Born For This

Weekends: A Lengthy Exploration

05 October 2009 by Elizabeth in Food

Our weekends have mellowed into something familiar and enjoyable. Sometimes we don’t know what to do with our free time; it seems so rare and precious that we become paralyzed and end up watching dull reruns for hours while we search for the perfect thing to do.

Saturday is mostly about food. In the morning, the farmer’s market(s), which this week yielded the following:

fm-squash

Winter squash, hot peppers, and jersusalem artichokes (sunchokes)…

fm-fleurs

…and wildflowers! And sprouts – mixed bean sprouts and some broccoli sprouts. And two eggplant that were much happier in the fridge than in this photo.

macarons-pumpkin

And…er…how did those get here? Pumpkin, salt caramel, vanilla bean, and strawberry. I mean…I know nothing about these macarons.

We skipped our usual brunch this weekend in favor of some hot and convenient breakfast tacos. Often, however, the next step after the farmer’s market is to prepare a gigantic brunch. Many of these have been recorded here already, but some haven’t made it in. For starters:

elvis-cloth

Post-race brunch from a few weeks back. You can’t go wrong with an Elvis-print tablecloth…

deadly-fruit

or some angry, stabby fruit…

post-race-omelette

but the omelette, that can do you in. The sauce was…well, looking at the photo now, I can say the sauces tasted just like it looks in the photo. White, greasy, creamy, and…it meant well. There is a ton of avocado hiding inside that omelette. It was waaaay too heavy for post-race food, and I paid for it for a few days.

So, Saturday afternoons I either kick WB out to have friends over (trust me, he heads for the hills willingly to avoid the hours of girl talk) or we do something cozy. An adorable social gathering went unannounced a few weeks ago, which I will now recap here for your viewing pleasure:

brunch

From left to right: romaine salad with truffle dressing, topped with broiled figs and mozzarella; peach jalapeno corn muffins; pumpkin spice muffins; apple cheddar muffins; chocolate almond biscotti; homemade plum and hot pepper jam. All of the baked goods are gluten free and made by moi, of course.

But this week we went to the library and, 25 books later (20 of which were mine, but 6 of those are for work), we stopped for a picnic. I packed an apple and some almond butter for me, and a tomato, butter, and soft cheese sandwich for WB:

picnic-park

To be honest, it was hotter and humid-er than I thought and the picnic was cut short by rain. But, nothing like a rainy Saturday afternoon to justify some chocolates:

cluizel-leonidas

milk and dark Michel Cluizel salted caramels, and Leonidas raspberry marzipan (buche framboise) and rum praliné (Europe Dark). It was a small consolation after finding out that our favorite local chocolatier had gone out of business…but who am I kidding, it was still delicious

Saturday night is usually a simple dinner, often a reprise of the morning’s brunch. With no brunch to fall back on, I invented a sauce to go on some sautéed eggplant, along with a sunchoke salad, some simple tofu, and the leftovers of my raw salads from Whole Foods.

saturday-sunchokes

The sauce had a tangy, caponata-like flavor. I wanted a tomato base, but the closest we had was the vegetable juice I’ve been using for my “soups”…so I whizzed some in the blender with a diced hot pepper, some green olives, and a tablespoon of capers, et voila, sauce! (If you are going to try this, you may wish to reduce the sauce by about 1/3 after it comes out of the blender.)

eggplant-sauce

The sunchokes got a bit more consideration. I credit this site http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch26.html with most of what I now know about this tuber, and this site http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=dailytip&dbid=209&utm_source=rss_reader&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_feed with what I know about the inulins it contains. Raw, it has a radish-like tang and a earthy, root-y taste, with a texture similar to jicama or water chestnuts…not fibrous, just white and smooth and crunchy. We dressed it accordingly and mixed it with broccoli sprouts.

sunchoke-salad

All of our basic vinaigrettes start with olive oil, apple cider vinegar (or lemon juice, or maybe white wine), and dry mustard. For the uninitiated, dry mustard is an emulsifier http://www.ochef.com/1411.htm, which means it can convince the oil and water to blend smoothly together. Consider mustard the diplomat of the dressing world.

