24 hours and some peanut sauce

This weekend, after a grueling, 8-hour, holiday-weekend drive to Spokane, I participated on a 5 person team for the 24 hour mountain bike race. This has been one of the few biking goals for myself for quite a while. My first lap went well, but then I had the dusk to dark lap around 9-10, and everything basically went to hell. I crashed on one of the really technical sections, bruised my palm something awful and almost broke my headlamp but ended up just bending it into a really awkward position that basically just lit the region right below my bike. I had quite a few literal and mental dark moments in the wood and thankfully finished the lap in almost 20 minutes more than I had done the first one. I came back to the camp and proceeded to burst into tears about the dark and then see the medic about my hand, who scared me that I maybe broke my hand. My team skipped my next turn, but then I managed another lap in the light around 8am. This lap was fun, and it felt so luxurious to actually see what was in front of me. We ended up 4th out of 4, but we were a team composed of 3 people who had never mountain biked in the dark (myself obviously included) and 2 who had never mountain bike raced before. (Also, my hand is not broken. The triage nurse at Hall Health didn't even think I needed an x-ray since it had gotten so much better by Tuesday. However, it is bruised, as our my thighs and knees, which make me look part leopard.)
If I can actually get some more experience in the dark, with my lights properly oriented, I'd love to do it again. It was really a fun atmosphere, so very very different than road racing, which I am completely not missing right now, though I am doing the crits coming up this weekend.
On another, completely materialistic note, we went out this past Memorial Day and bought ourselves a giant-ass tv. Okay, it's not that big but it sure feels ginormous. This replaces the RCA tv with built-in vcr that I inherited from my grandmother when I went to college (a little under 10 years ago). She had had the tv for years before and only got rid of it because she got a bigger, newer one. Yeah. But it worked great, vcr and everything. But now we've finally entered the 21st century, so we can now watch broadcast tv in all its HD glory and have a much crappier picture with the cable, since our box is not an HD cable box.

Also, if anyone wants it, I have finally written down my recipe for peanut sauce. This is amazing on stir fries, especially if you have fried tofu (the only way I make stir fries now):
1-2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 jar (maybe 3/4 to 1 cup) crunchy, salted peanut butter (I used the TJ's organic, hippie, oil-separating PB and not other stuff. Jiff and the like are too sweet, I've found.)
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar or seasoned rice vinegar
2.5 tablespoons molasses or to taste (or brown sugar with more liquid added)
1/2 cup warm water or enough for preferred consistency(can use steeped black tea for a bit more flavor)
Chili flakes to taste (optional)
Grated ginger to taste (optional)

Mix the peanut butter and some of the warm water to dilute. Mix everything else into the peanut butter to taste. Add more water if necessary. Serve over stir fry or anything else that needs peanut butter goodness. The recipe is pretty open to interpretation. I've been making this for years, and today marks the first day that I ever wrote anything down. Sometimes I add ginger, sometimes I make it with tea, sometimes I totally mess it up and can't figure out what went wrong.

Food!

First CSA box! Totally exciting.
Bulk strawberries:


From bottom-left to right, clock-wise: radishes, butter lettuce, yellow beets, carrots


From bottom-left to right: lavender (drying right now), fresh garlic (never used fresh before), arugula, snap peas (hurray!), onions


And the first creation using the yellow beets, beet greens, fresh garlic and onions + macaroni:

Agriculture Report

We went strawberry picking on Saturday. 4lbs of strawberries (for $1/lb!) were purchased, and a good deal of it went into making this strawberry shortcake:



And, in case you care, here's the latest on my tomatoes:



Also, I apparently figured out keirins better, as I actually made it to the final round at Marymoor on Friday night. I ended up in 4th, which is better than I've done before. Hurray for me! I did fairly well in the other races, but I liked the keirin best.

Food

Wheat berries:  They are awesome, especially this salad.  And they have so much protein in them.  I love grains.

