When one is about to embark on a long, international flight, it might seem a sensible and practical thing to avoid certain trigger foods.
Trigger foods are the foods that can generally be described as delicious, yet eaten out of habit, not necessarily hunger or nutrition. Consumed before travel, these triggers have the uncanny ability to cause you to spend the majority of the flight in the toilet closet. Nothing is more agonizing than being cramped into economy class with bloating, stomach & abdominal pain, diarrhea, dizziness and the overwhelming urge to vomit... all the time. Turbulence has the ability to take these ailments one step further. It can heighten them to a whole new class of mile high club.
The one no one brags about.
No one.
Scurrying down the airplane runway in a blind panic… only to be left standing there, attempting a patient facade... and calmly stumbling through your own personal hysteria, waiting for the folding door to open, the passenger to vacate and the green light to go on for you to enter.
It's not fun. I've been there. Many times.
In addition to my obvious packing problems, I am equally as horrific at eating prior to departure.
I’m trying to learn from previous mistakes, but my lessons only seem to serve as comic relief and rarely ever actually teach me anything.
I recently read some online articles from other travellers that gave advice on pre-departure dining, with little tips on what to avoid, focusing on certain disadvantages of some foods.
They all boiled down to “Watch what you eat before you get on a plane.”
This one article mentioned avoiding curries, spicy food, nuts and...
... wait for it…
...
...
...wine.
What the actual f? Wine? Uh uh...
I won't hear of it.
I can understand avoiding vindaloo, chorizo and jalapeños, but wine...?
Why denounce the one thing that usually helps us get through the flight?
And nuts? They’re practically throwing nuts at us up there.
It’s probably because of the salt content… and the bloating.
Yes, I bloat... and badly, so maybe I should just shut up and avoid nuts.
But wine?
Come on.
Obviously the writer of this particular article has never in devoured an entire bean & beef burrito prior to a 9 hour flight to London. Ground beef, sour cream and melted cheese gurgling around in my stomach was bad enough to deter me from that particular menu option for the foreseeable future... but imagine how much the lucky, lucky people seated near me, enjoyed the toot toot toot of the musical fruit?
Lucky...
Yes, I have indulged in spicy curries, garlic cream pasta, sketchy seafood... hot sauce... banana peppers... you name it... and they all have the same consequence when you're upright, cramped and congested in coach.
But regardless of any of these culinary delights… I take the cake on the world traveller’s worst choice of pre-departure flight food. Not to brag and toot my own horn, but I do win this one. Hands down.
Before I boarded a 27 hour flight from Ho Chi Minh City, I indulged in a hand crafted, wood-fired medium pizza... all to myself. And not just any medium pizza... this was a trendy, chic pizza, made with love and a sprinkle of international pizzazz. Pizza 4p was determined to set itself high above any competition, and they have succeeded. This joint has the motto of delivering the "WOW" factor, and that is certainly what I got. Thought it wasn't perhaps the "WOW" I was going for.
This was my pizza... half 4-cheese (Mozzarella, Camambert, Parmesan and Blue Cheese) and half
salmon sashimi with an onion ricotta cheese sauce.
You might ask WHY I would ever even order something so incredibly absurd before a flight… but that’s exactly what I did. RIGHT BEFORE my flight. Life sucked for me that day. It really sucked. When I think about really how ridiculous it was for me to eat a raw salmon & blue cheese pizza to begin with, I realize that I got the "WOW" I deserved.
This time I am bound and determined to be good.
Really good.
Except for the wine... which is downright silly, if you're asking me.
Be careful out there, people.