Workout on the Georgetown Track

It’s time again – Spring Track! The weather’s warm, the daffodils are out in full force, and my team is working out in Georgetown.

Usually we practice in Ballston, but thanks to Wash- Lee High School’s sports schedule, we have been relegated to the tiny Georgetown track. Commuters hate it, but I couldn’t be more pleased. It’s conveniently located 2 miles from my house – a built-in warm up and cool down.

If you go to the Georgetown track and run a lap, you my notice that your time is insanely fast. I hate to burst bubbles, but that is because the track is smaller than standard. Most tracks are 400 meters around - 4 laps to the mile, but Georgetown is 320 meters - 5 laps to the mile.

I really like the smaller distance - the laps go by quicker, and I spend the repeat trying to figure out where I am in the distance (a nice distraction from the work of the workout).

If you want to run 400 meters, run 1 lap plus 1 quarter of a lap. It can be confusing for shorter distances, but this track is ideal for longer workouts.

Last night I warmed up by running to the track. When I arrived, I did a few drills and strides, then stretched out and psyched myself up.

The workout: 


2 miles (3200m)
4 laps recovery 


1 mile (1600m)
2 laps recovery


2x800m
1 lap recovery between them

Translated into Georgetown track language, that’s 10 laps, 5 laps, 2x2.5 laps.

That initial 10 lap-er sounds intimidating, but it’s really not! The repeat is long, so it’s not as fast. Plus, you do the longest rep at the beginning, meaning the rest of the workout is “downhill” from there.

I called it quits after the mile (no 800s for me!). I was feeling a bit of a twinge in my hamstring and didn’t want to put myself out of commission for the rest of the week. 

My total mileage for the night was 8 – a good solid evening of track!

Cake of the Week: White Ricotta Tart

Once, while in a “diet phase” in high school, I made a ricotta cheesecake as a “healthy alternative” to regular cheesecake. I hated it. I wanted/expected an exact replica of the smooth creamy richness of cheesecake that I love so much. So when I put a forkful of ricotta-textured cheesecake in my mouth I was totally bummed. I said never again to the ricotta option and left it at that.

Fast-forward 7 years to winter 2011. I saw this post on Sprinkle Bakes, and in typical Mollie fashion gasped out loud and immediately sent it to all my friends – Want! Need! Have to have!

LLC made the White Ricotta Tart for a book club meeting and served it with mixed berry compote. Swoon! I was sold and back on the ricotta train, signing up for a lifetime ticket.

 

Last week I finally unpacked my food processor (yay!), figured out how to turn it on (harder than you might expect), and conquered crust-making! I made this White Ricotta Tart for a birthday party Friday night – Happy Birthday Nikki! 

Each guest brought a snack, so I cut the tart into bite-sized pieces and put each piece in a mini cupcake liner. (Plus a test-piece for myself...shhhhh!)

Everyone loved it! The recipe is super easy, so make it for yourself and all your friends! 

The original includes a recipe for sugared fruit, and LLC served it with fruit compote. I served it plain and it was great – this tart can definitely hold it’s own.

(Since I was baking mid-week, there are no glossy Photoman pictures to be had…sorry. I did my best but clearly failed, so I have just two of my pics to prove that I made it, and then borrowed from Sprinkle Bakes. And the flowers are just for fun - DC is gorgeous right now!)

White Ricotta Tart

Tart shell:

1 cup AP flour

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 egg yolk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp water

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Liberally butter a 11" tart or quiche pan and set aside.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine flour, sugar and salt.  Pulse to combine.  Add butter pieces and pulse until fine crumbs form.  Add yolk, vanilla and water.  Pulse in quick bursts until dough forms a ball.  Press dough into buttered pan (flour hands if your dough is sticky). Chill shell for 40 minutes.

After chilling, prick the tart shell with a fork and bake for 20 minutes.  Let shell cool completely before filling.

