Taste of Penn Part V: Lundberg Family Farms

This is part of the series about the Taste of Penn.

At the Taste of Penn, I have to say that the most delicious food came from the rice products at Lundberg Family Farms. The rice salad was phenomenal; it was textured, fresh, and the representative could list off all the ingredients when I asked for them.

The barbecue rice chips were also amazing. They don't taste extremely ricey (like rice crackers), but you can definitely tell that they aren't made from corn or potato. There is a ton of spice, which beats anything made by Pirate's Booty, and it's also really crunchy.

The flavours that they have are also ridiculously unique; Sesame and Seaweed, and Honey Dijon are flavours that I HAVE TO try one day (seaweed chips are rare out of Asia)!!

Lundberg Family Farms claims to be sustainable and family owned, and I asked where the farm is based. The representative said "California", which is a rather large carbon footprint (transportation) if you want to ship rice over to Penn Dining in Pennsylvania, every week/month. I mean, the Carolinas have rice farms too, and if they supplied rice for Penn, it'd be much more environmentally friendly. I voiced this concern, and the representative did go on about how they contribute to sustainability/eco-friendly behaviours, and that, yeah, transportation will always be an issue.

And, although Penn dining does boast the same things over and over (they make soup from scratch, they use local stuff, within 150 miles), all of it is pretty gilded when you consider that this rice will end up being from California (if they choose this vendor), fruit comes from all over the world, and the oyster crackers, ice cream, peanut butter, and sprinkles all come from U.S. food oligarchies with farms factories that are definitely not within a 150-mile radius. Oh, and the vegetarian soup has been vegetarian chili for the whole spring semester.

I'm eating a lot of peanut butter right now.

Taste of Penn Part I: Overview

In order to generate student enthusiasm/democracy in choosing the vendors for next year's Penn Dining program, Bon Appetit (our caterer) decided to sway all the current people on a dining plan with this huge food-free-for-all. To the typical student, it was just a mountain of samples. I noticed that a lot of students actually were paying attention to the vendors' speeches, although most just walked around, picked up samples, and left. Of course, it was a subtle advertising gimmick because JT, who complains about Commons food--okay, don't we all--, said that "this would be the only reason I'd get a dining plan next year", which of course is a hyperbole, but it still shows how stealthy/skilled businesses are at manipulating us.

The theory was that students would sample food from vendors and choose the ones that they wanted in next year's dining halls. Because I have connections went to a "student focus group/give your opinions of the dining plans" dinner a few months ago, I had the marketing manager's email, so I contacted her about the list of caterers because I really couldn't remember them all. She emailed me back with this list:

Against the Grain, Applegate Farms, Organic Beef Stadium Hot Dogs, Barilla, Dr. McDougall's Right Foods, Flint Hill Farm, Food Should Taste Good, General Mills, Jack and Jill, Kegel's Produce Incorporated, Kellogg's, Kiss My Face Corporation, Lundberg Family Farms, Market Access Culinary, NuGo Nutrition, Pulmuone Wildwood, Inc., Rockland Bakery, Smithfield, and Springfield Creamery/Nancy's.

There was also a Danish bakery (with a Danish name that I can't recall) that didn't have its name on the list.

The ones in bold are the vendors with whom I talked (yes, discussions happened.). The ones that are italicized AND bold are links, meaning that I'm going to make a separate blog entry about them, because I spent more than 5 minutes talking to them, and they showed me some interesting perspectives in the food marketing world (why am I a Biology major? Why am I not transferring into Wharton?).

I didn't bother talking to every vendor because

1. Applegate Farms, Organic Beef Stadium Hot Dogs, and Smithfield had animal flesh products.

2. Barilla sells pasta. There is always Barilla pasta in my house for some reason. It's not that novel for me.

3. Food Should Taste Good's representative wasn't present at the table so I just grabbed some chips and moved on.

4. Jack and Jill had one representative who was occupied with scooping ice cream for other people. Jack and Jill is currently the ice cream vendor in all of Penn's dining halls. A few months ago, I checked the ingredients list on its website and pretty much every flavour has HFCS (speaking of which, I will blog about my Nutrition paper later) and, again, ice cream like this isn't exactly novel.

