Christmas Eve Traditions

Christmas Eve dinner for as long as I can remember has always been the same meal for my family. No matter where we are, it doesn’t really feel like Christmas unless we are noshing on prime rib for dinner and my sister’s special sugar cookies. Even though when we get together the question is often posed, “what do we have for Christmas Eve dinner?”, it is not really a question. This year my sister, mom and I were going to be all together unlike last year and even more special, we were going to be celebrating in my sister and my new apartment. Furthermore, I was very excited to not only share Christmas with all the most important people in my life, but also to share our Christmas traditions which also include eating homemade loaves of Stollen on Christmas morning with sausages, eggs, fresh squeezed oj and plenty of coffee and eating “stew-p” which is an everything but the kitchen sink type of soup/stew (hence stew-p).

I ordered a really nice roast from Drew’s Brothers and while I was picking it up nabbed some breakfast sausages, hot italian sausages and chicken (for Christmas day). There were a total of 7 of us for Christmas Eve dinner and I wanted everything to be awesome. I fretted a bit over how to cook the prime rib and didn’t settle on a method until I read this post from Serious Eats. It went through the popular methods and figured out how to have the perfect sear plus perfect pink (medium rare). I was sold and with some trepidation proceeded forward.

Secret recipe Mac and Cheese

The menu included Prime rib, Horseradish Sauce (creme fraiche, dijon and horseradish), Green Beans with Garlic and Butter, Salad with AMAZING homemade dressing (red wine vinegar, olive oil, blue agave, fresh herbs and garlic), my secret recipe Mac and Cheese and fresh bread from The Baker.

I prepared everything in stages, timing out the whole meal and executing it dang near perfectly. Especially impressive since dinner time got pushed back by slightly tardy guests. I was nervous about the meal. I really wanted to provide an amazing dining experience for my guests. Before we dug into the food, we enjoyed a nice spread of crackers, hummus, salsa and plenty of Prosecco.

Empty plates and empty wine glasses? For shame! Dig in people!

With everything ready we sat down at the table, paused for me to take a picture of the table and then dug right in. Once everyone’s plates were full the room fell into a deep, deep silence as everyone savored their food. I hadn’t started digging in to my plate, instead I just watched their reactions and the delight at the tasting of each thing. It was actually pretty funny since they all seemed to look up at once at me and say, “this is really good!”. We drank delicious red wine with dinner and then once we had digested and socialized for a while devoured some of my sister’s Special Sugar Cookies, Peanut Butter Peanut Butter Chip cookies by The Baker and Gluten Free Ginger Molasses cookies by me. It was so much fun enjoying our tradition as a family and sharing it with the people I care about.

Goodbye Year, Hello New Chef in the Family?

Sister sampling her soup.

The other night, my beautiful sister offered to cook for us and boldly go where she doesn’t often go. My sister can cook, she just doesn’t know it yet. She has her staple items that she makes for herself, but a bad experience in the past of being made fun of for something she cooked for someone else has led her to be trepidatious when it comes to cooking for others. I was utterly shocked when she offered to cook for The Baker and I.

And cook she did. A delicious Baked Potato soup with bacon, scallions and cheddar. It had the flavor profile of a good hearty loaded baked potato but was a much lighter meal. She paired it with a salad and we were in business. She did great and I look forward to her next attempt. Who knows maybe one day she’ll be guest posting for me!

While she made soup, I worked on making some gluten free dark chocolate peanut butter and jelly cupcakes for NYE dinner. They are pretty dang tasty. I am stoked to share them. It has been a good year of eating, blogging, writing and living. I look forward to a continuation and growth of that in the new year. Happy New Year everyone!

The perfect bite: date, blue cheese and truffle honey

I have been absent. I know. I apologize. It was necessary.

Breaking in the new kitchen: Buffalo Runner Bean Chili & Jalapeno Cheddar Cornbread (GF!)

You see I have been taking care of one of my goals, a necessary thing to go forward with my life: finding a place to call home. For the majority of this year I have bounced around, having with me only enough stuff (including my knife roll!!!) to cover the bare minimum. Everything else was stashed in storage. I have been all over the world this year, spent copious amounts of time in Seattle, San Francisco and Colorado. This whole time however, I have circled and circled the same central issue when trying to tackle other goals in my life: lack of roots, absence of home, no place to provide routine, consistency and roots. Over the summer and early fall, I really focused on deciding where I want to be and came to the answer I have known for a long time but was unwilling or able to accept: my heart is in San Francisco. The food, the trails, the people, the family, the vibe, the weather, everything is just me. It makes me happy. And so over these past couple of weeks, I have been in a fever pitch trying to get moved. My sister and I found a place in the City and we went in to go mode in order to get the place sorted before Christmas. I have been to Seattle and gotten all of my things out of storage, unpacked box after box and even managed to sneak in a few phenomenal meals cooked in my new kitchen, which is absolutely fabulous. And I have been good about snapping pictures with my Nikon camera, I have loads of shots of drool inducing food (included here, a sample).

GF Ginger Molasses Cookies and Peanut Butter Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

One of the things that has not been able to be a priority is a weekly (or three) post. I wish that was not the case, but on the list of dire necessity it does not rank highly, maybe at some point in the future when I am a famous writer, but not right now. I often wonder if I would even be missed in the massive blog-iverse. Probably not, but I’d still like to believe that my voice matters, to someone.

A Thanksgiving Salad

If you’ve had a chance to read my Delicious Journey, you’d know that I have a clear goal of making this blog into something. And I am more resolved than ever to do so. Starting with the new year. So awesome reader(s) enjoy your holidays and happy new year! May you have a safe, beautiful, delicious holiday! Cheers!

Thanksgiving dinner: Turkey Mole on handmade tortillas.