Filling:

4 oz cream cheese, softened (low fat or no fat, if you like)

2/3 cup sugar

Pinch of salt

1 1/4 cups part skim ricotta cheese

3 egg whites

1 vanilla bean, seeds reserved and hull discarded (I just used 1 teaspoon vanilla)

Combine softened cream cheese, ricotta, sugar and salt in a large bowl.  Cream together with an electric hand mixer. Add egg whites and vanilla seeds.  Mix at medium speed until combined.  Pour into cooled tart crust and bake for 20 minutes

Weekend Report: Bridal Shower, Jalapeno Cheddar Hummus and Buffalo Chicken Dip

First things first - HAPPY MARATHON MONDAY!!! My good friend Chris is running the Boston Marathon as I type. Everybody think him some good luck thoughts! 

Alas I am here in DC, not cheering like a maniac on Heart Break Hill...thus is life. 



Anyway, you may remember from Best of the Week #15 that my roommate is getting married. Well, this weekend I scored major adult points by hosting her shower! (Adult points can also be gained by doing taxes, vaccuuming, remembering to pay bills ontime...and can be lost by activities like eating chips and salsa for dinner, losing a credit card and not replacing it for months, forgetting major holidays, etc...)

If you haven't been to a bridal shower (before yesterday I hadn't either), they are awesome. It's like a kid's birthday - games, presents, food - minus the kids! Two of my friends helped with the hosting, and it went really well.


I started the weekend with (among other things) 3 blocks of cream cheese and 5 sticks of butter, and ended it with a whole lot of dishes. But it was totally worth it. On Saturday I prepped throughout the rainy day. I grocery shopped and baked between running and yoga. Then on Sunday, after an 11-mile run early morning run, I food prepped and decorated and got everything ready to go (I put those 3 years of catering experience to good work!). 

Thanks to this country's bridal industrial complex, there are ample materials online to help you plan a shower. Martha Stewart gave me a few pointers, and of course I asked the Google "what do people do at bridal showers?" a few times...



The party started at 3 pm on Sunday, a good time for snacky foods. 


Bridal Shower Menu:

• Jalapeno Cheddar Hummus (recipe below)
• Buffalo Chicken Dip (recipe below)
• Chips, salsa, pita bread, pita chips, carrot, celery, and red bell peppers for dipping.
• Lemon Lime Punch
• Red Velvet Brownies
• Lemon Filled Cupcakes (recipe to come!)

The Plan:

1. Guess the Celebrity Couple Game
Prepare by writing or printing out names of famous couples on paper or notecards (i.e. Maid Marian and Robin Hood, Victoria and Beckham, Adam and Eve).
To start: When your guests arrive, stick the paper or tag (without them seeing the name) on their back.
Rules: The objective is to work out who you are. They have to guess the couple on the tag by asking other guests YES and NO only questions about their character. When they guess it they can put the name tag on the front of their shirt.

2. Make a Recipe Scrap Book for the Bride
For the two I’ve lived with her, Jeni has survived on a steady diet of tacos. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we thought it would be nice to make her a recipe book as she starts a new (potentially taco-less) phase of her life.

We asked guests to bring a couple of their favorite recipes. Then we gave everyone a scrapbook page, laid out tons of craft supplies, and let them at it! The bride’s friends are artsy interior-design types, so give them glue sticks and markers and fancy Paper Source paper and they’ll be amused forever. I was very impressed by the results!

3. Open Presents
Umm duh. Shower = shower of gifts! Everyone ate cupcakes and brownies and watched Jeni open many a box from Pottery Barn.

We had another game planned (the Make a TP Wedding Dress game) but the crafting took a while, so we didn't get to it. As all the guests left, I breathed a sign of relief - Bridal Shower SUCCESS! 

Jalapeno Cheddar Hummus (adapted from Eat Live Run)

Ingredients:

2 14.5 oz cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 jalapeno pepper, chopped and seeds removed

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup warm water (add more water as needed to make a creamy smooth hummus)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cumin

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

½ lemon lemon juice (about 2 tablespoons)

1 cup freshly grated sharp cheddar cheese

Directions:

Combine the chickpeas, jalapeno pepper, olive oil, water and salt in a vita-mix or food processor. Process until smooth (adding more water if you desire to thin the hummus out a bit).

