Greg McElhatton

My friend Cynthia created this awesomeness.

(If you have a Flickr account, please make sure to click through and comment on its adorableness if you like it!)

While heading up to a friend’s shindig this afternoon, it hit me that if I took the Baltimore-Washington Parkway up to the top of the Beltway (instead of the George Washington Parkway up to the side of the Beltway), I’d drive right past IKEA. And since I recently used up the last of my lingonberry preserves, well… a trip to the IKEA “grocery store” might be in order.

If you’ve never had lingonberries before, it’s a tiny bit hard to describe them. They’re a little tart but sweet at the same time, and they’re an essential ingredient on swedish pancakes. (Places like IHOP actually offer a lingonberry syrup for their swedish pancakes.) As I’ve been on a pancake kick lately (and really, why not?), more lingonberry preserves was a must.

I actually picked up two other similar foods that I’ve never eaten before, though; cloudberry preserves, and gooseberry jam. I have no idea what either of them taste like, but how can I resist something called a cloudberry? It sounds like what Frodo and Sam would have picked off of bushes on their trip to Mordor. Or maybe something Mario would eat to get a temporary power-up while trying to save Princess Peach from Bowser. I, for one, can’t wait to try them. (A gooseberry doesn’t sound quite as interesting. But in the interest of trying something new I bought it.)

If I had been going directly home I suspect I would have bought stuff out of the frozen section, too, but I was saved by warmer temperatures outside this weekend. Perhaps next time I’m up in the area…

[Sandra] Lee’s official Food Network bio states that, “Lee then attended the world’s leading culinary art institute, Le Cordon Bleu.” Lee enrolled in a recreational two-week course at the school’s Ottawa outpost, which she acknowledges that she did not complete.

It takes up less space on the countertop. Really.

This was a nice weekend, over all. On the downside, Charlie’s been coming down with a bad cold (or something) and spent all Sunday out of commission. Which meant, of course, that he got to avoid the craziness of a family holiday dinner.

The dinner was, needless to say, ultra-delicious. My mom’s side of the family is populated with great cooks and the food we had this year was no exception; ham, scalloped potatoes, carrot souffle, scalloped pineapple, green beans, asparagus, and probably something else that I’m blanking on. Plus three desserts; banana pudding, a carrot cake, and lemon bars that I’d made and brought with me.

The bars turned out pretty good overall. Next time I need to make sure I really push all of the crust out nice and flat; it was a little high at one end and those bars had to get thrown out because they were almost all crust and no lemon. Also, I need to buy a lemon zester before I make this again because using a cheese grater is a real pain in the butt. Still, overall, they were good. (Jim, I’ll edit in the recipe under a jump when I get home tonight.)

This morning I finally got off of my butt and went lap swimming for the first time in approximately 20 years. So yes, I did indeed survive. If my counting was correct (and it may very well not be) I swam 20 laps (or 40 lengths) of the pool, which comes out to 1000 meters. With little rest breaks between each lap, mind you, with which to confer with Julie and Laura. It was a nice time, although I clearly need to get some goggles because everything is now a tiny bit blurry. Also, need to find my rubber flip-flops. It’s been a while since I’ve had to do the whole shower-at-the-gym routine. (My current gym is all of 5 minutes away, my old gym was a 2 minute walk around the corner.)

I’d originally wanted to use this spring to tackle a triathlon, but missing Philly back in November put a hold on that. But I might give one of the mini-triathlons from Tri It Now a stab. If I get the bike serviced I am pretty sure I could handle that right now with no problem. (Famous last words, I’m sure. I can hear Moose cackling at my naivety.) In the meantime, though, I just need to keep at it. Practice makes better…

(more…)

Some people eat to live, but I have always lived to eat. For this I “blame” my mother, who at an early age taught us the joys of eating amazing foods through her cooking. (Somehow I’m a-ok with this.) After tonight’s cycling class at the rec center, the last of my homemade garlic, pasta, and prosciutto soup tasted so good I can hardly even begin to describe its deliciousness.

Incidentally, if you want to feel especially silly, or perhaps merely ungraceful, try and take pictures of yourself eating. Oh good lord, the horrors that little photo session produced…

(I got the recipe from Sally Schneider’s A New Way to Cook, which my friend Ev gave me for my birthday a few years ago. Sooo tasty!)

