Sounds Like Life To Me

Randomness

Like many of us, I spent the past 16(?) days catching up on the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, cheering for our country participating in sports I know little about. I am familiar with downhill skiing, cross country skiing and ice skating, only because I've had lessons in each of those activities, but I'm far, far, FAR from being a pro and have never competed, but I can confidently say that I can get myself from point a to point b. I know nothing about hockey, but I can get the gist of the game, and I found myself cheering and yelling at the TV a few times. Same thing with snow boarding, speed skating and bob sledding. I'm sure I would have been yelling at the curling event, too, but it wasn't on when I watched. Oh, and what about some of those guys (and women) in their super suits? You really have to have quite the physique to pull off one of those super fitted race suits. Now that the 2010 Winter Olympics are over, I'll have to find something else since American Idol is a yawner this season. At least I still have Project Runway.

I actually got out and ran with the track club on Saturday. We ran at one of my favorite locations, starting at Tidelands Park in Coronado, along the Silver Strand to fit in the time or mileage and back. A lot of people don't care too much for the Silver Strand, but I like it. I can find my groove there and just go with it. It figures that rain was in the forecast for our run. It seems it has rained three out of the four Saturdays in February, and that one non rainy Saturday I was sick. In spite of the rain there was a decent attendance of track club members. My mileage for this 2 hour out and back run was exactly as it was when I did it last year, but it was raining and very windy at some points this time, plus I was just coming back from being sick... I guess I should give myself some slack for that, but I was a little bummed with my time. It was good to be back running with the track club, though. I was able to catch up with my friends who did show up. I'm glad I had the foresight to bring a change of clothes because I was DRENCHED. My clothes and shoes were sopping wet and heavy. It felt good to change into dry clothes and shoes, even if it were just for the ride home.

I'm signed up for the Carlsbad 5000 on April 11 with Rehab United as a team - which should be fun. I missed the boat on the La Jolla Half Marathon, which said "FULL" when I tried to sign up yesterday. Am I bummed? No. Running in the LJHM was sort of an after thought to running the Carlsbad Half Marathon in January, and I was thinking about going for the triple crown (Carlsbad, La Jolla, AFC), but it wasn't a priority, getting healthy was the focus. Now I might have to rethink AFC and if I really want to do that one in the heat of August. There ARE other half marathons to consider.

Check out another running skirt give away at Endurance Isn't Only Physical.

I was in the mood for baking on Sunday, so I made a Red Velvet cake. I've been having issues with Red Velvet Cake I've had at restaurants. They aren't good. Either the cake tastes weird or the frosting is cream cheese frosting, which (in my mind) is all wrong. That's not how grandma used to make it. I scoured the internet for recipes and found this one that comes close to grandma's cake:

THE RECIPE FOR RED VELVET CAKE

The recipe for the frosting follows it. By the way, this frosting recipe contains enough butter to make Paula Deen squeal with delight.

Parenting (or in our case, Grand-parenting) rule #6.8 in the rule book:
"Never leave out any markers, pens, stamps, paint, and/or other media that a 6 year old can run a muck with."

What you're looking at is my dresser stamped with my husband's state license stamp. I guess the kiddo had a good time at it. No, he didn't get in trouble. It was his Papa's fault for leaving the stamp out, but the kiddo was made aware that this wasn't a nice thing to do, even though we thought it was funny.

Wednesday's Song:
Who Will Buy? - Barbara Streisand, London Theater Orchestra & Cast, Aaron Neville, etc...

PEACE

Photo by fleeglebingodroopersnork on Photobucket.com

Days Of The Week

Yesterday

We spent time at home fixing things around the house and gardening. I found more "planted" avocados, planted by my dog. The only thing is now some of the avocado seeds are starting to sprout. Someone suggested I dig those up and give them out as gifts. Aside from finding the sprouts, I pulled a lot of weeds and stray grasses, and that was just a small section. I really do need a bulldozer to take care of everything and just be done with it.

Today

Workout at RU today.
I got the usual killer workout, except this time I did barbell squats with 85#.

We're having some very un-San Diego weather here today. It feels somewhat tropical and humid. I was rained on. I'm glad it wasn't just me drenched in sweat when working out.

My PT sent me an e-mail, per my request, with a general workout for when I'm not working out at RU, 4 days of running - varied between my long runs, intervals, hills and tempo runs, strength training 2 days, and (of course) the two days I workout at RU. I just did the math. That's 8 days. Last time I checked there were only 7 days in a week, unless I missed something, and even so, I should have at least one rest day. I don't think he meant the workouts as it reads, but it does read as 8 days.