5. Kiss My Face Corp. isn't a food company. I just took the free lip balms and soaps.

6. Kegel's and Market Access Culinary... I know one of the vendors in the list is responsible for making the fries at our dining halls, and I suppose it's either of these two, but I can't remember. I did ask how they make waffle fries, and the representative said something about using a special type of potato cutter, but it was pretty vague.

So now, I will talk about the vendors in bold.

1. Against the Grain - gluten-free bakery products.

Using tapioca and other flours as a base, the gluten-free baked goods by Against the Grain were amazing! The quality of the raisin bagel and cheese pizza were really high, and honestly tasted like wheat flour bread! Sure, it was a little dryer, dense and glutinous, but the overall flavour and texture was strikingly similar to wheat flour baked goods; there were holes, the bread was squishy, and it could be toasted! While I was chewing my bagel piece, I listened to the representative talk to two other girls about gluten-free baking. One of them asked whether a gluten-free diet was healthier compared to a gluten-including diet. This was the moment I was waiting for! I wanted to see how the representative would answer this question. Would he lie and say that gluten-free foods are healthier, in order to sell his product? Would he claim that gluten makes us fat? Would he say that gluten is a nasty chemical?

No!

He said something along the lines of, "Well, celiacs are allergic to gluten. You know, some people say that gluten-free is associated with [certain health stuffs], but there really isn't enough scientific evidence to say for sure".

Now that's what I want to hear.

2. Flint Hill Farm

The representative showed us a video of cows and fed us some cheese and buttermilk. I don't think that I like buttermilk (I've never had it before)... The mozzarella was pretty good, and Flint Hill Farm apparently supplies the mozzarella in my sandwiches when I get Express at the dining halls. I don't recall much, but there was a lot of clutter on the desk advertising the farm...

3. General Mills

I was unaware that I was at the General Mills table when the representative offered me some oat bars. There were two types; the original soft-baked one, and a chocolate chip one. Both were pretty standard. I asked him what made his company stand out, and he said "well, all the brownies in your dining hall come from us, using this brownie mix here, and these bars come premade; all you have to do is bake them."

So our dining halls don't actually make the desserts from scratch. Not cool, in my humble opinion.

4. Kellogg's

Apparently Kellogg's makes the black bean burgers at the dining halls. I ate a sample of quesadilla with a mashed-up-black-bean-burger-patty filling, which kinda defeats the purpose of it initially being a burger patty. The representative offered me a recipe that I declined.

5. Rockland Bakery

To further ruin my impression that the dining halls make their own desserts, I learned that Rockland Bakery basically makes all the baked goods beforehand, and our dining halls just bake/defrost them. Also, apparently Rockland Bakery makes cherry cheesecake and lemon bars, which I have yet to see in our dining halls! What is it with feeding us hard sugar cookies instead of cherry cheesecake!? In response to "What makes your company cool?", the representative told me, "Well, we supply all of your desserts". Sigh. I did tell her that I loved the key lime pie that they make, but she looked at me skeptically and said "Uh huh." and offered me more dessert.

6. The Danish Bakery

I'm not super fond of danishes with jam in the middle, but the one I had was ridiculously buttery and flavourful. The jam was pretty tart too, and everything was so flaky I was scared that I'd end up having to eat the pastry with a spoon. When asked "What makes your company cool?", the representative told me that all the butter comes from Denmark (pastries are shipped here frozen), where the cows are fed a ton of grass and such and are therefore super fat. All that milk from the cows also comes from the winter, when the cows are even more fat, making the butter super fatty, flavourful, and nutrient dense (compared to other butters, of course). I don't know how truthful this all is, but the danishes were definitely pastry, not bread. Rockland Bakery danishes taste like smooshed dense white bread with glaze and jam. This company's danishes taste like flaky pastry with a nice crispy sugary touch on the exterior, and more airy pastry in the interior.

The other vendors will be the topics of other blog entries.

