Fresh sauteed vegetables, and a small sample of today’s roasted pepper and spinach frittata.

Foursquare tells me I haven’t eaten at Risley Dining since last spring, and hard as it is to believe, I guess it’s been a while since I’ve visited this all-you-care-to-eat dining room! Honestly, I tend not to hit the AYCTE lunches too often, for fear I’ll eat too much.

The nice thing about Cornell Dining’s limitless lunches, though, is that it’s easy to load up on fresh vegetables and a big salad before going too far down the path to gluttony. At least this week I can avoid the pizza and pasta temptations without thinking twice about it. This afternoon at Risley, I started with the vegetables, including a bit of the roasted pepper and spinach frittata. It wouldn’t be vegan, but luckily, I’m not avoiding eggs and dairy this week. No “wheat” on the allergen card? I’m set!

This salad at Risley is surely a meal unto itself! Except there are so many other fun things to try.

The salad bar at Risley is even more varied than the one at North Star, where I end up more often. In addition to the hard-boiled eggs that can help turn a salad into a meal, Risley offers cubed tofu, feta cheese, and even tuna. Some fresh spring mix and spinach topped with soybeans, cherry tomatoes, sunflower seeds, feta cubes, and tuna seems like a good start. Are all the salad dressings gluten free, though? Hm, when did they start making the type size so tiny for ingredients lists? OK, this creamy caesar dressing has no ingredients that I need to worry about.

Lorna, Risley’s Chef/Manager, stopped by to see how our lunch was, and I took the opportunity to ask her if there was gluten-free pasta available. She said yes, and there’s gluten-free pizza crust available on request, too. Risley apparently has quite a few residents and regular customers who avoid gluten, so these items are always on hand, even if they’re not always out on display. I bet I could also have asked for gluten-free bread at the deli station.

Stir fry curry with snow peas, broccoli, carrots, shrimp, rice noodles, and more.

Good to know I had these options, but I decided to round out my meal with one of Risley’s famous stir-fries. Not unlike Robert Purcell’s Mongolian Grill station, where you pick out a bowl full of vegetables and then hand them over for stir-frying with noodles or rice or sauces, Risley’s stir-fry station has loads of fresh veggies, and a choice of chicken or shrimp or tofu. I opted for rice noodles and the red curry sauce, which is one of two sauces that’s gluten-free. The stir-fry folks rinse and wipe out the pans between batches, but will start with a perfectly clean one upon request, to avoid cross-contamination.

Lorna told us her staff will gladly prepare and plate food in the kitchen, instead of in the serving area, for customers who are especially sensitive to gluten or other allergens, and want to be certain there’s no contamination. She says convection ovens make cross-contamination of allergens like gluten more likely because of the airflow, and her staff is trained to avoid contamination to the extent that’s possible.

You like brownies? No compromises here. Fudgy and awesome.

What’s for dessert? Those gluten-free brownies I talked about on Monday are available here, too, and Lorna says they often have GF chocolate chip cookies, too, but they’re out of them today. I often skip dessert anyway, so I went the fruit route today. I certainly had plenty to eat at lunch!