Will Run For Eggs (Okay, I’m totally lying, but if they’re in a pie crust…)

Today, I spent an hour and a half obsessing about a slice of quiche. I’m a little embarrassed by this admission, but not because it gives you more evidence of my food compulsion. Rather, I’m embarrassed because my extended reverie was about an egg pie! And there is nothing cool or sexy about that – especially when you are dreaming about it while running.

I decided to do my first run of the day at one of my favorite parks. Having just arrived back in LA, I’ve been craving greenery and flowers. Lacey Park has an abundance of both. An overflowing rose garden greets you on the back side of each loop as you make your way around the .70 of a mile of grassy fields full of children playing and grown-ups doing tai chi. It is a great place to get in an easy run – no traffic, no stress, no chance of getting lost. And that was what today called for after a stressful two-day drive from Texas through the major storms and flooding that swept through Arizona and California as we made our way west.

I wanted pretty and I wanted easy, and that meant loops in a pretty park. There is one problem, though, with pretty and easy: it gives my hamster brain too much space to latch onto something and then think about it, loop after loop, for the entire run. And more often that not, that something is FOOD – what I’m going to eat when I’m done with my run; what I’m going to cook for dinner; what George Clooney’s favorite comfort food might be. Today, my brain latched onto quiche. Asparagus Bacon quiche, to be precise. After all the traveling I had done earlier in the week, I was in desperate need ofsomething that did NOT have “grease” as the first ingredient. For some reason, quiche came to mind. Now, the only reason this is weird is that I don’t like eggs. Eck. But quiche stands alone in my book because it has almost as much heavy cream in it as eggs – and I love me some heavy cream. And then when you add bacon, and Swiss cheese, and asparagus, and scallions, and cayenne pepper for a little kick in the pants, all thoughts of icky eggs are replaced by the phrase Savory Food Pie. Yum.

So that’s what I made for dinner last night. And I enjoyed it immensely. And I thought that was the end of it until this morning when I started looping around and around and couldn’t get the Savory Food Pie out of my mind. I HAD to have a piece. So, even though I had lunch plans, I came home, heated a slice, tossed a quick salad with a vinaigrette, and snarfed it down before I got in the shower. And it was just as delicious as I had obsessed about imagined for 10 miles in the park. In fact, I’m going to even push it and say that I ran faster just so I could get home to my Savory Food Pie – and we all know how much I hate to run fast.

See, not all obsessions are bad for you. But forget I mentioned George Clooney.

Tagged as: loop runs, quiche, Running