By Stefanie Chen
It’s late, and you’re tired and craving something sweet. As you walk through the bustling dining hall, you spot the long, winding line for Cornell Dairy’s famous ice cream, with students clamoring around elusive double chocolate chip cookies and waffle machines being flipped and overworked. While the thought of an ice cream-topped waffle certainly allures you, it’s not what you’re looking for today.
Today, the epitome of a sweet treat appears in front of you as cool, refreshing honeydew. Its delectable image has never been clearer as you make a beeline toward stands stacked with ever-unchanging melons. Luckily, melon is exactly what you’re feeling today, but you know that tomorrow’s craving for fresh strawberries and the day after’s taste for grapes are nothing more than a pipe dream.
While Cornell Dining provides a fair variety of fruit for students to choose and enjoy, it’s clear which ones run the show.
Cantaloupe and honeydew are the A-listers, making regular appearances at the cold fruit bar and being undeniably present in every episode this season. Despite melon season hitting its peak in the summer, Cornell Dining somehow finds a way to keep its main characters running even during the tumultuous winter weather. As the main stars of the fruit bar, cantaloupe and honeydew arrive cut into easily consumed slices, though the quality of the cut differs drastically from one dining hall to another. Of the North Campus dining halls, North Star Dining offers the best slices, being adequate both in terms of ripeness and thickness. On the other hand, the melon at Morrison Dining finds itself in a state that could only be described as ‘scrap-like’. Pieces differ wildly, with some being paper-thin and others cut as irregularly shaped chunks. Thankfully, freshness isn’t an issue with the melon, with most having an almost suspicious sweetness regardless of slicing quality.
Apples, bananas and oranges play supporting roles. They aren’t usually at the center stage fruit bar, but instead, housed in wicker baskets that scatter the premises of the dining hall. Unlike melon, these fruits are displayed in their uncut entirety, highlighting size and freshness as the main determiners of their quality. For the apples and bananas, size is their most fickle trait. At times, Apples can be smaller than a palm, and at others, large enough that it’s hard to hold more than one in your hand. Smaller ones are usually covered with random bruises, and larger ones have scattered punctures. Baby bananas aren’t an uncommon sight, and neither are suspiciously long ones. They’re found in a state of immense green unripeness, or withering brown. There is no in between. Oranges are surprisingly constant, but don’t seem to be a popular option due to the difficulty in peeling them. In general, this trio is the reigning champions of the grab-and-go fruit category — fruit you’d hardly ever see someone sit down and eat in the dining halls.
Without fail, in every dining hall on campus, these aforementioned fruits are routinely found, but the same can’t be said about the guest stars.
Berries, for one, are hard to spot in an ‘unfrozen’ capacity. Typically, defrosted blueberries and raspberries can be found gracing the waffle and yogurt stands of the dining halls, but fresh ones are almost nonexistent. During one of the only times North Star Dining ever brought out fresh strawberries, a line formed at the fruit bar, extending to an unprecedented length across the dining hall. Even the tiny mutated berries at the very bottom were claimed by the end. When berries make their rare guest appearances, their presence does not go unnoticed.
Grapes, mangoes, peaches, plums and watermelon are even below berries, guest-star-wise. Grapes can be spotted in the once-a-week fruit bowls at North Star Dining. Unfortunately, their total quantity in one fruit bowl typically amounts to one grape. On the plus side, they’re not frozen, and the singular allotted grape has a crisp texture that leaves one looking for more. On occasion, Morrison Dining serves mango sticky rice on the weekends, and it’s only on these days that frozen mangoes can be found in a reasonable quantity. Being frozen, they have a characteristic raw quality to them that transcends even the layers of ice on them. Most West Campus dining halls have canned peaches as an additional star at the fruit bar, which have a syrupy taste that makes their canned nature clear. Plums have made one or two cameos in dining halls, coming in one of two forms -— spherical or oblong — with fantastic crunch factors. After that one sighting at Morrison Dining, plums never made a reappearance. Finally, the guest star fruit of Central Campus belongs to none other than Okenshields’ watermelon. Despite being a melon, its role is laughable compared to cantaloupe and honeydew, but in the lunchtime commotion of Central Campus’s only meal swipe dining hall, it stands out like no other when brought out to the masses of hungry students.
Unfortunately, the most popular fruits are those that only grace the campus dining halls at limited rates. However, certain fruits, such as berries and grapes, can be found in fruit cups at BRB-accepting locations on campus. Mac’s Cafe on Central Campus, often has fruit cups available with a variety of combinations, but their prices aren’t the most agreeable. Aside from going out to Wegmans or Walmart, there aren’t many other opportunities to meet these guest stars.
Cornell Dining should consider implementing more fruit options in their meal swipe dining halls, aside from the usual perpetrators. Though the storage life of berries and grapes may be less than that of melons and apples, hence Cornell Dining’s preference for the latter, their popularity amongst students would make up for their shorter storage time. The increased availability of these guest stars would make it so next time, after a long day of classes and assignments, cravings don’t have to stop at honeydew.
Stefanie Chen is a sophomore in the College of Human Ecology. She can be reached at sc3363@cornell.edu.
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