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17 Jun A Vegan Birthday Tale…

About six weeks ago, a friend approached me. She wanted to throw a dinner party. She wanted it all vegan and gluten-free. Would I cook it for her? Because I love both her and an excuse to experiment in the kitchen, I jumped at the chance.

Now this may seem like a tall order – vegan and gluten-free – but it really was quite easy, I just focused on fresh whole foods and weeded out glutenous grains. The cake was interesting to make, with several testers. So, here’s how the evening tasted….

We snacked on dolmas and a spring pea bruschetta (on gluten-free crackers) that I cobbled together out of instinct, but I owe the core of the menu to:

Heidi Swanson‘s citrus dressing for a millet pilaf (sadly, no photo of that below)
the Post Punk Kitchen;s summer vegetable tagine (from “Vegan with a Vengeance”)
Deborah Madison‘s baked herbed heirloom tomatoes)
Gluten-free Goddess‘ mexican chocolate cake, frosted with a dark chocolate “buttercream” and stuffed with stewed strawberries

Oh, and there was a cucumber dill salad in there too, but I have no idea how that lodged itself in my brain. Wait, did I forget to mention Carol’s Knock You Out Punch? You’ll see it below in the beautiful punch bowl. Looks innocuous; causes a hangover.

Most important part? Plates were licked clean and the birthday girl seemed pretty satisfied.

I have no recipes to share, since I took them largely from other people (hit the links above for more info), but here is the dinner, a fabulously fun and sometimes raucous evening, in photos, proving that vegan or not, gluten-free or not, good food and great company = a dinner that no one wanted to end, even though we all had to go to work bright and early the next day. Very bright and early.

Happy birthday, dear Carol!

Summer veg tagine (in the big pot) and baked tomatoes, ready to go!

The punch-you-out punch, dolmas and bruschetta.

Who knew if would be so hot on a June evening in San Francisco that I’d have to stop 3/4 way through frosting the cake because the frosting was melting off? Three nine-inch layers.

I swear this is a June evening in San Francisco. Yeah, we couldn’t believe we were outside without fleece either.

She sets the most elegant table – these photos really don’t do it justice.

The birthday girl, dressed in her dinner wig. A fabulous shade of purple.

Uncorking the champagne!!

Pretty Kate.

Is the birthday girl sauced or just saucy?

Make a wish.

I guess you could call it a conversation stopper cake…

maybe because the pieces were the size of my head.

M.E. describing her latest exhibit for the museum.

A reluctant end to a wonderful evening.

21 Jan Health News

You’re never too young to be in the know. Some news and other stuff from around the web….

According to the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, even for very active people, sitting still watching screens – tv, computer, whatever – can do more harm than make your joints stiff and your eyes tired.
Food labels, already overwhelming and inconsistent, go to a new level: how humane is your food?
While I don’t agree with the author’s quip that making your own almond milk isn’t worth the effort (as it’s fairly effortless), this is a nice breakdown of what’s good and maybe not so good about the stuff, and there’s a recipe for a simple, sweet almondy-delicious smoothie at the end.
More evidence that Bugs Bunny was onto something.
And, finally, a diet book based on farting.

15 Dec Joey Ramone, I Love You…

Things change.

I remember clearly the humiliation I felt in high school when we were suddenly forced to run a mile on the track for the Presidential Fitness test. Four laps equalled one mile. It seemed impossible. Four laps? Why, what purpose would this serve? Wasn’t a schedule packed with honors and AP classes enough? Honestly, it was as awful as I feared. I was the second to last person to finish. My legs and lungs felt leaden. I was so embarrassed. With each quarter lap getting harder and harder, I just wanted to disappear. It’s bad enough when you’re a shy teen with normal self-esteem and body image issues, but to fail such a simle task so spectacularly and publicly… it affirmed my suspicion that I was athletically less than, lazy at heart, not a runner, not a real athlete. (Gee, thanks Mr. President.)

I carried around that judgement for a looooong time, even after I started hiking, practicing yoga, working out with boot camps, bike riding, rock climbing, taking the occasional jog and walking four half-marathons. You see, I still hated running and couldn’t run faster than a snail or for more than 20 or 30 minutes at a time, so therefore I wasn’t a real athlete. But things change….

A week ago Sunday, I ran 10 kilometers in the North Face Endurance Challenge, San Francisco edition. It was one of many races in the weekend-long Challenge (which included a 50 mile, 50k, marathon, marathon relay, half-marathon, 10k and 5k). The course was gorgeous – a trail run through the Marin Headlands. The course was muddy – thanks to the rain that poured on runners the day before. And, the course was steep – it looked something like this:

If this doesn’t mean anything to you, maybe this will:

Yep, steep, but pretty.

I already posted 10 lessons I learned running the race – a mix of practical and smartass notes (and the Joey Ramone reference). For purposes here, let’s just say, it was hard. I had to walk briefly 4 times (twice because they miscalculated the distance and added an extra half-mile to the course, making it 6.8 miles not 6.2 miles, which neither my body nor mind was prepared for), and that was a little disappointing. But, frankly, knowing the difficulty of the course, my only real goal was to finish, so I’m trying to feel good that the walks were few and short.

I know that’s a rather anti-climatic race recap, but what I find most remarkable about this experience isn’t that I breathed through the fear of failure and got on the shuttle bus to the starting line anyway, or that (even with the extra half-mile) I finished within 5 minutes of my expected, best case scenario time, or that I somehow didn’t fall on my butt in all that mud (actually that last one is pretty remarkable if you know me). What I find remarkable is how things change.

I read a lot of health and fitness blogs by capital-R-runners. I know running a 10k is not a fantastic feat (I read a lot of people who regularly bust out early morning 4-milers or, on a whim, join 10k or 50-mile races). But you know what I realized after my quads stopped hurting and my hamstrings stopped groaning last week? I bust out 4+mile runs on an average morning. The girl who couldn’t run a mile at 15 is now a woman who can choose a race, make a plan and make it happen. The girl who couldn’t run a mile on a high school track ran 10 kilometers, mostly up hill, in mud, through the gorgeous Headlands.

I’d be a liar if I ended this tidily by writing that running this one 10k changed my life, that suddenly my athlete identity crisis is completely resolved. Change takes time and there’s nothing sudden about letting go of old judgements or opening to new possibilites. Yes, I am an athlete (I can almost say it without caveat) and this change in my self-perception took steady work over the years, by both pounding the pavement and looking deeply inside myself.

Hanging out with some friends that evening, after the race, we got to talking about half-marathons and jewelry – specifically the sweet Tiffany swag you get for participating in the Nike Women’s Marathon and Half Marathon – and I dug out the two necklace charms I earned for walking that race (I actually walked it three times, but the last was unofficial, i.e. unregistered). I’ve never worn them in public, always feeling they were an overstatement, false advertising in a way – I mean, I walked those races and that doesn’t count. But since busting them out a little over a week ago and reflecting on the race and how much has changed since that first mile I limped through so, so, so many years ago on the Santa Clara High School track, I’ve been wearing them on a single chain 24/7 to remind myself what’s possible – how much I’ve accomplished and how much is still ahead of me. Maybe this year I’ll be running the Nike Women’s Half-Mary… hey, it could happen!