Current Release: April 28th, 2009 | Vol. XXX Iss. 10

Illustration By Cait Barth

Caught in a pickle

BY RACHEL SATTERWHITE

rachelsa@verizon.ne

The dining center has found a new way to dress up the dinner plates this year. Over at the sandwich counter, a well-meant addition can nearly always be found alongside your food. It is, in fact, a pickle.

Many restaurants traditionally place a pickle alongside sandwiches. It gives off the sophisticated deli feel. So the new addition is not uncommon. It is even a very nice gesture. The dining hall is trying to raise their standards. No problem with that, excellent news. But why a pickle?

The dining hall forgot to take one matter into consideration when adding pickles to plates this year. Would people actually want a pickle along with their sandwich? Most students do not eat the pickle. It gets pushed to the side and ignored. Other times its pickle scent is especially strong and people put the unwanted food on someone else s plate. The situation is similar to going out to eat and ordering grilled cheese. When it comes out, each half has a round little pickle slice. You quickly take it off, but it is too late - the grilled cheese has that slight pickle taste to it and is ruined.

In the end, the pickles normally find their way to the trash. Uneaten and unwanted. That seems a bit wasteful. Perhaps  going green is being taken the wrong way. VWC is supposed to be engaging in environmentally friendly practices, such as banishing the trays to save water. Adding greenery to the food by addition of the pickle is too much, though. Not to mention an economic waste to the school, since most people just throw them away.

A few of the people working the sandwich counter have caught on to the low popularity of the pickle and have started asking if you want one. On the flip side, asking for no pickle is not always well received. People have asked not to get the pickle and occasionally get a mini-lecture and are told that it is part of the meal.

If students are going to be lectured about the necessity of a certain food, it at least needs to serve a beneficial purpose to the person possibly eating it. Pickles do not make the cut, they are loaded in sodium. Perhaps the next step the dining hall will take shall revolve around  going green and going healthy, and everyone will receive green beans along with their dinner. It will be like in the younger years, when mom and dad fixed your plate for you.