When I was visiting colleges my senior year, I happened to sit in on a Q&A session where potential students were peppering upperclassmen with questions about the faculty-student ratio and the number of credits a student can take per semester. Finally, one of the upperclassmen interrupted and said, "We can talk about these things all day long, but you should be asking the real questions. Like, you should want to know how the waffles are."
She had a point. Food is a pretty essential part of your college experience, and you usually end up depending on the campus dining hall for at least your first year. While you may have the most spectacular D Hall ever, it never hurts to have some tips to spice your meals up. With that in mind, here is an assortment of D Hall hacks that, if your school is anything like Washington and Lee, you might consider trying out.
1. General Suggestions
Walk around the entire area and survey your options before loading your plate. Life is too short to be stuck eating oatmeal when you could've had an omelette.
If you continually find yourself having to get up in the middle of your meal to refill your drink, just go ahead and take two full cups to your seat at once
.Try the infused water. I've personally never tried it, but I was told that I had to include that suggestion. If you want a larger cup, (and yes, there are actually two different sizes of cups in our D Hall,) they’re usually not located by the infused water.
Consider using D Hall as a study place during non-eating hours. From personal experience, I can agree that it's actually a pretty nice place to study, and there's always a snack on hand.
Also, rumor has it that booths are A+ for lunchtime studying.
2. Meal Tips
If D Hall is only offering a plain salad, you can always grab meat from one of the other counters to mix into it.
If the sandwich counter doesn't have the type of meat you're craving, it is an option for meat from another counter to be put in your sandwich.
Also, if you prefer your sandwich mildly or completely charred, you can request for the sandwich to be grilled extra long.
One of my friends suggested that if you're tired of plain old pasta, you should get chicken from another counter and then add the pasta, preferably a marinara so you can create a “Parmigiana chicken type thing.”
I'm 99% sure that this only applies to W&L students, but don’t forget that there are usually two other types of cereal in the gluten-free area
-- I didn't even realize this until a couple of weeks ago.3. Vegetarian Options
I'd like to take a moment to clarify that I am not actually a vegetarian; I love beef and hate vegetables far too much for that to be possible. However, I do have several friends that are vegetarian, and these were some of their suggestions for fellow vegetarians depending on D Hall:
If you're craving guacamole and there isn't any to be found, get an avocado from the sandwich bar and make your own -- homemade is always best, after all.
If they don’t have a cucumber or tomato or some other vegetable at the salad bar, you can always get one from the sandwich station
.My friends also suggested relying on chickpeas and edamame (still not sure what edamame looks or tastes like, or even how to pronounce it) and lots of pita bread and hummus.
4. Dessert Ideas
If your D Hall is anything like W&L's, you probably have a variety of dessert options available every day. Sometimes it can be fun to try something new, though, so this is a collection of random dessert ideas various people suggested.
If you want a treat with a little bit of protein, mix peanut butter with chocolate chips (located by the frozen yogurt/ice cream station) or Nutella. (I suggest using the smaller plates underneath the dessert counter for this.)
Make a root beer float! Mix frozen yogurt with root beer from the drink machine by the tea station.
To double the sweetness of your dessert, crumble a chocolate chip cookie (or any other type of cookie, for that matter) into your frozen yogurt.
Try putting honey from the tea station into your yogurt.
If you like keeping the D Hall workers happy, DO NOT under any circumstances put chocolate chips in the waffle maker. However, you could make a waffle, put the chocolate chips in the microwave (located by the coffee station) to melt the chocolate, then drizzle it on top of your waffle. This requires a little bit of extra work, but if you're craving chocolate chip waffles, that's probably about as close as you can get (or substitute Nutella for the chocolate chips.)
If you're not the biggest fan of D Hall coffee, make a mocha! Put however much coffee you want in your cup (based on how much caffeine you need), then add hot chocolate mix and hot water/milk if needed.
Also, if you just want plain hot chocolate, you can make it a little thicker by mixing it with milk rather than water.
Another dessert idea is to put Reese's Puffs cereal on vanilla ice cream. I have yet to try this one, but I'm sure it's great.
If D Hall is out of chocolate milk, make your own by mixing chocolate syrup from the frozen yogurt area into regular milk.
If you're in a rush, take your dessert to-go in a coffee cup!
