Road Rage – Big Sky Edition

Welp, folks.  I said I would update the site more, and it was an epic fail.  In my defense, it was one of my New Year’s resolutions.  I tried!  It’s the thought that counts, yah?

2009 has proven to be a pretty busy time for ‘ol Snarks.  My day job (I know it is shocking that nobody pays to read the crazy ramblings of a wannabe Zagat’s writer) has been bending me over, which leads me to a BRAND SPANKING NEW segment entitled: Road Rage aka OMFG Snarky Is Traveling For Work And Has To Eat The Most Awful Food Ever, Per Ushe.

Sooo, I’ve been working ’round the clock and so to save time, my job has decided to cater in EVERY MEAL to the office.  I’ve been eating it for a couple of days now, and realized fairly early on that what I have been eating has been SNARKY GOLD.  I mean, not only is this shit completely unrecognizable re its ingredients, but I have no idea what the “chef” is even remotely shooting for.  I frequently find myself asking “Is this chicken/shrimp/radioactive sludge/maggots?”  or “Why is there pineapple and toasted coconut in this (maybe?) chicken dish?”  I think the catering people noticed there were alot of questions being asked at meal times, so they now station 2 “chefs” (teenage punks in chef jackets) in the kitchen to tell us wtf we are eating.  Howevs, these 2 people just end up serving as eating cheerleaders, urging us along the buffet line with words of encouragement like “Give the pasta salad a try!” or “The sweet potatoes are to die for!” (they’re not kidding, that shit will kill you).

Ok, enough.  The food is the real star of this segment.  This is what I had for lunch today:

Your guess is as good as mine.

What is it, you ask?  Why, it’s a mayo-based broccoli & cauliflower salad with sunflower seeds and a bacon garnish, OBVS.  The best part of the way they served this “dish” was the GIANT bowl of bacon bits that was stationed next to it.  It’s like they were already anticipating my groan of protest and so tried to distract me with BACON.  It worked, sort of.  Until, I took a bite and it was SWEET.  Like coleslaw, except not.  It was barfy even when the garnish took up more than half the bite.  I’m sensing a catering theme where everything needs to be creamy and also look like vomit.  Which leads me to the Soup of the Day:

This is totes what Prison Mike was talking about.

This is apparently, chicken noodle soup?  Although it was more of a porridge consistency than soup, and didn’t contain anything remotely resembling edible chicken.  Also, the noodles?  I have no idea.  There are no words.  The pasta shapes in this state are unlike any I’ve ever seen before.  These noodles reminded me of the ends of lasagna, although not nearly as delicious and super mushy.  Mushy is like my least favorite thing to ever experience when dining.  This might come as a surprise, but the soup sucked.

I knew better than to look forward to dinner, but I was starting to feel faint from trying to subsist on nothing but string cheese and trail mix.  By the time it came out I had been working a full 12 hours and I was STARVING.  I set the bar low.  I prayed for sandwiches.  I prayed for a discernible protein.  I got this:

Holy clusterfuck, Batman.

As you can see, salad is starting to take up a majority of my plate.  I hate salad.  But, by now I’ve learned my lesson and without the roughage of salad in my belly, Snarky would die of starvation.  Clockwise around the plate: salad, Carribean jerk pork (whaaat?  really?), shrimp scampi (ha), gruel pesto pasta salad.  Obvs, the eating cheerleaders helped me spell it out because there is no effing way I would have known otherwise.  First of all, why would anyone in their right mind want to eat all of those things at once?  Like, how did they KNOW that I was totally craving tropical island-Italian fusion?  Genius.  The shrimp was in a weird cream sauce and just screamed food poisoning.  The pork I suspect didn’t actually come from a pig and was covered in orange marmalade.  I was banking on the pasta salad being edible.  The eating cheerleader told me it was his favorite food EVER!!!

What IS this, exactly?

The shape of the pasta scared me.  Do they not have regular pasta in Montana?!  Penne?  Bowties?  Bueller?  This pasta resembled globulous blobs of brain matter.  And it tasted like brains.  Like maybe I was eating my own brain because who in their right fucking mind would be eating this shit??

I ended up going back for seconds.  Of salad.  FML.