04/20/13

Cuisine for Peripatetic Academics, Episode 1

Cuisine for Peripatetic Academics, Episode 1: 20 April 2013, United Airlines flight from RDU to ORD
Today’s afternoon flight is just slightly over two hours, so no on-board purchasable snack box satisfaction for me. This afternoon’s meal is thus:
– 1 Crunchy Peanut Butter Clif Bar from the newsstand outside Gate D5
– 1 bottle of Fiji water, also from the newsstand outside Gate D5 (I always get this brand in airports because I like the petite size and feel of the bottle in the palm. It makes me feel like, Wow, I am powerful with impressively large woman-hands.)
– 1 plastic bottle of La Maridelle Sauvignon Blanc purchased onboard the flight. (The flight attendant also offered me a Chardonnay. I looked at her with my disaffected “Really? Chardonnay?” eyes. She quietly closed the wine drawer and moved on.)
Tasting notes:
– There’s no year indicated on the bottle of wine. Fabulous. Let’s do this.
– Notes of waxed-cardboard-juicebox apple juice. Hints of airplane upholstery. (Realized while sipping that I don’t know how to spell “upholstery.” Used manual spellcheck. Felt dirty. Took another sip.)
– Suggested pairings: any episode of Survivor: Caramoan – Fans vs. Favorites. (I choose the recent “Blindside Time” episode.) Let’s also give the Clif Bar a whirl to see what this does to the wine.
[munching]
[Side note: Good job, Self, moving up a row in this highly-non-full flight to have a double-tray-table-situation that enables *both* Clif Bar wine picnic and laptop to coexist. The couple originally sitting next to me abandoned a First Class seat and the warm nuts that inevitably accompanied it (the man actually used the phrase “warm nuts” to describe what was left behind) in order to sit together in economy. Fie on your forsaking of the warm nuts, people behind me! I love my husband but would not forsake the warm nuts, and he would understand. Work on your relationship and your cultivation of each other’s opportunities for autonomy and independent growth, ye forsakers of the warm first class nuts.]
[munching]
– Crunchy Peanut Butter Clif Bar brings out notes of dough and chalk in the wine. I also get hints of mud.
[Side note: in the future, do not choose a Survivor episode that features a merging of the tribes, because there will be a feast, and that will make you bitter if there are no snack boxes available on the flight.]
[munching and then sipping]
– While watching scenes of islandy-landscapey-background, it’s possible to imagine that this peanut butter wine combination is a form of Thai food. Very, very undercooked leftover Thai food from right out of the fridge and eaten with a plastic spoon because it’s the only form of cutlery you have on hand, because you travel too much.
[Side note: Fantastic. I had to choose the one episode of Survivor that involves an immunity challenge devoted to eating disgusting foodstuffs. Stop smiling at me, Andrea-the-blond-smiling-Survivor-“Favorite.”]
[Side note: why did I not take the Chardonnay when offered? Oh, the folly of youth!)
[munching and sipping and munching]
They are eating beetle larvae on laptop-tv.I am getting undercooked cold Thai food with notes of larvae. Now they’re eating balut. [How do I know how to spell “balut” without any problems, but not “upholstery”?] Nice job choosing televised entertainment, Me.
And it’s Cochran and Malcolm in the finals. Pig brains.
And we’ve come to the final descent.
The Final Evaluation: Slightly more palatable than the worst Thai food you’ve ever had. Get the red wine, take a flight that’s three hours or longer to avoid the no-snackbox-situation, and stay away from Survivor episodes while you eat.
The Scholarly Recap: The sensorium is shaped by one’s perceptive environment. Observation of images and narratives effects a transformation of other aspects of affective experience and in turn generates new bodily sense-objects by materializing new networks of relationships.