New Riders of the Polish Sausage...

I think I ate too much. I ate an entire breakfast burrito for dinner. It seemed good, a little juicy, and perhaps a bit spicy. But I didn't expect it to strike back at me. After conferring with a fellow sufferer of temporary food displacement syndrome, I concluded that I may simply have bitten off more than I should have chewed.

But it could be that the Polish hot dog I had for lunch didn't help. Now, this really has nothing to do with my GI system, so stop saying "Ewwww!" And why do you have to be so prissy about that stuff anyway?

But, more importantly, I have noticed something about the food in Seattle: it's really, really spicy, and all the spice seems to be concentrated in sausage.

When I think Seattle, WA, I think of many things like the Space Needle, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Puget Sound -- but I don't think about sausage.

How in the world did Seattle end up with the spiciest sausage in the world? Well, okay, I don't know for certain that it's the spiciest sausage in the world, but -- damn -- it's spicy. What do they put in the stuff?

It could be the large Asian community here has influenced the way traditional European meats are seasoned. After all, you can almost find a Thai restaurant on every corner in Downtown Seattle. What's with all the Thai restaurants? I see more Chinese and Vietnamese people than I've seen of any other east Asian ethnic group here. Do Seattlites just like really spicy Thai food?

But the Italian food is spicy, too. I ate a pizza from a local pizzeria on Saturday. The sausage like to set my mouth on fire (and, sadly, it added three pounds back to my weight, which had declined all last week). I also ate lunch at a cool little Italian cafe near my office last week. It's located on Pioneer Square (the cafe, not the office) but I cannot remember the name of it. I'll recognize the place when I see it. I had a sandwich with an unpronouncable name the chief meat of which was ... sausage.

If we were in the Middle East, Seattle would be the capital of Sausage Arabia. I'm beginning to think all the coffee shops around here probably offer sausage lattes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

By the way -- did I mention that Seattle really loves sausage?

I've found myself lusting for a cheap McDonalds' hamburger. Not a Big Mac. Not a Quarter Pounder. Just a little hamburger. I'm sure there is a McDonalds downtown somewhere but I haven't found it, yet. I did stumble across a KFC last week and stopped in to eat dinner because it was the first restaurant I'd found that had an actual parking lot where you can pull in and not have to pay any fees. Technically, it wasn't in downtown, but rather in Queen Anne, or on the edge of Queen Anne, which is right next to downtown (and should I be consistently spelling that Downtown or downtown?).

Well, it was good to have some greasy fried American food for a change, although the KFC meal had its way with me afterward, too. I think it may have been the sausage....