I've had a couple of trips in the past month that involved flying.  As a Foodie the quality of the food I eat is important, yet when I fly I often find I must compromise.  Even before airlines stopped providing meals on medium distance flights, I took issue with the food served.  But now it is clearly worse.  In flight food can be purchased on some airlines but have you seen what they offer?  I won't name any particular airlines but some of them provide things I would not want to eat.  For example, snack packs full of high calorie, high sugar, and high fat items: chips, cookies, candy etc.  It may be that I'm pickier than the average traveler but how hard can it be to provide real food over junk food?  I was pleasantly surprised, however, on one recent flight that they offered chicken salad for purchase. 

As a result, I have resorted, whenever I can, to taking my own food for eating on the plane.  Generally, this is easy to do on the outbound flight.  The day before a trip, if it’s a morning flight, or on the day of an afternoon or evening flight, I go to the store and buy something to take with me.  Of course I could make something but generally when I'm about to travel I don't have a lot of food in the house.  What do I take?  Well, it needs to be something easy to eat, not requiring heating, tasty, and preferably at least moderately healthy.  More often than not, it is some form of a sandwich on a particularly sturdy roll that won't get soggy or too flattened before I eat it.  I actually enjoy doing this.  The result is a tasty meal that I can eat at whatever point I want to during the flight.  I don't have to wait for the meal cart, I don't have to eat before I'm hungry, and I can eat something custom made for me.  It's great.

Unfortunately, I'm not always able to take my own meal with me.  Especially, on return flights where I may not have time to get the food or I'm not familiar with a place to get what I want.  On these flights, I try to grab something at the airport either before getting on the plane or during a connection.  Many airports have improved in the quality of food for purchase and I can often buy a relatively healthy meal – but not always.  I know the airlines are not going to start selling better food.  People like me are actually part of the reason why.  I have gotten so used to eating my own custom sandwich, at a time of my choosing, that I just wouldn't go back to airplane food unless I had absolutely no other choice.  The other reason why airlines won't start selling decent healthy food is that, unfortunately, it's not in demand.  I'm not sure if it’s that the average person doesn't want real food – but certainly many people are perfectly happy with the junk food.  As a consequence, the way I see it, the best we can strive for is that more airports will provide decent food for purchase within them.  Although, if the airlines sold the hot fresh baked cookies that I can smell the people in first class eating, I admit I would probably occasionally indulge!  Good thing they won't be doing that...

Tortillas in an authentic Mexican restaurant are really yummy. I used to live in Houston, TX where there is an over abundance of fresh tortillas. Sadly, in northern california the opposite is true. While we have many very good places to get burritos high quality authentic Mexican restaurants are in less supply. So when Husband and I saw a recipe for home made tortillas entitled "Making flour tortillas is easier than you think" (Fine Cooking, June/July 2006 p. 73) we just had to try them.

Now I admit, despite claims to the contrary, the recipe didn't look simple. but I have made bread, rolls and other backed products so "how hard could it be"? Besides step-by-step instructions were provided. And we didn't expect perfectly shaped tortillas. As you can probably guess the process was frustrating and the result was neither pretty to the eye nor pleasing to the stomach. In essence the tortillas were very thing and crunchy with little flavor. And to top it off they whole process made a huge mess of the kitchen (although that could be the Husband factor).

So I'm still craving those authentic fresh baked tortillas but I'm now thinking it might just be easier to take a trip to Houston and visit one of my old favorite restaurants...