Summer Running and Summer Salads

John and I are about to take some time off for the wedding. Ever since my area exam I've been working what I think of as regular hours on my dissertation in order to take a long period of time off this summer. My brain feels something like this Rameau tornado:

Some day I'll write a real post about my dissertation research, but you know, not right now. Suffice to say I'm ready for a break. 

In the mean time, John and I have been running a lot of miles and making a lot of salads out of Appetite for Reduction. I wanted to save the salad recipes for the summer when veggies are fresh and haven't traveled as far. So far, the salads in this book are blowing my mind. Every one of them is so good and has a dressing so delicious I could eat it with a spoon.

Above: Goddess Niçoise, with green beans, cherry tomatoes, potatoes, and a delicious green dressing with chives, cilantro, and miso, among other ingredients. 

Below: Edamame Sushi Roll Salad. Holy crap, this is good. We served it with dressing on the side, and as suggested, a dish with soy sauce and a little wasabi. I dipped each bite in both and it tasted so much like sushi! The salad itself has edamame and brown rice sprinkled on lettuce, with carrots, cucumbers, avocado, and sesame seeds. And the dressing tastes a lot like the ginger dressing common in Japanese restaurants. I wanted to lick the bowl.

And, since blogging transitions are for chumps, here's some running stuff. 

This summer, I've been following the 10k training plan from Run Less, Run Faster. The point was to sort of shake things up, since I feel like I'm not really running up to my potential in races and I was getting kind of bored with my routine. I wanted to be challenged, and I'm getting my wish. Every work out has very specific time goals based on previous race times, and every single one has been HARD. But hard in a good way. I don't think I'm hurting myself and I've noticed a lot of improvement in the five weeks or so that I've been using the plan. Every run has a very definite purpose now, and it's more mentally engaging than what I was used to. 

Since I'm running a half marathon in October, I'm just using the 10k plan now to get in shape to do the half marathon plan. And it's a pretty tough 10k plan compared to what I've done. Last week's longest run was 10 miles, meant to be run at a 9:38-per-mile pace. I've been able to run most of the runs at the proscribed time, but I've taken breaks that are not part of the plan. Even though every run is specifically timed, I've tried to maintain flexibility in my attitude, since I'm just sort of training to train at this point. I just want to get used to running this way, internalizing different paces. It can be mentally grueling and difficult for a perfectionist such as myself if I take the times too literally. All the sudden a 10:00-per-mile average pace for a 9 mile run can feel like a failure because it wasn't the proscribed time. That's crazy talk and it's ultimately not helping.

In order to combat that rigidity, I decided that for my 10 mile run last week I would ditch my usual route and try a new part of town, complete with a woodsy trail system I'd never visited called Medway Forest. I ran from home to Huron College, the Anglican college affiliated with Western. There's an entrance to the trail system just behind the college. I hoped to approximate a route, based on the map and John's previous experience, that included about 2 miles on the trail system. But it's virtually impossible to know exactly how far the trail goes just by looking at the map, so I knew the route I mapped was just a guess. On top of that, trails tend to slow me down. The whole run provided a much needed refresher from the Run Less, Run Faster method. 

What was meant to be 2 miles turned out to be more like 3. Even though the trails on the map look like they kind of dead end, they are mostly connected by smaller, unofficial trails, some very rocky and some pleasantly wide and run-able. I got out my phone a couple of times to look myself up on the GPS (and snap a photo), but I knew to keep the river to my right. I eventually popped out of the trail system on Wonderland, a main drag in town, and kept going for about 5 more miles. 

I have to say, Medway Forest is kind of amazing. It's beautiful, and much bigger than it looks on the map, and the trees are tall like the ones at the Pinery. I truly felt like I was miles away from London, which was another mental escape. I definitely want to incorporate it again, maybe with the GPS watch so that I know how far I've really run.

This run was so encouraging. Running the trail portion at a slower-than-proscribed pace made the rest of the run feel amazing. I ended up taking 1:42:xx to run about 10 miles, and I'm pretty pleased with that, since I did some walking and maneuvering on the trail. I didn't feel like I'd been hit by a truck at the end of the run, and while I'm sure the cooler weather helped with that, I think it also means the new running plan is paying off. And that just gave me more motivation to get back into the plan this week! Of course, traveling for the wedding will mean some slight alterations in the plan, and at some point I have to actually switch from the 10k plan to the half marathon plan. But I'm enjoying all the fast running. Pushing myself has been so rewarding thus far.

