I've flown the coop. Left on a jet plane to the moderate temperatures and dangerous bridges of Minneapolis, to commune with food writers from newspapers all over the country at the annual American Food Journalists conference. I'll be blogging from here: the Betty Crocker kitchens, a lecture on Native American wild rice, the state fair, a flour-milling museum. Hang on to your hats, you're going to love this stuff.

But first, I'd like to take a moment to complain about airplane food. Not in the way we USED to complain about airplane food: "Ooh, salisbury steak. How gross." "My lasagna was totally cold" "There were carrot coins in the vegetable medley." No, the complaining is different now.

There is no food.

You can travel on multiple legs of a journey, all day long really, and never get offered anything that might, even at a squint, be called a meal. As a new elementary school student, my daughter once took what was euphemistically called a "bistro bag" from the outstretched arms of the flight attendant. She peered into it and pronounced, with great disdain, "it's like snack time at preschool."

Truer words have never been spoken. And the multiple little plastic-encased things you do get are all carbs: crackers and cookies and chips. It gives me a buzzy, carbo-loading headache just thinking about it. What about the food pyramid, Fancy Airline Execs?