Jasper Jones

For a special treat, once a week we go to Starbucks in the morning for breakfast. They have just started serving oatmeal in the morning and it’s really very good. What they recommend is a cup of Starbucks vanilla latte plus protein and a cup of the new “perfect oatmeal.”

To be honest, it’s a little too expensive on a college student’s budget to do this very often, but it is a really nice way to start the day with a couple of good friends. I like the oatmeal and they have a really good apple bran muffin if you like muffins better. But now that the mornings have a little chill to the air, the oatmeal is a nice warm way to break the fast.

The temperature dropped about 20 degrees overnight and today it feels like a typical fall day. There is no humidity and the air feels really fresh after the past couple days of wind and rain.

I really enjoyed the walk to class this morning. It was invigorating.

Now that the weather is turning a little cooler it makes me think of my mom’s pot roast, her mac and cheese, and my favorite thing, her chili. I wish I could have a big bowl of her chili tonight. I don’t even know anywhere around here that makes a decent pot of chili. Guess I’ll have to ask around and see if anyone has any ideas about where to get some chili tonight.

There’s very few bargain restaurants around town, but we have discovered a really good bargain for hungry college kids like me - it’s the Golden Corral.

The Golden Corral is a chain restaurant that is all buffet. You pay a flat price for the meal and you choose a drink. Then you help yourself to what ever you want to eat. The table server brings you hot dinner rolls with butter, and keeps your drink refilled. The server clears your plates and brings a stack of clean plates so you can go back to the buffet as many times as you want to.

They have a whole section of salad bar stuff, a section of meats and vegetables and a whole section of desserts, including soft serve ice cream with a fixin’s bar of all the different candies and toppings that you could want.

We ate there yesterday for a late lunch and for under $10 - including a tip - we stuffed our faces full for an hour. The food tasted great and I was so full I didn’t need to eat again until 10:00 last night!

The Mapco near me where I buy gas has a great convenience store with a large deli section. I try to avoid buying the prepared foods there, as they aren’t all that healthy and they are very expensive, but the place is great for a cup of good, inexpensive coffee. They have a frequent buyer club card that they’ll punch for you so that every 10th cup of coffee is free, and they have a refill program that if you buy their mug or insulated cup with their logo all over it you can get the coffee refill for half price as a reward for dragging their logo around town.

I like the fact that they promise a fresh pot of coffee made every 30 minutes. They keep the coffee in carafes just like I would at home. They don’t put them in those vacuum pots like the other c-stores. So when you come into the store the aroma of fresh coffee wraps itself around you like a morning hug.

This store has an entire coffee fixin’s bar off to the side of the cashier. You can pick from a dozen different flavored creamers to add to the coffee and a variety of different types of sweeteners. And for people who want the flavor without the creamer, they have a lazy susan with squirt bottles of all the popular flavors, like french vanilla, hazelnut and caramel.

I’m starting to consider this place my little hangout. I can sit around here sipping coffee for under a buck instead of the Starbucks place down the street that charges me $5.

Alex and I have the luxury of a blender in our dorm room and I have to say, other than my laptop I think it is the most appreciated electric appliance in our room these days.

I went to the grocery store over the weekend and bought a lot of fresh fruit, so we have been making fresh fruit smoothies and other blender drinks each night. Did you know that making orange juice from a can of frozen juice tastes different when you mix it up in the blender? Putting the air into the juice gives it a different texture and a different taste.

Last night I put big chunks of watermelon into the blender and added a little protein mix from GNC. The mix didn’t have much taste so we really were drinking watermelon and it was a refreshing chill after being out in the southern heat riding my bike yesterday. I’m planning on riding my bike for an hour or so each night while the weather is good. Not only is it good exercise, but it is a great way to meet new friends, too.

Setting up the dorm room over the weekend meant that i had to go to the grocery store and buy a few things. I like to have breakfast foods on hand so I can fix it here and get out of here faster in the mornings. Plus it’s cheaper to eat something here than to go to a fast food place or the cafeteria. If I eat out, I found it’s better to eat a lot at lunch because the restaurants charge less for the lunch menu and ofter you get as much food as the dinner menu.

I bought some sandwich things and fresh fruit, but I already realize my first mistake. I bought the store brand of bread because it was like half price from the cost of Wonder Bread. But I made a sandwich late last night and I have to admit that I miss my Wonder Bread. The store brand just isn’t as soft and as satisfying as the real Wonder Bread.

Dinner was at Olive Garden. I figured there would surely be non-meat dishes on an Italian menu. Plus I like the huge bowl of salad and basket of breadsticks that they bring to the table to help beat down the hunger pains while you wait for your dinner to be cooked and brought out.

She was easy to please - ordered a pasta with cheese sauce and she didn’t mind that I ordered a dinner with meat and ate it in front of her. At least she said she didn’t mind. But I have to wonder if she is so committed to be a Vegen why she can in good conscience watch others eat meat. I’m not sure how that works, but I didn’t want to ruin a nice dinner attacked her values and questioning her Vegen reasons.

But eventually I think this huge difference between us will interfere with our relationship. So I don’t know if I’m going to call her for a second date or not. She’s nice and all, but this Vegen thing bothers me. I’ll have to think about it.

We met some girls while out on the lake and ended up pulling them on the tube for a few rides. They liked it a lot and didn’t mind riding as spotters while Jon and I took turns water skiing.

So we got their phone numbers when we dropped them off at the dock and I went ahead and called Gretchen, the blonde one, Monday on the chance she might want to go have dinner or maybe catch a movie. She said dinner would be nice but she warned me that she’s a vegetarian. So now I don’t know. I’m all about healthy eating, but taking meat out of your diet is a little extreme. Plus it really limits the places you can go and now I wonder if I order meat will I offend her? I’m not interested in giving up meat - even for romance.

So here I already invited her out and she accepted. So I don’t know where we’ll go eat - the places I like aren’t vegetarian. So we’ll see how this dinner date turns out.

With summer here there are all kinds of great fresh vegetables and fruits available and I intend to take full advantage by eating a salad every day and finding new ways to enjoy summer’s bounty.

This morning  bought a quart of fresh strawberries and I have to figure out what to do with them. I do not want to indulge in sweets and desserts, but strawberries are mostly a desert type of fruit.

I’m open to suggestions on how to incorporate fresh strawberries into either a salad or a non-dessert dish. In the meantime, I washed them thoroughly and cut off the tops and any obvious bruises. They are sitting in the refrigerator waiting for my inspiration.

How can the most popular coffee shops in the world be having money problems? I mean, they are charging primo bucks for a cup of coffee and there are always lines of cars waiting to go through the drive through and buy their high dollar caffeine fix. The crew in San Fran call it “Five Bucks Coffee” instead of “Star Bucks.” I know one real estate agent who drink 4-5 cups of Starbucks every day. So how can they be having money trouble?

On the cover of the Yahoo news is an article about how Starbucks is going to close up to 600 stores this year and lay off a lot of people - over 12,000 jobs will be lost. What are all those highly trained barristas going to do for work now? I mean, come ON!