Spring

Once we got back to Ontario last week, it was clear that Spring had finally arrived. Even though it snowed last week, it's finally stayed warm enough for me to plant my herbs and tomatoes.

 John brought me some lilac from a neighbor's tree while walking home yesterday, and I found lily of the valley growing along our driveway. They make the kitchen smell so nice! My mom always picked lily of the valley from our backyard when I was growing up and she would put them in a water glass in the kitchen. That flower always makes me feel nostalgic.

This year I tried to let my rosemary and thyme come back on their own, with only partial success. I trimmed the rosemary too much and I think I ended up killing it, so I ripped it out and put in a new plant (shown here on the left). The thyme, however, survived. It just started turning green one day, so I didn't have to replace it (center). This year we decided on sweet (regular) basil, rather than lemon basil, since we want to have it in the greatest quantity (far right). 

I also sprouted some basil from a package of it I bought at the grocery store to cook with. I let it sprout in a water glass for close to a month before planting it so that it would grow a lot of roots. I have a glass with mint growing in the kitchen now that I will plant beside it once it has enough roots. In the mean time, I've gotten to use both plants when I need a bit of either herb. 

And on the inside of our house, we've been busy making Mexican food.

For Christmas, my mom got me Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen. We've been kind of intimated by the recipes and put off trying it, but last weekend we went for it and I'm so glad. I should mention that a lot of the recipes in the book are vegetarian. But a lot of them are fairly involved, so we've been saving them for the summer when our schedules are more flexible for cooking dinner.

First of all, the Topolo margarita was the best margarita I've ever made and one of the smoothest, best I've ever had. You start by making a limeade and letting that sit in the fridge for a few hours. After that, it's just the usual ingredients. Now I'm excited to try the other margarita recipes in the book. 

We made a simple enchilada recipe from the book that was more like pancakes than enchiladas. It involves making a smokey, rich tomato sauce and then dipping tortillas with it. Then you top them with onions, cheese (feta, here, but it called for a Mexican queso), cilantro, and more of the sauce. Simple, right? But so flavorful. We had lots of sauce leftover, too. 

So we put the sauce on more tacos: roasted chickpea and broccoli tacos, with avocado, cilantro, and more of the sauce above. This recipe is from Thug Kitchen, a hilarious (and very profane!) vegan blog that I recommend for the laughs alone.

All this warm weather makes me want to go to Lake Huron, so I hope we get to do that soon. I hope the weather is nice where you are!

Almost Here

Kind of a lot of things are about to happen. I'll present them in a convenient (lazy) list format. But first, here are some things that happened recently: 

1. We went to Gen Pop, a dance party/fundraiser that my friend Matthew organizes. It benefits an LGBT youth group in London. This month, Gen Pop took place on Good Friday,* so they hid Eggs filled with chocolate and condoms all around the venue for guests to find. I found three!

2. John and I have continued to work our way through the Appetite for Reduction. Here's the caesar salad with smokey, roasted egg plant on top (how does she make the dressing taste so good?!):

We also made this chipotle chili with sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts. I know it sounds like an odd combination of things, but this chili was delicious! It's great with any kind of corn bread, obviously.

3. On Holy Saturday, we had an Easter brunch at our house with friends from school. I took this picture of the table before everyone arrived, so it's an incomplete representation of what we ate. Not shown: crepes, eggs, crumpets, and lots of Bailey's in coffee. I also started to make a drink composed of Bailey's, a splash of cream, and a splash of whiskey. I know, I know, there is whiskey in Bailey's. But a touch of it on the top of the drink kind of turned the rest of the flavors up to eleven. I call it: the Irish Russian. Like a black Russian, but with Bailey's and whiskey, instead of vodka.

Side note: after brunch, we went to see The Quartet. Music student friends, have you seen this movie? It's charming. Several of the characters reminded me of voice professors at Indiana. 

