My Continental Airlines Hindu Meal

There was a time when you ordered a special meal because there were so few requests for them that they had to be individually prepared. This meant you usually ended up with something that was a grade above the ham and cheese on a fat white bun that you could otherwise expect. Well those days are gone. Now that cost-cutting measures have resulted in fees for checked bags, pillow-count reduction and other assorted insults, airlines have found a way to make the 'special' meal absolutely ordinary. The good news is that their secret research might have unintentionally provided us with a ray of hope for achieving world peace.

How do they do it, you ask? Let's call it 'meal-combining.' This sounds a little like the faddish 'food-combining' that peaked in popularity a few years ago. The idea is to take the common denominator of all the special ideological dietary mandates of the World, and to create dishes that simultaneously satisfy every set set of rules!

Of course, the airlines didn't think of this first. My guess is that the pioneering efforts should be attributed to Kosher Indian-Vegetarian restaurants, which differ from airlines because their food tastes good. Take a look at the label below:

Let me first draw your attention to the fact that this is the ingredient label for a breakfast sandwich. This breakfast sandwich was served to me on an evening flight, more typically the time when 'dinner' is served. This certainly didn't bode well, but I had a seen an Indian woman eating lentils with chapattis that looked really tasty just weeks ago, so I was still caught off-guard.

Now, this was only a single item out of the whole tortuous meal box, and all the other offerings had similarly long lists of ingredients, so I've chosen to use this merely as a representative example.

From this label you will see that our hope for world peace lies in our common interests. All of us, well not all of us, but VGML, VLML, MOML, and HNML people all want the same things! Among those things are, apparently, azodicarbomide, calcium sulfate, and vital wheat gluten. To decode the encrypted meal descriptors, they translate as follows:

VGML= Vegan Meal	VLML= Ovo-Lacto Vegan Meal
MOML= Moslem Meal	HNML= Hindu Meal

How something like ethoxylated diglycerides qualify as Vegan is a bit mystifying to me, but I guess it's listed in a handbook somewhere. In case you have trouble reading the label, you are looking at the recipe for a 'Wheat English Muffin, Vegan American Cheese, and a Vegan Sausage Patty.'

The accompaniments included a quinoa salad, which tasted even more like bird food than quinoa usually does, if such a thing is possible. It promptly went back in the box. Maybe that should be the name of the 'restaurant' where this food is made, 'Back in the Box.' There was also some sort of cookie-ish thing, which I found detestable, but which my 3½ yo daughter had no trouble happily gobbling down.

I don't know what Air France is doing these days, but the paté de campagne, the camembert with a crusty baguette, and the little bottles of Bourgogne rouge that followed one another, like loyal French mercenaries, in an endless procession toward their demise, still stands for me as the pinnacle of inflight meal service. Adieu, HNML!

Airplanes should be retrofitted with USB power on the armrests.

I can't believe they use Hi8 tape for their entertainment playback. What dinosaurs- a 20 year-old tape format! Haven't they heard of DVDs? It's a  format which is built around easy menu driven, chapter-based playback and pausing, eliminating the need for swapping out tapes. But if you take a look in the closet of most passenger jets, you'll see ancient tape playback.

The fact that they still don't offer WiFi is stupid enough. When it comes to cellular, I am not in favor of introducing cell-yell to the cabin, but texting and email would be ok.

USB would provide a safe, low-voltage power supply that passengers could use to charge their mobile devices during long flights, when available battery power is taxed. The cables are already widely available and it is a standard in peripheral device power.

The FAA approach to green-lighting cabin technology works about as quickly as NASA's. NASA has a flight-worthiness certification that takes so long, that it sent up twenty year-old tube cameras on probes, long after much-improved CCD technology was available. Of course, airlines don't want to spend money when they are losing money. They don't even like to paint their planes anymore, it seems. But if they can get people to swallow paying for baggage and food, anything is possible.

Sensei Coffee

I've only managed to get within thirty feet of this device, so it is still on my to-do list to sample its brew. I know there are some who say they can taste the different between coffee brewed with bleached-paper filters and whole wheat filters, but I am not of that ilk. I don't disdain diner coffee, though I don't laud it either. But as the master says (see article) 'I am not ready.'

clipped from www.nytimes.com At Last, a $20,000 Cup of Coffee WITH its brass-trimmed halogen heating elements, glass globes and bamboo paddles, the new contraption that is to begin making coffee this week at the Blue Bottle Café here looks like a machine from a Jules Verne novel, a 19th-century vision of the future. Called a siphon bar, it was imported from Japan at a total cost of more than $20,000. The cafe has the only halogen-powered model in the United States, and getting it here required years of elliptical discussions with its importer, Jay Egami of the Ueshima Coffee Company. “If you just want equipment you’re not ready,” Mr. Egami said in an interview. But, he added, James Freeman, the owner of the cafe, is different: “He’s invested time. He’s invested interest. He is ready.”

Mr. Coffee Model VBX20: Drippiest Coffee Maker Ever?

Certainly, drip coffee makers are expected to drip in order to perform their life-sustaining function of brewing coffee quickly and reliably. This Mr. Coffee Model, the VBX20- (an inexpensive model, I grant you) delivers, however, a large number of extraordinarily stupid and irritating drip modalities that render it, in the domain of kitchen appliances, something akin to an infant learning to eat cereal. It is a messy affair, from start to finish. The coffee it brews is fine, let's fact facts: that is mostly about coffee plus water, but soiling the counter top is an unacceptable by-product, and is indicative of an intolerable level of carelessness from the industrial designers responsible for creating this insulting plastic monster. Joe DiMaggio would be aghast. Let me explain.

First, if you look at the back of the machine, on the far right in the photo, you will note two holes in the water tank. Bizarrely, should you attempt to fill the tank with water from the carafe and approach at anything but a precisely correct angle, water will spew forth from the holes. Ludicrous. Then, when the dripping process begins, it is accompanied by spattering, as seen in the middle image. Should you interrupt the brewing process before completion, a fairly standard technique of morning coffee lovers, the dripping head will not cease its dripping instantly. One, two, three four, five remaining drips will luxuriantly emerge from the spout and tumble onto the heated platter below, where they spatter and vaporize. Invariably, if you place the carafe on the counter- something I know by now never to attempt, you will be the proud papa (or mama) of a charming series of coffee rings.

The final and most egregious insult comes from the mere act of POURING the coffee into your cup. This, the quintessential act of coffee maker deployment fails, in the typically baffling drippy manner of the VBX20. With every pour, mysterious drops of coffee unavoidably scatter on your counter top. Have your handi-wipe handy, that's all i can offer as advice.
It's more than a coffee maker. It is a mess maker.