Rastall All Over Again

Rastall is the dining hall at Colorado College. I met my husband my freshman year of college, and we spent loads of time that first year, when we were just friends, in the dining hall with a loud, leisurely group of people (some with whom we still keep in touch).

So you can imagine the mixture of nostalgia and offense I felt when Todd burst out at dinner last night, "Rastall. That's what this reminds me of."

Granted, I had made a dining hall classic: hot open-face turkey sandwiches. But I certainly didn't want my version reminding my husband fondly of his college days. I have to explain, though. Todd did not consider Rastall a negative experience: The choices were relatively plentiful, the vast array of salad accoutrements is impossible to match in a home kitchen, and there was always cereal when things got really dire. One cook, Charles, was famous for his omelettes.

And it's not like I put a lot of work into dinner. I had purchased some Fresh Direct turkey gravy, which Todd liked but I found kind of salty, and simmered some sliced deli turkey in it, then piled it on squishy sandwich bread (the only kind to use for open-face, gravy-based sandwiches). Easy. And, for Todd, it fits into a little-known genre of college-nostalgia comfort food.