So, for a basic dressing like this one, we mixed:

one part vinegar
4 parts olive oil
1/2 part dry mustard (ground)

I like to add something zesty, something bright, and something crisp or salty to flavor every dressing. Our zestiness came from Pommery mustard, the brightness from some dried oregano, and the saltiness from truffle salt (which also added another earthy element to complement the sunchokes). We equally could have added some plum chutney (spicy and sweet), marjoram and basil, and…probably still the truffle salt. You only live once, right?

Sunday used to be the cranky, difficult day of the weekend. We’ve largely taken care of that by planning fun activities and taking care of as many errands and chores as possible during the week or, as a last resort, on Saturday. There’s no brunch – I work early in the morning – but when I get back there’s often a fluffy plate of eggs and veggies in the works.

These days, the afternoon goes to more work – catching up on blogging, perhaps, or taking care of travel arrangements and holiday plans. It’s also when I cook for the week, but that requires more description than this post can hold. We put the apartment to bed around 8, just after dinner, so that we can relax and read in the clean and quiet space. Soon we’re drifting off to sleep, another week of projects, meals to cook, miles to run, and so much more waiting to find us in the morning.

cat-sleep

Yeah, kind of like that.

New Foods

28 September 2009 by Elizabeth in Food

After feeling sick for more than a week, it’s no surprise that I’m craving some new flavors. Whether it’s psychological or physiological or somewhere in-between, I’ve been craving fresh, raw, whole foods by the truckload.

I had a huge green monster for breakfast this morning – 3 kale leaves, a whole banana, three strawberries, and a splash of almond milk. (Too tired for photo, sorry.)

I snacked on some pomegranate white tea, Mary’s Gone Crackers, and almond butter mid-morning. I was worried this was going to be too heavy.

tea-and-crackers

Lunch was a rabbit’s dream Broccoli and lettuce wraps. (I ended up mixing the broccoli with the leftover sauce from the lettuce wraps, delicious!)
lettuce-wraps

I made good use of the food processor last night to demolish 5 stalks of celery and 7 carrots in less than a minute. While I was prepping those, I put some chopped shitake mushrooms on to saute in sesame oil. Those all went in a huge (4 quart) bowl with 16 oz of cubed tofu, a package of mung bean sprouts, and a mixture of soy sauce, cayenne, ginger, garlic, and a little more sesame oil. It tasted good last night, but was even better this afternoon, especially in the company of crisp, green romaine.
chocolate-raisins
And last but never least, chocolate and raisins. I’ve been on a real raisin kick recently; I had stopped eating them long ago because they’re relatively high in sugar. Same thing goes for bananas, which have also happily found a renewed lease in my kitchen.

And dinner, what can I say about dinner…

dinner

On the left: “tomato soup”, made from vegetable juice (Whole Foods V8-esque juice) with a tiny drizzle of olive oil and a splash of curry powder, heated

On the right: tofu with nutritional yeast, broccoli with chili powder (a blend that includes oregano, thyme, and garlic along with chilies), and some raw beet and cabbage salad from Whole Foods that is dressed with plum vinegar.

I ran 2.81 miles at a 12:15 average pace (intervals of 10:30 alternating with 12:30) between the raisins and the dinner It was supposed to be 3 entire miles, but I was way too starving to finish. I tried doing my warmup at a 12:30 jog rather than walking – worked quite well, highly recommended. I’m hoping to get my “easy” pace set at a firm 12:00 by race day (currently at 12:30), and I’ve relaxed my goal pace to about 10:30. If I could alternate between those two for the entire race, I’d easily finish by what used to be my dream time….

The rest of the week should look much the same as today. Light, flavorful, and strangely vegan. I don’t necessarily believe in going vegan forever, but I’m happy to cut out dairy and eggs when the mood strikes. I felt alert and awake and light all day, which is a great way to feel. Sure, a change in perspective is the real culprit, but it’s true too that we are what we eat.

Tea and distraction

28 September 2009 by Elizabeth in Food, Ideas

tea I’m still not feeling right from last weekend’s gluten-ing (similar to The Shining), so today’s menu has consisted only of tea.

Luckily, I love tea.

Growing up, tea mostly meant weak Lipton in bed when I was too sick for anything else, often accompanied by dry toast or saltines. The occasional Celestial Seasonings brew would slip in – I don’t remember the flavors, but there’s definitely something familiar about their Lemon Zinger.

