<p>yum... food! so lets talk about USC's meal plans. i am soooo confused by the 5 options... dont understand the differences. someone care to elaborate on the pluses and minuses of the choices?</p>
<p>The meal plans depend on your residential building, so usually you only have ~2 to choose from.</p>
<p>mmm...food</p>
<p>im like 99% i'll be in marks hall (or trojan :( ) -> RHP.</p>
<p>Cardinal and Trojan are the main ones. Cardinal, you get $510 dining dollars (I think for next year as well) and 10 meals/week that roll over until the end of the semester. Trojan, you get all the money in dining dollars. For Cardinal, you usually don't have enough dining dollars by the end of the semester, and for Trojan, you have too many. It's probably best to get Cardinal and add money to discresh as you run out of dining dollars instead of wasting hundreds of dollars on Trojan.</p>
<p>thank you misoobishi!</p>
<p>where do dining dollars work? everywhere?</p>
<p>Yea, pretty much everywhere on campus including the cafes and columbo frozen yogurt.</p>
<p>oohh awesome!</p>
<p>ok- are there a lot of vegetarian/vegan options at sc?</p>
<p>Yeah, there are a lot of vegetarian options here. The dining halls are kind of self-serve/buffet/all you can eat style, so you can load up on all the veggie stuff you want.</p>
<p>Like over in engineering, in tudor hall cafe they have custom-made fresh salads of different kinds (with meat optional) but they also have one vegetarian "entree" daily special, in case people are sick of salad :) There are lots of international students who are vegan/vegetarian for religious purposes.</p>
<p>Especially the hindus - if you like Indian food, you're set for vegan food 24/7 :)</p>
<p>do people cook food themselves, is that possible?</p>
<p>Yes in the apartments. In the dorms, only what you can cook in a microwave- good luck!</p>
<p>Microwaves can make lots of Easy Mac and oatmeal...mmmmm.</p>
<p>"D" went with Cardinal for the first semester; however, she was stuck eating at EVK most of the time....trying to make her $510 dining dollars stretch. Also, she wasn't a fan of EVK; however, she didn't dislike it either. It was so-so. This semester she pleaded for us to let her try the Trojan meal plan. We agreed and she is by far much happier. Many more options. "D" is more of a
"grazer" when it comes to food and drinks A LOT of coffee now. Having more discretionary money helps. :)</p>
<p>you cant live on easy mac, they hav special housing for jews and muslims at parkside, with facility to cook for them selves</p>
<p>They just changed the cardinal & gold plans so folks can eat their meals at either EVK or Parkside. Also, you can rollover unused meals until the semester ends now. There are a few other changes as well--you have 5 guest meals for the semester & I can't remember the other things.</p>
<p>Microwave popcorn is pretty much essential study-food. :)</p>
<p>Other than that, there's not a lot of time to cook your own stuff, at least your first year - even if you enjoy cooking like I do, there are times when you just don't want to deal with it</p>
<p>You can make nearly anything in a microwave anyways, if you're creative enough. I once saw a guy on TV make eggs benedict from scratch using only a microwave, including the hollandaise and english-muffin-like substance. :)</p>
<p>anyone happen to know if USC has non-dairy frozen yogurt? i basically live on that and black coffee.</p>
<p>but if they dont, there are plenty of vegan jamba juice choices.</p>
<p>I know at EVK they have a frozen yogurt machine - not sure if it's non-dairy or not. Come to think of it, I didn't even know "milk-products" can be non-dairy. Interesting.</p>
<p>dunno, but I can check it next time I go get my weekly smoothie</p>
<p>milk can't be non-dairy, lol. but frozen yogurt can be make out of non-animal products (like soy). there is also vegan cheese, vegan chocolate, eggs, etc. not gonna lie- its a pain in the ass sometimes, all this non-this non-that. :-p</p>
<p>thank you jbusc :-D</p>