Quickest and Healthiest Snack for Busy Students

Your parents have been imploring you to eat fruit since you were a baby. And now, that's my job! Here is a picture of the fruit available at Cafe Ventanas (ERC).

Fruit is a very convenient and healthy snack solution for busy students. All fruit is good for you. Try to have a variety of different colored fruits throughout your day.

Fruits that travel well in your backpack: apples, oranges, tangerines, clementines, bananas.

Drinking small amounts of 100% juice is fine but aim to eat mostly whole fruit for the best nutritional benefit.

Tea Party

Are you trying to limit soda but bored by plain water? There is a healthy beverage solution when you'd like some flavor without the sugar; it's TEA! Dining Services has hot tea and iced tea available everyday. This pictures shows the iced tea dispenser at OVT on Marshall College.
Tea's natural, unsweetened flavor is great but if you need to sweeten it, try just one sugar packet. (That's a whole lot less than soda and juice.) Plus tea has some antioxidant properties. Be well!

What the Pho?

Vietnamese-style Pho is served every Tuesday at Plaza Cafe (Revelle College.) Plaza's Pho is a tasty soup with vegetarian broth, noodles, veggies and your choice of chicken or tofu. In this picture, I also added some sriracha hot sauce.

Dining Services likes to include cuisine from around the world. What kind of international foods would you like to see served in Dining Services?

Cereal, An Anytime Meal

Each Dining Services restaurant has cereal available all day in these nifty dispensers.

Cereal is a quick and convenient meal solution that you can eat any time of the day! Aim for the higher fiber choices or mix and match your favorites into the same bowl. Pour non-fat or low fat milk (or soymilk or lactose-free milk if preferred) over your cereal or mix in some yogurt in the mornings. Cereal is in these dispensers in the restaurants and available in boxes at the Places & Markets.

In the restaurants, milk can be found in the "moo" dispensers and lactose-free milks can be found in the refrigerated sections. The Places & Markets also have nonfat, lowfat, regular, lactose-free and soy milk options.

Come meet Chef Vaughn and me today!

Chef Vaughn (in the white coat) and I will be at Farm2U outside Roger's Place & Market today at 3:3opm. Come by and see what we are cooking up. There will be free samples!

And of course you can also pick up some fresh and local produce while you're at it. Hope to see you there!

Vegetarian? Flexitarian? Check it out!

Here is a delicious meal from Plaza Cafe. It's vegetarian but even a non-vegetarian could get into it! This meal is a penne pasta with sun-dried tomato and feta cheese with a side of steamed zucchini. I also added a salad with some kidney and garbanzo beans to bump up the protein.

Just the Facts, Ma'am

Swirl is a healthy iced drink available at Plaza Cafe, OVT, Cafe V and Canyon Vista. Swirl comes in a regular 100% juice form and in a Swirlite version, which is lower in calories because it's sweetened with sucralose.

New this week: all Swirl dispensers have the Nutrition Facts labels on them. Check out the labels the next time you're in the mood for a sweet, icy treat.

This photo shows the Cherry Snow Swirl label at Plaza Cafe.