A group of runners discussing football
By Ryan Jones
(He/Him)
Redactions are used to preserve anonymity and/or common decency.
"Who ordered the Lotus Seed Bun?"
Flat overcast light seeps into the recessed confines of a vegetarian joint in Chinatown, the deuteragonist destination of the Lunar Year dim sum run to the protagonist meaty option. We’re about 10 sweaty runners seated at a large circular table forming our own little microcosm of Athleticism within the greater universe of normie patrons at this brunch hour.
One of the ceiling fans is spinning opposite of its peers. I dimly recall something about toilets in the southern hemisphere but abandon that line of thought as it comes to my attention that a conversation about football is underway. American football, for the readers blessed enough to actually consider a different variant as their default mental model for the word. And not just any football game, but The Game. The Big Daddy, the Big Kahuna. I could keep going.
"Who's watching Rihanna?" asks ████. I note the strategic implication that the game itself is not the object of interest.
"███ Rihanna." 1
"I mean, I can't even follow the rules of football." A series of empathetic heads nod in unison. Before us sits what can only be described as a cornucopia: a humongous rotating mound of rice, pot stickers, dumplings, tofu, bean curd, and some vegetables I don't have the requisite visual library to identify underneath the layer of fried batter, all on a rotating platform that we have seemed to agree only should rotate clockwise despite there being no explicit rule about it.
"Oh, my Dad watches football. I picked up the rules through osmosis," replied ███. A complex imaginary diagram is drawn on the table with hand gestures. "There's four downs."
"I thought it was three."
“And then you lose the ball.”
"No, it's four. But sometimes you just sort of play three and then get rid of the ball on the fourth one."
"And then Jennifer cheated on me." Oh no, wait, sorry, that was the table behind us.
"So when the other team gets the ball, that's a turnover," continued ████, exhibiting a scholarly presence.
I think about apple turnover.
The problem with apple turnover is that it doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. It gets me frustrated just picturing it. What is this, some kind of scone? A pie? If you consult the internet (or, more likely these days, a semi-prescient chat AI that seems to have a better grasp on humanity than humans do, but that is neither here nor there), you will find a historical "account," which, if you notice my use of quotations, has an accuracy I would plant betwixt the flag poles of dubious and likely to be used by Joe Rogan as a fact, which illustrates that in 1630 St. Calais, in the Sarthe region of France, there lived a charitable chatelaine or "lady of the town" 2 who decided, amidst an epidemic, to distribute flour and apples to those in need, who dutifully went on to create the apple turnover as we know it today. So it's basically a shitty emergency food item that was hastily prepared because, in the context of the local happenings, it sucked slightly less than dying of malnutrition. Saint Calais went on to immortalize the event as part of an annual festival called Fête du Chausson aux Pommes (literally "Apple Turnover Festival") in which people with really big hats 3 carry a tray full of, ostensibly, the eponymous delights and show them off to the local magistrates or food critics or whoever goes around in a small French town looking at pastries. Now, firstly, I really have to take a step back in awe of these hats. 4 Secondly, the fact that this supposedly turnover-focused festival has extended to, and I quote, "a religious procession, flower parade, street performances...music, stilts (emphasis mine), horse-drawn carriage rides, an outdoor exhibition, juggling, etc." leads me to conclude that the festival has about as much to do with turnovers as this article has to do about American Football. Which reminds me.
The spread at the protagonist meaty dim sum option.
Image by: Linda S. Chan
By now the explanation has lost a bit of momentum as question after question peppers our unfortunate Professor of Football Studies, who has probably regretted by now the volunteering of a modicum of expertise on the subject. And so the conversation steers away from the land of Dads, yards, downs, offense, defense, and ellipsoids 5 to the more familiar territory of complaints about various esoteric injuries, training plans, and on the impossibility of finding running tights that actually fit.
H aving elected to run back over the bridge after the meal, I slowly realize the error in my thinking as the jostling in my stomach intensifies to a level that sets off various internal alarm bells. I briefly wonder if this is what it feels like to be pregnant. The repetitive vertical sloshing threatens to catalyze all the typical worst nightmare scenarios near and dear to runners, but I soldier through. The $2.75 saved is of little comfort at this point as I try and distract myself by attempting to remember Newton's laws...every step brings about a new wave of interior movement whose undulations shake loose every thought in my head down to a fragmented glittering miasma of goop. Vegetarian dim sum goop.
Plop, plop, plop. Second law. Force is equal to. Mass. Times. Acceleration. Heavy food. Plop. Every step rockets it upward. And then the coefficient of g brings it screaming back down at negative nine point eight meters per second. American Football is played on a field spanning 100 yards, which is very close to 100 meters because a yard and a meter are similar in length. Plop. The third law is about interacting objects. Something about equal and opposite reactions, but my gastronomical condition precludes any further reflection.
Apple turnovers can be made with the following recipe 6
5 granny smith apples; peeled, cored, and diced
2 sweet red apples; peeled cored, diced
4 tablespoons butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1.5 tablespoons cinnamon
freshly grated nutmeg, just a tiny bit
1 teaspoon salt
cornstarch slurry (2 tablespoons cornstarch and some cold water, mix together until smooth, should not too thin or too thick)
1/4 cup water
egg wash (1 egg mixed with some water)
[1] Nobody actually said "███ Rihanna."
[2] Your guess is as good as mine.
[3] https://i.imgur.com/qppAR4L.jpg
[4] Not to belabor the point in the main text, but there are some real humdingers on display in the promotional images available for this Apple Turnover Festival. Misshapen, overlarge berets that resemble mutant pancakes. The aforementioned absurdly vertical chef hats. What appears to be an academic graduation hat (graduation from what school? I had not the courage to delve into). It almost seems that hats, instead of people, were really what was in attendance. A town of hats.
[5] The closest approximation of the shape of an American Football is an "ellipsoid," and you can read more on the subject here, with a bonus explanation of why the flight of this unique sporting ball is closely related to a "rocket with a misaligned thruster."
[6] https://www.reddit.com/r/Baking/comments/27ve4a/just_made_apple_turnovers_recipe_in_comments/
Written and Produced by: Ryan Jones
Image by: Linda S. Chan (she/her)
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