4. For lunch this week, John and I made this salad with chickpeas, lentils, tahini, and feta from Smitten Kitchen. Two thumbs way up. I made a second batch of it today. Tomorrow we're going to brunch at Matthew's house and I'm bringing blackberry gin fizzes (also from Smitten Kitchen) to drink. I'll test the recipe and report back.**

5. It's April, and yet this was our weather this week: snow, as fast and hard as snow can fall for about 15 minutes. It was a total white out while I waited for the bus. Fifteen minutes later, it was bright and sunny. As one of my friends posted on facebook last week, "Go home Spring. You're drunk." 

6. Back to our original topic: lots of exciting things are about to take place. My area exam (a defense of my dissertation proposal) will take place between May 6th and 10th, but that means a lot of writing and editing in the next week. I only have time now to write this blog post because I've spent a lot of the day trying to determine exactly when Newton's theories gained traction in France (the actual content of my dissertation proposal is the subject of another post, one that I hope to write after my proposal is eventually accepted and the problems have been hammered out). Once I've submitted it to the committee, I'll have lots of time to grade final exams, make delicious foods, and do research for my RA-ship (for which I actually get paid by the hour - hooray!). But until then, I have a lot of Rameau work waiting for me. So by extension, my ABD status is also almost here. 

Incidentally if you're looking for a somewhat satirical explanation of what it's like to be a PhD student in the humanities, may I recommend this detailed analogy between the PhD process and the plot to all three Lord of the Rings movies. It was eerily familiar.

7. Other things that are almost here: our wedding (in late June), and the greyhound we plan to adopt in August. We're going to look into adopting one from GRA Canada, a greyhound rescue just outside London. Some of the dogs they currently have aren't quite ready for adoption, but will be within a few months. That means that one of the dogs on this list could be our future dog! Not that I look at the list all the time or anything. I totally don't know the names of any of the adoptable dogs. And I also definitely don't have a potential list of names for our dog based on historic music theorists/Enlightenment philosophes.***

*I would try to give a deep, quasi-theological interpretation of attending a gay dance party on Good Friday (perhaps about "dying" to prejudice or fear of others), but you know....it's not that kind of blog. 

**Brunch, two weekends in a row. I know what you're thinking, and you're right - my life is hard.

***Yes, I do. 

The First Week of "Spring."

Happy Spring! Break out the light jackets! Open the windows! Breath in that fresh, spring air! 

J/k, lol, it's still winter in Canada. Until, like, May. 

We've come up with a couple of coping mechanisms. New recipes, such as....

Blueberry Banana Whole Wheat Muffins from Daily Garnish

These were kind of an impulse baking decision. After I got home from singing for Palm Sunday, I decided a mini-brunch would be nice, so I made these muffins and some scrambled eggs. We had all the ingredients on hand, and muffins are usually simple to put together. These have a really nice texture:  a bit crispy on the outside, but soft inside. They'll be great for breakfast tomorrow, too. 

Forty Clove Chickpeas and Broccoli, from Appetite for Reduction, part of our on-going attempt to cook through this cookbook. 

Just like Isa Chandra says, this recipe ain't pretty. It's not worthy to serve to guests. But it's ridiculously easy (put broccoli, garlic, and chickpeas on a pan and roast), and remarkably flavorful. We'll definitely return to it for weeknights. 

Our friend Katie celebrated a birthday last week while we were in Toronto, so we had her over belatedly for some birthday beer and a little snack assortment on this lovely new (bridal shower present) tray! Everything looks delicious and classy on this tray. 

And finally, we made the roasted tomatoes and cipollini onions from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook. Like the broccoli recipe above, this was very simple. Tomatoes and onions roast in the oven for an hour or so. You pour them with their juices over some toasted bread, rubbed with a garlic clove, with some white beans, and then garnish with some slivered basil. Also, bonus, this is vegan! Definitely one of the richest vegan meals I've made.

Y'all, this is crazy good. The onions break down into something like butter, and the tomatoes brown and then just sort of burst. It felt really rich, and it was incredibly filling. Like a lot of the recipes in her book, in my opinion, this is great for a weekend evening. Some of them are fairly indulgent, some (though not all) take slightly more time than I would allow on the average weeknight to make dinner. But they're usually great with some wine, and a nice alternative to eating out.


Second, I coped with the extension of winter by going where few Canadians have gone before: 

Not just a Target (since most people in London, especially, have been to Target in Michigan). 