I found a really good referral to a raspberry buttermilk cake recipe off of Not Soccer Mom's blog, who found it on another blog, but it's also on Epicurious.com. The recipe is pretty straight forward and, in my opinion, easy. I've made this cake three times already. I might have to try this cake with blueberries next. It comes out exactly as it looks here:

Photo from Epicurious.com

Saturday's song:
Dream Of The Blue Turtles - Sting - Run-DMZ

PEACE

Superhero

This morning my son had mentioned that the next big food thing would be the breakfast salad. He said he went out for breakfast this morning and that's what he had. I was intrigued. He said a breakfast salad is, basically, a salad with a fried egg on it. That didn't sound too appealing to me, but I did a Google search for a breakfast salad. The breakfast salads that came up weren't much of a stretch, and not unusual from anything I've ever had, such as a spinach salad with bacon and hard boiled eggs and some sort of oil and vinegar dressing. One breakfast salad did come up that seemed interesting to me, and I might have to try it.



Breakfast Salad
By Cindy Burke, from the Cindy Burke collection
Serves 2
Prep Time 15 minutes
Total Time 12 hours
Introduction

Salad for breakfast might sound strange, but don’t knock it until you try it. Cindy Burke recommends prepping the vegetables the night before to minimize the time it takes to pull together breakfast in the morning; read the author’s inspiration for this salad on her Culinate blog.

Ingredients
1 cucumber
1 bell pepper (any color)
2 medium tomatoes, chopped, or a handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
~ Salt to taste
1 Tbsp. flaxseed oil or extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp. rice-wine vinegar
2 cups salad greens, washed and dried
¼ cup crumbled goat cheese or whole-milk ricotta
1 Tbsp. toasted sunflower seeds
2 large farm-fresh eggs
~ Freshly ground black pepper

1. The evening before you plan to serve the salad, peel the cucumber. Cut it in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Cut the cucumber lengthwise into eight equal strips and then into medium dice. Place the diced cucumber into two salad bowls.
2. Remove the seeds from the bell pepper and cut into medium dice; add to the bowls.
3. Chop the ripe tomatoes (or, if it’s early in the summer, substitute a handful of halved cherry tomatoes) and add them to the bowls.
4. Add a sprinkle of salt to the vegetables if you like. Add the flaxseed or olive oil to each bowl, then add the rice-wine vinegar (not too much — remember, this is for breakfast). Toss the diced vegetables with a spoon.
5. Next, tear a handful of greens into bite-sized pieces. Place the greens on top the diced vegetables, but do not toss with the greens yet (the oil and vinegar will wilt the leaves).
6. Crumble a little soft goat cheese on top. Finally, sprinkle toasted sunflower seeds over everything.
7. Cover and refrigerate the salads overnight. In the morning, take the salads out of the fridge.
8. Bring a small pot of water to a boil and gently set the eggs into the water; cook for 6 to 8 minutes. Once the eggs are cooked, drain the hot water and peel away the shells under cool running water.
9. Plop an egg on top of each salad, cutting each in half with your fork so the yolk can ooze out a little, then add a grind of black pepper. Toss and serve.

Other stuff...

When my kids were of grade school age, and it was my week to handle the carpool, the kids would often discuss being superheros. The question would be "If you were a superhero what would your superhero name be, and what are your superpowers?" I caught this Blogthing on Smartypantz's blog:

Your Superpower Should Be Mind Reading

You are brilliant, insightful, and intuitive. You understand people better than they would like to be understood. Highly sensitive, you are good at putting together seemingly irrelevant details. You figure out what's going on before anyone knows that anything is going on! Why you would be a good superhero: You don't care what people think, and you'd do whatever needed to be done Your biggest problem as a superhero: Feeling even more isolated than you do now

What Should Your Superpower Be?

Well, that's a stretch... NOT! Being a mom , wife, and having a boss at work, I have to read minds sometimes. Sheesh.

