The long and intricate mysteries of school lunches (Part I)

This isn't a picture of yesterday's lunch. It's a picture of a lunch we had some time ago. But that doesn't matter. What matters is what's in the picture. Or what's not in the picture? Look in the lower-left corner and you'll see a super-sized hot-dog-bun-shaped piece of bread! Yes, bread. Instead of a bowl or rice! I guess I'm back to the topic of rice...

As I mentioned before, we only have bread for lunch about once or twice a month. I am so sick of eating rice, I was sooooo thankful to have bread for lunch yesterday! Hallelujah! The world is safe again! Of course, it's not a perfect world I live in here, so what were served was white bread, not wheat bread. What's better, white rice or white bread? Hmmm. I don't know what's healthier, but I know what I prefer: white bread!

I can't stand white bread. I bet I used to eat it every day until I took a nutrition class in college and found out that white bread is basically a worthless, nutrition-less substance. Since then, I've done my best to eat avoid white bread. The same goes with white rice, though, right?

Before I came here, I didn't eat rice that often, but I did eat it. And I probably ate more white rice than brown rice or wild rice. But at least I know that brown rice and wild rice exist. Sure, brown rice and wild rice cost more than white rice. But why can't we have something other than white rice at least once a week, for crying out loud! Can you tell I'm getting sick of rice?

I also know that butter and rice tastes better than plain rice. But do they ever serve butter? Nope. And I know that soy sauce on rice tastes better than plain rice. But don't even think about putting soy sauce on rice here. People will look at you like you're nuts!

Once time for lunch when we had a particularly delicious sauce with our main dish, I poured some of it on my rice. Sure enough, I got a couple of those strange looks that time, but I didn't care! That was some good sauce and I wanted it on my rice. But I quickly found out another reason you don't put any sauce on the rice they serve here, besides the strange looks you get: The sticky rice loses its stickiness, and good luck eating non-sticky rice with chopsticks.

Last week was quite a week in the dorm cafeteria. Tuesday was "Food Appreciation Day." My predecessor mentioned that we would be "celebrating" that day once a month, but since we didn't have such a day in August, September, or October (or was I out of town each time?), I figured they must have trashed the idea. Boy was I wrong.

Just before lunch, I found out from a teacher that we were having the "hungry menu" as he put it. "Oh, no, not Food Appreciation Day!" I thought. Crap! See, on Monday I felt really sick at lunchtime so I gave away most of my food. By Tuesday, I had regained my appetite and was ready to chow down. Why couldn't Monday have been Food Appreciation Day!?

Tuesday's menu was soup, salad, two tiny fish about the size of sardines, and, you guessed it, RICE. I happen to like sardines, so I expected the fish to at least taste good. Wrong. I'm not sure exactly how the fish were prepared, but they were dry as a bone and just about as crunchy as a potato chip.

The teacher I was sitting with (good ol' Moto!) told me that the kids at our table were talking about how the lousy food was having the wrong effect on them. Instead of them thinking, "Geez, I sure am thankful for all the other days when I have such delicious food in such large quantities," they were thinking, "This food sucks! We're hungry!" I have to admit, I was thinking pretty much the same thing. I mean, I wasn't just thinking about how hungry I was, I was thinking that the kids must be pissed!

The weird thing is, you could eat as much rice, soup, and salad as you wanted, as long as it lasted at least. Isn't that sending sort of a mixed message? You can eat as much as you want at just about every meal, as a matter of fact. Nevertheless, I hardly ever go for seconds. Tuesday would have been the perfect day to go for seconds, but I was so put off by the food, I stuck with my one serving and suffered.

Wednesday's meal was back to normal, but I would rate it rather high on the scale. And then, well, you can't beat Thursday's meal: Steak! What the heck is going on here? On Tuesday we were made to suffer and two days later we're being treated like royalty? Say what?

Of course, the steak meal was not without its adventure. Half the school, the senior-high-school students and their teachers, was having steak on Thursday, whereas the other half, the junior-high-school students and their teachers, was having teriyaki fish. On Friday, the process was reversed. I didn't quite understand that until Thursday. That's why when the "lunch lady" asked me on Tuesday if it would be okay if I had steak on Thursday and fish on Friday (Fish Friday!), I said, "Sure."

Most of the time, the students sit in the cafeteria by grade. 1st-graders sit in the back of the cafeteria on the left, the 6th-graders sit in the back on the right, and the other "-graders" sit accordingly, in a U-shaped pattern. Normally at lunch I sit with the junior-high-school students, because I work with them way more often than I work with the high-schoolers. But since I was having steak, the lunch lady directed me to sit with some of the high-school teachers. (To be continued...)