Tagines, the Pirates, and Homeless People

Last Wednesday, DB~ and I went to the Pirate game with my company's two IT consultants. Before we went down, I made the gang dinner at our house using our new tagines. This time, I did a diced vegetable mix of red peppers, squash, onion, and garlic with a chicken broth. I then topped each tagine with a piece of tilapia and let it cook for 35 minutes on the stovetop.

It was served with a couscous (Near East box of Toasted Pine Nut) and some roasted asparagus topped with a pesto mix and pecorino romano cheese as a finisher. It sure beat having another hot dog, fries, and Coke for $20 at PNC Park.

After dinner, we made our way down to the game and enjoyed ourselves in the seats just a few rows behind the 1st base dugout. DB~ was on high alert for foul balls for the first few innings, but then settled down after that. Around the 6th inning, I made my way over to the left field bleacher section to meet in person for the first time a poster from Only Bucs. It's always good to put a face to a (screen)name.

Unfortunately, the Pirates lost and quite badly at that, to the lowly Astros. But they still won 2 of 3 from them in the series. This game was my 5th of the year and brought my record to 2-3 (they won both of the Red Sox games I went to). An interesting anomaly is that I have now seen every pitcher in the rotation exactly one time. There were many years that I would see Maholm 4 times or Duke 3 times and Snell 2 times.

After the game, when we were walking back to our car, there was a lull in the conversation. I decided to pipe up with "In the summer of 2008, I spent a whole night walking around downtown observing homeless people." That was a conversation stopper. 2008 was a "transitional year" for me, as I was working through some things. It was also a few months before I met DB~ in December of 2008. So one summer night in July, I put on some beat up clothes and wandering around town trying to see what the homeless did in the City at night. Saw a few prostitutes and probably a drug deal, too. I went to the Terminal Building around 2 or 3 in the morning to watch the tractor trailers come in and off load. There were a few n'er-do-wells there waiting to help off load the produce shipments for a few dollars. I watched from underneath the Veterans Bridge mostly.

So all in all, that night last week was the epitome of this blog -- it involved food, the Pirates, and Pittsburgh. Maybe the seemy side of Pittsburgh, but Pittsburgh nonetheless.