Food for Thought

Time for one last post before we become a family of four in less than 12 hours! Maddox is spending the night with Grandma and Grandpa Rakoz and Nicole and I made a quick run for the border to properly nourish ourselves for the big day. And I use the term “properly” loosely, but I have heard that Taco Bell puts oatmeal in their beef as filler so it can’t be all that bad – per Wilford Brimley.

So I figured I’d blog about food as I learned my lesson the hard way at the hospital the first time around. Maddox was born right after Christmas and I think the first day and a half I was running high on anxiety, excitement, happiness and fueled by an entire tin of Almond Roca. All that eventually translated into me becoming ravenously and continuously hungry during our long stay in the hospital. Seeing Nicole not be able to eat might have transferred into making me even hungrier too - sympathy hunger? Before I go on, a shout out and thanks to Kami for bringing in some cinnamon rolls back then, it was like a late but wonderful Christmas gift at the time!

In any case, I was counting on the hospital cafeteria to keep me going as a neighbor of my parents used to rave about how good it was – restaurant caliber supposedly. My first mistake though was thinking the cafeteria was open long hours when I ventured over the second night for a late dinner. It was closed and I went into a panic, pacing the halls looking for vending machines. I did find some vending machines, but these machines had the type of food which really has no business being in vending machines.

But since I was starving I settled on a turkey sandwich. I hurried back to the room to and upon opening the package observed how the sandwich exhibited a unique gray color. “Whatever” I thought as hospital food has to be safe, right? If not, I’m pretty sure I could have got a quick stomach pump down the hall for a few hundred bucks. Plus, the expiration date told me I was A-OK, despite the color issues. So I went ahead and played my own little game of Fear Factor and ate the gray, soggy mess, and just after taking the last bite noticed on the packaging that it was made in North Carolina. What!?!

In the following days I did try the cafeteria a few times and discovered that it made Shari’s taste like a five star restaurant, or what I imagine a 5 star restaurant tastes like. There must be some special vitamins and additives in the food up there that mask actual flavor. (Think hash browns that taste like sawdust). I’m far from a picky eater, I just didn’t think any number of things from different levels of the food pyramid would end up tasting like a rice cake, only with even less flavor.

During this time my ongoing strategy was to look as pathetic as possible when the nurses entered the room, in hopes of some type of pity snack or beverage coming my way. Surely they are supposed to bring the husbands something every now and then. Nope. That didn’t work either, as the only charity I got was one cup of coffee in six days. Geez, $27,000 doesn’t go as far as one would think!

Another option could have been to eat the meals that Nicole was not able to begin to touch. That strategy went up in flames as apparently she was red flagged or something.
By red flagged I am referring to how the menus Nicole ordered off of the first few times suddenly vanished. Leaving us to believe that the absence of choice meant that she was getting the worst of the worst – the least popular crap that no other patients were brave enough to order.

My culinary adventure culminated on our last day in the hospital as they were still waiting for Nicole to be able to put down some solid food before releasing her. We were going crazy hoping to get out of there and in comes Nurse Ratchet with the most unappetizing tray of food we’d seen all week, with the entrée being advertised as roast beef accompanied by some green stuff. There’s no way Nicole could choke that down, even on a good day, so I sprung into action and took one for the team with a few bites of the mystery meat and some green stuff. When the nurse re-entered the room we proudly displayed the partially eaten tray of food – of course giving Nicole full credit for eating some of the Saturday night special.

The moral of the story is that I’m coming prepared this time with a good stash of grub. We won’t be home to hand out Halloween candy but those great sales were once again impossible to pass up so I’ll be trick or treating myself with Snicker’s, Reeses and some other goodness. I’m wondering if it will look bad when I stroll in on day two with a 20 piece KFC family meal? Maybe I’ll go hang out around the vending machines at 8:01 PM and make a little extra cash. If a gray turkey sandwich goes for $6.00 I’m thinking I could get 20 bucks for a KFC Snacker.