Airplane Food

Airplane Food

I hate to admit this, but I rather like airplane food. I'm not talking about the fancy dancy stuff in the upper classes, I’m strictly a steerage flyer. The truth is I am generally quite impressed with their ability to serve a, often hot, not bad tasting meal to several hundred people under such awkward conditions. I don't usually touch the roll. It is generally hard and cold. I may poke it a bit to verify my experience, but to me that is the low point of the whole thing. The rest is not at all bad

Relegated to a small seat for 11 hours - me and my tiny T.V, I look forward to the smells of food and anticipate the small personal treasure hunt of funny little containers and sealed liquids when it finally appears

Years ago this was all served on china with stainless utensils. I do miss that. I marvel at the shear quantity of disposables that a single ocean crossing flight generates. Cutting meat with a tiny plastic knife and fork and with elbows firmly tucked to my sides can be a tad clumsy. And where to put all those little containers, and the covers I have torn off them, and the little paper napkins and the salt and pepper and cream and sugar and “wipe” packets – on a .7 square foot surface – well, I admit it is a challenge.

Partly I’m struck by the surreal nature of the whole thing. Here I am sitting in a large aluminum tube with some 400 other people, being hurled through the upper atmosphere 6 miles above the surface of the earth – quite a bit higher than Mt. Everest - where the temperature is far below freezing and there is ridiculously little air. Here I sit – eating curry chicken with strawberry cheesecake for dessert.

If we actually took in what we were doing, none of us would get on that plane. Look at the size of it. There is no way this thing can get into the air and certainly no reason to believe that it could stay there. But like good little lemmings, we turn a blind eye to these obvious realities and buckle up, ignore the safety film and sip a plastic cup of chardonnay in celebration of yet one more impossible, yet mildly thrilling, entry into the stratosphere.

Its a good thing that I like airplane food because I was on a trip that would provide this cuisine for four successive meals. I was flying from California to South Africa, two 11 flights interrupted by 3 hours at Heathrow airport in London. Of all the places I had imagined my self visiting, Johannesburg, was definitely near the bottom of the list. Yet here I was.

The reason I was of for my trip had its beginnings 17 years before.

My husband and I had decided we would take our children, Jeff, 16 and Cheryl, 12, abroad. Something about broadening their perspectives as I remember. We traded houses with another family in England, and branched out from there. I did mention that my son was 16. Typical of this age group he was mortified to have parents, not to mention a little sister, and embarrassed to be seen with any of us. Travel to far away lands did not cause this proclivity to dissipate.

It came to a head in Paris. Weary of dragging this reluctant miserable individual around with us we gave him an all day pass to the Paris Metro, a few francs, and information as to where we eating dinner if he cared to join us. Some might see this as child abandonment, but anyone who has traveled with an adolescent will find it eminently reasonable.

It proved to be a life-changing day for that young man. He joined us for dinner (ok, we were relieved) and regaled us with tales of his travels. He had mastered the metro, climbed Notre Dame, found food to eat that he actually liked and was able to use his high school French to communicate, more or less, to the natives. In short, he owned the city and was higher than a kite in a tornado.

That day, I’m convinced; he saw his destiny as a globe trekker, forever experiencing the diversity and texture of worlds previously unimagined.

His Freshman year of college he went to Mexico to learn Spanish, his senior year he studied in Spain and then spent several years living and working in Berlin. After business school he became employed with a mining firm that sent him traveling to China, South America, Turkey, Australia, the U.K. He had several girl friends, almost none of whom spoke English as a first language, and finally married a young woman from Chernavaca, Mexico, who, fortunately for all concerned, was subject to the same wanderlust as he.

My husband, Burt, and I have long given up hope that he will join us in suburbia and now just watch and wonder to see where he, and his family, will be going next. This is not passive observation. We know that where he goes, we will be visiting because, like most grandparents, there is a limit to how much time one can remain away from the upcoming generation.

Which brings me to this current – very long - flight. I actually took a tape measure to a globe and found that South Africa is as far away as one can be from Sacramento, California without resorting to the dog paddle. But 6 months earlier, he and his wife had packed up and moved to Johannesberg, lock, stock and grandchild.
I was joining them in late March to assist with the arrival and care of their second child, my granddaughter. I would be staying for not quite three months.

And so I whiled my time watching a movie or two, trying to read, trying to sleep, and looking forward to the next meal.