Mawige is what bwings us togevah today

Ben Affleck wasn't lying, y'all!  Marriage can be hard sometimes.  You won't always like the same shows or foods, or amount of clutter.  There will be life stress like moving or work or a death in the family that stretch and test and transform your bond. Sometimes you won't know where to go or what to do next. But marriage is so perfect because you have an automatic best friend and you can make decisions and tackle obstacles together. There are also inside jokes, kissing, adventures, and above all - love.

I'm so glad I've spent the past 5 years working and playing with my favorite friend.  I'm excited to see where our adventures take us in the next 5 or 50 years.

Our first "date", at a pub in London.  We were watching World Cup
soccer and commenting on how early we started drinking. 

Our second (or maybe third?) date in Florence. Kevin had just
found out he got a job at Ford and he took Ketti and I to dinner.

My 21st birthday, the first fall we dated. (I just kept trying to make side bangs work!)

Our first trip to SF, Christmas 2006

Backpacking in the Porcupine Mountains in Michigan's Upper Peninsula

Then we got engaged!!

And married!

And we just kept kissing.  Even when it was raining!

We ran our first marathon... and then 3 more!

We went hiking in Kauai

We went to Japan!

We went to Disneyland for Kevin's 30th birthday!

But it wasn't all fun and games... we also spent some time laying on the couch.

What can I say?  We make a pretty awesome team!

What we eat when we eat alone

I think about this topic a lot.  Ever since I was a little kid I have had certain rituals around food, most of which involve eating alone.  Even as an adult I have relished nights when I cook only for myself, since I can indulge in my own strange culinary whims.  Or at least I thought they were strange until I stumbled upon a charming little book by Deborah Madison, in which she shares anecdotes and recipes from a myriad of people she has met over the years, talking about the meals they make when they eat alone.  Moral of the story: people have complex, varied, and often bizarre relationships with food.

In elementary school, I remember walking home from school and watching cartoons for the 30 minutes or so before my mom got home from teaching across town.  I would do some mental calculations of how many cookies I could take from the snack drawer without my mom noticing.  The best cookies were chocolate sandwich cookies with chocolate filling, and I would break each one into quarters, letting each piece dissolve in my mouth to make it last longer.  If there weren't any cookies I would climb up on the counter and search through cupboards for my mom's "secret" chocolate stash.

Once I learned to use the oven, my go-to food when I was alone became homemade parmesan breadsticks.  I can't remember where I found the recipe, but I made it so many times over the years that it's stuck in my head. A dough of flour, baking powder, salt, and milk baked in a pool of melted butter and sprinkled with parmesan cheese. Totally unhealthy, but the perfect comforting crunchy carbs.  (True story: I attempted to veganize this recipe this weekend for old time's sake with less satisfying, but equally calorie-intensive results)

When we moved to California and Kevin started traveling a fair amount for work, I relied heavily on the Trader Joe's freezer section... things like garlic fries, Parmesan Pastry Pups, and frozen pizza.  The mix of comfort and indulgence made being alone a couple weeks a month seem fun and exciting, but it also made my jeans not fit very well.

Now eating alone usually involves finishing leftovers, concocting meals from any remaining CSA veggies or making a meal that I like but Kevin doesn't.

Kevin was out of town this past weekend for a bike race in Modesto, and then he drove down to Santa Barbara for meetings on Monday.  With 4 days to myself, I planned some meals, and tried to whittle down the stash of leftovers in our freezer.

Quinoa with braised pattypan squash and green pepper/onion/shallot tomato sauce:

Random leftover veggies

All mixed together!

Roasted vegetables with balsamic thyme reduction, over quinoa (can you tell Kevin doesn't like quinoa?):

Fennel, spring onions,  artichoke hearts, carrots, radishes, zucchini,
pattypan squash, red potatoes, eggplant. 

I think I got every possible vegetable in there.

While Kevin was gone I also started packing for our anniversary trip Hawaii next week

What?  It was only a week early!

On Saturday I went for a hike on Mt. Tam with my dear friend Niki.  It was a beautiful day, nice trail, and a great chance to catch up!

What a view!

On Sunday, I went down to Marina Green to watch the start of the final stage of the Tour of California bike race.  It was a bit anticlimactic, because they passed by so fast that I couldn't really pick anyone out.  Then I went for a 50 mile bike ride with a group from Sports Basement, a local REI type store.  I forgot to put sunscreen on under my arm warmers so I got an epic inner arm sunburn after I took the arm warmers off early on in the ride.

