Tag Archives: food drink

People Who Run Downtown

Some of the people I run with every Wednesday (6PM, Schenley Oval) also run on Tuesday nights with a group called People Who Run Downtown. A couple days ago, they got a plug in the Trib PM.

Strength in numbers

“Planning to eat at Finnigan’s Wake on a recent Tuesday night, Albert DiPietro took a six-mile detour from the North Side restaurant’s front door to his table. He’s among some 50 people who gather at a Pittsburgh area restaurant each week to first run and then sit down for dinner. The group, People Who Run Downtown, never goes to any place more than once a year. The group visits 52 restaurants a year and has been to more than 230 restaurants over the years.”

Clearly, Something Is Wrong With Me

I bought a case of emergency food from a company that makes food for disaster preparation. When I bought these things, it because I wanted to do some research for a novel. That was all fine, and I’ve learned a lot, but now I’m eating them just for fun. Even now, I’m enjoying the electrolyte drink beverage. It tastes like raspberries and evidently will supply me with essential electrolytes. Good deal.

Now, at this point I’m sure you’re all thinking, “Wow, I can’t believe he eats that stuff.” Plenty of people already have. But let me tell you, I’m eating better than I ever have before. These emergency rations are great. I get a main course, some fruit, dessert, and some crackers. It really is a whole meal. Compare that to what I make when left to my own devices, which is pretty much, “Find something that looks like it hasn’t gone bad yet. Boil. Eat.”

Every time I open an emergency ration I think, “This is so much more complicated than anything I would’ve made for myself.” I’m not kidding here. They sometimes use two, even three vegetables to make the main course. Novel! Now let me make it clear that this is in addition to pasta or rice. And putting crackers and some jelly on the side for later? Gods, if only I had such culinary ambition. I would be like a cook among men. Now if only they could make one with fried chicken and French fries. Or maybe hash browns. That’d be pretty good.

I’m going to be sorry when that tornado with my name on it finally comes around. I’ll probably die of starvation, or maybe I’ll just run out of electrolytes without this drink to keep me going. But until then, it beats getting scurvy.

Man, What an Idea

Who invented noodles? No, seriously, think about this for a second. Somebody at the dawn of time said, “Okay, we’ve got this wheat. Which is good. I like the wheat. But it would be better if we ground it up, added some kind of binding agent, and then formed it into long strings.”

It worked out pretty well, in my opinion. I wonder what that person would have invented if he or she were alive today? I think curly fries are perhaps one logical extension of the technology, but we already figured that one out.

It’s a conundrum.