If I ever become a food writer/critic/socialite, this is what I envision my job to be: going to trade

shows/expos/food sample events and just taking free stuff. However, chances are that I'm just gonna be working in a lab.

Poe-Tae-Toe.

I love potatoes! I love potato salad, too! However, by "potato salad", I mean the cliche vinager+mayo+American potato salad, with chunks of apple and celery, perhaps. Today I found out that I'm not too sure that I like any other type of potato salad.

Today, Commons had a field day - well, not really. They just obtained a lot of potatoes, presumably from a field nearby [since they always boast about how a lot of their ingredients come from within a 150-mile radius]. I've never understood why they always have tubs of raw food just sitting out there; the fruit is for people to take, but apparently they get irked when you take vegetables. Potatoes aren't that aesthetically-pleasing when they look raw and muddy [well, they're still cool, I understand], so why were they on display?

The only conclusion: STUDENTS MUST TAKE POTATOES!!

I am probably wrong.

To use up the huge surplus of potatoes [Seriously, they should have a giant bin that is labeled "free for all!" and dump in vegetables and fruits that they don't want to use to cook, but are perfectly edible - oh wait, those small tubs everywhere? Are those for us to take? I never know.], the fine cooks at Commons made one, I mean, two, no, I mean, seven potato salads.

Going anticlockwise:

The super-white potatoes on the left hand side tasted like coconut. They tasted super creamy, but not fatty or buttery [coconut milk?] and the potato chunks were not starchy; they were sort of raw and apple-like.

The slices were from a German potato salad. These tasted very much like vinegar-potatoes, and the potatoes, again, had an apple-like texture.

The next ones were normal, but not as tangy as cliche potato salad.

The ones without the dressing, and with the French bean, were just ok. Just potato.

The next creamy potatoes were...well, I'm sort of put-off by the idea of having apple-like-textured potatoes. I like potato salad with starchy potatoes that are almost mashed and have a nice, sweet, aftertaste [due to the amylose on our saliva breaking it down]. Most of the potatoes I had today were too solid, firm, and not too flavourful, save the dressing. So, this one would be an example of the potato salad that directly opposes what I envision in a potato salad.

Back up top: These were beautifully coloured and looked practically gourmet, and although the dressing was quite nice [perhaps I was deceived by the looks?], the potato itself wasn't ka-bang.

Centre: Wow. This one was amazing! I love purple potatoes now. The dressing wasn't sour enough for my liking, but the texture of these mini, irregularly-shaped, rainbow potatoes was just amazing! Fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth-after-you-chew, dense, and flavourful!

Overall, I'm surprised Commons decided to stick something at the "special stuff bar" of the dining hall. For the past few weeks, it's been either dips or apples/oranges. Oh, and for the last half of last semester, it was mainly just sandwiches. Except for the one time there were apple items on "Apple day" [which wasn't even that day!]

Green Tea Ice Cream!

Xenophobia has been, and still is, a major issue everywhere in the world. The sad part is that while some people shun others because they are of a different ethnicity/race/religion/etc., they still reap the benefits of that ethnicity/race/religion/etc. Now, that sounds confusing, but here is an example that comes to my mind: Green tea.

A lot of people like tea. A lot of xenophobic people like tea. Perhaps. I don't have statistics, but judging by the fact that tea is mentioned so frequently and drunk so often, one can assume that at least one xenophobe has enjoyed tea in this world.

Tea is originally from Asia. There are plenty of stereotypes about Asian people.

Yet, I'm sure during WWII, some people liked green tea, although perhaps some among thaose green-tea-consumers detested the Japanese for I'm-not-sure-what [I don't want to delve into facts about war. It just irks me.]

Also during WWI, sauerkraut was named "liberty cabbage".

Oh, then there were "freedom fries" and my spin-off, "freedom kisses" and etc. in 2006 when something happened between the U.S. and France.

I suppose my question is, why do people judge and hate and despise people of other ethnicities/races/religions/etc. while they still enjoy those places' foods? I'm not sure French fries are "French" though. At least, not the ones at McD.

