"planes" news and stories

For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.

With airlines cutting costs, some of us are actually wistful about the days when we got to complain about the prison-level quality of airplane meals. But Biggie over at Lunch in a Box has an idea - DIY bento flight meals. This disposable metal tray contains a ham and cheese sandwich, vegetable curry (in a disposible condiment container), red bell pepper strips with poppy seed dressing, Swiss and Cheddar cheese slices, beans with sofrito (Latin American tomato-based sauce), fruit, cheese triangle and corn chips. The whole thing gets wrapped up in a tea towel, to be used as a placemat or a napkin. Beats a Post-It sized bag of complimentary pretzels, eh?

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A Milan to Miami flight made an emergency landing in Boston's Logan International Airport last week after crew members were overcome with noxious fumes. The crew donned oxygen masks after smelling a foul odor, fearing it was a toxic gas. Boston firefighters and emergency workers in hazmat suits boarded the plane only to find...five tons of minced onions. The onions were unloaded from the plane and shipped by truck to their final destination.

Here at Slashfood we've devoted several posts to the onion-crying phenomenon. But I don't believe we've ever dealt with what to do when you've got 10,000 pounds of onion in your cargo hold...

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Finding something edible in the airport can be a challenge, especially if you don't want to break the bank. Sure, there are some highly rated restaurants, but most of the eating options involve fast food chains that seem to charge twice as much as their non-terminal bound counterparts. Sick of bland muffins and bags of chips, the best way to find something tasty is to look for the less common options. For example, the delicious, chewy soft pretzels pictured here are from Jay's Pretzels in the Philadelphia International airport. At $1 a piece (or 3 for $2.50), they were a great snack and had a regional flair. At California airports, look for smoothie stands the will serve up your "5 a day" in a cup that even at $4 or $5 dollars will keep you full for a whole flight. Aiming for regional favorites is the most likely way to find a good deal. Look for hot dogs in Chicago or pizza in New York, but if you want your snack to be reasonably nutritious, some airports are known for having healthier food than others, so just taking a stroll around - or keeping your eyes peeled as you dash to your gate - will help you find a filling snack.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]