Halloween Hustle 5K race

Had a good time this morning at the Halloween Hustle race in Palatine, IL. I ran it with Courtney, Hal, and Tyler. Everybody finished and Hal won for his age group.

We Are Batty 4 Bats

Dan is studying bats in school. So this weekend we had a little fun with bats. Dan was so excited! Stellaluna is a long time family favorite.

3 ways Subway sandwiches are different in Philippines

Sometimes if I'm interested in getting something other than the local food when visiting another country, it is fun to try U.S. fast food in other places. Sometimes it is very different from the U.S., like that you can get grilled skewers of shrimp with a side of rice at Pizza Hut in Asia. I find it more interesting when a concept has more subtle changes to appeal to the people of another country.

In the Philippines, Subway sandwiches are very much the same as in the U.S., but with a few differences.

#1- they deliver, which is more of a Jimmy Johns thing in the U.S.

#2- if you order a foot-long sub to go from the store, they will still slice it in half but instead of wrapping the halves together, they wrap them separately. I think they assume that no one person is really going to eat a whole foot-long sandwich themselves. Leave that to the gluttonous Americans :)

So, since they assume that the foot-long is for two different people, they ask separately about what sauce or toppings I want for each of the two halves of the sandwich. It seems novel to them that I want the same thing on both sides of the foot-long sub.

#3 - All the sauces are the same as the U.S., except that written in on the chart is "ketchup" as one of the sauce options, and sure enough, there is a big bottle of ketchup there if you ask for it as your sauce. I know in the Philippines that ketchup is pretty popular, people put it on their fried chicken and so forth. I found it somewhat gratifying, although I didn't add it to my chicken teriyaki sub, that it was available.

I remember that I put ketchup on most of my sandwiches when I was a little kid and that someone had once questioned why I would put ketchup on a turkey and ham sandwich instead of mustard or mayonnaise. Not sure why ketchup is just for burgers, fries, and hot dogs -- not for a sub sandwich. Apparently, somewhere in the world, it works fine.

A Sunday Walk in Heaven's Garden

Fall Break