What a glorious weekend. No, I didn’t jet set or road trip off to somewhere exciting. No, I didn’t do anything even that interesting. But it was perfect. I did exactly what I wanted and needed. Run, eat and sleep. After being sick, tired and working a bunch a four day weekend was just what the doctor ordered.
By friday, I was pretty tired, still not feeling recovered from the flu, in fact starting to feel more sick than I had for a week. I was also experiencing a delayed onset of post-race endorphin drop. I was just plain bummed out. My poor mother had to watch me cry and stumble around in the mental darkness trying to pinpoint the source of my mood. Sad and uninspired, I slept a very fitful night and woke up Saturday morning to do my long run. While I had planned to do a 15 miler at Tiger which would take me the coach prescribed 3 hrs, I decided what I needed mentally and physically was a “chocolate run”. I opted to do another run-about of Seattle and set off in the early morning through the city. Less than an hour into the run, I ran by my former best friend and teammate Lindsey Wilson on Queen Anne. At first I didn’t recognize her but then it connected in my brain… and it made me think about my funk. I pondered whether or not it was due to some deep seeded unresolved issue and if I had spent my adult life convincing myself that I had resolved my issues but really not. And then, I started laughing really really hard as I ran. Because the reality of the situation is, I was just bummed out, no deep seeded issue required. I felt a sudden levity and the spring returned to my step.
I had a great run, covering 30 miles. I tried Vespa for the first time on a long, long run and it worked phenomenal. I don’t know how, but it was great. My energy was stable and I only had to take one Clif Shot gel for the whole run. Vespa helps to metabolize fat, stabalize glycogen levels and minimize lactates. I.E. no dramatic drops in blood sugar, even energy, keeping the bonk away by utilizing the energy stores the body already has. Afterwards, I tended my organic vegetable garden at my uncles and went shoe shopping with my mom.
Sunday was another great day, heading out with SRC for the Sunday run and then working in the store for a few hours. For the week, I made it to 100 miles. Wahoo.
Food, in review
I know I haven’t been keeping up on my food postings, though I have managed to make a few remarkable things over the course of the last two weeks. Here are some of the highlights:
Veggie Lasagna
I have never been a big fan of lasagna. It was always too heavy, too meaty, too much of a brick in my stomach. But last week, I was in the mood for something lasagna-esqe. I ran to the store and picked up some Tinkyada Brown Rice pasta. In my opinion, I think this pasta is even BETTER than normal pasta. It was lighter, healthier and more flavorful. I loaded this with veggies and topped with Almond Milk Cheese.
Ingredients:
1/2 package of Tinkyada Brown Rice pasta
For sauce:
1 can diced tomatoes with green chiles
1/2 white onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 tsp italian seasoning
For sauteed veggies:
broccoli
onion
garlic
portabello mushroom
cauliflower
carrot
For layering:
fresh spinach
roasted bell peppers
crushed red pepper
italian spices
almond milk cheese, mozzarella style
Directions:
Prepare the noodles according to the package and preheat the oven to 350. Prepare the sauce by caramelizing the onions and adding in the garlic. Add in the diced tomatoes and spices and let simmer while you prepare the other veggies. I didn’t put amounts on the veggies to sautee because it really depends on how many you are preparing for. If you make too much, it can be saved or served on top as garnish. Cook em up however you like. I did a quick sautee of the onions and garlic, then added the carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and added a bit of mushroom stock to steam the veggies. Once the stock was absorbed I added the other veggies and spices including italian seasonings and a bit of cayenne.
Next step, build! On the bottom put a layer of sauteed veg, then some of the tomato sauce, a layer of roast bell peppers, a layer of spinach and then a single layer of noodles. Repeat until the pan is full and top with cheese. Baked for 25-30 minutes and enjoy!
Italian style quesdilla
Ingredients:
Brown Rice tortilla
Heirloom Tomato
Spinach
Roasted Red Bell Pepper
Mozzarella style Almond Milk Cheese
Directions:
On half of the tortilla layer tomato, spinach, bell pepper and cheese. Cook until cheese is melted and tortilla is golden. Delicious!