Add the cheddar cheese and cumin and lemon and cayenne pepper and process again until everything is well combined.

Serve with pita and/or veggies. 

Buffalo Chicken Dip (adapted from Eat Live Run)

*This is not dainty bridal shower food. But it is good, so who cares?

Ingredients: 

1 1/2 lbs chicken breasts

8-oz Frank's Hot Sauce

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

8 ounces (half a bottle) Ranch dressing

1/2 cup chopped celery

4 ounces shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Bake the chicken breasts at 350* for 25 minutes. Cool completely and then pull meat apart with a fork.

In a nine inch casserole dish, spread out the chicken and pour the wing sauce over. Mix well and spread out, covering the entire bottom of the dish.

In a medium sized saucepot, combine the cream cheese and ranch dressing.  Whisk while heating until smooth. You don't want any cream cheese clumps!

Pour the cream cheese mixture over the chicken and spread out. Sprinkle the celery on top. Bake for fifteen minutes at 375*.

After fifteen minutes, sprinkle the cheddar cheese on top and continue baking for another ten to fifteen minutes, or until the cheese has melted and is bubbling. Remove from oven and let sit for ten minutes. 

Serve with chips, celery sticks and buffalo chicken wings.

Best of the Week #16

It’s Friday!  HOORAY!


Two favors to ask of you all: Would you "like" me on Facebook (click the button above)? And follow me on twitter? @eatrunread KTHANKS love you lots!

I finally got over my bootcamp class plus track workout soreness yesterday and went for a gloriously spring-y lunchtime run with a co-worker. And I made a ricotta tart for a party I’m going to tonight…yummm! (More on that later, I promise!)

My most popular post this week was the Red Velvet Brownies with Cream Cheese Frosting.

The Washington Post hosts a Peeps Diorama Contest every spring. The winner was the “Chilean CoPeepapo Mine Rescue.” These are so cool – go here to watch the slideshow of all the finalists.

I’m going to visit Sister2 in Bangalore, India this summer while she is studying abroad! These Love Travel Guides look really great, so I'll definitely be referencing this site. 

This video made me smile. People do the coolest things!

There’s a family of ducks that are living in the “pond” outside my office – people are crazy for these little birds! Take some of the best photographers in the world, show them cute fuzzy ducklings...and you see what happens. They put in a special ramp so they could get in and out of the water – so freaking cute!

Everything you never knew about George Washington. (Go here.)

Literary Bite: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a collection of short stories by Raymond Carver, America's short story master. 

His writing style is very sparse and minimalist. Some of the stories are only a couple pages long, and none take more than ten minutes to read. Just as you’re settling in, the story stops at an unsatisfying non-ending. It can be jarring to re-orient to a new narrator every few pages, but that’s part of the power of Carver’s fiction – it keeps you on your toes.

As the title suggests, the collection is about love and human relationships, but not in the way you would expect. The book as a whole is perplexing and often depressing. According to English professor Fred Moramarco, it’s about Carver’s “puzzlement about the odd and battered condition of love in the contemporary world.”

Many of the stories are disturbing. Carver touches on all kinds of love - spiritual, carnal, platonic, possessive, brutal, obsessive, unrequited, and even parental, searching for what "real" love is. And since his stories end so abruptly, you’re always left wondering what really happened or what is going to happen.

Carver’s own love life was a bit strange, perhaps contributing to his slightly depressing perspective on love. When he was 18 he married a sixteen-year-old, Maryann Burk, and they had two kids right away. They separated twenty years later in 1976 and Carver was hospitalized for his alcoholism four times between 1976 and 1977 (they eventually divorced in 1983). He quit drinking in 1977, and published What We Talk About When We Talk About Love in 1981.

