City View

Today I made time for steps. Yes, MADE TIME FOR...I hate that phrase. It reminds me of Julia Roberts in "Eat, Pray, Love". I have never actually seen that movie nor have I read the book. All I picture, in fact, is Julia Roberts with that damn spoon in her damn mouth...

"...Today, I am going to make time for my yoplait and make time for myself...I am going to eat this, pray about it, and love it. me time..." I mean, what is she really doing but looking horribly orally fixated. Now, I like to eat, I don't pray, and love is like all other 4 letter words... When you "make time for yourself" you're being an idiot. Savor that activia, Jamie Lee. ALL time is yours, Dummy. Whose else is it?

So ANYWAY...I went to this ghetto-ass neighborhood today to walk steps. I tried going there a while ago but practically got chased away with torches because I don't eat squirrels nor do I have sex with members of my family. (maybe they just smelled the "gay" on me; I don't know.) I just felt uneasy and unwelcome. Only in Pittsburgh will you find back woods hill people living mere yards away from some of the most technologically advanced and cultured people in the world. It's very dynamic to say the least.

Spring Hill/City View. It's technically one neighborhood, folks. Why? Because after literally half of these respective neighborhoods' voting populations decided to hightail it out to Cranberry during the housing boom/bubble in the 1980s, they had to beg/plead to keep their delegation. The only way to do that was to join forces. A merger if you will.

Now I can say from experience that these two completely different, distinct neighborhoods have only a border to share in common. City View by name alone calls to mind a nice part of town with, duh, a good view of the city... and...well...yep. The view is pretty great. IRONICALLY this is also the shittier of the two. While there 5 or 6 really nice houses in City View they are completely isolated from the rest of the neighborhood by topography. There are 5 or 6 beautiful examples of Victorian splendiferousness with yards and gardens and security cameras and all that shit. Then, there are some 50 or so boarded up row houses and a ton of trash lying around, crumbling retaining walls, burnt out buildings, groundhogs, overgrown underbrush, rust, and general decay. It's just silly.

Then Spring Hill appears around the corner. They don't have the view because dumb Troy Hill is in the way, but wow, it's stable, populated, well kept, and full of interesting twists and turns, nice homes, it's airy and clean...I don't get it really. Welcome to Pittsburgh...

I know it's been a long time since I've posted. I'm sorry to all 4 of you that follow my blog. I try to keep the topic focused on step climbing and I just haven't been doing much of it lately. A shame, I know. I have been so wrapped up with work. I pour a lot of thought and creative energy into both the Crested Duck and Cannon Coffee that i have little to spare for things like exercise. That and my allergies morphed into a gigantic sinus/ ear infection over the last month. I feel like Liza Minelli's character from Arrested development with the loss of equilibrium and all. I'd dare not attempt a step trek and tempt fate to have me topple to my doom all because of a silly inner ear problem.

Pittsburgh's non-existent winter and its super wet spring has caused the vegetation to simply burst with wild new growth. At times, I have felt it necessary to bring a machete just to walk to my house. It's absolutely beautiful, though. The poison ivy is treacherous and everywhere it seems too. I got a tiny bit on my arm already and this is me not even trying to get out and hike steps. I wish I had a nice camera.

You can never have too much tongue...

Yesterday I ate some of the most adventurous food ever in my life. Kevin is pretty brilliant in the kitchen. He took ingredients ordinarily found on Fear factor and turned them into palatable delicacies; Tongue, liver, raw heart, kidneys, blood. The thought of it all I'll admit made me cringe. But then seeing all of the preparations and beautiful plating and smelling just what was cooking had my mouth watering.

I got to help make sausage. Sausage making is a very hands on like, well, most cooking techniques. I could never have imagined just how it is done. I supposed it was something done with a machine and required an assembly line. I pictured great whole hunks of mystery meat going into a giant hopper only to come out extruded into perfect uniform hot dogs. Like most Americans, I didn't know where my beloved food came from. I ate it and enjoyed it and if you told me what exactly was in it and how it was made, i probably would have spit it out. Then again, there is such a vast disconnect with the process that I'd most likely choose not to believe you and continue eating it. I'd brush off the hearsay poppycock urban legends and go on with my day. I've heard many a mother upon learning that hot dogs are encased in pig intestines vow they'd never feed that crap to their kids again then ultimately once junior refuses to eat anything else, bend to his picky palate. It is the thought of what you're eating that turns you off not the food itself. But there is a saying "if it tastes good, eat it."

We made duck blood sausage. Now if that doesn't make you cringe...

Kevin flavored it with sweet spices like cinnamon, clove, fennel, tarragon, white pepper, and in combination the flavors enhanced the duck-ness. The real meat of the sausage was duck breast. The blood was added not necessarily to bind, but to keep things moist. We then smoked the little buggers which in essence cooked them while adding that je nes sais quoi. If I could eat duck blood sausage every day, I would.

Are you tired, run down, listless...?

