I promise I still cook a lot!

My recent posts have made clear how much traveling, and training and worrying about my marathon I've been doing in recent weeks, because it's been quite some time since I've posted a recipe!  I've been doing a lot of repeats, and forgetting to take pictures of dinners and just feeling downright lazy.

This week I went to a conference in Erie, and I got to fly (wait for it...) FIRST CLASS!!!  I had never flown first class before, and when I found out that the SFO-DTW leg of my flight on Thursday, which was booked using our work credit card miles, was first class I lost my shit.  I bragged excitedly to every single person I came in contact with.  I spent a ridiculous amount of time on the Delta website figuring out what perks came along with sitting in first class so that I could take advantage of every single one.

And so at 7am on a Thursday, I was on a plane, in my first class seat when I encountered my seatmate for the next 4.5 hours, whom I have dubbed creepy old dude (COD for short)  He was late 60s-early 70s,  leather skinned, with a cowboy hat, shirt unbuttoned nearly to his navel, and copious amounts of old man cologne.  He made it clear immediately that he expected me to carry on a conversation with him, and informed me that he had already texted his girlfriend to tell her he was seated next to a lovely young lady. Then he proceeded to take my photo on his phone (without asking) and send it to someone with the message "There are opportunities everywhere".   BARF!  Way to harsh my first class mellow, creepster!

Through the miracle of my negative attitude, combined with noise canceling headphones and the fact that COD fell asleep almost immediately, I did not have to converse much after takeoff.

My seat!  Before COD arrived.

I was polite enough to only take a picture of myself, not of COD

Breakfast!  I politely declined the omelet.

They did not have champagne for mimosas, so I settled for a little white wine at 8:30am.  It's 5:00 somewhere, right?

The trip itself was fine.  Kevin had a cold all week and I had mercifully avoided it, until I landed in Erie and started to feel a little tickle in my throat.  By evening it was a full blown sore throat, and Friday was spent prepping for my presentation and consuming copious amounts of vitamin C and Zicam from my hotel room bed.  I left the room for approximately 2 hours for my session and then holed up in bed in my jammies again.

I got home yesterday and made a lovely dinner of Tempeh and Mushroom Fricassee with 40 Cloves of Garlic, from Peter Berley's Modern Vegetarian Kitchen:

Tempeh and Mushroom Fricassee with 40 Cloves of Garlic 

from Peter Berley's Modern Vegetarian Kitchen

2 Tbsp olive oil (This was originally 4 Tbsps, but I tend to cut the oil in Berley's recipe's in half, because I feel like he's a bit heavy handed, but if you like more, by all means go for it!)

1/2 lb tempeh, slice into bite sized pieces

1/4 cup white wine

2 Tbsp soy sauce

2 leeks, white and pale green parts julienned

1 lb mixed mushrooms (I used cremini and shitake)

1 Tbsp flour

1.5 cups veggie broth

40 garlic cloves, peeled (as pathetic as it may sound, I bought pre-peeled garlic cloves at Trader Joes to avoid all the peeling)

2 sprigs thyme

1 sprig parsley

Handful of celery leaves

salt and pepper to taste

Heat about 1/2 Tbsp of oil over medium heat.  Saute the tempeh until it is browned on most sides, about 10 mins.  Add the wine and soy sauce and cook a bit longer until most of the liquid is absorbed.  Put the tempeh mixture in a bowl.

Add the rest of the oil to the pan over medium-high heat.  Saute the mushrooms and leeks until they begin to caramelize and then add the flour and stir another couple minutes.   Add the garlic and veggie broth and bring to a boil.  Tie the herbs together and toss them in. Simmer, covered for about 30 minutes.  Uncover and cook another 5 minutes, until the broth has thickened. Remove the herbs, season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Planning ahead

I may have mentioned that I like making plans.  Charting out future events on my trusty google calendar, writing to-do lists, and of course, packing for trips days in advance.  In school, my favorite day of the semester was syllabus day, where I could see what was expected of me for the course, write everything down in my planner, and marvel at all the readings I would later try to avoid doing and the assignments I would procrastinate on until the last possible moment.  That is to say, sometimes my planning outpaces my ability or desire for follow through.