Beer, bikes, and ice cream

I just finished off a great IPA: Ninkasi (Eugene, OR) Total Domination IPA, which I found on sale at QFC (owned by Krogers for those WVians, and I still use my parents' Kroger card). I might have to try and find that brewery on the weekend of my sister-in-law's wedding, which is down, outside of Eugene. Hooray beer!
This weekend, I did the Vance Creek Road race, which I truthfully think is the longest race that I have ever finished at a whopping 52 miles or so. I actually finished behind the pack (DFL, in fact) but had been in a small break for a bit (a couple miles) and did a fair amount of other work, so I actually feel pretty good about it. It looks like I'll do Longbranch this weekend, which is a civilized 45-ish, and I will pray for track to come sooner so I can get my short-attention-span racing in. 2+ hours is just a pain (quite literally) in the ass.
Oh, and I had a Seattle first: I finally got to Molly Moon's (homemade ice cream), which I haven't been to yet even though it's IN my neighborhood and only about a 10 minute walk away. It definitely wasn't the cheapest ice cream, but the serving sizes were HUGE! I had the balsamic strawberry and the ginger ice cream, and they were both amazing. The balsamic strawberry was just really different, but it was amazing. And the ginger was perfect in that it was not in-your-face ginger but a bit subtle. Chris raved about the coffee and also had the scout mint, which I think is adorable because they bought their thin mints from local girl scouts. Hooray ice cream!

T-day

Chris and I are having people over for Thanksgiving this year, like last year. It's pretty much graduate students and their significant others (or sig. figs, as I like to nerdily refer to them in my mind). While Chris and I are providing the turkey, roast veggies, sweet potatoes, and apple and pumpkin pies, there are now 9 (!!!) people attending (4 more than last year), so other people are definitely bringing more food and wine and such. In fact, we have now gone beyond the capacity of our plates (8) and way beyond our wine glasses (4, we're not really wine drinkers), and we definitely don't have enough chairs either. I am trying not to freak out, as there's just too much to be done to have time for that. Geographically, we at least span the country: there is a big mid-Atlantic contingent (me from WV, Chris from MD, and two/maybe three others from VA), a smaller mid-western group (two from Kansas/Wisconsin), a south-westerner (AZ), and a European (Germany). While slightly stressful, I so much prefer hosting Thanksgiving than traveling, as we rarely travel close but almost always do things like drive from DC to WV or from Seattle to Oakland.

On another holiday note, I've been knitting off presents like clockwork. I've made 5 hats so far and one scarf. I need to make a bag, probably redo one of the hats because it looks stupid, and make at least 2 more hats and maybe a pair of mittens. This has been a fun way to try out different yarns (like Noro and some hand-painted stuff). I re-worked the design from the cabled hat that I had made for myself to make one for someone else, and it turned out so much better. I'm probably going to post pictures and the pattern because it's really cool looking, and I absolutely love my decrease. I've been figuring out how to make 2x2 rib tubular cast-ons, which I now absolutely adore, and I finished off one hat with grafting at the top instead of pulling through the loops (looks very good, actually, and it gives the hat a front and back). If this doesn't make any sense to you, just bear in mind that it probably doesn't make sense to 99% of the population.

And this weekend is the last cross race of the season! It's over so early this year, which is actually great because that gives me plenty of time to prepare for AGU. I'm thinking I'll get either 4th or 5th place overall, so that's good (and way, way better than last year). This previous race didn't go that well for me. I got taken out at the beginning of the first lap, ended up going from about 3rd/4th wheel to dead last, and spent the rest of the race making my way up past most of the field to the 6th/7th/8th place group. I wasn't able to get past 6th and 7th, so I ended in 8th, which is my worst finish this year. This race really mixed up a lot of the placings, though, so I wasn't the only one. Hopefully, I can get somewhere in the top 5 for the last race.

7 lbs. of blueberries!