From Vegetarian Times, Chilled Noodle Salad with Mango:
Yes I know, I know, I haven’t blogged in forever. And within that forever there has been everything. Ok, well maybe not so expansive as that, but starting last Thursday life has been stuffed and sometimes with snot. And instead of continuing to look for the opportunity to blog about all that has happened in that time and adding and adding, I figured I would take the next 15 minutes I have before I have to leave for my next library training to get myself and you up to date….
Western States training weekend and the storybook monster in my lungs
Last weekend was suppose to be an excellent training weekend, kicked off by QS 50miler and then followed by a double canyon run on the hardest canyons on the WS course. Thursday night I was lying on my couch and I felt something crawl up on to my chest and jump down my throat and nest itself in my lungs. Being a children’s librarian, I could see the pages of the picture book (not a real one) of something like this, complete with slimy green monster. Needlesstosay, that changed everything. I attempted to do the QS 50 miler, but was GETTING so sick that midrace when I could barely breathe and was throwing up, I decided to just do 50k. I wish I was recovering at that point, but really I had been hoping that the run would break whatever it was loose and instead it pushed it deeper. My lungs are very sensitive to flu stuff due to asthma. I still ran a very respectable 4:50 for the course, still love the course and would have been the female winner if they allowed mid-race switching, which surprisingly they don’t. I was only off my own age group course record by 8 minutes and considering all things, I think I could easily knock 25 minutes off my time if healthy. I made the right decision. I then headed to Cafe Gratitude, ate amazing food and was off to Auburn. Hollis showed me various significant spots on the course and on Sunday morning, feeling worse and worse I set off to do a double canyon, which he said would be around a 6 hour run. Running down the 2,500/3 miles I didn’t feel good, so going back up the other side of 3,000+/4.5 miles felt even worse. I did a lot of crying on the way up the hill. I made it to Devil’s Thumb (around 7.5 miles or so) and started heading down into the next canyon when I realized I was being dumb and dumber. I turned around and headed back in the race direction. I made it down to El Dorado Creek and was filling my bottles thinking of the 3 miles straight up I had to go. Hollis told me 24hr runners take about 50 minutes to do it, so I was sure it was going to take me forever and lots of tears. I spent about 20 minutes at the bottom of the canyon just crying and then headed up the hill. I got a sudden burst of power and found the grade really runnable, I made it up in 47 minutes. I got to the top and head over to the Anderson/Trason residency where Hollis was hanging out with his good friends. Earlier I had asked Hollis, “So I was wondering, did Ann ever TRY to qualify for the Olympics in the marathon.” He laughed hysterically. “No, the only marathons she ever wanted to run were training runs. Training runs of 2:35-2:40″. I knew it!
After the run I was dead, by Monday I was so sick I couldn’t even stand and so the week slipped away from me between taking monday off and then working the rest of the week. I managed to make a delicious Pho like soup when I was delirious on Monday. It took me 30 minutes of swaying around, standing in the aisle and the grocery to get the ingredients. On Wednesday, I made an amazing salad with greens hand picked from my own vegetable garden. YUM!!
From my garden!
Best salad in a while: dry roasted asparagus, tomato and mushroom. Pineapple, sprouts, dried cranberries and currants. Avocado. Greens from my garden and a balsamic reduction dressing.
This past weekend my sister was in town and on Sunday I dragged her with me on my first trip to the West Seattle Farmer’s Market. While the current offerings of local, organic, in season produce are sparse, just being there reminded me of the bounty that is set to come in very soon. It was very exciting to me to pick up my greens, garlic, pickled asparagus and dried pluots at the market. My aim is to eat as close to the source as possible, so that means having my own garden (at my uncle’s house), shopping at farmers markets and finally shopping at the co-op. I found a particular “treat” at this weekends market from a vendor called “Fungus and Foliage”, she had fiddlehead ferns which excited me greatly since I haven’t had those since last year in culinary school. After my sister and I were done at the market, I headed out for a 14 mile run, which felt pretty good and then we went to my uncle’s to work in the garden. My lettuce, spinach and carrots are coming on nicely now and it is so exciting!! Before we left, he harvested some rhubarb for me to take home and I looked forward to making a crisp for my sister, possibly as a breakfast treat before she sadly flew away Monday morning.