Either way, why blatantly say "I hate those primitive/sneaky/dirty/cheating/useless _______s" when one drinks tea, eats chocolate/xocolatl, chews samosas, bakes macarons, or indulges in latkes?

Food unites us all, it's something we all need, and such diverse foods by so many cultures should be appreciated. And, it is appreciated; people love to try exotic food.

So why do people hate other people based on their culture? Culture should be appreciated.

Actually, a side note I have is that yesterday I saw a website detailing the weirdest foods or something, and thousand year egg was on it, as were other foods, and they were all really scorned upon, which angered me. I personally don't like the taste of thousand year egg, but I still appreciate it exists. The fact that the website degrades cultural food just makes me mad.

At least thousand year egg doesn't have freakin' propylene glycol in it, like chocolate cake you can get at the store these days.

The reason I bring this topic up is that THERE IS GREEN TEA ICE CREAM AT COMMONS. Green tea ice cream at a school cafeteria.

Green tea ice cream.

Sure, there's green tea ice cream at the Asian food mart, and at Asian restaurants, and perhaps even some groceries [I don't think Shoprite stocks it, though]. But, at a school cafeteria? I found this surprising because green tea is getting incorporated in American food culture, which is pretty interesting.

Actually, chocolate mochi, or coffee mooncakes are also an Americanization of Asian food culture, but that stuff is usually reserved to sort-of high end retail.

Green tea ice cream at Commons indicates a larger acceptance of different cultures, I suppose. Maybe they'll have red bean ice cream one day, although I really doubt it.

The ice cream itself looked like green tea ice cream, and it did taste like green tea, although the flavor was extremely weak. It mainly tasted quite sweet and not that bitter. However, I tend to prefer tea without sugar and super strong, so I suppose other people may have liked it.

[THR]ICE CREEEEAAAAAM!

In an attempt to make its environment more swanky, 1920 Commons has decided to refurnish and update its locations of foods. The fruit bar has moved to where the nacho bar used to be. The nacho bar and soup have moved to where the fruit bar used to be. They're both displayed rather prettily, and they look less cluttered.

The bread section has switched with the dessert section; now, the dessert has a black-table backdrop rather than a white-table blackdrop, which I suppose more elegant too.

They've also stocked Original flavoured ["Original" has been a flavour for a long time] soymilk rather than Vanilla [read: sugar] flavoured soymilk.

The ice-cream bar now has to share space with the waffle maker [which used to be next to the soup, because it, of course, was completely logical to put a waffle maker next to the chowder...], but I think this makes college kids squeal with happiness. In addition, there is now caramel syrup, marmalade [labelled "pineapple"], strawberry jam, chocolate syrup, SHREDDED COCONUT, and walnuts in syrup stacked in sticky containers near the ice cream.

This change took me quite by surprise.

I ate at Hill today and there was no noticeable change there...so why did Commons decide to ka-boom and polish everything?

It did seem to make people happy, especially the ice cream area.

That was Tuesday night. Yesterday night and tonight at dinner, Commons had moved stuff around again; the dessert, nacho, fruit and soup had all switched places. Commons also has delicious pre-packaged breadsticks from NJ, even though they claim to be "Real Italian" or something...

I think they're trying to test out where the best placement is for... themselves [i.e. best places to put food without having a huge mess to clean up from us students dropping stuff]? For us [so that we walk more and use more Calories]? It's true that changes make people more interested and more likely to lurk longer/more frequently. That's why companies always make new flavours of stuff, and restaurants always have different "FEATURED!" or "SPECIAL!!" items.

At the beginning of my first semester here [what?! Second semester already!?!?], I figured, hey, if I eat ice cream using a cone, I will "save" a bowl and a spoon. That means that energy will be saved, because dishwashers won't have to use energy to clean the bowl and spoon, and chemically cleaned water won't have to be pumped and used and re-cleaned.

However, my logic was pretty bad because the cone itself took a TON OF WATER AND ENERGY to make, not to mention package and transport! Think about it.

The cone: grow flour and other ingredients on a field from a seed to plant. Pick plants, process them, cook/shape them.