Dressing room sunburn photo!  I added that dress to my packing pile.

We leave for Hawaii for a week on Saturday, which happens to be our 5 year anniversary.  Prepare yourself for beachy pictures and stories when I return.   :)

A Place for Everything and Everything in its Mise en Place

I know that many people detest the idea of cooking after a long day at work.  I definitely fall into that camp from time to time. I also get that many eschew the image of the wife in the kitchen making sure that dinner is on the table when her husband gets home. But there's stereotype and then there's reality.

In our reality, I love cooking.  Chopping vegetables is like therapy when I come home from work.  It's a way to relax a little while still doing something productive.

Also, Kevin commutes 106 miles a day.  That is gross beyond all belief.  I would be a raging ball of stress if I had to do that.  The least I can do is make the man some dinner!

And he DOES THE DISHES! Every night!

While there are many weeknight meals I like to make, stir-fries speak especially to my sense of order. You chop everything, get it all ready, in a neat and tidy mise en place and once you start cooking, the stir fry comes together in just a few minutes.

Mise en Place

                

Red Thai Tofu and Green Beans

This recipe is a mash-up of two recipes from Appetite for Reduction by Isa Moskowitz, and approximates Tofu prik king, which is my favorite thai stir-fry dish

1 block of firm or extra firm tofu, drained and cubed

1/2 Tbsp oil

1 lb or so green beans, ends removed, in ~2 in. peices

1 red pepper, seeded and sliced (I used green pepper this time, because that's what was in my CSA)

1/4 cup shallot, thinly sliced

3-5 cloves garlic, minced

1 Tbsp grated ginger (I keep my ginger in the freezer and take it out about 5-10 mins before I need it and grate it with a box grater.. so much easier!)

15 leaves Thai (or regular) basil

Sauce:

1.5 Tbsp Thai red curry paste

3 Tbsp soy sauce

1/2 cup water

1 Tbsp agave nectar

2 Tbsp lime juice

Red pepper flakes, to taste

Note: The original recipe calls for browning the tofu cubes in a pan with a little oil, which takes about 10 mins but I prefer to bake tofu, which takes a bit longer.  Either way works, just depends on how much time you have.

If you're baking your tofu, preheat your oven to 425. Mix together your sauce ingredients in a medium sized bowl and add your tofu for a quick marinade. Coat a baking sheet with cooking spray and arrange the tofu squares, being sure not to bring along much marinade liquid and to space them 1/2 inch or so apart.   Bake for about 20-25 mins, depending on how crispy you like your tofu, turning the cubes once or twice during this time.

Heat the oil in a large pan over medium heat.  Add the shallots and saute for about 5 mins.  Then add the garlic and ginger and saute another minute or two.  Add the green beans and peppers and saute for about 5 mins.  Add the sauce and continue to cook for another 5 minutes. Add the tofu and stir to coat with sauce. Take off heat and stir in the basil.

Serve with rice.

                   

Avenue of the Giants Marathon Report

I was really excited for the Avenue of the Giants Marathon in Humboldt Redwoods State Park.  I picked this particular race because it looked gorgeous, running through enormous redwood trees, and I had never been north of Sonoma County in California, so I was looking forward to seeing new parts of the state.  I was hopeful for the race, despite some less than ideal circumstances - extensive travel/work stress in the weeks before the race, a lingering cold that made it difficult to breathe, and having to cut our trip short by a day at the last minute so that Kevin could be home to fulfill his jury duty on Monday.

I trained fairly meticulously, I had a goal finish time (4 hours) in mind, and I even packed my running stuff early (believe it or not)... including an extra pair of running shoes, in case the seriously frayed shoelace on my left shoe snapped:

We hit the road around 9am on Saturday.  It was about a 5 hour drive, but it was quite lovely. We stayed at the Days Inn in Eureka.  Luckily the toilets were sanitized!

Eureka was actually cute. We ate dinner at the Lost Coast Brewery, and then wandered around downtown.  The first Saturday of every month is city arts night where the galleries stay open late and there are a lot of street musicians.  Plus it was prom night, which is always fun to watch - high schoolers all dressed up and pretending to be adults.

There were fun murals on a lot of buildings downtown, like this ginormous octopus

On marathon morning I woke up early and had my breakfast:

Peanut butter jelly time!

Then we drove over to the starting line.  We got there so early that there wasn't even a line for the porta-potties!

Who me?  I don't hang out by the porta-potties in case I have to pee. oh wait.. I DO.

