It has been almost two weeks since I last posted. In that time, I have cooked several things, ran a 5K in what may be a record time for me, and finished up my summer job. Get ready for some yummy food photos!
But before that (yes, I'm going to keep you waiting!), I'll debrief you on my job and running that race. First: the job was wonderful. While I am very glad to be back at home for my last month of summer, I will miss having the structure of getting up early, going to work, coming back at night, having things to do and then going to sleep at a reasonable hour. I am trying to set some kind of schedule for myself now at home, so I end up with enough time for the stuff I really want to be doing (rather than just sitting around dawdling and then having to slog through my to-do's later in the day). I'm also going to miss seeing the kids and my lovely coworkers every day. That theater academy is just an incredible place. It is full of love and creativity and positive energy and all the things a great workplace and a great place for growing should be. This summer job was a great learning opportunity. I'm sure waitressing or being a cashier would have taught me a lot, too, but I think this job was particularly significant in the way that it showed me a lot of different ways my life could end up after college- and all good ways, too. It made me better appreciate the importance of a diverse, well-rounded education and varied work experiences. It's also reminding me to let things happen and do what feels right- you never know where things may lead you. I'm certainly glad that I didn't turn this job down and wait for something better paying to come along- firstly because none of the places to which I applied ever contacted me, and secondly because this is something that I just enjoyed so much. Who gets to be that lucky?
Second: I don't have an official time for this 5K fun run that I ran last week, but from calculating the lengths of the songs that I listened to while running and asking a nearby runner what her time was when she finished, I'm pretty darn sure I finished that thing in under 27 minutes. I was definitely under the goal of 29:45 I set for myself (that's at a 9.5 minute mile pace), and I'm very, very happy for that. What could have made me run that distance in a shorter time than I've run it all summer? A few things, not the least of which was that we started up in front by the more elite runners, and when that gun went off, they were all flying. By the time the first mile was up, my chest was achy/burning in that way you get when you're breathing hard in cold weather...or just running harder than usual, which I definitely was. But I didn't slow down to my much slower usual pace. That's probably because I was competing- not officially, but in my own head. It can be a little hard to push myself and judge my pace when I'm running alone, but in a race, I spot people out and try to pass them, and I have a much better sense of my speed. So that's how I think I ran that quickly. And it felt great.
On a bummer note, my knee has been bothering me lately. I mean, come on. I am not old. There is no reason for my knee to be bugging me when I run or jump or put any impact on it. I have good knees. They don't feel weak or like they're going to give. One of them just gets touchy after (and only after; never during) exercise. When I get back to school, I'm going to see if I can get a free consultation with a personal trainer and have him/her check out my running. I'm wondering if my mechanics are inefficient and hurting my body. This wouldn't have popped up before because this is the most running I've ever done in my life. In the meantime, I'm laying off the running just a bit and replacing it with P90X's Cardio X workout and some biking. I'm also using P90X's Ab Ripper X workout to step up my core work, because I think I'm plateaued on that front and need to kick it in. And it should work, since I was sore the day after I did it.
Since I'm just hanging around the house all day and don't have to pack a bag lunch every day, I'm trying to stick to some kind of diet, cutting calories and eating little meals throughout the day rather than just three big meals. I'm a snacker, so if I just make my snacks a little bit bigger and my meals smaller, I hope that my metabolism will respond well and that I will consume a few less calories than usual. We'll see how it goes though- I just had to grab a stick of gum and chew it, since I was getting bored-hungry and seriously needed something in my mouth right then.
So by now you're thinking, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, Imara. Getting in shape is hard. Show me some food pictures please!!!" And now we've gotten there! Thank you dearly for your patience.
Item #1 doesn't have any pictures (so, so sorry), but it was an important thing for me to make. If I make it again before the end of the summer, I'll try to remember my camera. I made my family's pasta sauce and meatballs. They came out of a cookbook of restaurant recipes, but over the course of making them for years, my parents have made the recipes their own. This is not a recipe that is ages old or anything; my Italian-by-marriage-Polish-by-birth great-grandmother and her daughter, my grandmother, have all the good Italian family recipes. This is not one of those, but I am determined to make it so once I have my own family to feed. It's really not hard to put together. I think I psyched myself out of it for a while since it is such an important and favorite meal in our family. Really, it's equal parts tomato puree and paste (no canned or crushed tomatoes here), with chopped onions, basil, garlic, and some salt and sugar. Why sugar? You need it to cut the acidity of the tomatoes. Try a bunch of different homemade tomato sauces. You will probably be able to discern how much sugar is used in various recipes. I followed the recipe pretty much exactly, except I doubled the amount of garlic used. I love garlic, and I didn't use in enough in my last garlicky recipe (see the post about shrimp and linguine). My parents make this sauce with more sugar and garlic, and they add oregano, I think. It was totally delicious, but next time I'd definitely add more garlic, some oregano, and just as much basil as I used before (which was about a handful).
The meatballs are just as easy. The secret is two kinds of meat. Using just ground beef makes them mealy and like hamburgers, but using just sausage meat is just like having sausage balls. The combination of equal parts ground Italian pork sausage (it's just in a package like ground beef and is pink and mushy) and ground beef gives it a great texture and flavor. The meat is seasoned with some stuff- not sure what it is, but maybe oregano, salt, and pepper, plus onions. And maybe even garlic too. Plus parsley, an egg, breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, and some water. They're Italian. So they're probably Italian flavored. But remember, if you're putting them in with sauce, the sauce will have a lot of flavoring too. Unless you're feeding a big crowd, both recipes will give you plenty of leftovers, which we used for meatball subs. Mmm.
