And the popcorn goes to

Craft services!

I spent the week in LA working on the Movie Awards pre-show (hence the lack of posts) and I was hoping the catering would be better than the last large production I worked on. I was not disappointed. The two ladies who ran the craft services were on their game, providing plenty of healthy and not-so-healthy food choices all day long.

The day began with bagels, toast, pastries, fruit, yogurt and hard boiled eggs. Not a bad variety, although I did seem to throw one of the ladies for a loop when I asked for peanut butter on toasted whole wheat. "Are you on a high fiber diet?" Not exactly appropriate conversation for the breakfast table, especially since at this point if I ate one more egg (after a week of eating at hotel breakfast buffet with Apropos and Lambert's Army) I was going to lay one myself!

Midday, the ladies were at it again; passing out smoothies to the crew and adding cheese, crackers and other goodies to the table. Apparently I missed the empanadas that were passed around at Saturday's rehearsal but as soon as I found out, I made sure they knew to come knocking on the video truck door when more food was available.

Show day's "passed hors d'oeuvres" included chicken wings and mini crab cakes. There were also buckets of Red Vines, Starburst mini Hershey's and tons of other grab n'go treats. I didn't say it was completely healthy, did I??? But at least there were some tasty options! And lots of cookies!!!

For Saturday's meal, I actually needed some "alone time" and headed to Wolfgang Puck's on Universal's CityWalk. On a whim, I ordered the shrimp BLT and was delightfully pleased with the freshly grilled shrimp in a light mayo with smokey bacon on some slices of hearty whole grain bread. The side of Caesar salad was pretty nice too; with crunchy Romaine leaves, creamy peppery dressing and loads of Parmesan and fresh croutons.

Unfortunately, Sunday's lunch didn't fare as well. This was a catered meal at the Hard Rock Cafe and I took a bit of a misstep by passing up the hamburger for the dried out grilled chicken. Neither the tomato chutney or the doughy bland roll couldn't help moisten the chicken and the wedding style cake bites (they had run out of chocolate chip cookies by the time I got there) did not make this meal any easier to swallow.

In a word: yuk! Should have stuck with the gals at the craft services table and called it a day!

The wrap party fared much better. I particularly enjoyed the rare prime rib, baby carrots, and sundried tomatoes and mozzarella in balsamic vinegar. I guess I can forgive them for the crappy lunch.

Oh yeah, and we had a great show!