I am definitely that way about races.  When I was first in the throes of post-marathon enthusiasm I didn't say to myself "That was fun, perhaps I could run another one someday!" Instead I scoured marathon listing sites, made a spreadsheet of marathons I'd like to do in each of the 50 states and planned out which races I'd do - at least one every 6 months - for approximately the rest of my life. I stuck with the plan for two more marathons, completing three races in just over 18 months while I was in grad school.  Then real life/full time job set in and combined with my consistently slower run times really took the joy out of marathoning.  I ran some half marathons, did a sprint triathlon and even (under extreme spousal guilt tripping) ran the Chicago Marathon during my first 3 years in San Francisco.  When I started getting faster in the last 6 months or so, I decided I could give the marathon one more try.  After all having run 5 marathons somehow seems more well-rounded than having run 4.  :)

The Avenue of the Giants, my chosen race could not be any more different than the four marathons I've done so far. Detroit, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and especially Chicago were all large, city based races with strong crowd support, while Avenue of the Giants is tiny (~300 participants), in the middle of the redwood forests with very few opportunities for spectators.  I am excited by how scenic this race will be, and hope that I'm able to focus on my pace and my own internal motivations since there won't be anyone else around to motivate me.

And I pulled out my trusty spreadsheet to plan for a fall marathon.  Depending on how my race NEXT WEEK(!!!) goes I may be in a position to BQ (qualify for Boston) in the fall or next spring (knock on wood) so fast courses are on my mind.  My first choice for fall would be the St George Marathon in southern Utah on October 5, however they have a lottery system, so it's not a given that I'd be accepted.  If I miss out on St. George, the Las Vegas Marathon, in November might work as well.

I'm also planning for other future races, with an eye on diversifying.  I swam for the first time in almost a year last night, dipping my toes in the water, so to speak, to see if I can realistically complete an olympic distance triathlon this summer (my swim was dismal in the sprint triathlon I did last year).  I also am planning to do an organized bike ride with Kevin this summer - probably a metric century (100km or ~60 miles).  In September I'm joining a team for a Ragnar Relay in Napa - 12 people, 2 vans, ~200 miles (each person only runs about 15-20 miles of that, in the 12 person rotation).

And since I'm in the mood to sign up for things, (and because I like to have at least one picture per post)  I may try this too:

Taper madness

I seem to be missing the point of the marathon taper.  Common wisdom is that you do your last really long run (in my case, 20 miles) three weeks before your marathon, which was last week for me and then you start to drastically cut back your milage over the next three weeks so that you're relaxed and well rested for your marathon.

Today I did my long run (also known as LSD - long slow distance) for the week, which for anyone unfamiliar with marathon training, is supposed to be done at a pace 1-1.5 mins slower than your goal marathon pace, in order to get used to how much time you'll be spending running your race.  Since I'm tapering, my run was "only" 12 miles, but I saw fit to run it at an 8 min mile pace, which, if you're counting is at least 1 min faster than my goal race pace.  Ooops!

I also am in a bit of trouble in the "well rested" realm.  This past week I went on a two-night work trip to Indianapolis (the kind where you spend two days on a plane to spend one day at a conference) and this coming week I'm doing the exact same thing in Erie, PA (of 2003 Academic Decathlon nationals fame).  Then, the week leading up to my marathon we're having a major software release at work, which means a lot of testing in the meantime, long hours on the day of the release and a lot of documentation writing and question answering afterwards.  Combined with the 5 hour drive up to Northern California (that's enough to disabuse myself of the idea that the Bay area is Northern CA) for the race, I'm thinking I'll be pretty tired by the time my race starts.

So, to relax a bit, this afternoon we celebrated the uncommonly lovely San Francisco weather with a picnic and reading in the park:

Which quickly devolved into watching very drunk people play a game of kickball that required every player to hold a cup of beer in one hand:

This is what happens when our city gets a little sun.

An ode to radishes, or how to live without your grandmother

I've been eating a lot of radishes lately.  They've been showing up each week in our CSA, and it makes me happy to see them because they remind me of my grandma Mary.  Most people would not wish for the humble radish to be the thing that makes one think of you, but I imagine that if I could call my grandma up and tell her, she'd be pleased.

I remember as a very young child, harvesting radishes from the garden with her.  My picky tastes would not abide by such a vegetable.  They looked almost like candy, so bright and red, but the bitter spiciness inside was more than I could bear.  My grandma, on the other hand, relished them.  She would eat them whole, fresh from the garden and serve them plain with dinner.  She had very simple tastes and was never one for fanciness or superfluity, so it seems right that in my memory she is tied to the earth and the land she farmed, just like those radishes.

It's been almost a year since we lost her, right before Mother's Day, without warning. Sometimes I forget she's gone until the memory hits me, like a sucker punch, and I can't catch my breath.  It's hard to imagine a world without her in it.  Without her farm as a homing beacon, telling me if all else fails, there is at least one place where I belong.

But this is the world we live in.  So I eat radishes.

In salads:

And roasted:

Roasted vegetables with white beans, quinoa and a balsamic glaze.

And I remember.