Since we didn’t go anywhere on Saturday or Sunday, I decided to do some cooking yesterday.   I made the Southern Greens and beans again, cause they are so yummy and easy to make.   But this time, I decided to try one of the recipes in Alicia Silverstone’s The Kind Diet.  The recipe I attempted, Polenta Casserole with Seitan, was chosen simply because I bought polenta (not knowing what to do with it at the time), and thought this was a good way to use it up.

This recipe was sort of hard for me to make.  Because my ingredients weren’t quite right.  I’ll start at the beginning.

First step of the recipe calls for cooking the polenta and the cauliflower in a big pot for 30 minutes.  Okay, that sounds easy, right?  Well, I had pre-cooked polenta.  So I didn’t know what to do!  I figured that if it was already cooked and eventually being baked, that I didn’t need to do this step.  So I put the cauliflower into the microwave to cook, and thought that ultimately I would save time.

I went to the next step, which was placing the seitan slices on the bottom on the pan with the corn and asparagus.  Okay … another easy one right?  Not in this house!  The recipe called for 8 ounces of seitan.  One of my packages was exactly 8 ounces.  I took it out, placed it in the bottom … um, that didn’t even cover a third of the pan.  Hmm…. so I had a different package that was actually 1 pound and some ounces … I used that as well as the stuff that I had already put in there.  I had a little more than I needed but thought a little extra protein never hurt anyone.

So the cauliflower was done enough … and the next step was to mash the polenta and cauliflower until they were the consistency of mashed potatoes.  Well, I ended up needing to use the electric mixer and it was lumpy … I never got it right.  I put the extra ingredients in the mixture.   At the end I spooned in the peas and I added red pepper because I love red pepper.

Poured the polenta/cauliflower mash on top of the seitan mixture as directed and baked.  I had leftover polenta mixture, but I just tossed that.

And I thought to myself that this had better goshdarn taste well, cause it was a real pain to make!  It smelled really good!

Here it is right out of the oven:

And with the first slice taken out:

I made a small greens salad on the side, and sat down and took my first bite and ….. BLAH!  BLAND!  And I like bland food.  Or food as its supposed to taste.

What I think happened was two things … the seitan … too much and in this recipe it didn’t get a chance to absorb the flavors of things around it.  And the other being, obviously, the polenta topping itself.   I think I could make this again and have it taste better, but I won’t bother.  In the meanwhile, I’m going to separate the seitan from the polenta, and spice up the polenta and eat that and the seitan … well, I’ll see what I can dig up as far as sauces go and eat that.   I am a big fan of seitan so this was a disappointing experiment.

On the plus side, I made a really, really yummy soup a few days ago.  Recipe taken from the February 2010 Yoga Journal.  The name, Green Soup with Sweet Potatoes.  So yummy, and I ate it all over the next few days.

Here is what it looks like:

And its very important to note:

I tried a Sharon Fruit and it tastes just like a persimmons, except without a pit and the skin is edible. Yum!

I’ll be back with more stuff soon!

But I got up anyway, and prepared for the race.  We were not supplied with timing chip tags, so I had to figure out how to put my chip on my shoe via the laces and this was not the kind of thing I can figure out easily at 5:30 in the morning.

We left later than we wanted to, of course, but were early and beat the road closings.  We had the good fortune of the starting line being near Matt’s office, so we used that parking lot and stayed in the car where it was warm.  And I had access to indoor plumbing … no outhouses for me.

When it was time, we made our way over to the start line, and Matt found the 2:00 pace team and I went to the back.  The slowest pace team was 2:30, despite the fact that we had 3:15 to finish.

There were supposedly 4,500 signed up for this race.  That is a small race to begin with, and looking around, there was nowhere near that.  Oh no.  I hate these small races, I feel so slow!

The race began through the South Side of Pittsburgh and as we begin, 80% of the people participating break away.  I start to have a meltdown and must have given off some meltdown vibes, cause there are others around who start to talk to me and I express my sincere fear that I will not finish in time.  An older woman says that I will and she will finish too, even on the sidewalk.  The younger woman, whose name was also Jennifer was super supportive and we ran together all the way through South Side to the West End Bridge.  I had to stop to tie my shoe (of course) and she said that she was going to keep moving and I told her that I would catch up.  I never did.  I did see her a few times looking back for me, but I had lost too much ground, between tying the shoe and then having to go UPHILL to get onto the bridge.

Around the corner from the bridge, mile 4, my leg started to twinge.  For a moment, I panicked and thought that at least the relay station was only 2.5 miles ahead and if I had to stop that was a good place to do so.  But then I said “My leg doesn’t hurt, there is nothing wrong with it” and it was indeed fine after that.  I must have just stepped funny.

I ran/walked, ran/walked, all through the North Side.  There were few people behind me.  It was very surreal, I was practically alone, feeling like I was merely trudging along on a practice run, except that the streets of Pittsburgh were open just for me.

