Scottzilla Eats Chicago

We took our annual summer trip to Chicago to visit family and friends at the beginning of this month. It started out with me breaking off to hang with my old high school buddies...yes the Four Horsemen were reunited....I then met back with the family as we spent some time with both sides of our family. Every year I go back I make a food hit list. Every time I complete my hit list I cannot wait to get back to Georgia to shake off the lethargy that follows completing the hit list. It is my own fault really. I could get up and do something while I am there, but that gets harder and harder to do when everyone around me is just sitting around eating and drinking all day/night!

So I started my quest in downtown Chicago with my 3 best buds from Bremen High Class of '87. In two days I not only drank an obnoxious amount of beer but I managed to pour in:

• Hooters - Hot Chicken Sando
• Lou Malnati's - both thin and deep dish versions
• Portillo's Beef Sando
• An Italian Sausage Sando from Comiskey Park
• A gourmet pizza from a little Italian side walk cafe...the name of the place escapes me right now.
• Beer

The Hooters, I do not understand why we went there. I mean I can get that here in the A-T-L! I just went with the flow. Lou's? I just think they are the best Chicago Style Pizza out there and I ALWAYS make sure it is on my hit list when I return to Chicago. Same with Portillo's! They make one of the best beef sandwiches you can get! The Italian at Comiskey? Well what can I say? We were raisin some hell at the Cell and I needed to eat! The rest was just wingin it in Chi-town. I loved every bit of it while I ate it!

I then rejoined the family for some family fun and yes...more eating. Not as bad as when I was with the guys but still...not good! I managed to find my way to The Submarine Port. Anyone that is from the Midlothian, Illinois area knows about this place. It was where we would go just before 4 am to get a sub and some garlic fries...of course this was on the way home to immediately fall asleep into a grizzly bear like slumber...sometimes in the food that was purchased and not quite finished before the urge to snooze hit you!

I was then on a quest for a Chicago Style Hotdog. This brought me to Mickey's Gyro in Tinley Park. Another classic grease trap BUT not a great place to find a Chicago Style dog! It was not on a poppy-seed bun and it did not have all the great veggies and sport peppers that come normally on a hotdog from that area. So, in any event my quest continued.....to Pop's. There I got a Chicago Style Dog.....that my mom ate instead of her not so Chicago Style dog that just had tomato and cukes on it. This was shocking because my mom hates onion...which my dog had plenty on it and she did not notice. Still I considered my hit list complete. I knew that night we would go to Granite City in Orland and have a good meal and then hit the road the next day.

During my last night of sleep in Chicago I got to thinking as I choked down the inferno of acid reflux burning deep inside of my throat. I started thinking about Georgia and my new home. I started thinking about why I come to Chicago, eat like I am going to the chair, and then feel like crap all fat and tired for the entire first week I am back in Georgia. Shit I was to tired to even create this blog post until today! Still I do not understand it, but I can see how easy it is to get caught in that trap of sedentary binging and partial depression while in the Midwest. Now I am sure it is not the Midwest's fault! It is my own fault in not recognizing that a person predisposed to obesity cannot live in an environment like that. This revelation made me happier than ever to be back in Georgia.

In Georgia, because the weather is always pretty decent, you start to feel guilty when you are not doing something, so of course...you start to do something! So I am back at the gym. Only three days this week but it is a start that I will build on. I have lost the 10 lbs I gained while in Chicago and I am out of my funk! Yes I will miss family and friends....but I sure love living in Georgia for so many reasons!