Add risotto to cioppino. Stir together. Now add them to the list of delicious food that I will never again make at home because Vespaio has shown me, time after time, that I am simply not worthy of calling my food the same thing as theirs.
To wit:

Vespaio’s risotto is tender and creamy, with enough excellent cheese and truffle oil that it smooths into the back of your mouth in an embarrassingly personal way.

Mine is gummy, with too much salt and butterfat to be anything but a treat food and not enough flavor to warrant more than a few bites. Believe me, adding peas does not save the day.

Vespaio’s ciopinno is a fruity, rich, green-and-deep-red-tasting cloud with firm, tender mouthfuls of spanking-fresh mussels, tuna, prawns and flounder.

Mine is fish stew.

Who needs rice and fish at home anyway? Surely that’s why god invented restaurants?

Time is ticking down to a little event I’ve begun to call the WIE (Worst Idea Ever, pronounced ‘why’ as in ‘why, God, why?’) The WIE consists of a reasonable swim, a somewhat less reasonable bike ride, and wraps up with what we will laughingly refer to as a run.
Austin has been getting down below 80 degrees at night, and has been topping out at 106. This is what makes the WIE the WIE. It’s one thing to prance around in a bathing suit and swim cap in front of a thousand fit strangers after a decade of small overindulgences have thoroughly left their mark on your hips, it’s another to do this at 7 in the morning, when it’s heading towards 90 degrees before it’s light out, and when you have 2 hours of panting and sweating and maybe dying to go before you can sit down and eat breakfast, at which point it will be well over 100 and you’ll have a bright red face for the rest of the day. Anyway, the question is, how do we prepare for this?
So far, training day has consisted of a lie-in until 2 in the afternoon, a tuna sandwich, and a loving look at the Greek Gods baklava ice cream in the freezer. Though delicious, I will not allow it to suffer the indignity of being a part of the wreck that stumbles across the finish line tomorrow. Bush’s baked beans, on the other hand, may well be invited along. They seem stoic enough to withstand the abuse. Here’s how the larder (is that root word really necessary?) stacks up to the WIE challenge:
Mango – yes. Easily digested. Tropical, so it’s heat-tolerant.
Arugula – no. Through delicious, spicy lettuce does not scream ‘team player’. I need food I don’t have to fight.
Pickles – no. Ever notice how pickles make you thirsty?
Pickled okra – yes. Just in case I win the triathlon, so that when interviewed on my amazing performance I can share with the world the refreshing treasure that is the pickled okra July triathlon training meal.
Oatmeal – yes, because something tells me I might not win but that having a base of complex carbs might help me finish.
Decent bottle of merlot – no, but I’ll talk to you tomorrow, sweetheart.

UPDATE – WIE is now pronounced Whee! As in, ‘Whee, I did it!’ Fucking hot, though.