Race! Larry Noel 12k

Yesterday I ran a 12k race. It was probably my worst race since the 2006 Army Ten-Miler, but I learned some lessons, and I accepted that a large part of that probably had to do with slacking on my training the last couple of weeks. But I thought it might be a good opportunity to talk about what a nut I am before races.

So I read in Runner's World that beetroot juice is supposed to help athletic performance, and the one of the study scientists is an advisor to Paula Radcliffe (a lady who had a baby and won a marathon within a year of each other). Well, I get beets pretty much every week at the market, so I had one leftover. And a blender, and a whole lot of Friday-afternoon time on my hands. So I made beetroot juice. Without a juicer.

I whizzed grated beetroot with a teensy bit of water, and some chopped ginger (for zing) in the blender on a medium-low speed, and then poured the pulp into a cheesecloth-lined strainer, and squeezed the heck out of it. Take that Jack LaLanne.

It was tasty and beety, and my husband made all sorts of blood-drinking jokes. Then we had a lovely dinner of pasta with veggies and chicken sausage, and turned in early.

I woke up once at 4:30 a.m. to a huge crack of thunder, but the storm subsided pretty quickly, and I slept until 6, when my alarm went off. I leapt out of bed (okay, crawled) and made myself peanut butter toast with honey and drank a couple big glasses of water.

After that, I dressed, braided my hair, and was ready to face the race. The weather was, frankly, awful, over 75 degrees, and 100% humidity, but not raining. That, combined with the massive hills, and my over-enthusiasm in the first couple of miles, left me feeling totally drained by the 5k mark. But I pushed through, walking when I felt like I couldn't go on, and then taking up the running when I felt better, and I finished in just over an hour and twenty minutes (yeah, I was hoping for closer to 1:10 or 1:15).

Oh well, there's always next year.

Home Cookin'

Had a bummer of a day at work today, and on the way home I had to stop and pick up some stuff for tomorrow night's dinner. I thought we were having one of my husband's coworkers over, but he canceled after I'd already gotten the supplies. I thought about picking up a six-pack at the liquor store next to the grocery store, but when I passed the seafood counter, I noticed extra-large shrimp on sale. So, I decided it's a lot healthier to self-medicate with shrimp n' grits than with beer, right? Right? It may not be the most authentic, but it hit the spot.

First, saute half a pound of peeled, deveined shrimp in olive oil over medium-high heat. When they start to turn pink and curl up, remove them to a plate

Then, add diced onion, garlic, green pepper, and celery to the hot oil, along with a decent pinch of salt. I used a small onion, three cloves of garlic, a rib of celery, and a large green bell pepper. Cook them until they get soft, about five minutes.

Open a can of whole, peeled tomatoes, with no added salt, and crush them by hand. Sure, you can buy diced or crushed tomatoes, or throw them in the blender, but I like the hands-on approach. Really squish the little guys.

Add the tomatoes to the veggies, along with some hot sauce. My hot sauce has a scantily-clad lady on it, sweet!

Simmer that for five to ten minutes, then add the shrimp back to the pan and poke them under the tomato broth. Let that simmer for a little bit.

While the shrimps simmer, make the grits! Add a half a cup of corn grits to a combination of one cup each of water and milk, that has come to a boil. I add pepper, too. Whisk for about five minutes, or until the grits thicken up.

Then, whisk in 2-3 oz. of grated cheddar cheese. When it's smooth, slap the cover on and let it set while you put the finishing touches on the shrimp.

The finishing touch is a small handful of fresh parsley, roughly chopped, stirred into the shrimp mixture, which has been taken off the heat.

Now comes the fun part: serve and enjoy! Makes two huge servings. Hope you enjoyed my pictorial walk through the comfort food dinner I made myself tonight!

Days in Transition and a New Doctor

It's been a weird week for me so far. Monday I went ahead and worked from home, since the lab was in use, and I had everything I needed at home. And, anyway, I wouldn't have gotten in until noon because I had a physical in the morning. Because of the stupid state of Maryland dropping my health insurance from their offerings, I had to switch insurance, and get a new primary care physician, which was a big hassle. But I won the PCP lottery (which sounds suspiciously drug-related) and really enjoyed my appointment Monday morning, actually. He gave me some ideas (and samples) for dealing with my migraines, took my blood, did a neurological function test, and did an electrocardiogram, which was weird.

That's something. When he hooked up the stick little things to my body, he started asking me about what I do, and what my research is. Y'know how doctors like to make small talk when they're about to do something unpleasant to you? Yeah, that was when I asked him what exactly this test involved. Luckily it just involved sitting for a minute with stickies on me, but who knows? It could have involved zapping me or something.

But I'm a healthy individual, so the whole appointment was uneventful. Oddly, he didn't ask about my chafing marks, but they have an innocuous explanation (7-mile runs in the heat) so it didn't matter.

I've been trying to take a little more charge of my health lately. I tried going high-raw a month ago, but failed because I hit a big stress wall and craved cheese like you wouldn't believe. And cooked food. But I'm trying again, with dinner being my only cooked meal this week. I'm not doing great with the raw lunches and might add a little cooked food next week. I found an awesome vegan veggie burger made from wheat gluten a few weeks ago, so I might try that.

Writing is plodding along, very slowly. I did go through and write synopses of my chapters a few days ago, and then revised them to make the ending more exciting. I'm focusing on my sci-fi novel right now, even though the husband really wants me to finish the dark fantasy short story that I taunted him with by sharing the first few pages. Hopefully as I feel healthier, I'll feel more motivated to write, which always falls by the wayside when work bums me out. In the meantime, I'll leave you with pictures of beautiful salads (placed at random intervals throughout this post), the first one being my all-raw lunch salad, and the second being a grilled-chicken-topped salad we had for dinner a few nights ago.

Infrequent Doesn't Even Begin to Describe It...

Hi! I'm still here, I promise. I know it's been ages since I've actually updated here, but I have still be cooking, and running, and even sometimes taking pictures of food. But it hasn't really been my primary focus in life. So rather than bother to morph this into something beyond a food blog, I just stopped updating.

But y'know what? Non-food blogs are okay, too. As are blogs about, well, life, which also includes food sometimes. And what is this life I speak of, you may wonder? Well, one of the first things that has taken up my time is that I have been writing. Those of you who read my blog previously may remember occasional posts in November about this crazy plan to write 50,000 words of a novel in a month. And I did. And it was good.

Well, okay, it was terrible, but I learned lessons along the way, and plotted out another novel, started writing it, and promptly abandoned it. I actually did this three times. So I dug out my writing folder, and took a look-see and saw that, hey, some of this stuff isn't too bad. So I kept going on it. So yeah, writing is awesome. And will consume your life if you enjoy it.

I've also been cooking, but it's summer, and in summer I cook a lot less complicated. I did host a 4-course dinner party with a friend, which was awesome. The star of the evening was handmade egg pasta with slow-roasted tomatoes, so I'll share a picture of that.

But mostly I've been keeping busy with ecclectic pursuits. Maybe I'll be better about sharing them with you more often.