Recent food stories

Mrs. Khoury was pretty much right on the mark with her comment to one of my postings that Eric and I are eating our way across American in addition to biking across. I'm even amazed at the amount of food we eat everyday. If you consider that you can burn up to 100 calories per mile, I guess our gluttony seems reasonable... Here's a list of what I ate last night for dinner:

At Joseph's Family Restaurant in Stillwater, MN:
1 Omelet with cheese, fried onions and sausage
Hashbrowns
4 slices of toast
2 glasses of iced tea

At the German Bar, 1 mile down the street:
2 glasses of Paulaner Oktoberfest beer
1/2 a basket of french fries

In a parking lot:
1/2 an apple pie

The story of the apple pie is pretty funny. For days, Eric and I have been fantasizing about eating an entire apple pie. Just two days ago, after getting to camp early, I unhooked my bike trailer and when out solo biking to two different nearby towns in search of an apple pie. In the second town, Cambridge, MN, I found a family bakery, but it was closed! I peered in the window and saw a sign that read "Fresh Homemade Pies" and I could just barely see rows of pies sitting behind the glass. After seriously contemplating throwing a brick through the window of the bakeshop to get at those pies, I tore off in search of a grocery store and a factory-produced pie that I could legally obtain. Surprisingly, I could only find an organic store, which did not carry pies. Instead, I searched after my main drug of choice - icecream. All this store had though was soyscream and ricecream - it made me want to scream! I had to settle for chocolate rice (fake!) icecream and strapped it too my bike and rode back to camp as fast as I could before it started melting.

Two days later (last night) in Stillwater, MN, we went to Joseph's Family Restaurant for dinner. Upon entering, we were nearly blinded by the beautiful site of three rows of homemade pies in a display case before us. After finishing our meal, we gleefully ordered a full apple pie to eat immediately. The waitress came back and said that the manager wouldn't allow us to eat an entire pie in the restaurant and that she could box it up for us to take home. Eric, in utter confusion and sorrow blurted out, "we don't have a home." But we couldn't turn down the opportunity to eat an entire homemade apple pie, so we took it to go. After stopping along the way to eat more food, we got back to St. Paul Lutheran Church, where we were staying over night, grabbed two forks, sat down on the curb in the parking lot and dug in.

As barbaric of a sight as it must have been for any passerby to behold - two grown men huddled over a box in a parking lot shovelling food into their faces - to us, it was one of the most glorious events of the bike trip!