Yesterday's song:
Buns O' Plenty - Isaac Hayes - Step Away From The Cake

PEACE

Photo from culinate.com

Oatmeal Cookies

Last night's activity was baking cookies with my grandson. It has been a long while since I've made cookies, but something about having a kid in the house makes me want to do all of those homemaker-ish kinds of things that I've strayed from. Now that he's a little older, he wants to help crack eggs and stir, and baking treats (like cookies) has more purpose. It's the experience. The trick was to make cookies out of the ingredients I already had, and a batch of old-fashioned oatmeal cookies were created. The recipe came from the back of the package of generic oatmeal from Von's (Safeway.) The recipe is nothing unusual, other than their recipe version called for a half teaspoon of ground nutmeg. I can't recall ever using nutmeg in oatmeal cookies before. They turned out great, but when everyone else came home they asked "why are you making cookies?" Has it really been THAT long? The recipe is basic, right off the oatmeal cannister/package. Take a peek at your own cannister of oatmeal.

I miss running.

Yesterday's song:
King Of The Road - Roger Miller - Simplypink


PEACE

Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy

Yesterday my next-door neighbor brought over a huge grocery bag full of red plums from his backyard tree. The plums were great fresh, but there were so many that they'd go bad before we could eat them all, so I decided to make jam. I checked out recipezaar.com and found a recipe that I liked, but adapted it to what I had on hand and made it my own.