There are many, many reasons why I love making spicy black bean soup in my slow cooker. First, it makes my entire apartment smell like spices and deliciousness and when I come home from work (or running, or anywhere else) and it’s cooking away, I just get all excited. Second, I always have tons of left-overs, the majority of which goes into my freezer in plastic containers so that I can pull one out at a moment’s notice, heat it up, and have tasty homemade black bean soup.

But right now, at the start of the process of making the soup, I’m at another one of the reasons. When I put the dried black beans in a container and fill it up with water, I actually get a little giddy when a few hours later, almost all the water is gone (even though the beans were originally submerged by several inches of water) and there’s just a cascade of beans staring at me. Inevitably I add more water, some more of which will get absorbed. And tomorrow morning, when I dump the remaining water out, it’s going to be indigo colored and make me grin as it goes down the drain.

Easy to please, that’s me. (The recipe is after the jump at the bottom of the post.)

On an unrelated note, with the marathon in three weekends (my ankle feels much better today, by the way!), I’m trying to see how far ahead I can get with my reviews for Read About Comics. Now normally I’m writing a week ahead, so that this weekend I wrote reviews for November 10-14. For this weekend and the two remaining weekends before the trip up to Philly, though, I’m going to try and write one extra review that gets held in reserve. That way, when the marathon actually hits, I’ll be so far ahead that I can take a full week off from writing and there won’t be a blip on the schedule at all. We’ll see how that goes.

(more…)

I do not understand why I am so tired lately. I’ve been going to bed at a reasonable hour and then… bam. Sacking out hard. As someone who normally wakes up every two hours or so (and then usually falls right back asleep) it is very odd to wake up once, at most, the entire evening.

Now this may sound like a great thing, but the problem is really that it’s a symptom of something else. I’ve been finding it almost impossible to wake up in the mornings; I ended up having to scratch my Tuesday morning run for that reason, and this morning I actually hit the snooze button for a solid two hours before I was able to get up. Maybe I can squeeze the run between work and tonight’s book club, but we will see. At least I’ve done some non-running-exercise since my last run on Sunday; rowing and elliptical for an hour on Monday, and 50 minutes of my spinning class on Wednesday. But yeah, something is seriously kicking my butt this week.

So far, the best idea I’ve come up with is that I am somehow channeling all the woodland animals and trying to hibernate until spring. It would be sad to miss Thanksgiving and Christmas, but on the other hand, there is a certain appeal to it all. Hmmm. (Stupid autumn weather.)

Not much else going on, really. Last night’s dinner was fantastic; I’d marinated some chicken and put so much chipotle on it that even I found it really hot. Sooo good. Plus some chopped up eggplant that I fried for a minute or two, and then some pumpkin muffins to go with it all. (Most of the muffins will in theory go with me to book club tonight, but we’ll see if anyone eats them or not. I might be living on these for a while.)

Oh, and now my neck is mysteriously aching. I think it is bored and wants some attention. Hmph.

On the bright side, I am starting to get excited about the idea of adding some swimming and biking into my routine after the marathon. Hopefully that excitement will continue long enough into making it an actual routine, and not merely an, “It’s exciting because it’s not actually happening yet” sort of thing. We shall see! Those laps don’t swim themselves, after all.

Now, this show could turn out to be a disaster. I may end up angrily turning it off in disgust. But seriously, this sounds like it was made for me—I’m mentioning it here partially for everyone else’s benefit (who is of the same mind), and partially so I remember to set the DVR later tonight.

At the Table With Anthony Bourdain
Tune in Monday, Oct. 20, at 10 p.m. ET (Travel Channel)

As you’d expect from an Anthony Bourdain vehicle, opinions fly and no topic is off limits as Tony hosts a no-holds-barred dinner with four featured guests. Joining Tony around the table are celebrated writer Bill Buford, “Nightlife Queen of New York” Amy Sacco, TV personality Ted Allen, and magazine editor and former gossip columnist Chris Wilson. They’ll debate the ethics of an $1,800 dinner, and Tony will reveal how he always, secretly hopes the waiters like him. Food and travel stories will run wild from Wylie Defresne’s restaurant wd~50 in New York City. Anything goes “At The Table With Anthony Bourdain.”

While I’m thinking about it, I too would like an $1,800 dinner if someone else is buying. Just putting that out there in case someone has a lot of spare cash lying around.

(On second thought, give me the $1,800, I’ll have a great dinner for quite a bit less, and keep the change.)