"college" news and stories

Anyone writing checks to a college (or who caught the video of the Royal limo riot), knows that tuition is up worldwide, making any dollars for living -- books, housing, food -- tighter than tight. Low-income students, who may have received free or reduced-priced school lunch from pre-K to senior year, are hit especially hard. Enter the college food bank.

Laura Pick, a graduate student and coordinator of Oregon State University's (OSU) emergency food pantry, told Food Safety News: "Food pantries on college campuses are unique because they seek an underserved population of students that many people may not be aware is struggling."

OSU's food pantry, also open to the general public, serves upwards of 200 students each month. They usually open the doors "toward the end of every month because that's when people generally tend to run out of food stamps," says Pick. According to a September 2010 report by the USDA, food stamp numbers are up by about 50 percent, with 22,000 new applicants every day.

Pick believes every college should have a food bank, and OSU is now trying to partner with other colleges to get them started. UCLA also offers a food bank, which is run out of an abandoned storage closet. And we thought we had it bad with ramen and Easy Mac.

Image: stubandherbsbar.com

A weekly look at the draft selection in beer-friendly bars across the country.

The passing of Labor Day means back-to-school season is officially here. Many college students have already landed on campus. Hopefully, they have a bar like Stub & Herbs to help them lament the end of their summer vacation.

Located at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Stub & Herbs is a campus icon, opened way back in 1939 with the plan to serve great burgers and drinks. Though their cheeseburgers are still a staple, a lot has changed in the drinks department, especially recently.

"Over the last two years, I got creative freedom to pick whatever we wanted," says general manager Jon Landers. "Our taps are now 100 percent all-American craft beer." He pushed college standbys like Coors Light and Bud Light onto the bottles list and began using their 32 taps to focus on independent breweries, especially local and "blossoming" ones. "The Midwest has a reason to be proud," Landers continues. "They're turning out some great stuff."

Have a great beer bar at your school or alma mater? Fill us in in the comments! And see Stub & Herbs' complete draft list, as of Tuesday, after the jump. ...

Sodexo, a company that provides food services to more than 600 college campuses in the U.S. and Canada, has just released some of their long-term data monitoring taste preferences over the decades. Check out the list of students' favorite dining hall foods from this year, compared with the list from 1989. The results are pretty interesting.

Favorite foods in 2009:

1. Locally-grown fruits and veggies
2. Crispy garlic-ginger chicken wings
3. Mac 'n five cheeses
4. Vietnamese Pho
5. Green tea and pomegranate smoothies
6. Crab cake sliders
7. Mini samosas
8. Tilapia Veracruz
9. Goat cheese salad
10. Chicken Molé

Favorite foods in 1989:

1. Fruit and cottage cheese plate
2. Chicken nuggets
3. Turkey Tetrazini
4. Chicken Chop Suey
5. Egg, bacon and cheese English muffin
6. Half sandwich and cup of soup
7. Taco bar
8. Spanish beef and rice
9. Vegetarian bean chili
10. Algerian lamb stew

The "fruit and cottage cheese plate" strikes me as particularly '80s (this was the decade of aerobics and leg warmers, after all), and the "chicken chop suey" is as retro as it gets.

For those of you who got to partake in the delights of college dining hall fare, please spill - what were your favorite dishes?

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It's no secret: Anyone who's ever seen a football game and is not blind to mass-marketing knows beer and football go hand in hand. And as much as the federal government would like to have us believe otherwise, beer and college go hand in hand too. Therefore, beer and college football are like a "perfect storm" of drinking. And (thankfully) football season is upon us again.

So it makes sense that someone would want to compile a list of "the 10 best beer towns in college football" as Joey Redner of the St. Petersburg Times attempted to do. What doesn't quite make sense is the ratio between football prowess and craft beer quality used to determine his official order.

With two national titles and "16 brewpubs or breweries" the Washington Huskies took #1. But when a South Florida Bulls team with a 1-2 postseason bowl record can take #9 over a six-time national champion Tennessee Volunteers team (#10), all I can think is, the Tampa Bay Brewing Company must serve one heck of a beer!

So sure, the list has some heavy hometown bias, but it's more about sparking some friendly football and beer-infused debate than compiling a definitive list. What do you say? Which college football town has the best mix of brewers and bowl expectations?

[via Beertown.org]

When I was in college, one of the best things about being on the food service plan was that every Easter, Bon Appetit (the food service company at Whitman) would go all out and put together a fancy brunch for everyone who stayed behind that weekend. It would be held in the lobby of Cordiner Hall and there would be tables of pastries, made-to-order omelet stations and an absolute abundance of fresh, gently blanched asparagus. I would go every year in large part to binge on the asparagus, eating it until I could hold no more.

For some reason, the moment I saw this image of a bouquet of fresh asparagus, this memory of Easter asparagus in college is what my mind immediately conjured up. I don't have much in the way of Easter plans this weekend, but I do believe that I need to add "buy asparagus" to my shopping list.

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