Holiday travel’s secret ingredient: The food we bring along

Despite being something of a nervous traveler — one of those people who needs to have eyes on their gate at least two hours before departure — I increasingly find myself savoring the strange choreography of holiday air travel. There’s a ritual to it: informing the check-in agent, with unnecessary solemnity, that I am not transporting aerosol containers, flame starters or fireworks; reaching into my pocket countless times in the security line to ensure that my boarding pass and ID haven’t somehow dissolved into another dimension; the TSA guards barking orders about shoes, jackets and liquids in tones that oscillate between weary and militaristic. On the conveyor belt alongside laptops and shoes, I’ve seen Giordano’s deep-dish pizzas, Wawa hoagies and glass containers of rare Italian cherries, precariously arguing their way past the 3.4-ounce liquid rule. The highlights: chocolate-covered peanut butter balls, their glossy shells encasing a sweet-salty filling she’s perfected over decades, and my favorite, cranberry date bars — tangy, crumbly squares adapted from my dad’s mother’s recipe, a relic of holiday kitchens past. Late at night, after a long travel day, I’ll open the tub, eat a sliver or a cranberry date bar, and feel momentarily, impossibly, back in my mom’s kitchen.