Airline chow

I don't know if I am repeating myself but I woke up this morning thinking of Trader Vic's Malay peanut chicken. Never heard of it too bad. I have had many really good dishes in my long existence. A lot of Italian, some Japanese and German and a few French meals but TV's Malay Peanut Chicken is in my top five. 

Like the old lady on Golden Girls used to say, picture this. In 1975 I'm flying at 30,000 feet in a United 747 to Japan. I flew a lot back in the seventies but rarely flew on United Airlines. I favored Continental and TWA back then but a United flight was my only option. I could smell the aromas wafting from the galley. The flight attendant, actually they were called stewardesses way back in the stone age, and asked me if I would like the beef tips on noodles, yum yum or the whatever the hell the standard airline fare was back then or the Malay Peanut Chicken. 

Malay Peanut Chicken did she say? I had no idea what Malay Peanut Chicken was but I did know that United Airlines probably wouldn't try to poison paying customers, so I opted for the Malay Chicken. I devoured the peanut chicken like a man who hadn't had anything to eat in the last month. I really liked it. Actually I loved it. 

After the meal service, I strolled aft to the galley put on my best smile and turned my charm control dial up to 10 and asked sweetly "Who in your organization do I write to get the recipe for that wonderful chicken?" The attendant smiled sweetly back at me and extended her arm over my shoulder and said "You really liked it?" Before I could assess just what in the hell had happened she handed my this orange  8 1/2 X 11 card with the recipe printed on it and said "Just little old me." It was the culinary coup of my life. When I got back to my boat, I tried the recipe as it was printed out. The next time I tried making it again which was the next day, I fine tuned it a skosh. Now whenever I want to impress someone with my culinary prowess, I make my piece de resistance. I call it the peanut butter chicken. When I ask Ed my first born son, what do you want me to make for dinner. He shoots back, without any hesitation, the peanut butter chicken. 

As Ed is so fond of saying, "The apple never falls too far from the tree." 

 

I love my car.

 

When I was 17 years old I swore that someday I would own a Corvette. Ten years ago I was going to buy a newer car for myself to augment my pickup truck. I almost bought a Corvette but I knew that Sadie my spoiled Golden Retriever wouldn't take to a two seat car. She made numerous cross-country trips in  the pickup and she liked to snooze in the back seat of the truck. Instead I bought a 2001 BMW E-46 325ci silver convertible because it had a back seat.  Sadie loved the car, my girlfriend loved the car and I adored the car. I had the car for about five years and it had 135,000 miles on it when I bought it. Maintenance cost was  somewhat high but it's the price one pays for anything of beauty that you really love. After putting another 30,000 thousand miles on my beauty, the transmission went south. A replacement or repaired transmission would have cost more than I paid for the car so I got a one year newer 2001 silver silver BMW 325ci ragtop. The new car was nearly identical in looks and driving pleasure but didn't have the leather heated seats, big deal, I live in SoCal. It didn't have the high end audio system either but it was still pretty nice. They don't put crap at the factory in Germany. About five years later my former girlfriend, now my wife, came home and said some idiot in a rental van hit the car. She said, like the Black Knight in Monty Python, that it was only a scratch. My heart sunk, I was going to kill this moron. She said "See it?" I said "no I don't". It was truly, only a scratch. Being the car was twenty years old, the insurance company elected to "Total" the car and give me fair market value and they did just that and took away my little Teutonic beauty. Off we went to find a replacement and  guess what I got. A 2001 silver BMW 325ci convertible. This one has the heated leather seats and the premium sound system and no one that I know that this is the third car. They look so much alike. Do I love the BMWs? If you were to bet, play the favorite.

It's a jungle out there.

 In 1968 after eight years in the Navy I was discharged at the Naval Station in Seal Beach. The "Career Counselors" on the ship kept after me to stay in. They said that there was a "recession" going on and I wouldn't find a decent job on the outside. After leaving the ship, I went to a phone booth to call my wife to come pick my civilian ass up. When I picked up the handset I heard a clunk and over a dollar in change dropped into the coin slot. It was an omen. I knew right then that everything was going to be just fine and it was.