In high school, my pretentious intellectualism (fueled by the mid-90′s cultural infatuation with Zen and the new-fangled internets) turned me on to green tea. I brewed a thermos-ful each morning and toted it everywhere I went; my chemistry teacher insisted it looked like urine, which made me all the more certain I was on a steady path to enlightenment, far too subtle and special for the untrained mind.

Tea marketing exploded around the same time, with Tazo and the Republic of Tea neck in neck. I purchased a Bodum teapot and entered the world of the loose leaf while my peers learned to suckle at the sweet Chai syrup pump offered by good mother Starbucks.* I reveled in the exotic, esoteric mysteries of tea (likely my first foray into culinary anthropology) – the precision, the elements of chance and surprise that shaped the flavor of each cup, the magical and ancient discovery of these dried, fermented leaves.

I learned all the ins and outs of tender white tea, robust black tea, my cherished green tea, rich and strange oolong. Tea from twigs, tea with nuts and berries, tea from herbs, tea that begins as tiny balls and unfurls into tiny, delicate banners. I became quite the tea snob, shunning the likes of Teavana and dragging my oh-so-patient boyfriend up to Boston to visit Tealuxe (for some reason, my tea mecca of 1997).

Alas, tea and I drifted apart when I moved away to college. Everything was expected to be functional, so only the reliable echinacea and clover teas found a home in my pantry. There was no time for the foolishness of flavor, and coffee was much quicker when I needed a brain boost.

Gifts of tea still trickled in (the replacement for Bath and Bodyworks gift sets, it seemed, as the de facto acquaintance-level present), growing dusty and impatient in the back of unlit shelves. Each time I moved, the tea was toted along, often long past its prime.

When my Wonderful Boyfriend and I merged households, we needed an entire pantry shelf for the tea we had each accumulated over the years. In the commotion of new love, tea’s slow boil-and-steep ritual was easily brushed aside. As we have mellowed, this forgotten friend has found its place at our table – iced and sometimes flavored in the hot summers, crisp and green on quite mornings, fruity and bold in the afternoons. And I wonder: was I really too busy all this time for a cup of tea? I wish I would have accepted tea’s invitation more often to pause for a few minutes and just wait, just be, rather than rushing ahead for more, more, more.

And that is where the distraction comes in. I have again been guilty of distracting myself from what matters, often with a sneaky ally of what-matters-in-sheeps’-clothing. If I don’t have time for a cup of tea, if I have to press onward and the urgency is unending, I’ve gotten myself off track once again. Whatever is real will be there when the dust settles, and it will be there even if you look away; it’s not in a spreadsheet or a mindmap or a race time or a calendar. It’s lucky, really, because what’s real is much stronger than any of those, just a bit more enigmatic in its nature.

It seems sometimes like it’s the American way – push on and the problems will disappear, find a way to escape and you’ll feel better without any of the nasty contemplative parts. The problem with escape is that you’re always on the run.

(No running pun intended. And, no thinly veiled confession that I plan to quit running – I am still running.)

*Yes, I know that Starbucks chai is no longer a syrup – trust me, I worked there back when it was still cool.

Fall!

24 September 2009 by Elizabeth in Food, Ideas

I’ve gotten to wear my trenchcoat to work every day this week! (It’s very lightweight.) Even though the temperature climbed to 80 this afternoon, I’m still savoring the nearly-brisk moments from this morning’s walk to the bus stop.

In honor of fall, I ate something I normally wouldn’t:

maple-yogurt

I love maple yogurt, but nutritionally it’s a little weak (lots of sugar, no special antioxidant boost like strawberry or blueberry offer). Today was an excellent excuse for a little “junk food”

I started keeping a bit of a closer eye on what I’ve been eating because I haven’t been feeling so hot (I got gluten-ed last Saturday, right before my 5k, but that’s a different kind of feeling not-so-hot), and I’ll be darned if I haven’t been eating about 400 more calories a day than I thought I was. That’s almost a whole extra meal!

I haven’t seen the effects, but I’d rather nip that in the bud before I do. Only two months until my big event – not enough time to play catch-up with mistakes I made a new meal plan that includes a smaller breakfast, a smaller dinner, and one less snack during the workday (replaced with another cup of tea).