Now for food with pictures! For dinner one night, I made a penne dish with grilled summer squash and sweet corn tossed in ricotta. I found it on the Taste and Tell blog (hey, look at that! I figured out how to hyperlink text! Woohoo!), but it's originally a Rachael Ray recipe. See some photos below:
Assemble these ingredients: penne, olive oil, corn, tomatoes, ricotta cheese, and summer squash. We didn't have as much squash as the original recipe called for, so I added some zucchini, since they're basically the same vegetable but different colors. You'll also need garlic, thyme, salt and pepper. Boil water for the corn. That needs to be cooked and cool enough to handle first. Heat up the grill for the zucchini and summer squash.
Slice the corn off the cob and core and chop the tomatoes. Slice the summer squash and zucchini into long pieces. Brush them with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Put them on the grill when you put the pasta in the water to cook, and turn them halfway through.
Mix the corn and tomatoes together. Add the seasonings, ricotta cheese, and half a cup of the pasta water. Coat the vegetables thoroughly. Chop the grilled vegetables once they are cool enough to handle, and add to the whole pasta mixture.
This is the finished product! I wish I had a better camera so that I could really capture the colors and textures in this dish. I'm in a family of five, and we all ate together that night. We had a ton of pasta left. That's only one pound of pasta (which is a lot of pasta if you eat correct portions, but usually just enough for all of us), plus a lot of vegetables, and the cheese mixture, which is pretty creamy. Bulk up your pasta with vegetables. It's a really great way to get your veggies and eat less pasta, which isn't actually that bad for you as long as you stick to the recommended portions. (Also, this is the food I ate before the race. Maybe it helped!)
These are Oreo bars, or No Bake Cookies and Cream Bars, found here. They are made like Rice Krispie treats, by tossing crushed Oreos in melted down marshmallows and butter. If you look at the recipe photos, you'll see that those ones are very smooth and compact. I didn't use wax paper, nor did I use a food processor to grind up the cookies. And they get extremely gooey and sticky in the marshmallow mixture. They were pretty difficult to cut, but they are so chewy and dense and delicious. They're just as easy to make as Rice Krispie treats and could be a big hit at a bake sale.
The last thing I made recently, and photographed, is French toast. I haven't recorded this one here in the blog yet. French toast is the one dish I can put together without a recipe. Here we go!
Two pieces equal one serving. So for the five of us, I take out ten pieces of white bread. You could be fancy and use high-quality bread, but I just use white bread. I like to take it out a little ahead of time and let it dry out a bit, so it can sop up more of the egg mixture.
I need about three eggs for five to six servings of the French toast. Mix that up with some milk, vanilla, cinnamon, and a little bit of nutmeg. The egg mixture is what makes it so good. Then heat up the griddle, dip both sides of the bread in the egg mixture, and cook until both sides are golden-golden brown.
That is the almost-finished product. If you need to make multiple batches, heat up the oven and keep the toast warm in there.
Theret's the toast plated, with syrup and powdered sugar. I like to cut it up in triangles and arrange it like so. It's pretty much the only thing I know how to plate in a somewhat aesthetically pleasing way.
Clean plate club! The stuff is delicious and so easy. It's also great to make for crowds. I made it for my grandparents' 50th anniversary celebration for about 30 people, and it was no problem at all.
So that's about what I've been up to lately. I'm about to leave on a road trip for a week back to my parents' hometowns to visit our relatives out there. I will try to take pictures of our road food and local dishes and post them back here. My hope is that I can make a bunch of sandwiches and pack a lot of good, healthy snacks so that we don't end up buying Combos and orange soda at every rest stop, as inevitably happens. I'm thinking a lot of water and maybe some nut-based trail mix. And maybe blueberry muffins from scratch. :) I'm almost out of flour, I think, and I want to run out completely before I buy new stuff. Because then that's a good excuse to make something, right?
Peaches are almost in season, I believe, so I'm going to make a peaches and cream pie, with a real, rolled-out crust. It'd be great if I can hit up the farmers market for that. I've still got a dry rub barbecue shrimp recipe to throw together as well one night before we leave. I just need to narrow down my list and get things organized- 4 weeks left until I go back to school!
Here's an interesting concept: making things with the ingredients I can find at the school convenience store and whatever's in our dorm basement kitchen. Interested?
I hope that this wild heat wave isn't/won't get to you that badly. Please just drink lots of water and don't work out during the peak heat. Either early or late. You might not think that it'll get to you, but oh, it will. It was so humid here that when I woke up this morning, our windows were all steamed up.
Until my next cooking adventures, I'd like to leave with a few rambling life thoughts, since this blog started as a semi-public journal of how I want 2011 to be the best year yet, rather than a food blog:
What I have learned so far this summer? Sometimes, kids have bad families. And you can tell. One medium-sized city can harbor incredible differences and class divisions. Some kids actually don't get breakfast in the morning, and not in the busy teenager way. Like in the we-can't-afford-breakfast way, and instead potato chips are a substitute. There's a lot of different roads you can take to any one job. Deer will eat anything and everything within reach that you don't spray with repellent. Pushing yourself is worth it- to a point. Everything's expensive. You've got people everywhere that will take care of you, no questions asked.
What do I pray for? Better and more accessible food for everyone. All my students. Expectant families. South Sudan and all places in conflict, especially the Middle East. Unemployed and underemployed people, especially young adults and those who need to support others. My dear, dear family and friends. Compromise and integrity in our political system. Immigrants, legal and not.
What am I thankful for? Good weather, even in this heat. The incredible luxuries of a pool and air conditioning. The Internet. Foodgawker. StumbleUpon. My beautiful, messed up city. All of my students. All my teachers and mentors. Friends and family. My church and other models of faith and peace, from all religions. Food. My health. A job that I actually enjoyed and from which I learned a lot. All the people who take care of me and think of me.
Stay cool and classy, people.
Love,
Imara
