I am so impatient to run again! I haven’t gotten through a full week of training recently without something getting in the way!
I permitted myself to be a little lazy last Saturday, since I was on a short and awesome trip to visit my best friend in Champaign, IL. There just weren’t two hours in the day to run, between breakfast at the Farmers’ Market and Art Mart, and the Taste of Champaign fair, and shopping and hanging out. Perhaps we could have taken a nice long walk instead of my run, but we spent most of the day on our feet anyway. I figured that I could as easily run on Sunday night or Monday, without taking time out of our vacation. Trouble was that I flew home with a whisper of migraine, and it took a couple more days for that brain fog to dissipate.
Now, this weekend, we’re moving to a new apartment. I’ve hired a local moving company to take care of the larger pieces of furniture, but there is plenty to do in the way of preparation. For one thing, I have been moving all the furniture I can lift to one corner of the kitchen so there will be more space in other rooms for boxes. And on Wednesday, I jammed my big toe into the base of the ottoman while moving it, and snapped the toenail in half. I’ve done this before - once in middle school, a week before having to perform in a ballet on pointe. I managed. But this time the injury was somewhat worse. Fully half of the toenail was separated from the nail bed, and it took a good thirty seconds of ungodly pain before I could regain my composure.
“NOOOOOO!!! MY TRAINING!!” was my first thought. Toenails take a very long time to heal. The split will probably still be there in October when I’m running the marathon, as if I needed a greater challenge! Runners are somewhat susceptible to toenail issues in the first place, and I don’t want this injury compounded. Fortunately, I could e-mail my coach for advice. Apparently a couple days of rest followed by a good toenail trim should take care of it. Much better than I was fearing.
Here’s hoping July is a better month for training!
Posted in: Fitness Log, Team In Training (TNT).
Well, I had all the greatest intentions to keep with my training schedule, but these past two weeks have been quite trying. I am proud to say that though I’ve missed training runs, I haven’t flaked due to insufficient willpower.
Continue reading →
Posted in: Fitness Log, Team In Training (TNT).
Back now to the reason I re-started this blog: to serve as a festival of food and repository of recipes. I haven’t found much time for cooking lately, but in the interest of cleaning out the refrigerator, I made cinnamon apples this evening.
That was about all that could be done with the apples; the sorry things had been in the crisper since April, when I decided that getting a whole case at CostCo was a good idea. I figured I’d eat more apples if I had them in the house. But I go through phases with fruit, and apparently I haven’t been in the mood for apples. Lately it’s been sweeter, tangier things: pineapple, peach, strawberry. So the apples have gone uneaten, and have started to get a little dehydrated and rubbery. Somewhat unappetizing to eat raw, but quite recoverable through the magic of heat, butter, and sugar.
If you’ve never made cinnamon apples before, they’re fast and foolproof. Cut 4-5 apples into 1-inch chunks and toss them in a saute pan. Then add the good stuff: a half-cup of brown sugar, a teaspoon of cinnamon, and 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg if you’ve got it. To make all that into a syrup, you’ll need to add 1 tablespoon of butter and 2 tablespoons of water. Cook it at medium heat for fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally; I like to kick it up to medium-high for the last five minutes so I get a nice, bubbly, thickening syrup. Serve alone if you’ve a sweet tooth and are trying to pass it off as a legitimate side dish, or with vanilla ice cream as a simple dessert. It’s also simple to make in large batches, great for beginner-level dinner parties. Re-heats like magic. A sprig of mint on top for elegance. Can’t go wrong!
Posted in: Food & Recipes.
Welcome to Week Two, in which a mystery is solved and miracles happen. My advice to new runners now starts with this: Find someone knowledgeable to evaluate your form.
Continue reading →
Posted in: Fitness Log, Team In Training (TNT).
I just got back from my first group run this morning with Team In Training! With their help, I am planning to run the Detroit Free Press Marathon in October. However, I’m setting my fundraising goal high. If I do well enough in my early fundraising, I may opt to run in San Francisco’s Nike Women’s Marathon. Either way it will be momentous. For the former I will get a unique glimpse of my newly adopted home city of Detroit. I will enter Canada for the first time running across the Ambassador Bridge, and follow the world’s only “underwater” race mile through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. On the other hand, the Nike Women’s Marathon looks like a party — a great first marathon despite the legendary hills. I’ll also get the chance to see friends and family in the Bay Area.
