Chow

I’ve often questioned the nutritional value of food that has a longer life expectancy than I do. However, this is the reality for me for the next several months. When we are not mobile, we are served in a cafeteria, just like any other cafeteria-with one exception, it’s still that same non-perishable food, but prepared in mass quantities.

Despite this, I looked forward to several things each day. My milk which says it really is milk, but expires April 2010, and canned fruit.
My most interesting meal was spaghetti and meat balls. I thought I was getting mashed potatoes on my tray until the server plopped a big helping of tomato sauce on it. Sure enough, upon closer inspection, the thick pulverized white substance had elements that looked as if it had once been spaghetti noodles.

The next day, they were serving mashed potatoes and gravy. It was unique, as it was literally gravy mixed into the mashed potatoes giving it the color and texture of canned cat food. What really caught me by surprise was the taste. It tasted exactly like cheap canned catfood. Not that I actually have tasted canned catfood, but I’ve opened enough cans to get the idea. This stuff really brought me back to my childhood because it smelled like Alley Cat canned catfood that we would occasionally by from Buy For Le$$ for our herd of cats. It smelled more like the red can if I recall correctly- Red was beef, blue was chicken, and green was sea food. I had no life as a child.

Dessert was often hit or miss. It really just depended how dried out it was. One day, I was eating a brownie, and my plastic fork broke on it.