Fraudulent tater tot hotdish recipe forces USDA to act
That shit shut down.
Some North Dakota State dining employees may be out of work for weeks since the USDA shut down all services at West Dining Center. Many students were unaware of this closing since it happened the day before spring break began on March 8.
The annual food inspector, Katherine Kartel, came at an unannounced time and all the dining centers seemed to be prepared, except one. While students were enjoying their dinners, alarms sounded, and everyone was evacuated.
“I had no idea what was going on,” Bethany Marlene, a frazzled freshman said.
The famously known Midwestern meal of “tater tot hotdish” was mutilated by employees. After running out of tater tots, the supervisor, Noah Johnson, made the call to secretly use potatoes instead for the rest of the month.
“It is a violation of section 359, subsection 12, which states all ingredients must be disclosed with students and those eating the food. Potatoes are not tater tots. Once the case is finalized, I will have more information on the investigation and the West Dining Center shutdown,” Kartel disclosed.
Potatoes are potatoes. Tater tots are tater tots.
Dean Bresciani, NDSU president
To hide this, employees added more cheese and cream of mushroom and burnt the potatoes to make them seem like tater tots. There would be no complaints, but it came as a surprise to students hearing that they were eating potatoes instead of tater tots — because the two are complete opposites.
On top of this discovery, Kartel was shocked to see that a non-Midwestern student was in charge of writing the names for each of the items and forgot that the dish is “tater tot hotdish” and not “tater tot casserole.”
With this being a continued investigation, many questions have arisen for the NDSU Dining about how they will handle West being shut down, what will happen with employees and how they feel about the supervisor making such a careless decision. NDSU Dining has no comments at this time and have yet to send out an email to students about this occurrence.
West Dining Center will remain closed until further notice.
Were you a victim of eating the potatoes? Contact 1-800-NOT-MY-TATER-TOTS and voice your concerns.