Last year, I took a good week and a half off, I seem to recall. I didn’t feel like I needed it much, but the break was good for me mentally, as where I was in life was just an exhausting state of being. I was moving back from Atlanta after a temporarily indefinite stay there and trying to figure out where I was going and what I was doing with myself. I got back to running pretty quickly and have been running ever since.

This year after JFK in November, I was looking forward to a nice recovery period for the first time this year. After every race this year I have had maybe a week or so to relax and recover (or less) before turning my sights towards the next race. It was nice to think about just running and not scheduling, planning and just running (or not) what I felt. I decided to signup for the last PCTR race of the year, Rodeo Beach 50k as all of my training partners and a bunch of friends were running and I wanted to join in the fun. Plus, I wanted to see if I could run a race without specifically focusing on the race and truly allow myself to just let the day bring me what it would. Deep down, I was also hoping I might earn a hug and a mug from co-RD Sarah Spelt. She gives awesome hugs. See…

After JFK, I took a nice easy week, running 60 miles including running around at Quad Dipsea and such. I ran when I wanted and my body responded. With all the work we’ve been doing on my muscles at Psoas Massage and Bodywork in my weekly sessions, my legs recovered phenomenally from JFK and I decided that I would just continue with my run what I feel “offseason”. Since then I have run 91 miles, 50 miles, and last week 105 miles. I have been tired, energetic, dead legs and the freshest legs ever. The 50 mile week mentioned before was my moving week from Sausalito and Seattle to San Francisco. Moving is exhausting and while I got 50 miles in Tuesday-Friday, Sat and Sunday were full of nothing but moving boxes and furniture into my 18 foot rental truck and driving down from Seattle.

Fast forward to the following Saturday, December 18 and the PCTR Rodeo Beach 50k. After hauling, lifting, carrying, driving, cleaning, organizing the new house, not to mention trying to do things to prepare for Christmas, I was standing at the start line of the race wondering what the hell I was doing and how I was ever going to muster up the energy to run 50k let alone 5 cussing feet. I had been going full out all week, for more than a week really, and really hit the wall Thursday. I had a horrible run Friday morning feeling like after 2 blocks I should go home and never run again. Then I emotionally started crashing and that didn’t buoy my energy either.

But I showed up at the race nonetheless. Why not? Either I was going to run myself out of my funk for a time, for good or I wasn’t. I figured I wouldn’t be any worse off trying. We arrived at the start line less than 30 minutes before the start and waded through the huge crowd of people to gather numbers and say hi to friends before lacing up the Salomon’s and heading up the road. The course had been rerouted off of Wolf Ridge and now would pretty much identically resemble our Thursday morning 12.5 mile loop. That meant that Brett, Nathan, Larissa, Marla, Amy and I had no excuse not to know every turn, rock and roll in the entire course. The first loop also included a jaunt up Miwok out to Coyote, down Pirates Cove and back to Tennessee Valley. The 50k and 30k started out together and before I could think twice about changing my mind and hiding in the car for a few hours, we were charging down the road towards Rodeo Valley Trail and onward to Miwok. The first few strides were a marked improvement over the previous day, but I wasn’t overly excited. I went from feeling like death to death slightly warmed over, so that is not much of anything. It was a music for motivation and distraction kind of day and I found my own pace and turned on my music. The wind was crazy for the entire first loop. There were points when I thought I was going to go flying backwards like the “others” in Mary Poppins. It was not a friendly wind, but I just went with it. Nathan took off with Pete (who was running the 30k) at a nice clip and Brett was not too far behind. I was hoping they would both have good days (as with my gals Larissa, Marla and Amy) since they are gearing up for HURT. Brett had an awesome race at NF50 which was a great indicator of his fitness leading up to HURT and I was hoping that Nathan would have a good run to indicate the same. As for me, I was just happy to run all the way up Miwok and start cruising down Old Springs. My philosophy was to just get through the first loop and then I could just phone it in since the second loop was exactly our Thursday route. Heading out to Pirate’s Cove, Charlie Vazac a former triathlon teammate of mine who was running the 30k after finally coming back from injury and we chatted and caught up.

And from there well, I just ran. It was pretty uneventful actually. I just ran. I felt pretty consistently slightly better than ok. I didn’t bonk or have any super lows. I just got into a groove and cruised. I just ran. It was nice. Once I was in the second loop, I started passing guys and moved up about 6-8 places without working any harder. I was happy to run all the way up Miwok the second time and appreciated that there was less wind. When I hit the final aid station with just 3.7 miles to the finish, I finally allowed myself to believe and marvel for a second at my ability to run a 50k on that little energy and still run pretty well (even though comparatively I was really just cruising).

I got out on the road and kicked it up a bit, heading in for the finish, excited to see how the guys did and to be done. While I was feeling very accomplished for running well, I was really looking forward to just being done. I cruised in to the parking lot and sashayed across the finish line (literally, not figuratively) in 4:28 and as the first woman, I think 11th overall. Nathan was there at the finish line and I immediately asked him how he did and he smiled and said casually, “I won”. I was so excited for him because the men’s field was really fast and he trounced them and PR’s by 15 minutes in the process. He ran a 3:43!!! I was super impressed. Brett had a great day running a 4:12. All of our training crew finished and it was just a fantastic day all around. And in the end, I did get my mug and a hug from Sarah.

Whether or not this off season has been truly a break, it has been a good period of time for me. I have not had the additional stress of a training regime while trying to move, get settled and handle the holidays. I have been able to truly follow my bliss and run (or not) as I want to. It is really nice. I have enjoyed it. My first real race of the season is not until March, so I am looking forward to a nice slow long build up for that and seeing how a potentially VERY interesting 2010 shapes up!