Tribarazzi: Joline Gutierrez Krueger

Set food, or how do stars stay thin?

Were you to have dropped by The Tribune this morning you would have been greeted with loud Mexican music and the smell of breakfast burritos. Out at the food trailer, eggs were scrambling, sausage browning and cumbias blaring. Lighter eaters could graze on a fruit platter as big as Wisconsin.
That was just the beginning.
I'm here to tell you that movie crews eat well and eat pretty much the entire day and night.
"It's all about the food," one crew member said as he swallowed Oreos whole.
A commissary truck comes and goes throughout the day, replenishing a table of munchies for the crew. Ritz crackers, chocolate chip cookies, banana chips, baby carrots, hummus, sesame crunchies, grapes, cashews, Doritos, Lays, packages of gum. It's like some great college 'shroom party.
Coolers are interspersed throughout the area filled with Pepsi and Coke products, Costco-brand sports drinks and oceans of bottled water. But this is no Evian, no Glaceau Vitamin Water (though I think I spotted one of those being sucked down by Jennifer Lopez). The "Bordertown" water of choice is Arrowhead.
"Hey, it's California water," one set manager says.
Later in the day a nice woman pops in with a tray laden with even greater vittles: cheeses, salami, crackers, olive tapenade. The crew members see her coming and pounce, ever so quietly as the cameras are rolling. They even chew quietly.
But they are all waiting for lunch break, which comes at 4:30 p.m. today. Smoke wafts out behind our cafeteria. Ahi tuna is being seared, chicken is being teriyakied, steak is being, well frankly, burned into leather.
I and two sports reporters sneak back to, um, research the food. Besides the grilled meats, the spread includes different types of salads, a cold wild rice dish, cold potatoes, more baby carrots, grilled peppers of all hues, cakes dripping in caramel, ice cream.
We have not yet heard what's on the menu for dinner.