I don’t know about you, but when I went to university xx years ago, the food in my residence left a lot to be desired. Of course, I didn’t really know that then, and out from underneath my mother’s fine home-cooking and limited beer supply, I managed to put on the pounds quite quickly. I could have french fries with every meal, and much of the protein was fried, like the little chicken wings we called ‘budgie wings’. Swiss steak was ‘mystery meat’, and veal parmigianas were ‘hockey pucks’. The third Thursday of every month was wing steak night…as it was when my sister lived in the same residence 8 years before me!
All is not the same these days. Take some time to browse through the UBC Food Services Website. You’ll see some of the amazing menus they’ve come up with for the two residences at the university. The dining hall at Place Vanier Residence is well-appointed, (no ketchup stains on the ceiling) and the best-kept secret, although management doesn’t want to keep it a secret, is that the public can eat there as well. To hear my mini-documentary about UBC Food Services in streaming RealAudio, click here.
If you are a freshman or a parent of a student and you’re concerned about eating getting out of hand, I did come across a great book called The Dorm Room Diet by a junior at Princeton University in New Jersey named Daphne Oz, and it’s designed to give some help to students leaving home for the first time and confronted with the choices and stresses of first-year university life. (by clicking on the title you will go to amazon.ca, where you can save 24% off the cover price!)
