Food Flying Breakfast and the Music that Drove Me Mad

A Marriott breakfast is a thing to behold.

Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” plays mercilessly in the lobby of the hotel albeit at 7:00 in the morning even though it is not Jackson himself zinging it over the speakers but a Jackson imitator- an hour or so before the unremitting sun begins to burn through your clothes- alternating with simulacra performances of much too familiar Beach Boys tunes. Occasionally a genuine Aretha Franklin ditty is thrown in to imbue the musakical soundtrack thunderously wafting through the large space perhaps with a modicum of authenticity and plant the notion in your brain that this is not really a form of mind control.

Ah, morning in Irvine!!! The entirety of Orange County appears to be  cloaked in a kind of moaning soft rock subtext that is not all that “sub” and sort of bangs you over the head wherever you happen to be, with melodies mainly from the nineteen fifties and sixties that were better left behind; the ubiquitous soundtrack however seems to fit perfectly in some truly terrible way with the huge sunglasses everyone wears to stave off early blindness. You are assaulted with this noise at all the big box stores and some little ones too; it becomes impossible to grab lunch or find the kind of tissues or toilet paper or SPF 1,000 sunscreen you seek while these cacophonous beats drill through your consciousness.

A typical day: I exit the elevator with its sonorous ping way too early  as I do each morning, nod in the direction of the unusually friendly and alert front desk folk and bop through the lobby to the sound of knock-offs from the “Thriller” album, not fully awake yet, not entirely clothed, but yearning for one of those frozen undersized bagel look-a-likes and tiny packets of solidified cream cheese or hardened dollops of jam similarly wedged into foil; from a distance the thing on which these odd condiments land resembles a bialy gone very, very wrong or a weird, uncooked donut, but close up it tastes sort of like one of those stiff, round objects found in the supermarket frozen case minus the highly chemical, vaguely onion flavor that makes these soft sponges of re-heated ice chips almost palatable when you prepare them at home in your toaster oven. Be that as it may, I devour the repast in about two bites and thank my lucky stars for the cappuccino impersonator that accompanies this meal because at least it looks like the real thing. The word that most comes to mind in this neck of the woods is “cardboard,” because it’s all recyclable.

After a couple of days of this sad though exciting ritual of unappetizing food and rousing music in a scene peopled largely by bright-eyed-bushy-tailed corporate conference attendees roaming around in identically colored pale blue shirts with an assortment of ties and slightly glazed stares, I have all but forgotten that low fat double chocolate muffins exist and that there are aromatic beans sitting in huge barrels three thousand miles away at Zabar’s, giving off a pungent, mouth watering scent of real coffee as a suitably classical piece on low volume gently nudges the background, and that there are  lines of slightly edgy shoppers cracking cynical, funny jokes with the servers and looking comfortably scruffy; that it may even be raining or at the least cloudy and that all this exists as we speak, as I type, as Marriotts all over the globe begin to serve their version of breakfast.

Fear of (Food) Flying, Part One

I survey my fellow passengers to rule out potential terrorists and am relieved it’s a fairly benign looking group. Asians tend to wear surgical masks when flying and the guy across the way has a really neat one on- it has a thick double ear loop and a sturdy, rather sleek looking breathing cup to match his streamlined, shiny laptop with which he is seriously engaged. I’m tempted to ask him where he got the mask but desist from doing so and am convinced in any case that he will be food-less during the flight because of the mess involved.