But a Target in Canada. 

Canadian Target! Finally. 

It seems like a regular Target in a lot of ways, but with one new feature I've never seen in Target: the cart escalator. You put your cart on it, and it takes it upstairs! Maybe this is common in Targets in metropolitan areas? 

                                     

Seeing all the familiar Target brands and layout in Canada was sort of surreal, since it's a place that I so strongly associate with America. It was also crazier than the mall on Christmas Eve. I could barely walk through it. Canadian Target will be more fun to peruse after the novelty wears off and everyone in town isn't inside it.

I snapped a couple of photos of these items in the underwear section. Two things every bride needs. 

I purchased neither, though that tank top would probably work well for our pre-wedding 5K fun run. 

Blow, Ill Wind, Blow Away

My schedule this term is slightly crazy. I pretty much felt like this all week:

It's really not so bad, but I'm still not used to teaching as much as I have to this term. I'll admit, I'm having a tough time finding a balance between teaching and working on my dissertation. But it's good practice, since I'm signing up to do this full time, you know, for my career. I love my students (mostly) and I love my dissertation (mostly), but I'm ready for reading week. 

But I'm also not ready for reading week, because I have to submit a draft of my dissertation proposal by then, and it's far from done. 

After a full day of teaching, office hours, a staff meeting, more teaching, and planning for class on Friday, I came home and did this:  

That's no cupcake. That's bubble bath waiting to go in the tub. After a long week of writing and teaching the kiddos, it was a perfect way to end the week. Also, bonus, I planned all of next week's classes, so I should be able to have more quality time with Rameau (aka, the star of my dissertation) next week. Here's to a more balanced week.

John and our friend Ian took over the kitchen two nights in a row to make Alton Brown's recipe for Coq au Vin, and they were not disappointed. 

                                        

They paired it with a really buttery, delicious Chardonnay that I hope to find again sometime. 

John has said on occasion that he wants to learn how to cook certain meat dishes, and I've encouraged him to find a meat-eating friend and go to it. Knowing I had to come up with something easy for myself that wouldn't take up a lot of kitchen resources, I made this: 

I call it the Lazy Girl's Pizza for One. It's a pita with melted herbed havarti, sauteed mushrooms, and arugula on top. I got to eat the whole thing while they waited for their coqs (heh) to finish cooking, and they were definitely jealous. Even with coq au vin on the way, melted cheese is still tempting. 

We also made some recipes from Appetite for Reduction.
Living in the age of Twitter means that anyone can randomly get in contact with famous people, or at least bug them more directly on the internet. So I decided to tweet to Isa Chandra that we are using her book. And she replied! Here's the email notification:

**Blush**. You guys, we're friends for life now.

This week we made: 

Red Thai Tofu and Pad Thai Salad.


                                       








Y'all, this salad dressing is delightful. It's mostly ground peanuts, a little soy sauce, water, garlic, cilantro, and sriracha. Super easy, lightly spicy, and it really takes the salad up a notch. The rest of it is simple to throw together: grated carrot, red onion, bean sprouts, and cilantro. She suggests bulking it up with the tofu recipe, which was also very straight forward and probably took 30 minutes, start to finish. Ian and John took a break from the first night of coq au vin work to eat this, and they were pretty impressed. That salad will probably become a staple recipe for us.



Mom's Marinara and Tempeh-Bean Balls

Isa Chandra suggests about 10 different variations on the marinara sauce, which is just a simple tomato sauce. We tried the mushroom version, which adds about a pound of sauteed mushrooms to the sauce, once it's mostly done. John and I also added about 1.5 tbs of balsamic vinegar to the sauce and that gave it an amazing flavor. I'm sort of mixed about the bean balls. On the one hand, they are way easier and faster than homemade seitan. But we left them in the oven to stay warm while the rest of the recipe was coming together, and they dried out slightly. Fortunately, that was easy to fix by smothering them in the sauce. This one will make for good leftovers.

Last but hardly least, I made Oh She Glows, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Larabars. 

If you have a food processor, then the active part of this recipe takes about 10 minutes. Then you freeze the mixture for about 15 minutes, and voila! Larabars. With chocolate in them. Just like the real deal, they have about five ingredients: cashews, dates, chocolate chips, vanilla, and salt. They'll be great little snacks to bring to school. 