The packaging [in a giant cardboard box, with plastic wrapping, perhaps]: grow trees, cut trees, process trees, shape card, fold/glue/staple card.

Transportation from factory to dining hall: more energy.

Now, if we used a ceramic bowl and metal spoon [not disposable!], the energy to create the spoon and ceramic bowl would be invested evidently [synthesising, packaging, transporting], but once it is in the dining hall, every use only uses, say, 1L of water and a bit of dish soap. It is much less than the energy used to synthesise a wafer cone.

However, a paper/plastic [and, please NO, styrofoam] disposable container would be the same as using a wafer cone, although I think that the wafer cone would be more energy efficient because the wafer cone is digested, leaving no trace of garbage.

The digested cone is excreted as heat, water, and in poop, perhaps, and consumed by bacteria and someone cycled back into the soil or water.

So, I suppose the way to conserve the most energy in this circumstance would be

1. Consume less of everything and stop wasting stuff!

2. Use a reusable bowl and spoon.

3. If there are no reusable utensils, use the wafer cone.

4. As the last resort, use disposable utensils [oh how I dislike them!]

Sammich!

Yes, I actually cooked today.

YES I ACTUALLY BAKED TODAY. [First time I stuck something in the oven since...lasagne in the summer?]

But what I'm baking is currently in the oven, and, besides, I want to wait it out because I'm going to make two more of them... so I'll make a cheesy [harhar!! punny hint!] blog post about them on...Sunday, most likely, because Saturday's post will be about JM's Christmas party.

Instead, I'm going to post about a meal I had about three Sundays ago, and it was quite cool because it was individually tailored!

I was at Commons, with the take-out box because I really needed to study so I couldn't eat in the cafeteria, and I decided to have a sandwich. Commons always has this really crust bread at the sandwich-making place, so I asked the dude whether I could have a sandwich made out of that kind of bread.

"This? It's been sitting here for a few weeks now... I don't really recommend it. But tell you what, let me check out the back to see whether we have any fresh bread like this."

So he goes to the back and comes back with a baguette.

AMAZING!

So, this is why Commons DOES NOT SUCK! This is evidence stating that Penn's food is not bad! This is in retaliation to people who call the dining hall servers annoying or anything negative! This dude was awesome! Instead of square wheat bread, he gave me a fresh half of a baguette!

As a side note, Commons recently decided to add a nacho bar to the dining hall, so we have a pizza place, a dessert place, a fruit bar, a salad bar, a grill, a comfort foods place, the hot and cold drinks...and a nacho bar. Sweet. Or should I say, zesty!

Macaroni and Cheese...on a Pizza.

The world is changing. There used to be a time where pizza, macaroni, and cheese were discrete. We then had pizza with cheese and macaroni and cheese.

And now I have encountered the sum of all parts. A macaroni and cheese pizza.

Yes, it's in a bowl because I had eaten cereal beforehand. The macaroni and cheese was ridiculously buttery, which was kind of a deterrent because it tasted more like buttery oily pasta on pizza dough. In other words, it didn't really taste cheesy or umami :(. Recently, I've realised that a lot of the dough at Commons is some mix of whole wheat and white flour, which makes the dough extremely... elasticky. It almost has a plastic sheen to it. I'd say it's the high gluten content that whole wheat flours tend to have [due to less refinement? If you look at nutrition labels, the 100% whole wheat flour-made breads usually have 5-6g protein per 120 Cal, wheras white bread... doesn't have many. 1-2g? 3? Anyway, this was at Hill... and it was most definitely white flour.

Vegetable Pocket Pie!

This vegetable pocket pie really makes me feel comforted on a cold rainy day. Unfortunately, we haven't had many cold rainy days... they've just been rainy. Either way, it's quite nice to try new food; I've never had a pocket pie, let alone a pocket pie made with whole wheat flour. So now it's buttery empty carbs... WITH FIBRE!

