Take Two

I’m blessed with the ability to eat bad food.

I would never have said it to her face (because I was a good boy and because, in truth, I did not know) my mother was not a great cook.  I remember salmon patties for dinner, and still to this day, when I think of them, I feel a definite shriveling sensation. Unfortunate Tuesday or Thursday nights, malodorous shingles of overcooked liver. Sunday after Sunday  roast beef for dinner after church, a fatty cut of meat that metamorphosed in the oven into a stringy, leathery horror. And there was chicken that I kind of liked, because it was all I knew about chicken. What does a kid know about food but what his mother gives him to eat? 

So, as a sometimes friend to bad food, tonight I was able to eat not one but two Delta Airline Chicken in a Bathtub dinners. 

Tizi will not eat airplane food. That’s an absolute in her life. Like she will not eat anything with mustard or mayo, ever. She turns an cold shoulder to pickles 

“How can you eat that stuff?” she asks now.

I’m hungry.”

“I know, but–.”

“–But I’m hungry. And furthermore, it passes the time.”

We’ve reached our cruising altitude of 37,000 feet. We’re sailing along at 590 mph, helped by a 50 mph tail wind. It’s 85 below zero outside.

“Pasta or chicken?” the flight attendant asks. 

“Nothing for me.” You know who says that.

“Chicken, please.”  

Never the pasta. Never. At one time I might have. Not any more. Even I have standards.

“On second thought, I’ll have the chicken, too,” Tizi says. She does this for me. She freely gives me her Chicken in a Bathtub.  That’s love. Sort of love. It’s also curiosity, I might even say fascination with the exotic, with Midwest American gothic, she bears horrified witness to the gustatory  grotesque. 

What bathtub?

It’s the shape of the dish. I thought “boat” as I was eating, but once I’d licked the first plastic receptacle dry and tucked into the second one, I knew I was looking at a bathtub.  

It is an oddly named dish. MC Chicken. Does Delta mean Motor City? Does it mean Mother’s Crazy Chicken? Does Delta mean McChicken? Whatever the case, there’s further oddity. On the wrapper I see Chicken in Butter Sauce. In the bathtub, I see a turgid tomato sauce that could be, but is not burnt and terrible. It’s really quite good. With these flavorful morsels of chicken in questionable butter sauce is a serving of rice with roasted garlic and cilantro, neither of which is anywhere in evidence, at least to the eye, and I’m not sure I taste either one either.  Once I’ve dispatched the chicken, I dredge the rice in the leftover non-butter, turgid tomato sauce. It’s tasty.  

Always accompanying one of these dinners is a little dishling of something else, a green salad, a canned fruit mix. Today is quinoa , chopped tomato, green onions, and dill, a sprig of real dill I can pick up and hold in my hand. It’s a revelation. Quinoa? Delta is bringing it. 

“Want mine?” Tizi says. She means the whole shebang, and yes I want it.

You can’t not contemplate the miracle of it all. We’re way up in the air. It’s now 90 below zero outside. Hot food comes to us in hermetically sealed dishes, in this case bathtubs. I picture the industrial process, consider how industrial chickens lived out their brief lives and were raised up to 39,000 feet, I picture the food plant with conveyer belts, mechanical hands depositing cups of rice, mechanical ladles dishing forth Chicken in Butter Sauce, mechanical fingers delicately tweezing sprigs on dill onto the quinoa. I picture each bathtub sealed with an industrial kiss, crated, transported, loaded onto the aircraft. The best and worst of modern times all rolled into one. 

Would I eat MC Chicken any other time or place? Not on your life. It’s bad. It’s full of chemicals and unnatural flavorings, enhancers and preventatives, additives and subtractives. It should be marked: Contents not meant for earthy consumption. 

And in the air, two is my limit.