4/13/07 Vending Machine Food

An unexpected bonus for a Friday the 13th...free vending machine food! Seems that Ye Ol' ImagePoint is thinking about changing our vending machine vendors for our kitchen, so a bidding hopeful brought in a lot of their sample foods for us to try. As expected in a place where it takes three days to read one day's worth of incoming email, the "Free Food!" message went out with supersonic speed. They didn't even formally announce it. They just snuck in, spread the free food out on a table and invited the first lucky sap who wanted into the kitchen by accident to try what they wished. At that exact moment, super-sensitive FOOD radars went off all over the company. (Remember that commercial where everybody's head pops up over the cubicle in perfect prairie dog style as they all scent food? We put those guys to shame. By the time their first head pops up, we've already assembled a hungry hoard of co-workers, and are racing through the hallways to converge on the unsuspecting vendors like lions over a kill). Fire alarm goes off? It takes us 10 minutes to evacuate, even with the ominous smell of smoke drifting thought the air. Free Food? We had that place cleared out in 2 minutes flat.

I was lucky enough to grab a tray labeled "Angus Cheeseburger" and a tiny "Turkey Bacon Ranch Wrap", both from Outtakes Quick Cuisine. I was a little scared of the cheeseburger, because really, how good can a vending machine cheeseburger be? Plus, while the package instructed me to keep it refrigerated, it didn't say anything about how to microwave it, or even if it needed microwaving. In the end, it was the fact that the package contained pickles (I love pickles!) that convinced me to eat it, and I microwaved the meat patty for a minute just to warm it up. And OH MY GOSH THIS BURGER IS FABULOUS! It's juicy, it's Angus-y, it tastes just like an $8 restaurant burger, sans fries. I'm sure that it contains no real food whatsoever, but this doesn't bother me. Preservatives just make me last longer. So two thumbs up now for vending machine burgers, and if any other vending machine food vendors are out there, I just want to make it known that I'm entertaining new vendor foods and my vote can be swayed with free samples.