The prettiest part of the trip was a part of Northside that I had only seen once, at night, during a Halloween 5K.  There is a park somewhere nearby and a walking trail to the right.  But we were on the road, of course, and the trees were still holding on to their leaves.  This was essentially the “turnaround”.  One more uphill ramp, to the 31st street bridge, and down into town and back to Southside and we are done.

Along the way, two girls taking a walk break said that they were surprised that the race was so competitive.  They didn’t think running was so big in Pittsburgh and didn’t think they would be all the way in the back all alone.  They were there for fun, not for speed.  At this point we were all averaging somewhere around a 12:00 mile, so we weren’t exactly going slow.  But we felt like it, as it was so isolated back there.

Around mile 7.5, 8, somewhere in there, I knew I was probably done running, or at least trying to run for any length of time, and I was also nauseated.  At this point, I looked over and saw someone who looked like she was struggling too.   She was also not feeling well, so we helped each other by walking together.  She was walking faster than me, so I had to keep up.  Then she slowed down, and I sped up so she had to keep up with me.  Mile 10 went really fast, but the rest of them seemed to go on forever.

Eventually, my nausea did pass, so I was happy about that and Rachel and I did get to the finish, and I did run across the finish line.   In pretty much 3:00.  That is my third slowest half marathon time.

I would not have done nearly as well had it not been for the kindness of strangers and the support of Jennifer and Rachel.  I finished 138th out 139th in my age group, and I actually think that is a bit funny.  There were not even 2,100 finishers in total.

One thing I was surprised about was that they did have water until the end. I hear about the people at the end who don’t get any because the race runs out.  There was no sport drink after awhile though, but I don’t know if its cause we were late, or if they didn’t pass them out.

The pros of the race:
*The course was nice
*Our goodies … this HUGE reusable shopping bag from Dick’s, a reusable water bottle, a towel, a finisher’s hat (which we got at  the expo) and a long sleeved technical tee
*Plenty of water and food at the finish (although could that be because half of the registrants didn’t show?)

The bad:
*Not enough participants
*There were not time clocks at every mile and I don’t think all of the miles were even marked
*The medals don’t have the year on them
*Not a lot of crowd support

I knew the first part of the directions and I had a different way of getting there than the GPS and so we laughed at the GPS saying “Recalculating”. Its really funny how I swear that voice is showing beligerence when it has to “recalculate”.    We eventually make it to the zoo.

It was a perfect day for the zoo.  Cloudy and not too hot, so the animals were active.  And boy did we hit a jackpot year with all the baby animals.  We didn’t see the young tigers, or if we did, we couldn’t tell.  They were born last year.  We did see the two baby elephants, both girls, who were born last year.  I was surprised at how small they still were, but considering how big they have to get, I guess its not surprising.

My favorites though were the water babies.  The sea otters were rollicking in the water.  Rolling around, jumping.  So cute.  I think we watched them for a LONG time.  The baby beavers were cute too.  And there was the little sea lion.  She was born in mid-June and was still being nursed.  She was walking really well and swam really well, but she couldn’t get on the rocks in the middle of the tank.  She tried really hard but she just couldn’t make it up there.  I hear that she was able to do it today though.

Petting the kangaroo was a nice highlight too.  Every time I go to the zoo, I hope they are close enough to the path for me to touch, but never until this year.  I expected them to have wiry fur, but they were soft.  Baleigh crawed through the stingray tank and into the meerkat habitat.  She laughed at me when I ran from the “Bat flight” display.  But she was just getting even with me for laughing when she ran from the Hornbill.

After the zoo, we headed back to my neighborhood because it was the day for me to pick up my weekly vegetable box from the local farm.  While we were at the host house, we saw two domestic kitties.  The black kitty was owned by the family and he was really friendly. There was also a stray who was a buff tabby with white paws.  He was a cutie … he had the extra toes on each front paw.  The stray was also very friendly, and we don’t know what happened to his owners. I was talking to the neighbor there and discussed getting him neutered.  Cross your fingers that she does it!

Now it was time for dinner!  We texted Matt and then headed to Station Square and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe, where I forgot to order fries, as my other cousin says that they are the best.  I ordered green beans instead.  But then we had dessert.  I had a rum cake, and it was really tasty … and really small.

We rode the Monongahela Incline to the top and took pictures of the City and walked all the way up Grandview Avenue, and down the Duquesne Incline.  Then walked to the Station Square parking lot and came home.  I got lost in the parking garage.  Really, I did. 

We were all exhausted, we uploaded the photos, Bay and Matt watched Hannah Montana.  Eventually we all went to bed.  Matt and I (surprisingly for me) were up at 9:00 and Baleigh slept to 10:30.  I must have worn her out!

Friday morning, we dropped some paper off at the shelter and took the quick 10 cent tour.  She was invited back to hang out in medical another time.  We drove back to her house (why does that trip seem so much shorter when there is someone with you) and I came back home and was glad to not have to drive again that day.

I really enjoyed myself.  Baleigh is so smart and pretty and she is a joy to hang out with.  She helped to make my birthday week one of the best I’ve ever had!