My not favorite thing about Seattle Restaurants
Over the weekend, with my sister in town we dined out for dinner Fri-Sun. I am a foodie truly, and when I have the opportunity to, I like to explore what is making a splash on the food scene, even if the menu doesn’t show a glimmer of hope that I will be able to eat something not special order. The thing I love about nice/gourmet restaurants is that you have a highly skilled, well trained (we sure hope) chef in the back, supported by great sous-chefs. I have a great deal of faith in their skills. Thus, I never feel bad in a restaurant asking for what I want if I don’t see something on the menu I can eat. A sign of a good restaurant to me is when they don’t even bat an eye when I ask if the chef can prepare me a plate of veggies using olive oil. Half of the time, there are ample veggies to choose from from other dishes and it gives them an opportunity to do something different. Other restaurants, such as Hi-Life, offer several vegetable sides that if I order two, I get plenty of food. Out of the three restaurants we went to over the weekend, 2 failed miserably. Cactus on Alki was the only success and the waitress was even able to offer an option that I would have never been able to decipher on my own- Spa Chicken sans Chicken, double Portabello. It was amazing. The chimchurri and mushrooms were great together. The other two, were fantastically disappointing. Betty, which was just named one of the best new restaurants, brought me 4 sprigs of Broccolini and 2 roasted tomatoes. What are you kidding me? That combined with the mixed green salad, aka lettuce and light dressing, was simply not enough. I think in this case 1) the waitress did a poor job of communicating with the kitchen and 2) they just didn’t take time or effort on it. The second restaurant, Coastal Kitchen, I went to more hopeful since they are run by the same parent company as Hi Life. So I expected them to have vegetable sides. My sister and I joked that it would have to be better than 4 sprigs of Broccolini. The waitress was awesome in working with me and totally got it. Apparently however, all of the rice and potatoes are already prepared with cream and butter, and the other veggies (?) were not available to make a nice dish, so what did I get? Broccolini, 6 sprigs and about 4 stalks of asparagus, oh and a tiny pile of Chard. After all that discussion? I mean, that would be fine if maybe I ate like 1300 calories a day or something. But just to be alive at 6 feet tall, I need nearly 2000 calories. If I move, add more. If I run, like I just had -14 miles-, there is another 1400. The waitress came back and checked in and asked how it was, and I tentatively said, it was fine but what I was still hungry. She totally was like, “yeah what was with that?” She went back to the kitchen and had them make me more. Luckily, it is an open kitchen, so you can see what they are doing. And I felt bad to make them do that, but really. The question is: how hard is it to make a vegetable dish? 1) the restaurant makes hand over fist on the dishes 2) they take no more time to prepare than any other dish 3) there are so many vegetarians, vegans and special needs eaters around, you would think by now most restaurants would offer AT least one or two vegetable side dishes. It just disappointed me (and made me light headed from lack of fuel). I just don’t think people who don’t want to eat dairy/meat/wheat should be doomed to not be able to get more than a salad at most nice restaurants.
My favorite non-running blog
On Saturday, at work we had a surprise visit by City Librarian Deborah Jacobs who is leaving the system to take a position at the Gates Foundation. Needlesstosay, meeting her is a really big deal. She has done amazing things for the SPL and it is what it is because of her. When I got home that evening, all a twitter about the visit, I was checking my blog comments and another inspiration to me, had left a comment on my blog! Karina from Karina’s Kitchen blog, which is my favorite gluten free blog, had commented on my blog. Yes, she only stopped by to say that she was glad I enjoyed her recipe BUT STILL, it made me feel nice. So, I decided that I would make a couple more renditions of recipes from her blog and see how I liked them. On Monday morning, I made a tasty rhubarb crisp based on her vegan peach crisp and then on Tuesday night, I made Colcannon. Both were absolutely delicious and I highly recommend. Its been the kind of busy week and so having the opportunity to try out others recipes helps me find the time to do everything I need to and still make amazing meals.
