Mind Soup

MIND SOUP : After more than one year of renovations, AUB's main cafeteria (the one in Ada Dodge Hall) had its "grande" opening last Thursday (October 14). During the last three working days, students have been flooding into the cafeteria, more disappointed than satisfied. Below is a detailed pros/cons description of the situation. AUB-Themed  Wallpaper © Mind Soup What we like: Definitely the design and the wallpaper which captures the AUB spirit and successfully integrates itself in the AUB campus. The division of food sections is a good idea, students can get pasta, daily dishes, hot sandwiches, cold sandwiches, manakeesh, and drinks from different places, but this also a negative aspect (scattered lines of waiting people, crowding) The colors. I personally like the black, red and white retro thing that's going on. The modern furniture which is a well-deserved upgrade from the bus cafeteria that we had for the last year. Students have a ne...

Annahar's Hiyam al-Kosayfi Photo Credits: Youtube/AnnaharTV MIND SOUP : Journalist for the Lebanese daily Annahar, Hiyam al-Kosayfi, expressed her anger about being denied wine in a hotel restaurant in Down Town Beirut during Ramadan. This hotel which was "founded by a Maronite Christian and blessed with sacred water by a priest" has made it a policy not to serve any form of alcoholic beverages during the month of Ramadan, where Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset on food, drinks, and sex, and usually abide strictly to Islamic Law during this month. According to al-Kosayfi, she said the that waiter recommended a good bottle of wine, but then embarrassingly apologized and took back the wine glasses from the table after realizing the policy. The (Christian) writer and her crew made a fuss about this incident until a manager approached them and offered to serve them wine in blue tinted glasses, as not to alarm the Muslim customers who were having breakfast (iftar)...

Below are a few posts I have enjoyed reading this week. Shoot As You Walk "Plug Into E-Cycle Movement" Pictures (NourSpot) Photo by NourSpot Futurist Project (Joe's Box) After five years of hard work and research my sister made a nice final project for her diploma, a nice creative project that i personally loved and i guess we need those kind of projects as Lebanon is witnessing an unprecedented boom in shopping malls. A museum of archeology and history In Byblos as the city is a tourist destination visited annually by many tourists. [...] Where are the tourists? (Blog Baladi) In June 21, Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud said that the number of visitors to Lebanon has increased by 26.6 percent compared to this time last year, the National News Agency (NNA) reported on Wednesday. Since then, we haven’t heard any updates on the number of tourists in Lebanon and to be honest, i think the numbers are going down and drastically. [...] Why Not? (Independence ...

A hamburger is not inherently an exotic food. However, in the hands of the right creative (or crazy) individual, that single slab of meat and two buns can become nothing short of spectacular. Herein lies the importance of the chef. As KoldCast’s resident chefs Ivan and Sergei teach us in their experiments with raw sugar, food is not only what you make of it, but how you make it. In honor of bootstrap cooking, the possibilities of the burger, and our very own Ivan and Sergei, KoldCast presents you with the weirdest and most unique hamburgers on Earth – or at least on the Internet. Just make sure you don’t read the rest of this article on an empty stomach. Enjoy! 1. The NutBurger Hailing from Butte, Montana, this burger is nutty! Many profess that it’s like eating a sundae topping on a burger…if your Sundae topping consists of mayo and nut clusters. 2. The Fattymelt Simply put, it’s a burger crossed with grilled cheese. This heart attack-worthy burger originates from the Mossy Cre...

Here's another article from the same website. It is really important to me to save money on meals, because I'm a college student who mainly depends on mom's cooking and fast-food places. This article is mainly a humorous way to give you (and me) ideas on how to economize! Too bad there isn't a decent kitchen here in the dorms, the plates that I cook back home kick ass.. really!! So here goes the article: Mr. Cheapie takes his frugal living tips to the restaurant. by David Leonhardt Mr. Cheapie is here with his super-charged budget-cutting frugal living tips. One of the biggest wastes of money is restaurant meals. You can cook a meal at home for about 2 cents a plate. Just put leftovers in the microwave, and Presto! Those same leftovers cost a lot more at a restaurant. They call it "the buffet", and they sell it to you for $10.95. Consider also the steak dinner that costs, say, $7 at home. At the restaurant, you pay $13.95 for the same meal. Or, if you want fan...

A Japanese restaurant in New York has taken pity on a 140-year-old lobster and said that it would not end its days boiled in a pot but instead swim free in the Atlantic Ocean. On Saturday, the venerable crustacean, named Craig, will leave the acquarium at the Halu Japanese Restaurant & Grill in Brooklyn, where it has been on display, and head north. The owners of the Dyker Heights restaurant have asked People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) to return the ancient 20-pound crustacean shipped to Maine, where it is to be released into the sea on Saturday. Local law in Maine forbids taking lobsters above a certain size. "Kudos to Halu for allowing Craig to live out the rest of his days in his native habitat," Ingrid Newkirk, president of the animals rights group Peta, said in a statement. Peta has been campaigning to liberate restaurant lobsters and save them from being thrown alive in a pot of boiling water. According to invertebrate zoologist Jaren...