My first weekend with actual riding in it ended rather poorly. I raced track on Friday. Unfortunately, not enough women showed up, so we raced with the cat 4s, though we did have our own keirin. It was actually my first keirin ever, and I did rather poorly (last place). I just wasn't thinking about positioning at all. And on top of flat, my calve had been hurting in the first race (12 lap tempo). I made some adjustments, and it felt better. But today when I road out to Kirkland for the crit, it was hurting on Juanita. I had to bum a ride home, and I clearly didn't race. I just want the pain to stop.
Provided this gets better, I'm thinking of getting coaching for cyclocross. I really want a non-burnt out season, and I've never had a coach before. It could be an interesting experiment. I think I have most of the skills and things to do well, but I just need a little more of a push.

On the food side of things, this week has been pretty good. Chris and Jen T. went berry picking last weekend, so we're well stocked on raspberries and some different types of blueberries. I made chocolate souffles that made use of these. I think they turned out great, maybe a tad on the dry side but still very tasty. Then yesterday, Chris and I headed out to Henna Blueberry Farm outside of Fall City. We picked 7 lbs. of wonderfully ripe blueberries. I think I had more blueberries yesterday than real food. I'm going to attempt to make some blueberry preserves, so if anyone can offer any help, it would be really appreciated.

For anyone not squeamish, wish me luck tomorrow on my gum graft. I am really not looking forward to this, but hopefully it will makes things better for the future.

Summer fun

Biking with out pain is amazing! I successfully raced track on Friday night (with an unexpected 2 lap solo break in the point-a-lap). The break burnt about all of my matches, so I was barely useful in the last two races, though I would say that I certainly helped my teammates out. Slowing down the pack is great when you're tired. I also did about an hour of madison practice on Saturday. I will hopefully be prepared for the FSA Grand Prix.


Photos are from Wheels in Focus. The short one is from the start of the break, while the tall one is after about 2 laps. Notice a difference?

After the madison practice, I returned home to find Chris making a cherry pie, potato bread, and pizza crust for dinner. I love when the kitchen smells like baking. The pie contained cherries from the U-District farmers' market. I also got some of the first blueberries of the season. I love living in a berry-rich state. I did get some non-berries, like broccoli and the cheapest organic Walla Walla (sweet) onions I've ever seen: $2.50 for a bundle of 3 huge ones. Summer is brilliant!

Injury and sister visit

No updates in a while, mainly due to just general business.
Bike-wise, since the last post, I raced Methow Valley, which completely sucked. I was hoping to do okay in the TT, as I did at Wenatchee, but ended up second to last. For some stupid reason, I wasn't expecting hills at all. I had a bunch of borrowed TT gear, too, so it was a little embarrassing to do that poorly. I dropped out of both the crit and the road race because of an injury. I've done something to my calf, in the same spot where I think I ripped a muscle last year. And it keeps flaring up as localized pain or as a more general tightness and discomfort in my hamstring. But I bought one of those stick roller/massager things, and I'm planning on going to the Sports' Medicine clinic at UW's Hall Health, so hopefully that will help.
But, of course, I didn't let the injury stop me from doing track, which was stupid. I felt like I couldn't put out any power at all. And I made really dumb positioning mistakes, especially in the 2-lap heats. The 4x5 was awful though, my leg hurt a lot, and I kept attempting to bridge gaps. I should have just stayed pack fodder or just not raced, which probably would have been the intelligent thing.
Some time off strenuous riding should hopefully help me race longer this summer. I really hate
to miss track, but I do know that racing track now with an injury will not really help me heal to race track later this season. I think I'm just going to be doing mainly track for the rest of the season. I'm also pretty mentally burned out on road, right now. My performance has just been so sporadic.

