Nom nom nom ~ Dashi Panda

Well, howdy there :) Coming from Texas, you'd think a girl like me would be used to sinking my teeth into cornbread and a steamy bowl of chili on a daily basis, right? :D Hehe, actually, totally not! My parents pretty much *only* eat Asian food =_= And Indian food isn't even included in that D: So when I'm at school, I like to try new things. Actually, my first experiences with American "comfort food" was at WashU when I came as a freshman. I ordered from the Comfort station EVERY SINGLE DAY. My happy memories from freshman year included meatloaf, mac 'n cheese, turkey tetrazinni, shepherd's pie, Coca-Cola steak with steak fries, and chicken pot pie. The servers knew me by name, and I swear a few of them were in together on a scheme to fatten me up... I gained weight exponentially! :P

But my school also has a lot of diversity when it comes to options; it's not just all American food. ... Otherwise you'd probably find a very.. uhm.. heavy student population waddling around campus. ;) At our student center, our servery offers (Americanized) Chinese food, although they've been introducing Korean and Thai options too~ Pizza, salad, Mexican food, a grill, vegetarian, rotisserie food, and a sit-down restaurant are all places we can choose from in one building for lunch! The Mexican food station and the sit-down restaurant are open for dinner too~ ^^

Besides sounding like I am trying to sell you my school, haha, I just wanted to write down my thoughts and how much I appreciate being a student here. I'm not lying when I tell people one of my major factors for choosing WashU over other schools was the food XD They're really big on "being green." Recycling? That's weak sauce. We do that ANNNNNND compost. HA. Hehe~ All our food is from a 50mile radius or something like that... I'm not too clear. I'm not a crazy advocate of slow food or a localvore, etc, but after being here for 4 years, it made me realize how lucky I am to have attended a university that really supports sustainability I mean, we even have water-saving toilet flush options (push down for solids and up for liquids, hahaha)! When I go back to Texas for medical school, I'm going to miss all of this. I'm one of those people who will feel extremely irked when they see another person throw away a water bottle instead of recycling @_@''

ANYWAYS. Let's look at some pictures of food, shall we? :P

Tuesday's lunch

This came from the vegetarian station at our student center. They had Indian food today, so there was creamed spinach and some aromatic mixture of cauliflower and tofu. I have no idea how legitimate or authentic this food is, but mannnn, it sure is delicious ^^ The spinach is usually chopped up instead of being whole and leafy, but I really like the leafy version too! And the steamed BBQ pork bun (叉烧包) came from the Asian station. Lunch is sooo gooood :)

As many of y'all know, 2013 is year of the snake! HKSA（Hong Kong Student Association) held a banquet at Wei Hong Restaurant, and each table was named after an animal from the Chinese zodiac. We were the Pig table! ... which was very fitting, as we eat *a lot.* When it was time to leave, we surveyed the other tables, and most of the other tables still had plates of food left! We cleaned everything off our dishes XD

Rice cakes with filling in ginger soup ^^

So Chinese food aside, I also had Korean food! My Chinese TA, Jin, had never really tried Korean food (SUCH A SIN! :P), so we went to Seoul Garden for his first introduction to what may possibly the best food on Earth. ... just kidding. Deciding which is the best is impossible for me D:

Seafood pajeon

Appetizer! Seoul Garden's pajeon (pancake thing) was quite large. It was bursting with green onions (a major plus for me), and was a little light on the seafood, but I definitely found some octopus and shrimp swimming around in the pajeon. Er, more like stuck, but yeah.

Jin isn't allowed to eat until I get a picture, haha

Next up, bancham! Little cute side dishes that go along with most Korean meals

This is probably my favorite part about Korean meals. They're so colorful that it makes me wanna cry! .. with tears of *joy*. I asked Daniel a lot about where Koreans get their vegetables, and it's pretty much all from the bancham, although I still feel like there isn't enough veggies for that ._.''

Grilled mackerel

Yep. My mandatory grilled mackerel that I have been getting when I go to Korean restaurants! Seoul Garden's rendition was a large, succulent, and juicy piece. It was so oily (the good oily)~~~

Oh yeahs, although pajeon might be an expensive appetizer ($13ish), it's definitely big. I ate the leftovers for the next day's lunch and dinner ^^

And they are very photogenic leftovers!

Speaking of Korean food, I took a Korean out for some froyo! Hehe, it was a random Thursday after my lab, and Daniel wanted to grab something to satisfy a sweet tooth. Off we went to Tutti Frutti! But Elaine just got off work, so we missed her :(

Om nom nom

Err, yes. This is what I look like after lab >_< I need a haircut!

NO WORRIES. I'm getting one Tuesday. hahaha~

After filling our tummies with froyo, somehow we decided to go to O! Wings for some Korean-style fried chicken. It was my first time eating chicken wings :D (been to Buffalo Wild Wings, but I just sat inside and didn't eat anything / just chilling with my sister while she ate) I thought it was going to be an uber messy process, but eating wings is actually really easy even with the bones :)

Our dinner feast

We ordered 20 wings for the two of us, but they actually gave us a lot of extra wings and ended up with 24 O_O Daniel says they do it all the time, and it's probably because we had 3 sauces, so they tried to even it out. The sauces we chose were: Original (tasted very Asian :D), Honey Mustard, and Thai Chili Lime. The Thai chili lime was a little too spicy for me, but I enjoyed the other two while Daniel finished off the hot wings before helping me eat the others. We finished all of it, and apparently it's a lot to eat that much o_o'' I went to dance practice afterwards and told my friends I went to O! Wings, and they freaked out when I said we split 24 wings. But to my defense, I *only* ate 11, and Daniel ate 13 ;)

Super messy, but super yummy ^^