I find that every fall I find the urge to get back to brass tacks and make sure everything’s in order. I spent an hour this morning updating my budget and I emptied my to-do list (sleepily) before I left for work today. The need for order carried over to work – I’ve knocked out everything that’s been lingering in my Outlook task list in the “not really due so let’s put it off because it’s tedious and/or thankless” category. (Ok, that’s not really a category, but every project has those tasks.)

All of my planning has really highlighted that I’m feeling unfulfilled. There are a lot of things in my life that have been waiting on other people for too long…I’m trying to be patient and polite, but those time limits are running out When time gets short, I end up cutting out the things that are sort of selfish (blogging, working out, cooking what I really want to eat rather than just heating up more broccoli and tofu, and so on) because I’m the only one who feels that pinch. Sometimes I wish I could be more selfish and oblivious

Several things learned this week:

Blackberry users: make sure you close programs when you’re not using them! I had several programs running in the background (including a game that I played once while waiting for the bus that did not have an exit option) that were totally draining my battery, but now that I’ve removed them my battery is as good as new
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
Sometimes a little “thank you” goes a long way, especially from the right person (yeah, you, mister top-of-the-org chart. Made my day!)

Off for a walk in the “brisk” (72 degree) evening air.

The Flu.

21 September 2009 by Elizabeth in Running

I have (had?) it. Hence the weeks of exhaustion and low spirits, I assume. I’m doing my best to be on the mend, but this was not what I’d had in mind for Labor Day weekend and the weeks that followed This set the gigantic blog lag in motion, because I’ve been too zombie-like to blog (or do much else, really).

The lag snowballed, of cours, because I can’t seem to finish this long recap post from the past while. But, the fact is, those brunch recaps can wait. I ran a 5k yesterday!

The only other race I’ve run in a long time was on July 4, and I hit my goal right on the nose. I had hoped to take a whole 10 minutes off my time in yesterday’s race, (sounds like a lot, but that first time was just superslow!) between that race and this one, but it ended up being only 2 minutes.

I’m mostly happy with my time, even though it’s still so slow that most health bloggers wouldn’t even admit they ran it. This race was all in grass and mud, and nearly all up hill. (Seriously. And the last .75 was straight uphill. Up. Hill. In the mud.) I only walked for 30 seconds, which was way better than the last race I ran, and my average pace was a minute faster than last time.

hill

(The hill, from the top. I made WB walk back with me so I could show him and try to get a photo which, of course, does it no justice.)

But did I set my goal too high? Am I stuck comparing myself to runners who are a few years younger than I and who work from home (if they work at all)? I can’t schedule my runs on a whim, I can’t guarantee I’ll be home at any certain time, my legs are tired after a long day in heels, and I can hardly guess what my mood will be like (though that is at least evening out now that I’ve been in my new job for a month). I can’t even rely on healthy convenience foods to get me through the tougher weeks because they’re either gluten-filled or $12 for each TV dinner.

I think I could have met my goal if I had been able to train harder, but there’s only so much of me to go around. Commuting, working 8-5, working at my “side hustles”*, and having a life (you know, things like Wonderful Boyfriend and family obligations) all have to be factored into my plan…when I’m really sticking to my training schedule, I’m lucky to have 20 minutes at the end of the night with WB before my eyes snap shut.

It’s a lot to think about. Balance isn’t easy to find, but looking for it is an important learning process. I’ve been here before, and each time I find a better solution. For now, my answer is sleep

A note to dream on:

gf-swag

The race swag Delicious.

*I tutor and do some sporadic web design-type work on the side, nothing big anymore but it all takes time.

New job changes and Brunch-stravaganza

04 September 2009 by Elizabeth in Fitness, Food

It’s always the quiet ones, right? I thought this job change would be a piece of cake, but now I find many things about my world topsy-turvy.

My schedule that was supposed to be simpler and allow me so much more free time because I’m so relaxed? The seeds have been planted for it, but it has not yet sprouted. I am a lot more relaxed when I get home from work, but so far that has translated into wanting to do fun things, not catch up on all my home to-dos. Plus, there are a handful of personal online tasks that I don’t yet feel comfortable doing since I’m still so new…these tasks eat up a nice chunk of time at home.

And I’m tired! Not like last week, but much more than normal. I know I will adjust once I don’t have to be prim and perfect (or I will at least get used to hours of it).

When I haven’t been sleeping, it seems that I’ve been cooking or shopping. This weekend was brunch-stravaganza.

Saturday

We were ready to get cooking after the farmer’s market.

