In a genuine attempt to save money I do my best to mostly pack lunches to school. This doesn't always happen. At the college it was no big deal, there were many options that I could totally justify paying for because it was so freaking cheap. And if I didn't want to spend more than $5 for a full meal, I could wander over to Chef Training and fill myself full of weird and wonderful dishes for even less than that! And even at the uni, if I don't manage to eat before getting here, I'm never here that long, so I can just wait and eat later.

But, sometimes I fail at life and I NEED to eat something. Problem is that there aren't a whole lot of options for someone who's gluten free and doesn't eat much meat. Everything's fried and deep fried, there aren't even any salad options! Srsly, I tried to order a salad once. Had to specify that a salad is just "a wrap without the tortilla".

This morning I NEEDED something to eat I just could not find energy. So I grab a little plastic cup of peaches. These are canned peaches taken out of the can and put in a little plastic cup! And a bottle of iced tea.

My total? Nearly $6.

For nearly $6 I could have gotten bacon, eggs, some potato looking product (they say they're hash browns, but I'm not convinced) and toast, most of which I can't eat, the rest upsets my stomach it's so greasy and heavy. And with that a medium coffee, which is freaking disgusting, I've never had such awful coffee. Somehow this is of lesser value than canned freaking peaches and iced tea.

Sandwiches and wraps are almost double the cost of hamburgers and chicken burgers. Veggies and dip are almost double the cost of fries with gravy, fruit and cheese trays cost more than onion rings.

Milk, juice, and iced tea costs more than pop/soda, and the soup of the day ALWAYS has so much sodium in it I get headaches. And I'm a pretty big salt eater, so that's saying a lot.

And it's not like a person could just up and go somewhere else. The closest thing to us is a Subway (sandwich place, in case you aren't familiar) and it's a 45 minute or longer walk, the bus doesn't go by it, and even driving there takes a while because you have to go all the way around a fairly large residential area to get to it.

I know people are probably thinking "just pack your damn lunch". Mostly yeah, I probably should. But what about the people who live in residence? They aren't even allowed to have hotplates in their rooms, they DEPEND on this cafeteria. What about people like me who do their best to brown-bag it but sometimes don't manage for one reason or another? You'd think in a building of higher education that we'd be a little beyond only having deep fried garbage with sugary syrup to wash it down.

I'll be writing a letter to my student union, I think.