In other non-biking news, my sister visited for the past week. She's visited before, so she wanted to do some different things, so we:

• Attempted to hike Mt. Si. This didn't quite work, as I was injured, Chris still hadn't recovered from Methow the previous day, and my sister lives in Chicago with basically 0 elevation. We got to the flats and turned around.
• Visited Portland. We did Powell's, REI (no sales tax!), the Rogue pub, Mt. Tabor, Apizza Scholls, and Voodo Donuts (the last two both on recommendation of Anthony Bourdain).
• Walked around Greenlake, Wallingford, and Alki Beach.
  
• Made calzones and ate at the Tangletown/Elysian Brewery.
• Attempted to bike to the Redhook brewery but only made it to Logboom Park before having Chris pick us up and just drive the rest of the way because we had started later than I hoped, so I was getting hungry. Also, my calf was a little more sore than I wanted it to be.

It was good to take some time away from the paper I'm working on. And then yesterday, I got to watch some naked cyclists in the Fremont Solstice parade, so, you know, there's nothing better than seeing average people naked on bikes to top off a week.

Ballard and more

Here's to race reports that don't have much to do with the people who are actually, really racing for top placings!
I was oddly happy that track got cancelled on Friday night, as I didn’t have to skip it then. I raced Ballard on Saturday, and track probably would have been a bit too much before that race. Ballard went pretty well for me. At first, I was actually being intelligent about staying in the middle and more toward the front than normal. But then I got caught behind the awful looking crash, and I had to chase back on. I hung out at the back to recover, but I was there for a bit too long, as I ended up with a group of 4-5 people who had gotten gapped off the back of the pack. I didn’t even see the gap open up, just realized it was there at one point after I had thought I had chosen a good wheel to be on. We (myself, two teammates, and a WoW rider) maintained the gap at about a quarter lap, and somehow we magically caught up with the pack at about 4 laps to go. I ended up doing a reasonable amount of pulling to get back on, though really I felt kind of dumb for not realizing the gap had opened, and I think I could have stayed with the pack had I been paying attention. I got 10th over all, after some girl got relegated for reasons that weren’t clear, otherwise I would have been 11th, but, really, a pack finish feels like a victory for me. Not that it matters much, but I think I might have been the highest placing cat. 3. It’s hard to tell since some other people with cat. 3 numbers placed higher than me, but I think they all had been upgraded already.
Ballard was pretty awesome this year, certainly not for the weather, but because there were both 1-2-3 and 4 fields, first time ever, both with good prices. There were nearly 30 cat 4s, I think, maybe closer to 25, but given that it looked like rain and was occasionally spitting, that was better than I would have expected. I think my field had 23-ish, so over 50 women total. Again, it’s not the biggest fields in the world (some of the Masons had much more), but for a possibly rainy crit, I’ll take that.
And yet again, my hamstring felt weird on Sunday, so no riding. I need to mess with my saddle height, clearly. At least this allowed me to get some real work done, but it’s so very annoying. At the end of the day, Chris and I went to this awesome restaurant on the Ave: the oddly named Jack’s Tapas. It’s not tapas in what I think of as tapas, really, but it’s fairly authentic (so the online reviews say) Chinese food, certainly not your P.F. Chang’s or buffet style food. And family style is the way to go there. There was a great vegetarian selection, and they have handmade shaved noodles that are just amazing!

Risotto

I wish the weather would begin to make sense this week. It's kind of cold and rainy now (50s), but it's supposed to be close to 90 during the weekend. The Wenatchee stage race this weekend will definitely be a shock to my system. And I won't get my weekly dose of track because of it!
So, I finally got back on the new recipe bandwagon this weekend. I made the spinach, mushroom, and feta risotto from the Moosewood New Classics cookbook. I can't remember the official name of the recipe, but you can probably guess what's in it from what I said. It turned out well, though I substituted a couple things: used frozen spinach instead of fresh because I am lazy and cheap and put in sun-dried tomatoes because they are awesome. Chris thought the feta-taste jarred with the risotto taste, but I thought it was a good mix. It doesn't reheat wonderfully, but I blame that more on my crappy office microwave. I don't know if I'll make this specific risotto again, but I like seeing what ingredients go into them, as I've probably only made 3-4 others. Certainly, risotto isn't really a quick meal, though they are much more time consuming than actually difficult, so it's not going to become a stand-by. Making these really makes me appreciate our Le Creuset (ceramic-coasted cast iron) French oven/over-sized pot. I've got another recipe that I want to try out: a black bean skillet dish from the same cookbook. I also plan on trying to make some flaxseed banana bread because apparently I'm eating like a hippie this week. Actually, banana bread would probably be great for the race.
And if you happen to live and/or vote in WV, remember to do that today.