And now, I'm off to eat dinner and cheer on the Hoosiers as they play Michigan. Let's go Big Red! 

High of 11

As in, 11degrees Fahrenheit. It's been a cold week here and probably where you live, too (unless you're Sargibso, of course).

John gets so covered up to wait for the bus that all you can see is his little face. I can tell John has really become acclimated to life in the north. This week he said to me, "Once the temperature warms up to, like, twenty degrees, I'll totally run outside." 

We've both been working out at the gym a lot in order to escape the cold. I know the treadmill isn't the same as running outside, and it's so boring that I've started to learn the TV schedule at the gym. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm on the 'mill by 8:30, the same time "Property Virgins" comes on. If I'm lucky, I can get a treadmill by that particular TV so that I can watch young rich folks shop for houses in Toronto. But it's kind of a trade off, since the show that comes on next is "Princesses," a sort of intervention show for spoiled rich girls whose parents want to cut them off financially. The ideal spot is between that TV and the one next to it so that once those rich kids pick a house, I can switch to watching Sports Center.

I know you're glad I told you about my gym TV strategy. 

Anyways, my foot seems to like the treadmill better, and it's been easier to work on my form without having to worry about icy side walks. My mileage is still conservative this month. Next month I'll start training for the Forest City 10K and that will require going outside. On the plus side, I've been using a lot of this indoor time to lift weights and I can tell that I've gotten stronger since Christmas. I hope to write a post soon with some 2013 running plans/goals. For now, they are still forming.

And now, here's some food!

 We made the mushroom bourguignon (that's the link to her recipe!) from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook. It's pretty easy and just gets better as leftovers. I'd highly recommend taking a look at that book if you haven't already.

Continuing our tour through Appetite for Reduction, John and I ate three recipes from that book this week:

Caribbean Curried Black-Eyed Peas.

We ate this dish with rice and steamed plantains. Then when we were out rice for the leftovers, we made some orzo pasta to go with it. This isn't my favorite Isa Chandra recipe - somehow it just didn't knock our socks off. But it's tasty and pretty easy. 

 Next: Black Bean Red Velvet Mole. 

We made this before Christmas and froze it - turns out, it freezes well. I have no words for how great this recipe is, especially because its easy-to-tasty ratio is so great. This isn't a labor intensive, authentic mole, for you mole purists. But it's chocolately and easy and delicious. I want to make it again right away.

Big Fat Taco Salad

What can I say? I love taco salad. The "guacamame" (regular guac + edamame) might benefit from a little cumin, but it's a very fresh tasting salad. You can make the salsa-dressing aspect of it in advance and it keeps for five days. John and I eat a lot of salad, so this brought some welcome variety to the salad menu this week. 

We still love Appetite for Reduction, and it's easy to plan dinner when we know we'll pick something from it each week to make. 

In non-food, non-running news, John and I have moved on from a Homeland obsession to watching Friday Night Lights. Holy crap, I love this show. I thought all the hand-held camera work would prevent me from watching it at first, since that makes me very motion sick. But I've gotten the hang of it and I know when to avert my eyes. It's really compelling, even if you aren't into football. Also, I've decided that before every road race, I'm going to look at John and say:

CLEAR EYES

FULL HEARTS

CAN'T LOSE! 

After John's Colloquium Talk

Yesterday, John gave a paper in our colloquium series at school. Giving a paper takes a lot out of a person. So afterward, we went with some classmates to Matthew's house for pizza and drinks.

John, posing for his GQ photo spread.

Matthew is a gracious host. Here he is posing with one of his favorite LPs.

For some reason, everyone took a turn doing squats before the pizza arrived. Bunch of show offs.

We capped off the night with a visit to the Early Bird, one of our favorite spots for any time of day, but especially late at night. Here's John enjoying a Pimm's cup.

In other news, John and I are making our way through the Appetite for Reduction. This week: Mango BBQ Beans with Fresh Corn and Scallion Cornbread. Both are easy recipes. I can tell Isa Chandra intended most of this food to be week-night friendly. Also, the combination of spices and liquid smoke in the beans is amazing - it has a great BBQ flavor. We made a double batch, thank goodness.