Ze beverage: watermelon, cantaloupe, and cucumber, blended into a refreshing smoothie

watermelon-coolers

Ze side deesh: Okra, fresh from the farmer’s market. One half is seasoned with Trocomare, the other with a mix of chili powder, garlic, and salt.

okra

Ze final product: Scrambled eggs with microgreens, toast (Udi’s gluten-free bread), roasted okra, sweet potato fries, sauteed vegetables (mostly eggplant and peppers from the farmer’s market), and a smear of the arugula pesto I made a few weeks back (it has been frozen in the meantime, don’t worry).

saturday-breakfast

Eet ees perfection, non? In the corner of this photo you can see the bonus container of sprouts that was given to us by the sprout “farmer” at the market – she wanted us to try it because we are good customers

saturday-breakfast-3

And Macarons!! Farmer’s market day is the best! Pictured below are rose, violet, yogurt and pistachio; we only ate rose and yogurt today.

macarons-1

macarons-3

macarons-4

A reprise of the morning meal for a light dinner (with Amy’s Bistro burger hidden under those sprouts):

saturday-dinner

Sunday

I had a bitter melon leftover from the market and I had never prepared one before…we opted to skip the boiling step, taking the bitterness full-on, and stir-fried it up in sesame oil and soy sauce with some tofu:

bitter-melon

It was so bitter that we kept it quarantined in its own container to avoid cross-contamination (It’s really tasty, though!)

sunday-breakfast

The full spread: broccoli topped with broccoli sprouts, canatloupe, scrambled eggs with microgreens in toast, leftover scrambled egg mixture that didn’t fit in the toast (that’s what those yellow wedges are), and chocolate-cherry smoothies.

sunday-breakfast-2

My plate! The Udi’s toast looks and works like real toast. It’s the best! The spread on my toast circles is a local version of nutella (much less sugar, many more nuts, and a thicker, crunchier texture).

The smoothie contained cherries, strawberries, ice, chocolate almond milk, chocolate shavings, and nutritional yeast…all topped with a squirt of whipped soy cream.

sunday-smoothie

Fitness…?

I’ve had to re-prioritize my fitness goals for now. I’m keeping my race schedule, but relaxing my expectations a bit – I don’t have the energy for speedwork after a day at my new job, and my weekends barely have room for my long run because they’ve been picking up the slack for my tired weeknights.

Also, shallow as it may seem, my primary fitness goal right now is to look how I want to look at a big event I have at the end of November. This runs a bit contrary to some of the changes from training – my legs were bulking up a lot, and my body wanted to bulk up a bit all over because I just wasn’t getting enough rest and recovery time between workouts.

Also, I was tending to skip my workout altogether if I couldn’t do a perfect run. Somehow just getting out the door wasn’t good enough – I had to be properly fueled, hydrated, rested, and ready with a map for each short run. My life just doesn’t work that way right now! I ended up missing several runs because I wasn’t “fully prepared”, even though it would have made more sense to go for just a mile or two than for no run at all.

Once I’m settled into this job (whenever that is), I’ll reevaluate. Maybe it will turn out that I’m able to handle a busier, higher-profile job, train for my first half marathon, take 5 min off my 5k time, stay healthy, look great for my big event, and still have time for WB and everyone else in my life. I’m pretty sure it will be ok either way.

Blogging…?!?

Well, that’s obvious, no? I’ll do better next week – I have re-strategized

Tidbits

03 September 2009 by Elizabeth in Food

This week’s dessert:

dessert

WB and I split an apple (is there a food/health/fitness blogger in the country who didn’t eat apples this week? ) with a supersecret dipping sauce; the tea is all mine. (If you must know, the dipping sauce contains cinnamon, cloves, agave, nutritional yeast, and coconut oil, in that order. My nutrtional yeast cravings were out. of. control. But I swear you can’t taste it in there with the spicy spices.)

I hadn’t planned on dessert for the week, but I was starving after dinner! And I had so, so, so much energy…normally I’m falling asleep on the couch around 9:30 while WB watches TV or works, but the hours after 9:30 saw me doing two loads of laundry, packing my lunch, catching up on email, and reading several chapters without so much as a drooping eyelid.