Biking heavy weekend

This was a bike-filled weekend. I helped with a track class on Saturday, which actually happened despite potentially unhappy-looking weather. It was a bit cold, but it was great to be on the track again, and I exploited this to its fullest by doing some intervals after the class. My legs were definitely not used to the fixed gear, but it wasn't too bad. I have to add that I was very glad to be running a pretty easy gear. After that I went to pick up a new saddle for my track bike. It's bubble gum pink and perfectly matches the bar tape and rims on my bike. Since, you know, track is really 80% style.
Sunday, I biked around Lake Washington, north first. I really thought I was going to just go over I-90, instead of doing the whole loop. But I figured I might as well completely wreck myself, and I made it back fine. There were certainly some moments where I thought I would just fall over, such as when I was we met some guys who were hammering and road with them from Coulin Park to turning off Rainer onto Seward Park. The women I was with just let them ride away from us, as even though we were now going uphill, they didn't seem to be slowing down. This is the first ride where I wasn't the last one up the climbs, in fact was soundly in the middle, and I noticed that the moments I was hurting most were when other people were actually breathing visibly heavier too. I feel a bit trashed now, but at least I know I'm not as bad, fitness-wise, as I had expected to be.
After getting home, we actually tried a new recipe using our new crock pot. We had a huge, 8-quart one that we got for our wedding, but it was way too big for two people, and the controls were quite sparse: there was no timer or anything. So, we use a Bed, Bath, & Beyond gift card to get a smaller, better one (a Rival SmartPot, if it matters). With this new toy, we made French onion soup using a combination of a recipe from the Joy of Cooking and one from the booklet that came with the crock pot. It turned out good, though I re-discovered that I absolutely detest soggy bread. After scooping out the nastiness, I just used some nice, dry toast with Gruyere melted on, which worked well. Unfortunately, I wasn't really in the mood for it, though it certainly smelled amazing, as it wasn't really a great post-ride meal. Normally, I prefer things a bit more caloric rich, starchy, and protein heavy. We'll probably make it again, though, so I can try it when I'm in a better mood to eat it.

I went ahead and made the Buddha's Jewels (Moosewood) last night. I have to say that they were a bit disappointing. While they were filling (basically 90% tofu dumplings) and not bad, they were very bland. The recipe didn't call for any salt or pepper, but I added both as it seemed sacrilege to not. Maybe it was the low-sodium soy sauce I used or something. It really could have used some heat, too, something I discovered too late to usefully add some chili flakes, though I did anyway. In the sauce, there were choices to add orange, pineapple, or apple juice (for liquid) and brown sugar, maple syrup, or honey (for sweetener). I went the maple syrup and orange juice route because I had them, but I think in the future (which probably won't happen) I would use pineapple and brown sugar. The sauce also was a bit ugly, though even ugly things can taste good, so that's not really a negative.

The dumplings and sauce:

The finished product:

Food for thought

I wanted to put in a plug (Seattle-specific) for a great company (not coincidentally also the sponsor of Chris's cycling team). Cucina Fresca makes amazing fresh pasta and great sauces. We've had the linguine and the fettucini in the past week, and it's incredible. But the most awesome pasta that I tried was the butternut squash ravioli. This is truly incredible! You don't need to add anything to it for it to be tasty, though a splash of olive oil helps. Though it is decidedly more expensive than dry pastas, it is well worth the cost.