We are on our way to Food Police Central Command- California! - and I am dreading what I will find on the menu there, but for now we are at ground zero of that which is barely edible and will remain in this position for several hours as we cozily rub up against our strange new companions on even smaller, slimmer, more crowded, more energy efficient planes as the flight attendant explains when we comment on the coffin-like atmosphere; she rhapsodizes that they too miss the old 767s where next to these you could dance in the aisles. As soon as the seat belt signal goes off, people stealthily start whipping out their meager airport provisions trying not to bump elbows with their seat companions. The couple next to me quietly produces two cellophane wrapped sandwiches and when the guy chomps down on his it oozes a substance from all sides resembling vegetable cream cheese, even though I know it cannot possibly be vegetable cream cheese as he simply does not look like a vegetable cream cheese kind of guy but more of a pulled pork man. His pony-tailed companion carefully unwraps something tidier, a pile of closely packed thin slices in between two brownish squares of whole grain bread and a bit later she will discreetly place a banana peel on the tray carefully folded and then leave it there for the duration, during which time I will have to gaze upon it every time I incline my head to the right.  It’s ironic, air travel really does not inspire hunger  and yet the smell of those invisible plastic “snacks” they heat up in the back- rewarmed frozen pizza? Petrified chicken cacciatore? Sizzling Twinkie-like cakes?- creates a sort of sense memory of longing for a hot meal, perhaps like the old aromatic canned spaghetti and ketchupy sauce once served at the automat. I myself have stowed a low-fat double chocolate muffin from Zabar’s but since I had to purchase it two days before flying it implodes when touched.

Three and a half hours into the flight they’re coming around again with the rolling carts, this time with myriad little cups of feces water, a liquid which I refuse to drink having just learned from Yahoo that you should never partake of airline H2O for above reasons of gross contamination, and so I ask for a seltzer. An hour or so later I am sitting close enough to business to see the flight attendants deferentially deliver warm, damp facecloths to the One Percent comfortably ensconced in their big seats, then collect the towels as if in a sushi bar before delicately plopping them onto a tray with some sort of pincers; the action is a cross between a ritual that happens in the operating room and a fancy Japanese restaurant.

The clouds are starting to look like generous masses of white mousse with ice blue streaks flowing through and I wonder what flavor that concoction tastes like and if I will find it in the land of All Things Fresh and Good. As we start to deplane like a long, slow conga line at a 1960’s “Love In” I bid a fond farewell to the trail of chip and pretzel wrappers glutinously dotting the aisle like petals from a flower girl’s basket along with the random, defiant gatherings of crumbs here and there that seem to say they do not give a fig (or an olive or a pomegranate for that matter) about the land of nouvelle or novel cuisine- a place where I will encounter the foot soldiers of chocolate chip-soy-avocado shakes and worse- and I prepare to meet them bravely. . . .  

The Food Police and Tyrannous Gluten

What’s worse than being born with three heads or the prospect of a nuclear holocaust? The unabashed tyranny of gluten, that’s what- a scourge that is truly hard to fathom in a twenty-first century world!

It’s egregious, this complete disregard for dietary evil personified, a rampant addiction to toast and bialys that has more than a whiff of the sacrilegious about it- do we really wish to live by bread alone? Clearly, we are still in the stone age of nutritional, spiritual and mental health. I mean, how stupid and in denial are we, thinking that those spine chilling glutinous substances only present a danger to the 1 in 133 Americans clinically diagnosed with Celiac disease. Now everyone can act as if they have this unfortunate affliction- why discriminate? We like to pride ourselves on the fact that we are an inclusive society, and what better place to start than where it counts, in the gut?

And speaking of grains, whole or otherwise, these guys are far from innocent, being the very hosts in which the culprit thrives plus having their own set of malfeasances. An entire wannabe pop best seller recently devoted itself to the horrors of genetically engineered grain monsters that purportedly result in the flesh eating, soul mashing condition of something (I shudder to say it) called Wheat Belly. . .  a prospect meant to frighten, warn and disgust. As we know, any belly of prominence is to be scrupulously avoided unless you want to look like a rotund silly whose buttons are too tight and have pants that strangle, but this particular chubby mid section against which the author admonishes apparently presages something far, far worse: instantaneous fatality followed by eternal damnation by the Food Police; I really have to force myself to avert my eyes whenever I see ads for the book and have had trouble saying the word “belly” since I learned of the phenomenon. So between the nightmare of gluten and the slippery slope of Thomas’ Whole Wheat English Muffins, what’s a breakfaster to do? A hearty repast of merely butter and jam? Just a few baked blueberries, no actual muffin? Invisible popovers? The chocolate chips minus the cookie dough? And if you’ve ever had the pleasure of interacting with that yellowish, translucent, strangely tasting rice product that’s meant to stand in for ziti, or those sickeningly sweetish, stale looking masses of crumbs pretending to be pastries, I think you will agree that look-a-like pretenders are out- the only thing worse than being maimed for life by gluten is engaging with anything that touts itself as “gluten-free. . . .”

