Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Even thinking about this makes me throw up in my mouth. Velveeta = seriously gross.

No St. Louis-style?

Triumph: Oreo ice cream layer pie!

Putting my hand in this one:

For rootbeer floats, nothing will do but Fitz's rot beer with any high-quality vanilla ice cream (pref. Haagen Daaz)... for a change, orange soda (also from Fitz's) with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

On brown cows: I always thought that a brown cow was a Coke float. Kosher-for-passover Coca Cola makes the best ever.

@ReneeRobinson, you and me both!

I stress bake, but do my very best not to stress eat, and so I bring most of my goods to class the next morning. My advisor just happened to be teaching on a morning in which I brought a dozen muffins and a batch of cookies to class, and her first remark was "I didn't realize this class was catered!"

hmw0029: Provel is definitely an acquired taste, to be sure. I grew up on Imo's, and a salad wasn't a salad in my house if it didn't come covered with a layer of Provel. I live in Chicago now, and the lack of Provel in my life is a sad, sad thing - whenever I come back to STL, the first thing on the menu is sausage and mushroom pizza :)

Sorry you weren't wild about Zia's... I've never had a bad experience there, dining, service or otherwise.

Get rid of vending machines in schools. Get rid of the "snack lines," where schools sell the junk food that is, unbelievably, worse than anything they are selling in the cafeteria. Those are good first steps in solving this problem.
I don't care so much about organic and local food in this case. The only good rationale for choosing organic produce is that it would be a boon to the organic growers, and also provide a reason for the FDA to more strictly regulate what can be called organic. But, food needs to be cheap and nutritious. It's just hard to serve nutritious food on that scale.
We always had the option of pizza or whatever the hot meal that day was. The pizza was horrible - it took 4+ napkins to blot up the grease, but it was still better than what was probably considered the nutritious option. Kids want to eat what looks and tastes good... unfortunately, the pickings are slim, so it's easier to go for the vending machine.

Flat Branch, the microbrewery in Columbia, MO, had a fantastic white lasagna on the menu a few years back, a white lasagna with artichoke. This recipe looks to be relatively similar:
http://recipes.epicurean.com/recipe/23182/artichoke-lasagna.html

There's a stellar white cake recipe in Joy of Cooking that has apparently been used as a wedding cake recipe. I made it for a friend's birthday last year with honey whipped cream icing, and it was excellent, but I've also made buttercream and meringue icings for it and they've all turned out equally well. PM me if you'd like the recipe.

When I have money? Ribeye, no question. But, I like a good flank steak when I'm nearing the end of my student loan money for the term!

When my father became a police officer in 1987, at a newly-incorporated city, my mother made boxes of cookies for all of the officers and their families. It was fine when there were only 30 officers... now there are over 200. Every year, after Thanksgiving, my parents' house turns into a cottage cookie baking operation. When I moved out, I swore I'd never make Christmas cookies. They make thousands of cookies - chocolate chip, double chocolate, and oatmeal raisin. Nothing too fancy, but still nothing I want to be around.

I moved from Columbia, MO and St. Louis to Chicago about a year ago. St. Louis is a strange place to grocery shop because it is a very colliquial place. We have a couple of chains that are all over the place, but none of the big national chains - I had never seen a Kroger until I went to college, or a Safeway until I moved to Chicago. Dierbergs and Schnucks are still, in my mind, everything a grocery store should be: lots of local vegetables in the summer, lots of local food lines, and people who work at those stores their entire lives.

I despise Chicago grocery shopping, and Dominick's and Jewel. Whole Foods is special treat shopping, but I try to do lots of shopping at Woodman's, which is a veritable Mecca of grocery shopping. It really is everything a grocery store should be.