TWO KINDS OF PIE FILLING ON BROADWAY AND REPUBLICAN

When Pedestretarian contributor Tara Atkinson told me she had seen two different types of pie on the sidewalk outside the Broadway QFC, I expected to find two whole smashed pies, or at least two semi-intact pieces of pie, and instead found what appeared to be just a pile of cherry filling and a pile of apple. The fillings looked like they had hit the ground with some force, and there was no trace of crust in the vicinity. When I pulled over on my bike to take a picture, a couple of panhandlers sitting on the curb told me I was one of many who had stopped for a closer look at the pastry wreckage. One of them said, “Kind of makes you want to eat off the ground, doesn’t it?” “Kind of does,” I replied, though in fact it was the most repulsive discarded non-meat item I have seen that was not partially digested. The characteristic QFC pie goo had dried just enough to remind me of dogs that sleep with their eyes open. It looked as if someone had sucked the crust off the fruit and spit it back out. I couldn’t even bring myself to smell it, though it likely smelled better than it looked. As I normally do not hesitate to eat off the ground, I’m not sure why I told someone I wanted to eat this notably unappealing pie filling.

If you find food on the street, send location and description to sgalvin1000@gmail.com

DOG FOOD AND PEAR CORE ON 14th AND PINE

Pedestretarian contributor Willie Fitzgerald found this pear core and can of “Pet Pride Good n’ Meaty” dog food outside Porchlight Espresso. They had been placed on one of two black wooden boxes near door of the café like slime-covered and slime-filled candles on an altar. Willie says neither of these objects smelled, though he prodded the pear core and found it to be “moist” and “kinda gross.” While fruit cores are left in all sorts of places year-round, the can of dog food was puzzling, especially outside of the warm “discarded food season” when people throw half-eaten hot dogs and pizza slices around like rice at a wedding. According to Willie there was no indication of why the pear core and dog food were on the box, and “sadomasochism is a possibility, as is astral flux.” Because there is no one in the photo naked and covered with can-shaped bruises, the most likely explanation seems to be that someone ate the pear and then was too full to eat the dog food.

If you find food on the street, send location and description to sgalvin1000@gmail.com

MARBLE CAKE WITH SPICY CHEESE TOPPING ON N. 9th AND DRIGGS (BROOKLYN, NY)

Pedestretarian contributor Baiju Prafulkumar Bhatt found this food item resting on top of a corduroy jacket in a Brooklyn neighborhood inhabited mainly by a mixture of “old Polish families and twenty-something recently graduated liberal arts majors.” Baiju says the dish, which was accompanied by a mostly empty, melting iced coffee, looked like a “moist, bready substance,” possibly a Reuben sandwich, topped with cheese. Poking at it with a fork made him curious and hungry enough to take a bite, revealing that the dish was in fact something resembling marble cake. The cake tasted of vanilla and chocolate, and the substance blanketing it was a cheese with a “spicy, Southwestern twang” Baiju believes was jack. He speculated that the cake/cheese was a “KFC Famous Bowl” style concoction, and noted that the cheese was melting visibly in the morning heat.

If you find food on the street, send location and description to sgalvin1000@gmail.com

BAGEL SANDWICH ON DENNY AND OLIVE

Pedestretarian contributor Web Crowell found this bagel sandwich on Denny and Olive at 4: 37 PM. It was lying under a bike rack outside the Bus Stop bar, wrapped in cellophane and completely uneaten. Its neon-orange price tag read “1.75.” The sandwich’s wrapping was covered in droplets of what was hopefully rainwater by the time I retrieved it at 10: 32 PM. The sidewalk around the sandwich was scattered with enough cigarette butts to make me wonder if its owner had quit smoking and eating bagels simultaneously and hurled the sandwich out of their car along with their ash tray. The Bus Stop was empty except for a bartender and one patron, who both watched as I shook the water off the bagel and put it into my bag with expressions which seemed equally likely to mean “I was going to eat that,” and “Someone’s taking the roofie bagel.” Tasting it in the privacy of my living room revealed that it was not in fact a roofie bagel, but poppy and sunflower seed, with a thin cracked rectangle of cold, slightly dry cream cheese between its sliced halves. It tasted of the sidewalk in the same way old ice cream can taste of the freezer. The following night my roommate added hummus, avocado slices and a fried egg to the sandwich, which improved it drastically. We ate the whole thing, with beet and goat cheese salad.

