French Dip in a Styrofoam Box and My Madeleines

Note: I wrote this on the plane late last night.

I am flying to see my parents in Ohio. I had the worst flight experience ever. The flight was late from Seattle and I missed my connection in Dallas to Columbus. They scheduled me for a second flight, and that was delayed due to weather. When we finally took off, lightening was flashing out my window. The turbulence was so bad there were few bumps were my seatbelt kept me from bouncing out of my seat. I was reading a book while the plane loaded. Once we took off, I had to put it down to hold on to the armrests. I longed for my dog Fox to be sitting my lap. We didn’t gain much altitude for what felt like ten minutes. I’ve heard of pilots trying to flyover storms, but it seemed like this pilot was trying to fly under the big black cloud. Would we fly all the way to Columbus at cruising altitude of 4,000 feet? Maybe I am used to flying out of Seattle where the planes need to reach a high altitude soon to make it over the Cascade Mountains.

I missed my connection in Dallas by twenty seconds, if that. I was driven through the airport on a cart since my knee isn’t up to running through airports quite yet. The gate attendant had already printed out my new boarding pass for the flight two hours later. I was annoyed that the only flight of the day that departed on time was the one that I missed.

At the Dallas Airport, I stopped at the TGI Fridays for dinner since this restaurant was directly across the gate where my flight was departing. I ordered a looked at the menu and debated between the hamburger and the French dip.

“The French dip is one of the most popular items on the menu,” the cashier said. “You can get a hamburger anywhere.” It was settled. I got the French dip, a salad and an unsweetened iced tea.

They packed up the food in Styrofoam boxes so I could take it with me on the plane. I ate all of the salad and half of the sandwich. I now have this with me on the plane.

In a normal world, half a sandwich and soggy fries in a carryout box would seem like not a big deal, but this is my—and perhaps my father’s--madeleine. When Marcel Proust ate a madeleine cookie as an adult, the taste and smell transported him back to his childhood. A more modern version of this is in the Pixar film Ratatouille where the food critic Anton Ego tastes the ratatouille prepared for him by the rat chef and is transported back in time to childhood where his mother serves him the vegetable stew after he falls off his bike.

Every time I visited my parents since I was an adult, I’d walk in the house and open the fridge. Inside would be three or four Styrofoam takeout boxes each with a half and sandwich and soggy fries. My mom was famous for not finishing restaurant meals and bringing them home. I am the same. French dip was my mother’s favorite sandwich. She would always get it with au jus. She was really picky about French dip sandwiches, always hoping to find the perfect one, and often being disappointed. I think she was hoping that she would find something akin to an Italian beef sandwich,* which she grew up eating from corner takeout joints in Chicago. TGI Fridays also brings back a memory form my childhood with my mom. Back in the late 1970’s before TGI Fridays was a massive national chain, my mom and Mrs. McCann took my friend Amy and I there for a special mother-daughter lunch. I remember we had baked potato skins, something I never had before. I had never been to “lunch” before, where the purpose of going out to eat was to socialize.

Here I am flying in to see my mother before she dies, carrying with me a Styrofoam box with a French Dip sandwich. It probably has been a while since his fridge was full of carryout boxes. I hope he doesn’t mind that I am bringing one.

* Gourmet magazine once had an article about local food, and featured Italian beef. They talked to a local who told them about da stance. Da stance was how you had to stand while eating an Italian beef sandwich so you wouldn’t drip the juice on your clothes.