Dorm Yum: A Must Haves List

This week seems to be the week of lists! Monday I posted the list of weekly shows I'm watching this fall and today I thought I'd post about the food I like to keep in constant supply in my dorm room. These are, by far, not the only foods I keep in my room and certainly cannot make up an entire diet (most private universities I know have a cafeteria for that), but these certainly make my life easier and my blood glucose level happier.

1. Bread & Butter : This is an absolute must for me. I love to keep "French" bread or at least wheat rolls in my room at all times with a tub of Land-o-Lakes in the fridge. I'll eat a piece of buttered bread before a morning class, or after, or before bed, or as a midnight snack, or as a study break snack, or as all of the above. They say "[one] can not live on bread alone," and indeed you shouldn't, but I challenge that and say I could live on bread and butter for at least a few months.
2. Decaf Coffee : My kidneys may damper my caffeine intake, but they will not take coffee from me! I love to get up every morning, turn on the coffee pot, and wake up fully with the smell of brewing coffee. Not to mention it tastes good (I also like to keep herbal teas for late, cold nights)!
3. Water : I'm not one to drink tap water, and I've noticed a large number of my friends who forget to or simply don't keep water in their rooms. This leads to either: 1) they buy expensive purified water from the bookstore or b) drink the sodas from the cafe and nothing else. This isn't very healthy, so I like to keep a case of 24 bottles of spring water in my room at all times.
4. Crackers/Nuts : Right now I have several kinds of crackers in my food drawer and a can of cashews. I love the option of having crackers or nuts to just munch on when I'm studying or louging back reading. Wheat Thins are a great option and come in several flavors, as are the Ritz brand toasted chips.
5. Chocolate : I am a firm believer that a controlled amount of chocolate is good for your mental (and possibly physical) health. When I can find them, I love to have the After Eight chocolate mints or when I can't I usually go for the dark or semi-sweet chocolate chips from the baking section. Chocolate chips are great because you can eat a handful without eating all of them.

As I said this isn't all I keep in my dorm, but these are really my must-haves.

What are your dorm/kitchen must haves?

The Espressologist: A Book Review

Honestly, when I picked up this book my hopes were not overly high. One reviewer I have come to generally trust, Claire, gave this book a good 4 "star" rating in her review. Not long after reading Claire's review, I saw the book displayed in my local library and decided to snatch it up. After Claire's review, I knew the book was out of my normal style, but the review made it sound like something that would be worth picking up. I was not disappointed, but I was not overly impressed either.

This book is certainly a Young Adult, feminine book. I think it's a cute, fluffy read, but it certainly doesn't make you think or invoke much participation on the readers part. It's a neat story for an afternoon or weekend Summer read.

Jane Turner has been working at Weird Joe's coffee shop for several months now. As she served drinks and observed people, she began to see a pattern: She could tell what kind of person someone was by what drink they ordered. As she became more interested in this phenomenon, she started to keep notes on what kind of person drank each drink, and surprisingly, she was spot on every time. Finally more confident in her informal study, she began matchmaking friends and frequent customers based on their drink orders. Each time the couples were ecstatic. When word gets out, more and more people want to be matched by the "Espressologist." With all her matches, Jane was happy to see she'd help couples find happiness, but what about her happiness? What about her match?

I really enjoyed this book for the style. Matchmaking is not generally a genre I'd venture into, but I thought it sounded good for a quick summer read. I was certainly right. This is a great book for a quick summer read, but don't expect it to be well researched, perfectly written, or surprising. I'd say I have very few complaints about this book. I think Ms. Kristina Springer wrote an interesting new take on the YA romance scene. Wonderful debut novel.

But with all the good I have to say, one major thing brought the entire rating down. The Ending. I felt that the book ended suddenly, as if Springer simply tired of her story or her characters and wrote a quick easy ending without thinking it entirely through. I also felt that the ending was extremely unrealistic. Not so much in what ended, but in how Jane and other characters acted in the end. I understand this is fiction, but it's a realistic fiction about teenagers with teen drama that suddenly drops. I was very disappointed. Before I reached the final few chapters, I thought this book would be a 4 duck book, but the ending got me. There were also problems with the writing and phrasing, especially one character's use of British slang (incorrectly, might I add).

Over all, I thought it was a decent summer read and good for something light and frilly, or should I say frothy. If you're looking for something a bit romantic, very light, and very quick, you should think about checking this one out.