If you find food on the street, send location and description to sgalvin1000@gmail.com

MILK ON 11th AND THOMAS

The complete lack of even shattered remains of a bottle make this milk appear to have spilled in a violent and unusual way, like that lava lamp that exploded and killed its owner because he put it on a stovetop to make the blobs go faster. Pedestretarian contributor Kelly O did not report any corpses nearby, so either the corpses had been removed or the milk bottle had been recycled. Kelly noted that the milk had no smell, and that there was a large amount of milk, probably a whole bottle. It called to mind a time a bottle of olive oil fell out of my bag in South Lake Union, causing me to yell “shit bag” loudly enough to startle a group of Amazon employees. While profanity did alarm people around me, had I stood there sobbing, they would have assumed I had “emotional problems,” or perhaps that I was “schizophrenic.” We are probably warned against crying over spilled milk in order to avoid these labels. “The milk was a nice reminder not to be a crybaby,” said Kelly, “No use being a crybaby.”

If you find food on the street, send location and description to sgalvin1000@gmail.com

ONION ON EASTLAKE AND MERCER

This onion was mostly hidden under a parked car on Eastlake outside the Mars Bar. It seemed intact except for a missing patch of papery outer skin. This exposed spot was whitish-yellow and embedded with tiny gray rocks from the pavement. Juice leaked from the punctures. An ambulance was parked next door with lights flashing and I imagined someone had dropped the onion because they were having a stroke. From then on I thought of it as the “Stroke Onion.” I imagined the onion’s former owner as a Russian peasant like the ones in old movies like The Battleship Potemkin.I always picture disasters as being very bizarre or dramatic and when I witness them sometimes the most horrifying thing is that they appear insignificant in comparison to the way I imagined them. The idea of an old Russian lady being rushed away in an ambulance while her new onion rolled under a car was so depressing I decided to make the Stroke Onion into the most cheerful dish I could think of, which was a stir fry. I sliced up about a third of the onion and sautéed it in olive oil, then added chopped bell pepper, asparagus, broccoli, and tofu. I seasoned the stir fry with soy sauce, sweet chili sauce, and rice vinegar. I added chopped zucchini last so it wouldn’t get mushy. The sauce-saturated onion slices covered the vegetables that couldn’t be cooked long enough to absorb flavor. I wrapped what remained of it up for future dinners.

BANANA PEPPER ON PINE AND PIKE PLACE

The corner of Pine and Pike Place is ghostly and magical on a May evening, like a single jelly bean left in a bag because no one knows what flavor it is, discarded on an ancient burial ground. Pike Place Market closes at 6 PM and some tourists are still wandering between Post alley bars in the fading blue daylight. At this hour of the day, in the absence of flavored honey and Pike Place Fish’s airborne fish corpses, Pike Place Market’s popularity with tourists seems even more arbitrary than usual. It looks the same as any brick or cobblestone street in town that was built on a foundation of hundred-year-old garbage and toilets that all overflowed simultaneously when the tide came in http://www.senior-inet.com/articles/article5.htm, but with a few remnants of the day’s business, like this shriveled banana pepper. It was near a produce stand that was enclosed in after-hours plastic. There was something sinister about it, lying withered on the cobblestones in near-darkness. I expected it to be intensely spicy, but the piece I shaved off with a pair of scissors tasted just like a raisin. Leathery, sweet and mysteriously not spicy, a shred of this pepper was the perfect thing to eat on a street deserted except for a few people who had travelled thousands of miles to watch someone throw fish.

If you find food on the street, send location and description to sgalvin1000@gmail.com