Low quality meat

On Sunday, I went on a 100+ mile bike ride with some guys. When we got into Lodi — about 80 miles into the trip — we stopped at a Piggly Wiggly, and one of the guys got a ham sandwich with mustard and mayo. It sounded disgusting.

But it looked kinda good. He asked if I wanted a bite and I said sure and holy cow! It was excellent.

I held off on purchasing one right there. Based on all my previous athletic experience, it just didn’t make sense that a ham sandwich could be consumed at that stage of a workout. But when I got home, I went to the store and got some ham!

Earlier in the summer, when I was visiting my sister and her new restaurant in Milwaukee, I had a Chicago-style hot dog (hold the relish) — not a food I normally go for much. It was my brother’s idea. It They (I had two) were wonderful. In fact, I had another one for the road later that day.

And then the next time I was in Milwaukee, I had a hot dog.

The summer progressed, we went up to Door County, and wouldn’t you know it: there was a bakery/deli that served Chicago-style dogs. Of course, since every third person up there is a FIB, I should have been able to guess that they would have Chicago-stlye hot dogs.

A few days later, after we had gotten back to Madison, I got the craving again. There used to be a hot dog place on Regent called Dog Eat Dog. And there was another hot dog place somewhere up on the capitol square. But I knew Dog Eat Dog went out of business, and I suspected the other place had also. I vaguely remembered seeing a hot dog place just a couple months ago, and I had read about a guy with a cart who sold hot dogs on Williamson Street, so I decided to go out for a mid-day drive and track down a dog.

I took my own dog with me; together we drove out to Willy Street, then back up to the capitol — all to no avail. So I gave up.

But then today, after that whole ham sandwich incident, I got inspired to search again. I actually found a forum which discussed hot dog places in Madison! And then I found a site called hotdogchicagostyle.com. I’m not kidding. It rates all the places in Madison that serve Chicago-style hot dogs.

Apparently, one of the best in town is in Home Depot. Yuck!

Needless to say, I’ll be trying it.