Because Carver wrote as a recovering alcoholic, alcohol often plays an important role in many of his stories. A common theme is two couples, spending time together and drinking, and usually misscommunicating. Drinking is often contrasted with eating – Carver presents food as nourishing and nurturing, while alcohol is a kind of empty substitute that serves to distort and confuse. (For more analysis, read Moramarco's whole essay here.)

Overall, I think What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is worth reading as an example of great American fiction. And it’s short – you’ll finish it in less than a week!

The Stories in the Collection:

• Why Don't You Dance?
• Viewfinder
• Mr. Coffee and Mr. Fixit
• Gazebo
• I Could See the Smallest Things
• Sacks
• The Bath
• Tell the Women We're Going
• After the Denim
• So Much Water So Close to Home
• The Third Thing That Killed My Father
• A Serious Talk
• The Calm
• Popular Mechanics
• Everything Stuck to Him
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
• One More Thing

Fair Pay Day

Humor me while I climb up onto my soap box...some things are more important than eating, running, and reading...

Did you know that women, on average, are paid 23 percent less than men? 

Yesterday was Equal Pay Day, a public awareness event started in 1996. It happens on a Tuesday to represent how far into the work week women must work to earn what men earned the previous week. (So women must work 1 week and 2 days to make as much money as men who work 1 week in the same job.) This year it fell on April 12, “the symbolic point at which the average woman's salary finally catches up to the average man's earnings from the previous year.” That means that women take nearly 16 months to earn what men earn in 12 months.

Readers, did you know this? It blows my mind and is not talked about enough. I remember learning in college that the women's’ faculty salaries are lower than the mens’ -- my brain almost exploded. As a young woman entering the work world this just hurts. Dear World, Sometimes you disgust me. It’s 2011, get with the freaking program!

Of course, everyone has the right to make his or her own work/life balance decisions. It is true that women sometimes take lower paying jobs because they value spending time with their families more. And that’s great. But I’m talking about the women who do the exact same thing as their male counterparts and are paid less for it. I know that life isn’t always fair…but come on!

I don’t usually get super political here at Eat Run Read, but some things are truly rant-worthy and this is one of them. 

There’s legislation in the works, go here and find out if your senator voted for the Paycheck Fairness Act, and tell them that you want them to support fair pay!

Banana Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies

I use the term “breakfast cookies” liberally. I mean, who says breakfast has to be healthy? Why are cookies shunned as inappropriate breakfast food, while cinnamon rolls and muffins are embraced? What’s really the health difference between a cookie and a pancake?  They’re both round…I might even argue that cookies are better. They’re smaller, and denser, and give you that satisfying something extra when your yogurt just doesn’t quite cut it.  

I feel no guilt eating a cookie for breakfast (I was trained by the best). Sometimes a brownie-filled chocolate chip cookie qualifies, but in the case of these chunks of banana-y awesomeness, the more traditional healthy breakfast cookie implication applies.

They have fruit. They have oatmeal and whole wheat flour. They have nuts (aka protein - work with me here!). They go well with coffee. And most importantly, they are delicious!

I found this recipe on For the Love of Cooking, and I’m a huge fan. It tastes like banana bread, but in cookie form. Mine don’t have chocolate chips (I didn’t have any), but I think you should add them. I won’t judge, who doesn’t need some chocolate chunks in their breakfast?

Banana Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies

1 very ripe banana

3/4 white sugar (brown sugar if you have it)

1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/4 cups of whole wheat flour

2 cups quick cooking oats

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup milk chocolate chips (optional)

3/4 toasted walnut or pecan pieces

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place a silpat mat on a baking sheet.

Combine the banana, sugar, butter, egg, and vanilla in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until mixed thoroughly.

Mix the salt, baking soda, flour and oats together. Add the oat mixture, chocolate chips, and pecan pieces to the banana mixture and mix well with a spoon.

Drop cookie dough on the baking sheet covered with a silpat mat 2 inches apart. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on racks then serve. Enjoy.