She: What is "puppy chow"?

Me: It's crack for kids.

For the most part, the food in the dining courts is bland and tasteless and completely devoid of Tabasco Sauce. So often I would wonder how I gain the weight I do, if I can look at what they are serving in Earhart Dining Court, and see that it is tasteless. Now, I could blame it on 5 cokes a day, late night runs to Buffalo Wild Wings, or sitting on my rear typing this thing, but that would be silly. It would also have just ended this article, which would disappoint many out there, I'm sure.

However, every once in a while, the dining halls will produce something that is absolutely heavenly, amazingly delicious, and probably brought in from another state and doesn't even come near the cooks in the back. And I have decided it is when they bring this stuff in that I pack on my pounds that I so proudly carry with me everywhere.

Edible Items Brought into Earhart Just Often Enough to Grow my Gut

1. Puppy Chow: See first two lines. Chex (the fake, offbrand variety of the stuff of course) covered in chocolate and peanut butter with powdered sugar sprinkled on top. If you can have only one, you either had a terrible allergic reation or are not human. If you have a couple more, I will allow you back in the race.

Generally, when they get this stuff, I get a cereal bowl and fill it with the stuff and pour some milk on it to make up for breakfast which I surely missed, and then I get a couple cups filled with it. When I've had my fill in the dining hall, which is evidenced by me shaking violently and spilling other people's drinks, I fill my pockets with it and covertly exit the dining hall with about 10 lbs of the stuff in my pockets to hold me over until the next time they have it.

2. Buffalo chicken breast, Buffalo chicken wings. It is a beautiful day indeed when they have either of the these items. Not necessarily because of the buffalo chicken items, but because of the buffalo chicken sauce that is sitting in a decent sized tub right by the chicken. The complaint of the lack of hot sauce being involved in the making of the food is temporarily silenced for a couple days by this wonderful creation, and the fact that so much hot sauce exiting the body can be exceptionally uncomfortable.

Besides putting some chicken on the sauce, I have found that it is an exquisite condiment on fries, a great dipping sauce for calzones and goes well as a replacement for tomato sauce for the make-your-own pizzas. And of course, it is a delicious replacement for your 5 daily cokes. People look at you a little weird when you fill a cup up with it though, so consider yourself forewarned. I find myself getting extra of everything just to have something to put it on.

3. The Ribette. The dining hall's answer to McDonald's McRib, and KrustyBurger's Ribwich. It's always an adventure when you eat something of dubious origin. I don't know what they put in it, and I'm not really sure anyone does, but don't let that stop you from trying it. Whatever happens to be in it, it works. Another bonus with these things is that this is the (exceptionally) lazy man's sandwich: chewing isn't a necessity here. A machine has pretty much digested this thing already, and expelled the waste in a preformed shape that makes it look like it has bones and real meat. Its less work for me down the line.

Since it comes with a BBQ-like sauce with some type of drug in it that makes you complusively eat this thing, the only they that need be added to it is a little bit of Frank's RedHot Sauce. Anythng else, and you start diluting the additives. Simply dig into all 7 of the sandwiches that you got, though be sure to use at least two bites per sandwiches. As previously stated, chewing isn't absolutely necessary here, so you should be done with them fairly fast. However, by the time you finish all 7, you are dang full, you are craving more, and you aren't prepared for the withdrawal, so like all good addicts, you find ways to get your fix. I found a very effective way of taking care of teh problem is purging.