Historically I’ve been neither a runner nor a fundraiser, so I’m taking on a true challenge here. But you can’t reach goals you don’t set, and I’m fortunate to be surrounded by coaches and mentors for both aspects. I have a one-on-one fundraising planning meeting this Monday, and I’ve already come up with some creative ideas. (I welcome suggestions!)
Why Team In Training? In addition to the excellent support for its runners, the organization is part of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I have known friends and coworkers who have struggled with blood cancers. They can and do strike young adults, like me, and they are not considered preventable. The treatments are difficult, often requiring immunosuppression and isolation. LLS offers hope, both by providing patient support programs and funding research toward cures.
I’ll continue to post my weekly progress and reflections here. This week’s “long” group run was three miles, and I’ve raised sixty dollars. I hope you’ll support me in my efforts — follow the link to my TNT profile and donate. The early donations, however large or small, are a real boost to confidence!
Posted in: Fitness Log, Team In Training (TNT).
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that Atlanta’s in the middle of a pretty serious drought these days. Following are a couple mildly humorous takes on the situation…
A friend of mine recently posted the following IM away message:
Freeze Warning: Please leave faucets dripping.
Drought Warning: Please conserve water.
AirTran is advertising their Atlanta departures with the tagline:
Save water. Shower in another city!
Posted in: Atlanta Metro Area, Trivia & Miscellany.
There’s two big words for you. Chose that title because the root word for “god, deity” is in both of them, and there’s something a little bit transcendent about these two chocolate bars I recently picked up. I guarantee, in either case, that you’ve never had anything like them before, and that they are very tasty. As follows:
Vosges Haut-Chocolat Macha Bar. A glorious blend of Japanese macha green tea and “deep” milk chocolate. What could be a better complement for dark chocolate than another bitterly buttery, rich and aromatic sort of flavor? It really shocks me that I haven’t seen this combination before. Regardless, Vosges executes it perfectly. At first, you only taste the milk chocolate… which is surprisingly intense for milk. Just as the initial wave of chocolate is beginning to dissipate, the lush green tea flavor takes over. It’s spectacular.
3400 Phinney Bread & Chocolate Bar. This arrived in my Christmas stocking chiefly because it had a cat on the label, and my mom picked it out. Only later did we read the label and find it to be “Bread & Chocolate.” A mind-boggling prospect that was. “Surely, they meant cookie, or cracker,” I thought to myself. But when I at last unwrapped it and snapped off a piece, I found mind-bogglingly smooth superdark (83%) chocolate. Excellent superdark chocolate, in fact — sweet, not too bitter. Then, a subtle crunch, and the beginning of a buttery, yeasty flavor unrolling after a short delay. The bread was real: a good flavorful French bread, dried and ground finely, so as not to disrupt the texture. Outright impressive. And nothing like a chocolate croissant, in case you were wondering, but equally satisfying.
Next, I must try Mo’s Bacon Bar and the d’Oliva Bar from Vosges. Just to say I have, you know.
Posted in: Food & Recipes, Product Reviews.
Tagged: food
“One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map that is the territory. You must remember this.”
From the Notebooks of Mr. Ibis, in American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
Posted in: Information Design, Quotes & Excerpts.
I learned something important about lemons this weekend. They taste completely different — and wonderful — when you grill them. It had never before occurred to me that there would be any difference between squeezing a grilled lemon on top of my salmon and using fresh juice. Instead of puckery-sour, grilled lemons have a rich and aromatic flavor, the perfect complement to meat and fish. I’m sure this holds for baked or sauteed lemon, as well. The previous night, it happens that we’d eaten at Rumi’s Kitchen, a Persian restaurant in Sandy Springs, and I had ordered a chicken dish that featured the same lovely rich lemon flavor. It was excellent. Clearly, lemons are meant to be grilled. You can bet I’m going to be cooking my lemons whenever possible in the future.
Posted in: Atlanta Metro Area, Food & Recipes, Restaurant Reviews.