Yeah, As I ave said before, I am extremely over extended lately. This week has been a marathon of work. Tuesday was a huge catering gig then closing the shop (12 hours total) Wednesday 10 hours, Thursday 10 hours, Friday, 12 hours, and this Saturday will be 12 again. That's 56 hours in 5 days. Not bad methinks. So this week in total? 70 hours worked. WOW. do I do anything else? No. I have Sunday off and I'd really like to do steps and blog about it but I have to do laundry and hang out with my friends before they forget who I am. There is no relief in sight either. Odds are, we have to hire someone new since the shop has been absolutely slammed, while this may appear at first to be a chance for me to get more time off, I tell you it is not! I have to train this new person requiring yet more of my time. Once they get trained, I am taking a whole week off if I can,

So tomorrow at the Crested Duck Charcuterie, is an Offal Dinner. Offal refers to all the parts of the animal not necessarily considered edible in American tastes. It is all mostly organs and skin or connective tissue. In most parts of the world, the culture is not NOT waste any part of the slaughtered animal. We do our best at the Crested Duck. Items on the menu include: Head Cheese, Elk Tongue, Rabbit Heart Tartar, Elk Tendon Salad, duck liver pot du creme among other pates and things. It was sure fun preparing today with the Kevin, the head chef. We prepared the pot du creme which he sort walked me through. Kevin is most excited about this "flan-like" dessert. Liver isn't traditionally a dessert food but the way he has prepared it is out of this world. The base is a slightly astringent but sweet semi hard caramel, then atop is a pudding mixture of spiced heavy cream, eggs and the pureed liver. God did it all smell amazing. So tomorrow we will be serving 5 courses to a fully booked double seating. I am excited to get to see all of the excitement on people's faces and on Kevin's as we present the dishes.

This must be the other side of the rainbow, toto

Something has become abundantly clear this spring. I am out of shape. I couple of times I was out there ascending what very well could have been the stairway to heaven AKA the right amount of heart pumping exercise to give me a massive coronary to make me meet my maker. I am relatively young, fit, and conditioned for this or so I thought. But the last couple of weeks I have been having this weird chest pain. I sharp pain in my left chest cavity, you know, where the heart is. It was so bad at times i figured I should consult experts. Not doctors, mind you. I am too poor for their opinions, but friends whom have worked at hospitals and older people whom very well could have had similar activity in their very own left chest areas. Here is a breakdown of possibilities to my life threatening chest pain:

Gas

Allergies

Stop smoking, Ben

Lack of sleep

heightened anxiety

aliens have implanted me with a chip of some sort

Most of those things I can agree upon. I eat too many fried foods (just when I thought you could never eat enough) I smoke, I haven't been sleeping, and I have always been a bit high strung. And I am sure the aliens put the chip in my brain, not my chest.

So today, I went grocery shopping for heart healthy foods and vowed to turn my irrational fear around of having a heart attack at 29. Though it is possible. I did see a doctor and he diagnosed me with this rare condition that, while it won't kill you, makes me think that you are going to die. It's called Hypochondria. I am looking into joining support groups for survivors and sufferers alike. We can beat this, guys.

I did sleep 12 hours last night. I had prepared to stay up all night as in the last few nights. I got snacks and super-loaded my hulu queue with episodes of "Cummunity" and "Daria". I cooked myself some sauteed broccoli and shrimp in a light olive oil lemon sauce with spices and I settled in. Wouldn't you know I had passed out in my food, ass in the air not even past the opening credits to "daria". The body needs what the body needs. Nate came home at around 1am and fixed me up proper; got me a blanket, ate my food, and watched "parks and recreation" while I slept. I don't even remember that. I do remember waking up at 9:30 all bright eyed and bushy tailed. (hardly)

I am still trying to shake the no energy blues today. I have been dragging ass. I need to wake up proverbially and get really for the witty repartee required of hosting trivia night at Brew On Broadway. someone cyber slap me!

This whole city steps thing has me totally worn out.

Prepare yourselves for some hard core bitching...I work two jobs, haven't had a day off in 3 weeks, don't have a car and port authority sucks so hard, my allergies are bothering me, but...the weather has been so nice lately, I am already half-way done. I have been doing this in my spare time mostly and it gets so difficult. I know that if I had just one day off a week at least, I can be done this summer; early, this summer. So I just need some momentum.

I used to feel so weird when people asked me why I was doing this. I think because when i started, I really didn't know. It was just for fun at first and then it became an addiction, just like when I started shooting heroin watching "Mad Men."
It has become by comfort, my escape, my feel good happy fun time.

I get my alone time on those steps. I think in the entire time doing this I crossed paths with maybe 5 other people on a set of steps which, incidentally, pisses me off. Usually I am counting and if someone tries to be polite and say hello or whatever, I lose count. During the entire time logging the South Side Slopes, which was last Spring/Summer, I didn't have my counter. I recall one incident in particular where I had just about made it all the way to the top of this big mama set of steps and this Asian couple had just begun to descend. Wouldn't you know they had to ask me in broken English, where the "train" stop was. They were adorable and of course I helped them out but as soon as they were on their way, I was palm of hand to face "doh!"...My car was parked at the top and I was not about to walk down these m f-ing steps just to walk back up. That has happened more frequently than I care to remember.

This one time, this hard-core yinzer with all the bravado and lack of intelligence and tact I've come to expect from some of the "hill people", starts in on me as I am clearly doing what I am doing and decides to berate me with stupid questions. my thoughts in response will be in parentheses...
"Did you walk all the way up here?"
"...yes"(no I got dropped from a helicopter mid-way)
"Them are a lot of steps, man"
"yeah." (clearly out of breath here.)
"I usually walk down em, I never walk up. you're crazy"
"it's good exercise" (clearly, because you're fat, but maybe I am crazy)

Pittsburgh Pilgrimage: Hiking The City Steps: Numbers

Pittsburgh Pilgrimage: Hiking The City Steps: Numbers