It was only 48 degrees, so I was a little cold hanging around the starting line without my jacket, but I was so glad to avoid the 80+ degree heat of Saturday.

Pre-rasce

I was able to distract myself with a great photo op with the Avenue of the Giants sign.

Which marathon is it?  Oh yeah, right...

I felt really good as the race started.  I passed a lot of people in the beginning and my mile splits were well below the 9:06 pace I needed to run a 4 hour marathon.  There was a woman who seemed to be about the same pace as me for the first 4 or 5 miles but she dropped out of sight behind me, and I didn't think much more of it, until around mile 9 when I heard two people talking about engagement stories and elopements behind me.  I listened to their conversation as they caught up to me, and as they pulled even I discovered it was the woman I had been running beside earlier.  Her name was Pam, and she was from Denver, and her newfound running buddy was Dan, from Oakland.  I fell in pace with them and our conversations really helped the next several miles go by more quickly.

At the halfway point, which was also the start, Kevin was waiting with the camera and a nice wave.  He had been talking to a lady nearby him about my marathoning history, so she hollered well wishes at me, and mentioned that "my man" had told her I was running my 6th marathon.  It was sweet, and encouraging and "my man" was only off by one!

Half way.. still feeling good. Pam (in pink) and Dan (in grey) were only a few steps ahead of me

Around mile 15 or so all those sub-9 minute miles began to take their toll.  I fell off the pace that Pam and Dan had set and ran by myself, at continually slower paces until the end.  Luckily those sub- 9 minute miles counterbalanced the 10 and 11+ minute miles I ran from mile 21 onward.

Nearing the finish line.  This was right before I told Kevin to never let me talk myself into running another marathon

In the end, I ran 4:10.  Slightly slower than I had hoped, but still a 30 minute PR.  I was sore and feeling a bit defeatist at first, but it wasn't long before I was talking about how I would adjust my training as well as my race strategy for the next one.

On the way off the Avenue and back to Highway 101 I made Kevin take a picture of me in front of a big redwood.  They really were spectacular:

And the trees were THIS BIG!

We drove back home directly from the race, stopping in the small town of Willits, CA for some lunch at a local place called Buster's Burgers and Brew.  They had a pretty tasty veggie wrap and some fabulous onion rings.  A guy sitting down the bar from us ordered the "Belly Buster", an eating challenge dish that included a burger with 4 or 5 patties and about three times as many onion rings as came in our basket:

Celebratory onion rings!

If he ate it all, he would get his photo on the wall.  Alas we wanted to get home at a reasonable hour, so we didn't stay to observe the outcome of said challenge, but my money is on violent gastro-intestinal distress of some sort.

Despite the delightful lunch, I spent much of the car ride home pondering my ideal post-race celebration dinner, and I came up with this:

Dinner at home: Pasta with cauliflower and breadcrumbs. Aka white carbs on white carbs on white carbs!

And since my dear sister responded to my post-marathon news with: "Great!  Now you can start blogging about food again!", here's the recipe:

Penne with Cauliflower and Breadcrumbs
Inspired by a pizza at Pizzetta 211 in SF and a Peter Berley recipe

For the pasta:
3/4 lb Penne pasta
1.5 Tbsp olive oil
1 head cauliflower, cut into small florets
salt and pepper
1 medium yellow onion, sliced fairly thinly
2 cloves garlic, chopped
~8 green olives, pitted and sliced
1/4 cup golden raisins
1 cup veggie broth
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1-2 Tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup chopped parsley

For the breadcrumbs:
1-2 cups of stale bread (I used leftover sourdough)
1/2 Tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic,  chopped
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.  In a medium bowl, combine the chopped cauliflower with a Tbsp of olive oil and salt and pepper. Place on a foil-lined baking sheet and roast for about 30 minutes or until well browned.

Meanwhile combine the golden raisins and the broth in a small bowl and put aside to re-hydrate.

Then, combine breadcrumb ingredients in a medium bowl. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes or until well browned. (can overlap with cauliflower cooking time)

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and cook the penne according to the package directions, about 8 mins.

While the pasta water is boiling, heat the remaining 1/2 Tbsp oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add the onions and saute about 10 minutes, until caramelized.  Add the garlic and stir for about a minute.  Then add the sliced olives and raisins/soaking liquid and boil down until the liquid has thickened a bit. Stir in red pepper flakes.  Add pasta and 1/3 cup of pasta water to the pan.  Add lemon juice and parsley and stir to coat.

In a large serving bowl, combine pasta mixture and roasted cauliflower, sprinkle with breadcrumbs, and serve.