Taster Spoon

Shake it baby, shake

Talkin' bout the Richter Scale.

Nope, I didn't feel it. 

Possibly because, at the time, I had slipped off to Smart & Final where I spied good deals on Halloween candy - I got a big bag of gummy body parts for less than $5

- and found myself rocked by something even more exciting!

There's a neat little Japanese grocery store right next to it and I wandered in to find all sorts of yummy things for completely reasonable prices.  Unexpected of Japanese anything.  Also excitingly, all their produce and meats were marked organic and local - organic spinach, chicken from Petaluma...and did I mention their prices were completely reasonable?  Unexpected of organic anything.

So I picked up a half pound of thinly sliced pork, packets of frozen udon, a block of tofu, spinach, acorn squash, pea shoots, enoki and shiitake mushrooms, red miso paste, a packet of spicy tuna sushi, a packet of seaweed salad and a six pack of Asahi Super Dry - all for less than $20 - and we had impromptu shabu shabu!  (I've discovered recently that Asahi Super Dry is so far the only beer I can tolerate and managed to enjoy an entire can.  Asahi Super Dry - the beer for people who don't like beer!) 

California does know how to party.

By Popular Demand

 

And now I must show you the original, uncropped  picture Ace took, where I am not even the focus of the photo, but rather the emphasis is on squeezing in a shot of the painting he scammed off an old Japanese lady at the De Anza Flea Market. 

We're not sure what it says.  She let it go pretty cheaply so I'm wagering it's cursed.

Piece of (Local) Cake

Oh, but so the upshot of that Eating Local thing is that on Tuesday night we discovered to my surprise that, except for the sparkling wine from TJ's and the organic chicken that had been living in our freezer anyway, without even meaning for it to be, our whole meal was local.  Get out of town!!  Or, don't.

We sat down to roasted red, green and white peppers from the farmer's market - plus a red one from our own jalapeno plant - in garlicky vinaigrette made with olive oil Ace won at a race in San Jose and herbs from the plants by our front door - a tomato and fresh mozzarella salad also from the farmer's market; and to sop it up, nice, thick, toasted slices of panettone from Ace's favorite bakery in Oakland.  It was really pretty, but I didn't think to get a picture because I hadn't realized how noteworthy our dinner was until I looked twice at our main course.

Chicken breasts with a teriyaki-type sauce of brown sugar, soy, cayenne, rice vinegar and chicken stock I made Saturday, cooked down until thick and syrupy; steamed bok choy with garlic and oyster sauce, and mashed butternut squash with dark sesame oil and a little five-spice seasoning.

Take a picture, it'll last longer.

Tonight we're cleaning out the fridge and freezer before we leave town for that race, so I guess we're back to the Russian sea scallops that have been chillin' behind the ice cream for a month (seared, with a little truffle oil and cream), but lo: this morning I put together the roasted red and golden beet salad (farmer's market) with cranberry-pomegranate (farmer's market) relish we'll have to start (it's so pretty!) and the cream of leek (farmer's market) soup and the blue potatoes (farmer's market - they are CRAZY BLUE) we'll have in the middle, and the applesauce (local) we'll have for dessert. 

Question: Has our way of eating really changed because of the Eat Local Challenge?  Answer: No.  We just pat ourselves on the back more.   

Ace said Sunday that shopping at the farmer's market made him feel like a grown up.  I said it made me feel like a trendy twenty-something with disposable income and time to kill.  He looked at me, so I amended to say a well-heeled fifty-something whose kids are out of the house.  What?  It's expensive.   

Eating Local Stinks

As you are well aware, September was "Eat Local" month, and I griped and moaned for the three weeks I half-assedly participated. 

(Reminds me of the time my law school roommate and I agreed to partner up on a project, and to each contribute a quarter of an ass, so that our combined effort would be merely half-assed.)

I don't know that I learned all that much, so much as it was brought home to me how much our immediate environments are changing.  For instance, when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, as they say, my grandmother's immediate neighborhood was surrounded by cornfields.  (And she and my grandfather had that house built as part of a developing community, so I guess they were sprawling subdivisioners before sprawling subdivisioners were cool.)

This is what it used to look like, for a 30 minute drive in any direction.

I knew that cornfields have been getting mown down even as the McMansions have been popping up, but when I was back in Illinois I was astounded, as I drove the half hour to get to the purported farmer's market that wasn't there, that the entire route that I expected to be between cornfields, was now instead flanked by these.

It reminded me of back in the '80s when Sting was hanging out with those Amazonian Indians in Brazil, the ones with the saucers in their lower lips: they came to my high school to talk about deforestation and noted that this one half hour plane ride from here to there in Brazil used to be 100% rain forest, and five years later there was forest below them for only the last 5 minutes of the flight.

But I've made an effort to get to the farmer's market; I was bummed when the weekend got away from me and I didn't make it to the Harvest Festival over in Fremont this past weekend - I like to think I've absorbed a little of the seasonal spirit that trying to eat local ignites.  Speaking of ignites...oh, I'll get to that.

I've also gotten caught up in the grooviness of it and have hippied out in other ways.  Because I tried to avoid buying anything not-local in September, when I ran out of the Vanilla Sparkle antiperspirant I love so much, I rummaged through my cupboard and found this Deoderant Crystal I bought at the health food store many months ago but have been afraid to try. 

I guess it's just a big block of salt, right?  You moisten it under the tap and rub it around in your pits. 

Much to my surprise, it seems to work.  It doesn't stop you sweating like antiperspirant does (by blocking the pores with aluminum, if I understand correctly), but you don't smell like anything. 

