Menu Subject to Change without Notice

Since when are there red beans in tuna salad? Come to think of it, this sausage is probably barely 15% fish. And what about the sides — cole slaw that looks like corn, macaroni and cheese bearing a striking resemblance to boiled cabbage, bizarrely fruitlike cookies?

Egad, the old switcheroo! This is a completely different meal! 

The ERDCC kitchen diverges from its posted menu with irritating frequency. Some days you trek across the yard, through pelting rain or blazing heat, having put off some important bit of personal business, anticipating one of the especially edible meals on the six-week menu cycle, only to be greeted by an unexpected smell and a surprise foodstuff. No warning was given. You just got duped.

Similarly, there are times when you're scared of the planned meal and make other arrangements, resolved not to even set eyes on, say, that inedible brake pad they call meatloaf, only to find out after lunch that the kitchen manager substituted the more palatable vegetable soup and sandwich, and that you just cooked something with canteen foodstuffs that would've been better reserved for leaner times.

This happened at Crossroads periodically — usually just with a side, such as beet-and-onion salad or corn relish, which few cared about. Fresh fruit was also substituted for cake pretty often, to the dismay of many a sweet tooth. Here, though, it's about once a week that someone with authority veers hard off-menu.

I haven't seen peanut butter in months, though it definitely remains part of the printed meal plan. Instead, we've been given bologna or scrambled egg mix on the regular. One time they slapped slices of turkey ham (something else against which my digestive system revolts) on the trays where peanut butter should've been. During my initial months here, the institution was out of black-eyed peas. Because the menu didn't reflect this, I was tricked again and again, only to wind up with trays piled with pinto beans instead, which was fine, if not ideal. I love me some dirt-flavored legumes.

This week I skipped a movie on basic cable because there was a chance that lunch's cardboard pizza would be replaced by that rare treat, a pepperoni pizza pocket. It wasn't. And while this sort of thing isn't that big of a deal, it's just another item in the long, long list of tetchy bullshit that I abide, living this life locked away.