My nearly-raw lunch served me well all week, though it was a leetle bit slimy by Thursday. (I’m looking at you, bean sprouts.)

lunch-desk

Can you spot the unhealthy part of this lunch? Is it the crispy romaine? The tender but raw broccoli? The raw “stir-fry”? No! It’s the mouse and phone!

lettuce-wrap-work

All wrapped up and no place to go…clearly, because I just eat at my desk every day. That is changing, because it makes me nuts.

We went out for an office birthday lunch on Friday. The menu had lots of great vegetarian options (the birthday boy chose it with me in mind ), but not much in the way of gluten-free options. I got a tasty mozzarella, spinach, red pepper and tomato sandwich minus the bread, which came with awesome potato salad.

office-lunch

I’m not a potato person, and I’m not usually a mayonnaise salad person. This place makes the creamiest, pickle-iest, dilliest potato salad you could ask for. I have loved it ever since I moved to this city, though I probably won’t miss it once I go. Why do I say all this? Perhaps it is a thinly veiled confession that I ate nearly that whole scoop of potato salad. I couldn’t finish the “sandwich” part, though, let alone the shot glass of dressing.

My nearly-raw food week was so delightful that I’m doing a very-slightly-modified repeat next week! How delightful was it? How about -703 on the inflammation scale according to nutritiondata.com….

nutrition-1

Or, if you prefer, because it’s not quite 40/30/30 in the carb/protein/fat split, how about some amazingly high concentrations of vitamins and minerals?

nutrition-2

It’s not perfect, but I’ll take it. Even if somehow my food only provided half of what NutritionData calculates, I’d be feeling pretty jazzed about it. And since the crazy-healthy food was so easy and successful, I’m planning to be fully back on the working-out bandwagon this week. I only ran once this week, though WB and I went for some substantial walks and I worked my tail off at yoga on Tuesday. I’m not going to broadcast my running plan in advance, though, because it seems that makes me too anxious about whether or not I’ll actually complete it

Not my best

28 August 2009 by Elizabeth in Food

I was in outer space all day yesterday, which meant that back on earth it was time for everyone to ask me difficult questions, in person, in a rush. My crowning glory was when I nearly mowed down a VIP in the hallway because I was wrapped up in my thoughts.

I made myself lunch but didn’t pack it – I brought an empty lunch bag. So, Jimmy John’s to the rescue! (Except I forgot to get my unwich without mayo, because why should I remember anything?)

Crazy? Is that you calling me?

I’m not sure what I am so stressed out about, but this isn’t working for me I’ve gone to sleep early all week!

I chilled out after work (and worked on a problem for work with WB, though we couldn’t solve it)…and fell asleep before I could get out the door for my run.

Not exactly model behavior, but I guess it happens to the best of us.

Highlight of the day: the Oskri Sesame-Molasses bar I brought for breakfast (along with some trail mix…and no, m&ms in the morning didn’t even fix whatever’s wrong!).

bar-and-mix

The bar was a little too sweet for the morning, but nice and crunchy:

oskri-texture

Off to another day – planning to make it a better one!

Catching Up

27 August 2009 by Elizabeth in Food, Running

I don’t really believe in catching up. I think that, for the most part, time lost is time lost. By the time you report on things gone by, the information has changed into the nostalgic, fluffy stuff of memory.

But I am here, catching up.

This weekend was fabulous. Not to sleight my family, but WB’s family puts a lot of effort into making it feel like we’re coming home somehow when we get off the plane – it’s a cozy, relaxing way to start the trip.

k-window

We successfully reunionized (re-uned?) on Saturday. I won’t lie – I had low, low expectations…I was ready to mingle with a group of bragging and nervous strangers from an unfamiliar small-ish town in a dingy bar and find something likable about the situation. We managed to paint WB as successful without being snobby or braggy (and didn’t embarrass ourselves once – a real accomplishment!).

Before the reunion we went to one of my favorite Mexican restaurants (pretty Americanized, but in my case that can be for the best). They have a very funny sign:

mexican-1

Sign says “Sorry wi du not espick inglich but wi promis not tu laf at yur spanich.”

