Plane speaking: Vegetarian desserts

I’ve had an issue with this for a while, but I’ve never said anything about it until now. Because although it’s made me cranky, it wasn’t until I was faced with this particular outrage on my recent flight to Dublin that I finally snapped. My issue is this: just because I order a vegetarian meal on a flight, that doesn’t mean I don’t eat dessert. Look, I’ll be honest – it doesn’t even really mean that I don’t eat meat, it’s more that I’m a bit fussy and figure it’s better to order a vego meal to be on the safe side. Well, that and I do like to feel a bit special.

Anyways, back to this particular outrage. The lovely Etihad lady went around the cabin handing out menus as we began our journey. I had no clue what time or day it was, so had completely forgotten that my vegetarian meal was pre-ordered – I looked through the menu at the delicious sounding options (of which one was even vegetarian) and started to get excited. And then I got to the dessert section and saw this:

Oh yeah. Banoffee Pie is one of my most favourite desserts in the whole wide world. So you can imagine how excited I was. But then my meal came (it wasn’t the amazing-sounding vegetarian option from the fancy menu, by the way) and I eagerly scanned the tray for my pie. But instead, I found this “dessert” waiting for me:

Uh huh. Not quite Banoffee Pie. I sobbed quietly to myself. Then 15 minutes later when my neighbour finally got his meal, I got a glimpse of what I had missed out on…I would have taken a photo of that, but I couldn’t focus through my tears. And he wolfed it down so quickly that I didn’t get a chance.

This always seems to happen to me – the airlines give fruit for vegetarian meal desserts (and it’s not even a strict vegan meal, it’s that lacto-ovo option, so surely that rules in most desserts?) instead of real sweet treats. But it’s never hit me as hard as this flight, when the Banoffee was so near and yet so far. It’s enough to make me cancel my vegetarian order for the flight home, just in case…