Monday, December 7, 2009

As sometimes happens, my soup selection today (tomato) was constrained by my schedule. I am consenting subjects for a study that is preparing to close to enrollment, which means that this week I am focusing on meeting my enrollment goals. I'm down at the clinic for a good chunk of the day. Today, I tried to pick up my soup at 10:40 am. I usually try and pick up my soup at around 10:50 am. 10 minutes can make a big difference. If I go after 11:00 am, most of the cafeterias are packed with throngs of hungry OHSU workers. After 12:00 pm the crowds have died out, but I find myself left with nothing but sad, postprandial scraps and remnants. So, today I crossed my fingers and headed down to the MacHall cafe, hoping that there was some kind of soup selection that had been put out a little early. There was not. This forced me to get a little creative, and shuffle down to the Multnomah Pavilion cafe. The Multnomah Pavilion is regularly touted as "the oldest building on campus." I've heard that this title actually belongs to the VA's human resources building, but I have yet to verify this little snippet of information with the campus historian, if there is one. At any rate, the Multnomah Pavilion boasts a psychiatric ward. It also has a cafe. The chef at the Multnomah Pavilian cafe (or cafe "North," as I have heard it called by those in the know) is very nice, but doesn't seem to love vegetables in the same way that the MacHall cafe chef does. To boot, the cafe north's "12-oz" soup cup has none of the heft of MacHall's hearty serving. An anorexic cousin to MacHall's husky boy, the cafe North soup forces me to supplement my lunch with things like vegetarian pizza or tofu spring rolls (the former of which is depicted here, minus one bite).