Cherry Season

     Page Two Hundred Fifty-Eight.
     It's cherry season. Enjoy this 90 minutes while it lasts. It'll be over before you blink. (Cherry season is 10.23 AM, June 28 - 7.16 PM July 17.)
     Cherries and pepperoni pizza are my two favorite foods. I believe I've mentioned that before. What I do frequently in summertime, cherry season, is make a meal of pizza and then have cherries for dessert. In my previous blog, though, I  mentioned my recently changed eating habits.  I've cut back tremendously on the pizza. So these days, I'm having cherries as a complete meal. Really. A bowl of cherries is dinner. Still not too bad.
     I'm also quite finicky about the variety I purchase. I like the very large, dark type. Those are usually difficult to come by and if I can find them they're tre expensive. This year, my neighborhood discount grocer happens to have them at only 2.29 per pound. A true gift from God.                    

Ode To Cherries

     Page One Hundred-One.
     It's cherry season. I'm categorically not a fan of summer or warm/hot weather, but cherries make it all worthwhile. When I'm dead, I'll be sad because that means that I won't be able to eat cherries anymore.
     My two favorite foods in this world are pepperoni pizza and fresh cherries, sad but true. (I'm a kid at heart. Guess why I'm so good at interacting with and caring for young people?) So, quite frequently during cherry season, I'll have pepperoni pizza with a nice salad for dinner and then for dessert I'll have a bowl of cherries.
     In fact, maybe that's what I'll have tonight for dinner. I think I'll make myself a deep dish pepp pizza. Yessiree Bob. That's sounds just right. I'll go to Alesci's Italian grocery store (one of our local fantastic Italian grocery stores) and pick up the sauce, cheese, pepp and dough. I don't make my own dough. Why bother when I can buy it freshly made at Alesci's for thirty-five cents?  Then I'll bring the whole mess home and assemble.  
     I'll break out my twelve inch cast iron skillet, grease it, dust it with corn meal, then put the dough in and spread. Then, I'll pour on the sauce, toss on the cheese, lovingly place the pepp and bake at 425 for about fifteen minutes or so. Yum, yum, yum. It'll be too good for words.
     If he plays his cards right, perhaps I'll make the new kid, Shem, some of my deep dish pizza sometime. Not tomorrow, though. He likes lasagne, so I'll make him that. And, because it's virtually impossible to make lasagne for one, I'll make a normal amount and then I'm going to join him and we'll sit at the dining room table and eat dinner together like civilized people. We planned it yesterday. He also likes Moose Tracks ice cream... okay fine, twist my arm. 

The Perfect Pre-Run Snack

     Page Sixty-Eight.
     I used to run for exercise. I ran a fair amount from the mid-90's until the mid-2000's. I probably averaged twenty-thirty miles a week with my typical run being four or five miles in length. In December of 2002, I decided that I wanted to try to run twelve miles in one shot. I'd never run that distance, and I just wanted to see if I could.
     I spent all week psyching myself up for it with Saturday afternoon being the time of destiny. I had my route planned (the route, unfortunately, included some yucky hills, which are virtually impossible to avoid in my hometown of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, but too bad). I didn't run on Thursday or Friday to conserve my energy and I got lots of sleep on Friday night.
     What I hadn't planned on was the weather. I woke up to a mild, first winter snow on Saturday. Funny that I should have been surprised by snow in Cleveland in December but I was. I didn't let it stop me though; I decided to run anyhow.
     Now what does one eat just prior to attempting to run twelve miles? I had some leftover pepperoni pizza in the fridge, so I ate that along with drinking a cup of coffee. My roommate at the time was a very young vegan engineer student who found me and my spare bedroom on Case Western Reserve University's off campus housing bureau. (Case is a few blocks away from me.) He thought I was crazy for eating pepperoni pizza and coffee just prior to attempting a twelve mile run, but I didn't care. I ate it and off I started.
     My route was actually a very large circle around my neighborhood. The circle was four miles long and I simply did it three times, so I was really never too far from home. I had some good music on my Walkman and I just ran. Forrest Gump had nothing on me.
     The snow wasn't bad, actually, and in fact, was rather refreshing. I wasn't happy about the hills but they didn't deter me. The pizza stayed where it was supposed to and the caffeine in the coffee kept me going. All in all, it could've been much worse. By the time I completed the major hill for the third time, and was only two miles from finishing, I actually contemplated adding an extra couple of miles. I had that much energy reserved. But I opted not to and proceeded home.
     When I got home, I took my shower and was watching TV before my roommate emerged from his bedroom. He was very shocked that I'd completed my task while fortified with such trash as pepperoni pizza. But he admitted defeat. Vegans don't really know everything.
     That was the longest run I'd ever do. I eventually switched to long walks and I enjoy my four or five mile walks nowadays. Occasionally I still run though and I insist that they're best after a few slices of pepperoni pizza.