Amazing

 

I am writing this on the final leg of my trip home from our Mexico location and had a sudden intuitive perception (I was going to use “epiphany” but is that a tired word or what?) that I must share with you.

 

We walk through life oblivious to the amazing things that occur all around us.  Yes, I assume you exist in the same ethereal fog that blankets my consciousness and if you don’t, good for you, Maharishi.

 

Back to the point. So I am sitting in first class on a flight from Phoenix to Chicago. Yes,  I upgrade when feasible so that I can get off the airplane without deep vein thrombosis, my knees not permanently locked at 90 degrees, and my ribs unbrusied by the boorish wide body clod who thinks the world is his toilet and had the extra large bean barrrito for lunch.

 

The meal came.  I chose the stuffed shells.  The pasta shells were nicely stuffed with a ricotta cheese mix and smothered in a better than passing tomato sauce. Not close to anywhere in Italy or even Olive Garden, but hey, pretty darn tasty.  Accompanying it was a nice whole wheat roll and a salad of bib lettuce, Greek olives, artichoke hearts, cherry tomatoes and capers.

 

So I button the napkin to my shirt.  For those that don’t frequent the front of the MD80 your cloth napkin has this ingenious little button hole perfectly situated so that you can anchor it to that second from the top button on your cotton pinpoint.  Now that I was protected from stray marinara and random salad dressing I looked at my meal.

 

Let’s start with the shells.  Pasta made from wheat probably grown in North Dakota, harvested, and sent to a storage silo.  Just think about that sentence.  Imagine what is involved in preparing the soil, planting the seed, harvesting the grain.  Think about the business of a silo and all that requires.

 

The wheat, after being traded several times on the Exchange makes its way to a mill that grinds it into flour.  The flour is then sold to a wholesaler who sells it to a commercial food wholesaler who markets it to a producer of pasta in, oh let’s say, Cleveland.  Why Cleveland?  I dig The Flats.

 

They make the pasta and let’s even assume they produce the shells.  They send the shells to a wholesaler in Tennessee. The wholesaler sells it to a distributor and eventually it finds its way to a Phoenix catering company. 

 

Then, there is some tomato grower in Santa Maria, California. He harvests his crop (and let’s not forget about all his effort to plant and grow the little suckers) and sells it to a wholesaler who sells them to a marinara sauce producer located in Dallas.  He produces the better than passing sauce and sells it to that Phoenix catering company.

 

That smooth ricotta cheese mixture starts in a Wisconsin farm where there are these hundreds of dairy cows eating and lactating for your pleasure.  Consider what is involved in making the cow’s feed and the equipment required to milk the cows.  The milk goes to a cheese maker in New Hampshire where it is processed into that soft cheese that is only a couple of steps away from clotting your arteries. Next, to that caterer in Phoenix.

 

The caterer takes all these inputs, hires people, pays taxes, deals with those HR problems that plague all business owners, accepts customer abuse that plagues all business owners, and makes a tasty dish and ships it to American Airlines every day.

 

We haven’t even touched the salad yet.  It is actually too much to detail in this little article. Bib lettuce.  Where was it grown and how was it handled before it got to that dish on my tray?  How about those tiny tomatoes and artichoke hearts?  And what about the capers?.  Where the hell do they come from?  I don’t know but by the look of them they would appear to be the offspring of a rabbit’s rear end.  But I digress.

 

I won’t even waste your time with the whole wheat roll or even tax your cerebum with the little plastic sleeve of salt and pepper. But let me tease you with the fact that salt is a mined mineral, pepper is a plant by-product and then there is all the activities surrounding the little plastic sleeve that holds the two seasonings.  Mining rock, growing stuff, making plastic just so you can insult the chef.  Pretty cool.

 

The above logistics description does not even come close to identifying the literary thousands of people involved in getting me this evening supper.  It is a very abbreviated outline but I hope you get the point.

 

And so I am eating this meal produced by the magic coordination of thousands of people and millions of dollars of equipment in a long aluminum tube at 30,000 feet above sea level travelling at 500 miles per hour writing this on a laptop powered by a rechargeable lithium battery listening to the latest Radiohead CD through a device smaller than my American Express credit card with earphones that not only block out extraneous noise but delivers concert hall quality sound and sipping a Malbec produced in Argentina.

 

Ayn Rand would be proud.  Think about it.  Amazing.

Comments

[Becky]

And think about how much all of that activity impacts the earth: our air quality, soil, and water supply. And how much of your meal will end up in the trash. Well, not your meal, Mr. First Class (be honest, that was the *real* point of your post, wasn't it). But in coach, think of how many little salt and pepper packs, and plastic cutlery, and plastic/paper trays, and plastic sacks for the cutlery, are tossed after one use, every day. And more significantly, all the jet fuel burning up and emitting carbon and changing the climate!

Now Dad, as you know, I'm far from the model of environmental consciousness in action (though I have learned to turn off lights when I leave rooms since flying the familial coop). I'm only bringing this up because it overwhelms and confuses me. . . In spite of all of the amazing feats of human planning, imagination, and engineering that go towards creating and sustaining the global economy, the environmental toll our brave new world is suffering is genuine, grievous, and daunting.

So, now what.

But more pressingly, can we explore the caper further? I guess it's a berry, allegedly (so says Ali). And does anyone really eat them, or do we all just roll them around the plate with our forks until we push them into a lonely pile on the side? Because I definitely eat radish roses, orange slices, and even parsley sprigs (okay, only at passover, but it still counts). but capers are like little black balls of salt and spite.

[phillip Jensen]

nice note..I will get a kick out of your blog..especially if you get political! see you at hoops one of these days.

[Laura]

I'd like to challenge mi hermana's comment regarding the environment, but only to say this:

"But in coach, think of how many little salt and pepper packs, and plastic cutlery, and plastic/paper trays, and plastic sacks for the cutlery, are tossed after one use, every day."

Ahem, food? In coach?

Riiiiiight. They didn't even give out the entire can of pop on our San Diego flight this weekend.