My favorite simple trick
Lately I have been a big fan of making different glazes using strong vinegars or soy sauce. The fiddlehead ferns that I got at the farmers market lent themselves well to this, as they have a very , how shall I put this nicely, “earthy” flavor to them. I parboiled them for a few minutes and set aside. Meanwhile, I minced two cloves of elephant garlic (yes it was a ton of garlic) and sauteed that. Once the garlic as getting all crispy and golden, I threw in the ferns for a quick saute and then added about 1/4 balsamic vinegar. I turned that puppy on high and reduced the balsamic down to a nice glaze. It was unbelievable. The sweetness of the balsamic nicely complimented the earthiness of the ferns, the garlic rounded out the dish, filling in the flavor profile.
My favorite drink
There are few people that know me and don’t know that I not only love Kombucha but that I brew my own. I have a minor obsession with the stuff. I brew it on a regular basis, but haven’t had the opportunity since moving because I have been too darn busy (*gasp*, I swore- I hate that word). I realized as I was brewing that I had yet to share the love AND ease of making this wonder tonic and figured since I was well into it, I should share how I make my favorite thing!
This is how I make my massive batch of Kombucha
Ingredients:
5 gallons distilled water (very important, tap water or filtered tap water is not acceptable)
5 cups of organic cane sugar
12 bags of organic green tea
12 bags of organic black tea
kombucha cultures & starter tea
supplies:
gallon jars
cloth covers for jars (clean towel or old cut up t-shirts work)
rubber bands to secure cloth
warm dark safe place outside of the kitchen for culturing
Directions:
It is really quite simple. Brew tea. That is bring all that water to a boil and turn off the heat. Stir in the sugar until dissolved and place the tea bags in:
Since I have no pot big enough to fit that much water, I do it in 3 separate pots. I do 1.25 gallons in the two smaller ones and 2.5 in the large one. This is when you should know the ratio of water to sugar to tea. For every gallon of water, one cup of sugar and 5 tablespoons (or bags) of tea is required. Since I do a mixture of green and black tea, I usually do this in equal parts. You can use any green or black tea in any combination, but don’t use any other type of tea. Herbal especially….
Once you have the tea brewing, let it hang out on the burners (off!!) for about 30 minutes. The longer it sits, the stronger it gets. After the tea is done brewing, remove the tea bags and let the tea cool completely. This usually means overnight for this size batch.
Once your tea has cooled, you can get your starter jars out and get ready to divide the tea. I have about 12 gallon jars which could all be utilized, however I brewed enough for about 8, so some were consolidated into a “mother jar”. Kombucha cultures are like any fermented food culture, you get one from someone who has been making it as the Kombucha cultures produce a “baby” during the fermenting process. Thus, all of my 3 dozen cultures are all products of one culture that I received from Sean two Christmases ago. I am always happy to share my cultures with others so they can start their own culturing process. The starter jar basically has about 1/5 of the previous fermentation cycle liquid and a culture (or two in my case since I have so many). I put the cooled tea into the jars, filling up to just below where the top of the jar starts to narrow, as the culture will split you want to provide room for this to happen. Never touch a kombucha baby or mother with metal. This will kill them. In my head, I imagine that I could hear them screaming in pain if I did this. After all the jars are done and all the brewed tea appropriated, cover with cloth and secure with a rubber band. Now, put the jars in a warm, dry, dark place to ferment for 2 weeks. 
After two weeks, the brew should be well strong enough and it will be time to bottle. I use large amber glass bottles to bottle mine. You pour the brew through a funnel into the bottles and leave the cultures in the jar with enough liquid to start the next batch. Now, here is the secret. I then put the amber bottles on the shelf for 7 days to continue to ferment, this is when you will proceed the nice bubbly-ness that we all know and love about Kombucha. After 7 days, I put mine in the fridge until I am ready to drink. Sometimes I mix mine by the glass with Organic 100% juice (this means its just juice, not even water), such as Concord Grape or Cranberry. Delicious!
This ‘buch is for you!