And this cool mint dispenser (we didn’t partake, I just love it):

mint-dispenser

I had an 8 mile run scheduled for Sunday morning – it turned into a *great* 5.25 mile run in WB’s hometown. They have a long (20+ mile) trail that connects his town to a few of the adjacent towns. The trail is beautifully maintained and takes you by shopping centers, neighborhoods, gardens, and open expanses of prairie (full of flowers and butterflies at this time of year). I even passed a few cherry trees! I wish I had brought my camera, but my dSLR is pretty big to bring on a long run

More amazing things about the run:

It was 70 degrees *in the sun*! I can’t remember the last time it was that “cold” here! Bring it on, fall.
WB came with me for the whole thing! He never comes on my long runs. I jog/shuffled while he walked for the first mile or two, and then I took off on my own while he walked behind me…and even ran a bit on his own!
Everyone on the trail was so nice! A few of the “hardcore” runners that saw me looking at the trail map stopped to see if I was lost – that would never happen here! (Little did they know I was just waiting for my wonderful boyfriend to catch up.) We worked out a pretty good system for the run: I took off at about a 10 min/mile pace while he stayed at his 17 min/mile pace, and when I reached a certain landmark I turned back and caught up with him. It was so nice to run in better weather
I didn’t get tired at all.

duck-pool

We had a pool party (I’m not kidding – WB’s parents are like Ward and June when they want to be) Sunday afternoon with lots of aunts and cousins and associated rugrats. WB’s dad grilled us some portobellos to go with the brats and other assorted meats that the “real” grown-ups were eating.

picnic-lunch-party

I had a deviled egg, a portobello cap with relish and mustard, some fruit, a few corn chips, and some gluten-free brownies that his mom baked just for me. (Thank you!!!)

squirt

I also had a can of Squirt. I don’t usually drink soda, but we can’t get this here without a special order so I decided to blow my sugar intake for the day in favor of sweet citrusy refreshment.

And then it was already time to fly home, just 30 hours after we landed, back into the wall of humid, smoggy haze that surrounds our city.

Ever since we got back I’ve been exhausted. I went to bed at 7 on Monday, and I’ve been taking naps, sleeping in, and drinking way too much coffee to make it through the day. I’m not quite sure what’s going on, but it’s kept me from doing any more training – I haven’t run a single step since Sunday except to catch the bus. I suspect dehydration or low iron/b vitamins, so I’m trying to fix those things.

I did go to yoga on Tuesday, which was excellent as always. Lots of twisting in this class.

One last tidbit: crackers and almond butter, packed to go.

I love little containers – they make it so easy to pack lunch without having to rely on prepackaged foods that can be less healthy and worse for the environment.

crackersnack

And my job is still great. More about that as I resume our regularly scheduled posts

Mega-Dinner

21 August 2009 by Elizabeth in Food

I survived my first week at the new job! So far all of my “complaints” are really things I like…I just have to get used to them after being without for a few years! For instance, I’ve been a bit shaken by the extent of my independence…but really, I’m glad to have their trust and respect and I look forward to improving some of the projects I inherited!

Tonight was a lazy celebration. (Really lazy – I’ve already napped for 90 minutes). It started with the rare beast Mega-Dinner:

mega-dinner

It’s a huge dinner for us! We stopped at Whole Foods for some supplies for the trip* and also got an avocado roll, a veggie roll, some Amy’s bistro burgers, and some “cracklin cauliflower” (roasted cauliflower with peas) and raw cheesecake from the prepared foods bar. (The raw cheesecake did not compare to the ones I’ve eaten in other cities – maybe it was their first try? It was chunky and gross…WB didn’t finish his part because it had a lot of coconut.)

We split the sushi, heated up the veggie burgers and some tempeh “bacon”, and made burger sandwiches with a tiny bit of brie. Mine, above, is on Udi’s gluten-free sandwich bread! I’ve had the bread in the freezer now for a week and it’s just as fresh-feeling and tasting the day we bought it.

The pretty pink beverage is some pomegranate lime juice with a teensy splash of celebratory Grey Goose.

*We’re going out of town for one night…I’d rather tell the story when we get back than talk about it in advance. It’s nothing bad, just kind of awkward for me. At least I should have some quality airplane time to catch up on all of my half-written posts, and I’ll get to do my 8 mile run in better weather, albeit a day late.

I don’t have anything ready for tomorrow, so things might be quiet until Sunday. In the meantime, do you know Cakewrecks? This blog cracks me up! I’ve been falling asleep while re-reading the archives this week…WB has snapped plenty of blackmail shots of me with the laptop in bed. It should be enough to keep you company while I’m on the road