Build The Tower Of EAT-za!

It’s a family tradition as old as my parents – maybe even before their time – where, on New Years Day,
all the aunts, uncles, first and second cousins and any associates, dates, spouses or  passersby swept into
the event horizon of our collective mass – go out to the buffet, and catch up on life and put a hearty dent in the restaurants offerings.

For the last 20 years or so, our buffet of choice has been a reliably awesome Chinese all you can eat –
that rhymes with Shmandarin,and even though you can make as many trips as you like with your plate,
the younger generation (by no means the youngest anymore..) have a tradition of stacking our plates as
strategically as possible.  This involves some Jenga/Lego inspired ingenuity, not to mention the consult of
a cousin who’s now a UWO Enginerering student.

Walls and dividers made of cucumber slices and those long breaded shrimp, respectively, for example.
Cold, un-peeled shrimp retaining walls and second level floor foundations  made of mussels on the shell,
layered with celery and carrot sticks to hold the kung-pao chicken above the pepper beef stir-fry with
minimal intermixing. We’ve got it down to a literal-science.

Tiny ice cream bowl for dessert? I don’t think so.  One must grab a large soup bowl for maximum sundae
potential. And those dessert plates are for rib bones only.  Full size plates from the hot table are the only
dessert plates that can accommodate the “Ark Principle” aka “Two of Everything”.

However – should you find yourself faced with a traditional ONE TRIP salad bar and  wish to make the most
of it, leave it to the Chinese whose Pizza Hut stores reportedly did away with the salad bar after some MAD
ENGINEERING SKILLS led to massive towers of food like so….

Back in college, our meal plan also included a massive salad bar in the common-area, in which lay
the guarded secret that only a select few had discovered and shamelessly abused, called the “Maximum Salad”.
A Maximum Salad was the flat-rate of $7.00 charged for any amount of food that weighed above a certain
point when the cashier rang it through on the scales. So once you’re past that point, you might as well go for
the tower and double, triple, or quadruple.. or octuple that amount, right?

And so we did. Thus, the cucumber method was born.
Add the baby corn, carrots and celery, which my friends and floor-mates used like two by fours
for structural integrity and as floors upon each tier as our towers grew with each visit.
The cashiers looked on with seething hatred as we patiently built our towering stockpiles
and then gingerly walked them over cautiously like chefs with wobbling wedding cakes.
“Hi.. Maximum Salad….”

And then came the treacherous walk across the campus parking lot to the residence hall, past the occasional
frozen lumps from disastrous tower collapses of the past, those hard frozen knobs of frozen peas, potato salad
and deviled eggs upon the frozen ashphalt,  breathing deep and taking slow, measured steps towards victory..

And then once to to common-kitchen, we’d duck into the in-rez cafeteria for empty Coca-Cola cups into
which we’d deconstruct our towers of food and fully stock our individual mini bar fridges within in our rooms.
And so it was in this fashion, that only 3 transactions per week were made on the meal card, as the Maximum Salad
tower would stock your larder for a couple days at a time.

When the meal-card ran out shortly before finals, I resorted to hoarding saltine cracker packets from
the dinner soup station, and peanut-butter, jam and honey packets from the breakfast toast station –
to make mini sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. My next-dorm neighbor and I would nibble on these
while salivating over deer walking out of the Humber woods, fantasizing over dreams of  one chasing the deer into
the volleyball  nets and the other armed with a knife doing the takedown as swiftly and humanely as possible,
and becoming heroes of the floor and stocking our collective bar-fridges with venison.  If only…..

When I returned 10 years later to spend a nostalgic weekend in Rez with a friend – I found the salad bar
in the commons, but was told that the Maximum Salad had been phased out years ago.  I wonder why.

What are YOUR strategies and methods for building the ultimate buffet plate?

Categorised in: Afternoons

This post was written by Matt McNeill