Plum-Lime Jam

Ingredients:
8 cups (about 64 ounces) of of plums - rinsed, pitted and coarsely chopped with skins on
1 1/2 cups of sugar
1 pinch of salt
2 teaspoons of vanilla
The juice of one lime
Three 2 inch strips of lime zest
~~~~~

For easier measuring, I just filled up a 64 ounce Gladware container with the chopped plums.

Place all the ingredients in a large pot with plenty of room to allow for the mixture to boil. Cook over low to medium low heat. Make sure all the sugar is dissolved, and continue to keep scraping the sides as you stir.

Last to go in -- the strips of lime zest

Once the mixture appears to me more liquefied, take out the lime zest and mash the mixture. The original recipe says to use a potato masher and that the mixture should be chunky. If you like a little more chunky, well then go for the potato masher, however, I love to use my kitchen gadgets, so I opted for the hand held mixer...

...and ended up with a smooth mixture. Keep in mind that the pot is still on the stove on low to medium low heat.


The original recipe explains that the mixture should be the consistency/thickness of honey when cooled. It's not the same texture as honey, but it should be somewhat thick, well, like jam (duh!) To test it, I would spoon out about a tablespoon into a small bowl, cool.

My jam is tangy, and that's what I was going for, but you can adjust the tangy-ness by reducing the lime juice to taste. This recipe yielded just a little over a 2 pound jar of jam. Store in an air-tight container. Will keep in a refrigerator for about a month.




Yesterday's song:
Fast Cars And Freedom - Rascal Flats - Katiefeldmom

PEACE

Hummingbird

It's hard to believe that the little guy in the photo is going to be 5 in a couple of weeks. I dug out this photo because Bisous is looking for a cake recipe for her daughter's first birthday. I immediately thought about the Hummingbird Cake recipe, which is what that bunny cake up there is made out of. (I miss the days of bunny cakes. Now it gets more complicated because that little guy in the picture now wants a Lexus birthday cake. How do we manage THAT, other than putting a Matchbox or Hotwheels version of a Lexus on top???)

Here's the recipe:

HUMMINGBIRD CAKE
From recipezaar.com

Ingredients

• 
  

Cake

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3 large eggs, beaten
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 (8 ounce) can crushed pineapple, undrained
• 1 cup chopped pecan
• 2 cups chopped bananas
• 1/2 cup chopped pecan

Cream Cheese Frosting

• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
• 1 (16 ounce) package powdered sugar, sifted
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Combine first five ingredients in a large bowl; add eggs, and oil, stirring until dry ingredients are moistened.

2. (Do not beat) Stir in vanilla, pineapple, 1 cup pecans, and bananas.

3. Pour batter into 3 greased and floured 9" round cake pans. (I used 2 )

4. Bake at 350 degrees F for 25-30 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.

5. Cool in pans on wire racks 10 minutes; remove from pans, and cool completely on wire racks.

6. Spread Cream Cheese Frosting between layers and on top and sides of cake; sprinkle 1/2 cup chopped pecans on top.

7. Store in refrigerator.

8. Cream Cheese Frosting: Beat cream cheese and butter at medium speed, with an electric mixer until smooth.

9. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating at low speed until light and fluffy.

10. Stir in vanilla.

11. Yield: 3 cups

Calories - a gazillion

Since the cake was for a one year old, I left out the pecans. The first time I had this cake it was in three layers, but it has the density of a carrot cake, so you really don't need to layer it. I made the bunny head using two round pans, cutting out the two ear part, then using the left over part for the bow-tie. I also used store bought tube decorating frosting and confections to decorate.

Most importantly, he loved it...


Yesterday's song:
Hot Dogs and Hamburgers - John Mellancamp

PEACE

Feelin' At Home

Cardio workout at home - Billy Blanks - Cardio Bootcamp DVD- 30 minutes. Whew!

Last week my husband purchased a few very large sweet potatoes, but I didn't want to make the typical sweet potatoes and marshmallows. Meghan over at Pinkdumbbells.com posted a link to this recipe for sweet potato minestrone. Today was the day I put a couple of those large sweet potatoes to good use. I like this recipe because you don't need to be exact with the measurements. It says to use large sweet potatoes, but I've seen sweet potatoes as big as footballs... I guess it's all relative to what you have on hand. The flavors are a little different than we're used to for regular minestrone, but it really is yummy, it's vegetarian, and makes for a wonderful cold weather soup to warm the soul.

Here's a photo of my little bowl of soup right before digging in:


I still have to work on my food photography technique, like cleaning up around the rim of the bowl and pairing it up with some crusty, whole grain bread. I was hungry and I didn't want to spend the time prepping soup for a picture. After all, it is soup, not one of my kids! It is one colorful and tasty bowl of soup, so maybe it didn't need further embellishments.

Sweet Potato Minestrone From Allrecipes.com

Ingredients

* 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
* 1 large onion, chopped
* 2 large stalks celery, chopped
* 2 1/2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
* salt and pepper to taste
* 1 (28 ounce) can Italian-style diced tomatoes
* 5 cups vegetable broth
* 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
* 2 large carrots, sliced thin
* 6 ounces green beans, cut into 1 inch pieces
* 5 cloves garlic, minced

Directions:

Heat oil in a soup pot over medium-high heat. Saute onion, celery, Italian seasoning, salt and pepper until tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in tomatoes, with the juice, broth, sweet potatoes, carrots, green beans and garlic. Bring to a boil; reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes.


Peace

Rest Stop

No workout/run today. A rest day...

A couple of weeks ago I came a cross a recipe for soup that intrigued me. It was actually from a segment on the local mid-day newscast. I've never really made a recipe from a tv show or news segment before because most TV recipes usually have some form of cheese or dairy, which I need to be careful with due to allergic reactions. This recipe is for roasted garlic and squash soup. Squash is one of those vegetables that's iffy in my house, it's either hit or miss, but this soup was a definite home run with everyone. They even came back for seconds.


ROASTED GARLIC & SQUASH SOUP
(From KGTV San Diego - Chef Larry)

1 garlic bulb
2 tsp.olive oil
Salt
Fresh ground black pepper

For the soup:
1 tsp. olive oil
1/2 cup leeks, diced
1/2 cup celery, diced
1/2 cup carrots, diced
2 cups Butternut, Acorn or Kabocha squash, peeled, diced
1 bay leaf
1/3 tsp. thyme leaves
4 cups chicken stock
salt
fresh ground black pepper
1 1/2 cup heavy cream (optional)
Chives, minced


Roast the Garlic:
Method: Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Prepare roasted garlic by slicing off tapered end of the garlic bulb. Season open end of garlic bulb with olive oil, salt and pepper. Wrap seasoned garlic bulb in aluminum foil. Roast garlic in oven for one hour. Remove and cool. Remove roasted garlic from skin and reserve.

For the Soup:
Heat olive oil in a large saucepan or pot. Add leeks, celery, carrots, squash and thyme, cook over medium heat.

Allow vegetables to cook until tender and well "caramelized". Add roasted garlic and chicken stock and bring to a simmer. Cook over low heat for 25 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Carefully puree mixture with a hand mixer or blender. Adjust seasoning and finish with cream if desired. Place soup in a tureen for service or portion into individual soup bowls and garnish with minced chives. Makes six to eight servings.


My take on this soup:
The roasted garlic comes out soft and buttery. Be prepared to get a little messy when taking it apart. I personally don't measure on recipes like this, so it's easy to fudge a little on the measurements if you don't have enough of one thing or too much of another. I had more than the recipe indicated and used it, so I basically doubled it. I used butternut squash. When Chef Larry made this on TV, he added about a half cup of pumpkin(pureed/mashed/smooshed/canned - whatever) which is not listed on the recipe. I added the pumpkin since I had it.

There wasn't a listing of the calories, carbs/protein/fat ratios, but it's low in fat and calorie kind if you leave out the cream.

Enjoy your Wednesday.

Peace