Lunching at the airport

The Oakland International Airport really needs better food options. After eating only an apple and a handfull of Doritos all today, not to mention all the free samples at Andronico's, I was hoping for something fullfilling at the airport. It didn't have to be fullfilling in the "Wow, this is the best meal ever and now my life if fullfilled" kind of way. It just had to be enough for me to feel like I was somehow satiated. A greasy pile of potatoes would have been fulfilling. Or, a cheesy burrito. Maybe even a Toblerone bar. Something. But I chose none of those.

I chose the Cobb salad, instead. It was one of the "Air Meal" things that have come into popular existence recently because of all the discount airlines. (I'm not quite sure how I feel about those. Sure, I might save a couple of bucks on my flight, but I kinda like the food that comes in those strange tiny plastic trays with all the condensation on the clear plastic wrap. Not that I like the food really, but I like the idea of the food.) In any case, I chose the Cobb salad. I had no idea what a Cobb salad was, but it looked more appealing than the tiny bowl that contained just iceberg lettuce and the other tiny black bowl that contained iceberg with the addition of croutons. This Cobb salad must have been the super deluxe salad, with chicken, what looked like bacon, not one but two cherry tomatoes, a hard-boiled egg cut in half to expose the perfectly yellow yolk, shredded parmesan cheese, and, of course, iceberg lettuce (the only kind of lettuce, apparently, at the Oakland airport.) I chose a packet of ranch dressing to top off all the salad goodness.

I was skeptical and perhaps a bit delirious from not eating much the whole day. I must have been. Come on, I chose ranch dressing. What level-headed Californian purposefully chooses ranch dressing? Anyhow, after tearing open the packet of ranch along the perforated edge, squeezing out that milky white substance, cutting up all the big chunks, and giving it a toss, I started to dig into my first meal of the day. The salad tasted of ranch dressing, although I don't know how to describe the taste of ranch dressing. Creamy? That's not a flavor, is it? Tangy? Yeah, a bit tangy. Coated my tongue with a layer of fat? Yup, there was some of that too. The two cherry tomatoes were spectacular for airport tomatoes though. Quite a surprise. Sweet and a bit sour at the same time, with just enough give to the skin of it to know that it was fresh. And, those bits of brown that looked like bacon, tasted like bacon too.