The filling was curry vegetables, which was quite spicy so I needed to drink a lot of milk. I read somewhere that the reason we taste stuff as spicy is that capsaicin [Well, capsaicin in chillies. I'm not sure what chemical it is in pepper or curry or bengay...not that we consume bengay] is a molecule that, when attached to a receptor, sends a message to the brain. The brain interprets the message as "heat" which is why we feel heat.

This doesn't explain why there is physical heat, though. Also, do we have curry molecule receptors? Pepper molecule receptors? Do we have receptors for every molecule of food [e.g. every molecule that elicits some taste?] We probably don't, since there are so many flavours in the world. We all know of the 5 tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami. What about spicy? What is THAT classified as? Is spicy stuff just classified as "heat"? However, heat is energy. Where did we get the energy from? The molecule of food? So, why aren't chillies warm? They could totally be hand warmers in the winter!!

Tastes good... with milk... which again asks the question, why dairy? Why does that alleviate heat? Does that mean chili ice cream isn't legit?

Mini Pears!

At Commons, I found some pears. Actually, I have discovered some quite amazing things at Commons, such as RED PEARS, BROWN PEARS, and now, MINI PEARS. I never knew that pears could be anything but the typical, medium sized green pear, or the round Chinese yellow pear. This is just amazing. Mini pears are cute.

Mind the Food Gap - Urban Nutrition Initiative Dinner

Today at Commons there was a dinner from 6 to 7:30pm hosted by the Urban Nutrition Initiative, which is a community service group that teaches high school kids how to plant gardens and how to cook and do nutritional planning. This week, actually, is Food Week. Initially I wasn't even going to go, but I figured that I might as well go after my Nutrition midterm [which I did not do well on. I definitely didn't get above a 95% which really irks me because this stuff is really easy...] and I wondered if I'd be late, since I had to get my camera from my dorm. The really stupid thing is that I came into my dorm, left my school bag in my room, then went back out. As I approached Commons, I realised that I'd forgotten to bring my camera. By then, it was 6:10 so I figured I might just blog without pictures. However, downstairs in Commons, no one was serving food or anything... so I went back to my dorm and rushed back out and back to Commons. By then, they'd started discussing stuff about food justice. I think it's a really broad topic that one could write a book about, or devote a blog to. Either way, it was a light discussion for my table since we didn't have a table leader from the group to talk to us.

This event seemed pretty legit since they gave us 3 different sized forks and a spoon. They also emphasised the fact that the produce was local; the first course was "Roasted Red Pepper & Brie Cheese Soup", which was really delicious, actually. It was really tangy, great with the bread crust [but the bread by itself was pretty plain].

The "Spinach Salad with Local Feta, Red Onion and Warm Shallot Vinaigrette" was amazing. I seriously loved the vinaigrette!!!! I could drink that stuff [okay, I can't.]

The feta cheese chunks were really huge though, and different from the feta cheese I had eaten at this Greek restaurant back in high school.

Everyone else had "Hendricks [sic. no apostrophe] Chicken with Tarragon Cream Sauce, Sage Whipped Potato and Sautéed Broccoli Rabe". Since I'm a vegetarian, they gave me some butternut risotto. I tell you, this is NOT risotto. It's bulgur with butternut squash and cranberries. It is not a risotto. Risottos are sticky and creamy and made with arborio rice or other short-grain sticky rice. It was alright. The vegetable side was way too buttery. I guess it's personal preference, but I've grown up eating either steamed vegetables or vegetables cooked in light oil. I'm not used to the butter-drenched vegetables thing. Nor am I used to spreading a tablespoon of butter on bread, either...

However, the lighting was great so my pictures turned out nice. Actually, the guy next to me took pictures of his food too!

"Warm Bread Pudding with Maple Crème Anglaise" was pretty intense...the plate was cold and the pudding was sort of lukewarm. The bread pudding was nicely textured, and there were a lot of raisins. Overall, it was really sugar saturated. The maple glaze did not have any maple flavour. The thing that confuses me is that they said that this was grown locally, so I wonder whether Philly has a maple tree farm? I doubt it...but I could be wrong.

Interesting. I think I want to join this group to teach nutrition to kids.