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Karim Bhalwani, a third-year business economics student, eats his “Wannabe Ghirardelli Hot-

With mom nowhere near to tell them not to play with their dinner, it’s only natural that students would want to have fun with the dining hall food they eat every day. Because the dining halls at UCLA double as the kitchen for many Bruins, creating new dishes adds some variety and excitement to the norm of dorm food.

Ortence Middleton, who has worked in UCLA food service for almost four years, confirmed that students create various concoctions to mollify their grumbling stomachs.

“I have witnessed them mix everything,” Middleton said. “(Sometimes) they’ll take some of each drink and mix it together.”

One such cure for dining hall dullness is the “Fruity Cocktail,” which combines orange juice, a little bit of apple juice and a slight trace of cranberry.

“It’s a really cool color,” said inventor Karim Bhalwani, a third-year business economics student.

Bhalwani went on to explain that the interesting thing about his drink is how it forms layers as the densities sort themselves out, making it appear like a sunset in a glass.

But the span of his inventive skills does not stop there.

Bhalwani and his friend Katherina Jawaharlal, a third-year global studies student, co-created a way of improving the dining hall gooey half-baked brownie with the “Wannabe Ghirardelli Hot-Fudge Sundae.”

Their recipe goes something like this: Take a little goo (brownie) and put some vanilla ice cream on top. Follow with more goo. Add banana slices and thread them throughout. Mush it and mix it all up, and voila! It’s ready.

Both Bhalwani and Jawaharlal enjoy their resourceful dessert so much that they argue over whose idea it was first. Eventually, they came to the consensus that the bananas were Bhalwani’s idea and putting the dessert in a cup came from Jawaharlal.

Despite its debatable origins, however, the sundae can simply be described as “a reward,” according to Jawaharlal.

Other possibilities are much more unconventional.

“One guy used to mix barbecue sauce and ranch dressing and put it on his salad. He said we should try it,” said Middleton, although she admits she never did.

Another barbeque-sauce lover is William Ninh, a third-year philosophy student who feels that “ketchup becomes run-of-the-mill,” so he puts barbeque sauce on everything from rice to cheese pizza.

One time, he even put barbeque sauce on ice cream.

For Ninh, inventing new combinations is a way to not get sick of repetitive food. Ninh makes his creations in an effort to create dorm food diversity.

“You get sick of it. ... You don’t get to make your own food, so the combinations are as close as you can get,” he said.

Ninh’s most recent creation was Thanksgiving on a bun, with hot turkey, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce.

“I don’t have to rely on utensils (for it),” he said. “It’s not laziness – it’s efficiency.”

Efficiency or not, making new dishes adds variety. After only a quarter at UCLA, Charlotte Burke, a first-year undeclared student, is already bored with the food.

“The food (here) is bland,” Burke said. “I get bored with the food, so I try to spice things up.”

Burke likes to make macaroni and cheese with plain pasta and salad bar cheese. She also creates rice-crispy treats with cereal, marshmallows and butter in the microwave, topped with soft-serve frozen yogurt.

Burke also likes to use her creativity to come up with new salad toppings. Instead of plain dressing on her salad, for example, Burke will mix together oil, vinegar and mustard.

Another unusual salad recipe is that of Andrew Cannon, a first-year undeclared student.

For “Andy’s Special Ranch and a Whole Lot of Love (Salad),” Cannon meticulously chops a plain chicken breast, tomatoes, eggs, provolone cheese (from the sandwich bar) and onions, then adds lettuce and a lot of ranch dressing.

Cannon’s reason for assembling this creation is it makes him feel “a little special” that he can create and eat food that other students haven’t yet, he said.

So the next time dining hall food gets old, don’t hesitate to mix various foods together to create a new dining hall concoction; after all, the vast amount of food lends itself well to creating new variations on the same old food.

“There is a plethora of food options here,” Bhalwani said. “Take advantage.”