C is for Cookie

I think I may be going soft: I was happy with the dining hall today. I haven't been happy with the dining hall for the past year and a half (coincidently, ever since it came under the management of Chartwells). If there are vegetable options (and not just potatoes and corn, which, frankly, just don't count because of their high starch content) they are soggy and unseasoned. I've pretty much stopped going to lunch and breakfast because the choices are so often the same, and so often super greasy and covered in cheese. Not today.

In about two hours I'll be headed down the road home for Winter Break (who am I kidding, probably four hours, seeing as I have yet to pack anything at all). I didn't really have time to prepare anything for ABS today. And, miraculously, the dining hall came through for me. Exam week is the most extreme week for the dining hall; I've found that the quality vacillates more during this time than at any other during the semester. Like me, they're most likely trying to use up all of their food before we all leave for break. Dinner has suffered – I've been eating French fries and pudding for the past two days. But the cookies, oh the cookies.

Every year during exam week, the dining hall stops serving dry cheesecake and mutilated pie to devote their energies to the Annual Cookie Box. At the back of the main room, they set up a beautiful gingerbread house surrounded by a deep tray that covers one long table. And fill it with deliciousness. And then refill it every lunch and dinner period.

[The lunch shift survivors. Imagine this covered in cookies. Then multiply by two.]

I took these photos at lunch today, after the box had been picked down to bare bones, though Kathy managed to snag the last of the sugar cookies from the lunch offering. Even though they were the last, these vanilla sugar cookies (with cocoanut frosting!) were just as good as the first, and miles above the usual cookie offerings during the rest of the semester. I'm glad I'm going home, actually, because I think I may develop an addiction if I eat any more of these.

Shoremen: Enjoy the cookie box while you can; non-shoremen: Enjoy the holidays!

* ABS will continue to post over the next month, though I won't be able to post on Tuesday (and maybe also Thursday) of next week: I'll be in Las Vegas!