Tapering Down

The thing I enjoy the most about approaching races is the tapering down. That's when you cut back on your running/training. It's been fun and it happened to coincide with a somewhat normal work schedule. I had a chance to finally try a recipe from Michel Richard's Happy In The Kitchen. This books is food porn, as far as I'm concerned. A friend sent it to me while I was in Iraq. At the time it was like rubbing salt into the wound -- and anyone who's every eaten DFAC food knows what I mean. I tried an easy recipe, albeit with some changes because I didn't have an onion on hand and I forgot to put in the balsamic vinegar. With spring in full-swing, I stopped at the farmers market Sunday and they had fresh beets. I remembered that there was a beet puree recipe in the book. You can see a picture of it on the right. It's time consuming because you have to roast the beets for a little over an hour, but after that it's a breeze. I chopped the roasted beets and put it into the blender with some olive oil and salt until it was smooth. Then I set it aside to let it cool down a bit. What gives this recipe body is, I think, potatoes. Per the Richard's recipe, I boiled potatoes and then put it through the food mill. Over a double broiler, I mixed the potatoes into the beets. And voila! I used it as a base for some grilled scallops.

This week, I also tried the Chana Punjabi recipe again, only I didn't use the chickpeas (and yes, I know the name doesn't really apply anymore), but substituted it with eggplant and some peas. I didn't have a jalapeno, so I added some chili powder, but this time it lacked a good spicy kick. Still, it made for a good lunch two days this week.

Well, I tomorrow I head to NYC! I'm a little nervous about this race -- it's suppose to be a warm day and I convinced some family members to run it with me. I hope they have fun. I don't want to be known as the cousin who likes to torture her other cousins by making them run 13.1 miles on a hot, New York City day!