So many dangers out there, so much treachery at every turn, but it would appear all pales next to gluten, the genuine perpetrator of everything unseemly in the cosmos. Forget international terrorism and the spread of highly contagious bubonic plague-like diseases, worldwide hunger, endless war, pestilence, famine, cyber attacks and the destruction of the ozone layer, to say nothing of the polar ice caps melting away- this is all mere child’s play. The real and present threat we face on a daily basis seems to be that which croissants are made of, and why may I ask is our dysfunctional congress not doing anything about this??? Bid your birthday cakes adieu. Bagels will soon be a thing of the past. Pizza is more destructive to your digestive system than arsenic. Baguettes simply have got to go. And yes, even whole wheat pasta. . . well, in this last case it may not be such a loss.

The media of course has been suppressing the extent of the gluten pandemic, probably on the orders of government officials sworn to secrecy in order to prevent widespread panic and other catastrophes like bread burning orgies and the large scale dumping of bags of pretzels into the oceans thus leading to further environmental damage. In truth, the only way I can even wrap my brain around the horrific possibility of an imminent gluten Armageddon is to think back to one of my favorite sci-fi movies, “The Blob” with the ineffable Steve McQueen. Who could ever forget the scene wherein the gooey rather glutinous as it happens mass of red jelly that has been taking over the world suddenly oozes through a projector room, swallowing the projectionist and sending the story’s theater going audience running  screaming as they flee for the exits. . . .

Ah, those were the days of sheer imagined terror! In truth, I think we miss ‘em in these times of real catastrophes and thus the need for a new bogey man, often disguised as a nicely spherical San Francisco sourdough or a mild mannered raisin challah, with the occasional kaiser roll or chillingly fearsome rosemary ciabatta thrown in for added shock value. They’re saying that if you gaze too long upon a peasant bread your partner will turn to salt. Will this never end? I try not to think about it and have sworn off watching or listening to the news for fear the “g” word may be mentioned. It’s just too darn upsetting. 

The Food Police: Quinoa

There’s a distinct snob value in knowing how to pronounce quinoa (keen WAH). You do not want to be caught musing aloud in the health food store or at the burgeoning tabouli-bulgar-cous cous-wild rice section at Fairway that for some time now you’ve been itching to try kee-NOA (or much, much worse, kwee-NOA). It immediately will brand you as some kind of retro, twentieth century food ignoramus who still eats fruit loops.

In truth, it’s all about the name here and it can be quite intimidating. The food police like to remind us that there are basically two types of people in the world: those who know how to say the word and those who do not; this division of food class creates chasms of socio-political-economic differences that speak volumes about your dress style, choice of music, voting habits, number of plastic bags used in a lifetime, breed of dogs cleaved to, type of movies watched, whether you have an iphone or an android or neither, if you practice yoga or pilates, cross training or walking, which browser you prefer, the vagaries of your moral compass and life expectancy to the minute.

It’s all so smarmy, and for what? The particular grain, whose name I refuse to type again lest I give “them” the satisfaction of knowing that I too have succumbed to pressure and learned how to bandy it around without a shred of linguistic awkwardness, is completely tasteless and tends to make people stutter when trying to say it. It’s a loser big time against such formidable competitors as kasha, which can also be used to help comprise a knish, and wheatberry, another fiber blockbuster with a much more charming name evocative not only of all things wholesome and clean  but also of fairy tale meadows. Are they kidding or what? The stuff has a weird, trick spelling and is boring beyond belief. And most sadly, there really is no way to jazz up that ubiquitous, obstinate mulch of tiny kernels completely devoid of any flavor- the dish is simply the queen (pronounced KWEEN, not KEEN) of bland.

Bland, bland, bland!

And I will not take back those words, even at the threat of being excommunicated from the kitchy kwizeene klub.