One of the perks I remember when I was the Scholarship Counselor (before TC was born) were the free lunches and dinners for scholarship events. Although I am no longer filling that role, my colleague (who is) invited me to fill in for our principal who was unable to attend today's Bank of America Awards luncheon at the Mission Valley Hilton. I gladly accepted, if not to be off campus for a few hours! Plus, our student represantative was the one I nominated.
It was sprinkling a tiny bit as we drove up to the venue (it poured when we emerged an hour and a half later). We arrived a few minutes late, but still in time for the first course which was spring mix salad already pre-plated. In fact, the dessert was also on the table as well, tempting me to try it first, but I resisted the urge. Although free lunch is sometimes nice, in this case, it wasn't the greatest of meals. The entree was a rubbery and dry chicken breast scantily topped with some sort of cream sauce (it didn't help much), garnished with a lonely carrot, two roasted new potatoes and a few thin sprigs of Chinese broccoli. Two potatoes?
I ended up eating just a bread roll with butter and the vegetables. After several bites of the chicken, I decided to just leave it be and went for the dessert which was tiramisu finger topped with a chocolate covered espresso bean. We heard an inspiring keynote speech, and a rundown of the student winners in each category (my student won $1,000 for 3rd place!).
So that was my boring ass hotel banquet-style lunch. If I had stayed on campus, I could have bought some better food from the Filipino mom & pop place across the street and enjoyed that much more!
Later that afternoon, after picking up TC and my nephews, I made them fried rice with SPAM which was promptly devoured by all four of us, then later my brother, when he came to pick them up. My Spam fried rice was kind of basic today. Just a chopped onion sauteed with cubed SPAM, to which I added the day old white rice, leftover frozen mixed vegetables, garlic powder, fresh cracked black pepper and low sodium soy sauce....Mmmm
It was sprinkling a tiny bit as we drove up to the venue (it poured when we emerged an hour and a half later). We arrived a few minutes late, but still in time for the first course which was spring mix salad already pre-plated. In fact, the dessert was also on the table as well, tempting me to try it first, but I resisted the urge. Although free lunch is sometimes nice, in this case, it wasn't the greatest of meals. The entree was a rubbery and dry chicken breast scantily topped with some sort of cream sauce (it didn't help much), garnished with a lonely carrot, two roasted new potatoes and a few thin sprigs of Chinese broccoli. Two potatoes?
I ended up eating just a bread roll with butter and the vegetables. After several bites of the chicken, I decided to just leave it be and went for the dessert which was tiramisu finger topped with a chocolate covered espresso bean. We heard an inspiring keynote speech, and a rundown of the student winners in each category (my student won $1,000 for 3rd place!).
So that was my boring ass hotel banquet-style lunch. If I had stayed on campus, I could have bought some better food from the Filipino mom & pop place across the street and enjoyed that much more!
Later that afternoon, after picking up TC and my nephews, I made them fried rice with SPAM which was promptly devoured by all four of us, then later my brother, when he came to pick them up. My Spam fried rice was kind of basic today. Just a chopped onion sauteed with cubed SPAM, to which I added the day old white rice, leftover frozen mixed vegetables, garlic powder, fresh cracked black pepper and low sodium soy sauce....Mmmm
3 comments:
Congrats to your student! That's awesome news! Not so awesome that your lunch sucked! you'd think that people putting on a function would actually put on an impressive (if not, decent) meal?
Anyway, SPAM...my student that is living with us for 3 more months (yes, I'm counting down the days! LOL) is obsessed with SPAM! He always adds it to my grocery list! I've never had SPAM before and he always likes to take SPAM sandwiches to school for lunch. My friend told me it's really popular in the Philippines too. I grew up with my grandmother, grandfather and mom making corned beef with sauteed onion and sometimes green peas...always served on white rice.
well, when a hotel makes food in bulk, the quality suffers. i didn't expect gourmet quality of course, but on a scale of 1 - 10, it was a 4.
that must be the same corned beef recipe! my parents made that too...they would also add tomatoes.
interestingly enough,i have never had fresh corned beef, always from a can. how very Filipino!
Haha! Yes, I forgot the tomatoes! They put those in their corned beef recipe too. Hmmmm...I wonder if all filipino families know this recipe? ;)
There's a deli in Montreal that serves corned beef sandwhiches. They're sliced pieces of corned beef, whatever that means. It sort of looks like pastrami. It's served on a sourdough bread with a side of pickles. If you ever come to my neck of the woods, I'll have to take you to some neat places to dine ;)
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