Farmer's Market Carrots and Beets

In early June, I went to the farmer's market and bought a bunch of carrots. As usual, I let it sit in the frig a bit too long, so I decided to try my hand at a carrot soup. I looked at a bunch of recipes, but the one that caught my eye was from Nigel Slater. He doesn't like the sweetness of carrot soup, and I tend to agree with him. He adds tomato to the soup. So I cooked some onions, carrots and tomato in vegetable stock and put it through the food mill. I love my food mill! The taste was interesting in a good way, but I don't think I had the proportion right. It definitely tempered the sweetness of the carrots, but I think I may have put in too much tomato.



The other item I picked up during my trip to the U Street Farmer's Market was beets. I've cooked beets before, but this time I used all the beets -- including the greens! I added some of the wilted down greens, cooked diced golden beets, a nice spoonful of ricotta to some pasta. The leftover greens and beets made a nice side salad in and of itself. Beets are on my buy list the next time I'm at the market!

So Much Eating, So Little Writing....

I've actually been doing a lot of eating out, a bit of cooking, and only a tiny bit of training. We'll start with the most recent. I went to see the National Theatre's worldwide broadcast of Phedre yesterday at Washington's Shakespeare Theatre Company. The play was good -- although some of the monologues went a little long for my taste. But I went straight from work, so all throughout the day I thought of all the places where I could grab a bite to eat..... Cafe Atlantico, Teaism, Zola, Cedar (a new place in DC), matchbox, Ella's, etc. Then it struck me -- Full Kee -- a hole in the wall in Chinatown, but with a really good food – in Monday’s night case it was desire for their shrimp dumpling and noodle soup. I got my soup to go, went to the Atrium of the Portrait Gallery and proceeded to chow...or more accurately... slurp down.

This weekend, I cooked and grilled. On Saturday, ME and I made another version of the Chana Punjabi (this time with chickpeas and cauliflower) and Zucchini Vichyssoise. These two dishes are becoming standards for me. On Saturday, JW and I grilled -- a portabello mushroom burger for me and a regular burger for her. She did something very interesting with her burger and added tomato paste, Parmesan, and basil to the meat. And on Friday night -- I made a Greek styled orzo salad with a little lemon, olive oil, tomato, spinach, olives and feta cheese and an Asian slaw with red cabbage, carrot, sesame seed, sesame oil, apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, salt and pepper. These were my offering for a picnic dinner before an outdoor showing of the movie Footloose. Unfortunately, a summer thunderstorm put an end to that.

All through last week, I also baked. I found this cool cookie website Cookie Madness. I used it previously to bake Brown Sugar, bittersweet and milk chocolate cookies and I did them again. I also baked butter cookies from Alice Water's The Art Of Simple Foods. The flavor was good, but I don't think it worked well as a drop cookie. Next time, I'll try rolling the dough out and using my cookie cutters.

I also baked chocolate chip, cranberry cookies. When I first made the batch, I didn't having any baking soda and the cookies did not rise. I left the dough in the fridge for about 4 days, and it may have been my imagination, but the cookies had a bit more volume than the first batch. I also made rice krispie treats. Mixing the rice krispies and the melted marshmallow and butter is really quite difficult. Putting into the buttered dish was even harder. The mixture was sticking more to my fingers and spoon then the dish. I eventually sprayed some Pam on a Ziploc bag and got the mixture in that way.

You'll notice, I haven't mentioned any training. That's because I really haven't been doing any. I'm going to have to buckle down in July if I hope to do the Tri.

Everything But The Kitchen Sink Frittata

I'm headed out of town for a long weekend away and needed to use the veggies (farmer's market squash, broccoli and mushrooms) before they spoil. I also head 6 eggs and some bleu cheese, so I made a frittata. I sauteed some onions and garlic, added the mushrooms and chopped up squash and stirred for about 3-4 mins. Added salt and pepper and then the broccoli with a little water so it would steam a bit. All that got put in my pie dish (which I use for everything else but making pies) with some chunks of bleu cheese and covered with some slightly mixed eggs. In my year of veggies, this has been a standard go-to meal for me and I'm really enjoying the variety of vegetables and cheese I can use. So, to sum up, I had a lovely, light dinner which was good post run and swim, as well as having enough leftover for lunch for the next two days!

Beware the Bear

I think you have to be somewhat nutty to get up at 5am-- and really nutty to do it on a Sunday morning. But that's what we did. The purpose: swim 750m, bike 17.7 (hilly) miles, and then run 3.4 miles. It was the Black Bear Triathlon in the Poconos, PA. I'll be honest, I had not been looking forward to this. I had not trained as much as I should have, and I was worried the water would be cold, and I don't have a wetsuit. Well, the water was cold, the bike was hella-hilly, and the run was a trail run where I had to stop mid-way and get some pebbles out of my shoe.
I waded into the water -- about knee deep -- prior to the start of the race and the water was OK temperature-wise. The swim portion was an in-water start, meaning we had to tread water by some buoys while we waited for the horn to blow. About 25 feet from the shore, as the water got deeper, it also got colder -- it felt 10-15 degrees colder. My feet were going numb! By the time I reached the first buoy, I was beginning to warm-up, but my feet were pretty cold for the entire swim portion. My hill attacks were better -- I'm improving at switching gears, but I did have to dismount twice and walk the bike up some long hills. It was quite funny, I'd bike past some of the walkers, huffing and puffing all the way to the top, only to have them pass me during the downhills or the straightaways. And then the next hill, the same thing would happen. The last two hills I finally learned my lesson!
Despite these challenges, it was a friendly crowd and I did finish. In fact, my swimming time improved a lot from last year's NorthEast Tri. The volunteers were great. And as soon as I crossed the finish line, i was handed a bottle of water and made my way to the food! (pizza, rita's ice, pretzels, oranges and more.) All in all, it was fun.

The best thing non-tri related was the rental car. We took a scenic drive up to Beltzville State Park (the location of the tri) and we stopped at Hershey's Farm Market for lunch. (Incidental, you can also pick up half a pig -- which according to their literature is 5lbs of bacon, 20 center cut pork chops, i country style ribs, 1 ham-cut or whole, 15lbs large link sausage, 1 pork loin end roast, and 1 rack spare ribs). They also had a great candy section and an assortment of Amish focused literature -- which was kind of strange. But it was there we notice the trunk of the car. On the inside of the trunk lid was a tab -- looked like a car air-freshener. If you looked closely, it was a glow in the dark tab with a person jumping out of the trunk! You guessed it. This car had a tab for if a person is "accidentally" locked in the trunk. You might ask how I'm certain of this? Well, I tested it out, of course, post-tri. I climbed into the trunk and had ML close the lid. I saw the glow in the dark tab, pulled it and voila.....the trunk popped open!. Here's ML trying it out!