be rotated back in eventually.

One of the coolest things is that the chefs have been given plenty of freedom. It’s become a familiar event when one of the chefs concocts something new, like a Mexican pizza or something, and offer it up alongside the usual fare. I strongly advise you try them at least once. Not only is it nice variety, but usually they make good stuff. Just goes to show they can cook and not just mass produce a recipe.

Now, Harvey Mudd has its dinning hall called Hoch-Shanahan, or the Hoch (pronounced like “hawk” in Mudd slang). However, we’re right across the street from Scripps College, which has its own dinning hall, and a few blocks from CMC with their own. And lucky us our meal plans work on all the Claremont College Campuses. So, if you’re tired of the hamburgers from the Hoch for lunch, enjoy a nice trip down to CMC and their giant sandwich bar. Pitzer is known for organic options. Pomona is more of what you’d expect in an older back East College. Mudd tends to be a bit more fast-food in nature. Plus, you can use your Flex at their shops as well. So, you can head down to Pomona and the Coop and buy stuff there as well as the stuff on Mudd at Jay’s Place. This actually creates something interesting, since they get money based on attendance. By spending your meals or Flex on another College, Mudd has to send part of your meal plan payment to them, and the same thing if an off-campus student spends their meals on Mudd. Thus, it’s an incentive to make good food that the students like to attract more students, thus earning them more money. Pretty cool, huh.

If you get off the meal plan or have access to a kitchen, there’s also your own cooking, which is very much subject to the chef’s abilities. Or you can get yourself a microwave and lots of Ramen, but I wouldn’t advise that. At least bring a rice cooker and some furikake, although that’s not too healthy either.

In short, you won’t starve here. Or if you start looking starved, we’ll track you down and force feed you.