I've been playing it safe by patting myself with a big puff full of mango-scented talcum powder I swiped from my grandmother's, and spritzing with one of the perfumes my dad is so reliable about gifting.  (This month it's True Star, the Beyonce-inspired scent from Tommy Hilfiger.  True Star "captures the essence of a private performance by the American superstar and the alluring play of her gleaming radiance, confidence and modesty."  That's so me!  Gleaming modesty!  Private performances!)  I used to think perfume was kind of an unnecessary extra step, but now, with the powder puff and the spritzing, I feel kind of old fashioned and feminine. 

(There's a guy at work who wears cologne - not in a Guido way, just enough to make you turn your head after he walks by, and think, "Oh!  That was a Man, man!"  It's nice.  I know a lot of people have allergies, but I think I'm going to help him bring back scents in the workplace.)

I've also been taking more scented baths.  I pulled out my big store of essential oils for a chapstick making party last month, and kept them out to squirt in the tub.  Word to the wise: a little patchouli goes a loooooooong way.

Long story, I'm feeling pretty good about the crystal: Ace hasn't said a word about me smelling sweaty.

Then again, it may not be the first thing his nose is picking up. 

Because I was trying not to buy anything new that wasn't local last month, I was short on protein sources other than eggs.  (Oh, and sometime I'll tell you about the goat yogurt I got.)  So I raided the cupboards for dried beans, and, well, I'll let your imagination be your guide.

My dad told me I "reeked."  So true.  So embarrassing.  So antisocial!  More patchouli!

But then yesterday I followed a link from Extreme Pumpkins, where the EP guy explained that his business was an online drugstore that would discreetly ship to you all the things you were way too embarrassed to take to a live person at a cash register.

Bean-o!  Charcoal pills!  Nullo! The Flat D Fart-Filtering Chair Pad!

Now that I'm off the beans, October seems to be pretty quiet.  The wildfires in the state park have died down, if you will.  Still, I think locavores might find it prudent to stock up on just a few non-local items.  Nice to support local farmers and all, but maybe even nicer to be considerate of your actual neighbors.

The Clothes Make the Athlete...or Do They?

So I've got a race this coming weekend.  It's the Long Course Duathlon (run/bike/run) World Championship - awesome, right?

I mean, yeah, it is, sort of. 

By qualifying for this race we find ourselves on "Team USA" and can participate in all the related hoopla.  We have to wear Team USA uniforms and march in the Parade of Nations - from what I've heard about "Worlds" events from Ace, it sounds like quite the Olympic Village scene.  (What about the free condoms?  Our reporter on the ground will let you know.)

We even had the option of ordering Team USA track suits. 

I got one, since this will be the only time I ever make it into something like this. 

It is everything you want from a pseudo-Olympic (Olympish?) track suit. 

Not only is it red, white and royal blue, it has TEAM USA silkscreened prominently on the front, on the back, on the leg.  It runs large, so it's kind of ill-fitting and slouchy.  Best of all, it's made of this cheap-feeling polyester - it is both really heavy and not very warm, kind of clammy.  It makes me look like a hockey player from some Eastern Bloc country, circa 1978 or so.  (Ace says I look like a Romanian gymnast, which would be totally true if I were a foot shorter and 20 years younger. )

But when I think of the Olympics, that's what I think of.  I think of 1980 and 1984 and 1988.  Debbie Thomas and Katarina Witt; Eddie the Eagle,  Carl Lewis, the Jamaican Bobsled Team; the year professional basketball players were allowed to compete for medals and mopped the floor with everybody else; that big US/USSR rivalry on the hockey rink; the greedy, greedy medal counting; the John Williams/NBC theme song.

I've worn it a couple of times after working out 24 Hour Fitness, possibly slowing my pace lingering as I pass their sign with the big Olympic rings on it.  No reason, no reason, just stopping to tie my shoe, throw my bag over my shoulder. 

Like I say, it runs a little a lot large, but that's okay, because I plan to wear this well into my later years when my consumption of Sara Lee's frozen banana cake has outpaced calories burned waltzing over there at Arthur Murray.

But here's the catch.  I have to earn it.  And my training this season (since about June, really) has been grudging at best.  Once upon a time, I looked forward to weekends of 6 hour bike rides and three hour runs, and not only because of the "Gotta Have It" size Cold Stone that went along with.  But this year, I find my self resenting, not the exercise itself, but all the time I don't have to do anything else.  Like have people over for dinner, or leave town for the weekend without my bike, or just lie around by the pool. 

Although I have to say, I've kind of been making the worst of it.  Knowing that I'm supposed to exercise, I don't allow myself to make any fun plans or leave the house on a Saturday morning in anything but bike gear...but because I feel so sorry for myself, I don't get the exercise in either - I just mope around and eat pancakes.  So I'm both boring AND unfit!  Jackpot!

Anyway, the race is upon us.  This should be taper week, where you drastically cut back on the volume of exercise you do to allow your body a chance to recover from all the stresses you've been putting on it over the last eleven weeks.  Taper week is usually my favorite week.  You suddenly have all this free time, and you don't feel guilty about it! 

But this time I'm not even going to pretend to taper, because there's nothing to taper from.  I guess I'll go to the gym a couple of times as usual.  Today I thought I'd maybe squeeze a bike ride in since I cheated myself again this weekend -

Great.  It's raining. 

How do you know when it's raining cats and dogs?

You step in a poodle.

Look at it coming down out there!

We've had such a blistering and lengthy summer, I'm enjoying the downpour. 

Know what also make me happy on a day like this?

$5 at the DeAnza flea market!

I also have this song, for obvious reasons, stuck in my head.

I hope this doesn't ruin the Ardenwood Harvest Festival - it's already put a muddy crimp in our Haunted Corn Maze plan.

Why does Snoop Dogg carry an umbrella?

Fo' drizzle.

But do they offer AFLAC?

Shoutout to Boots, who's starting a new and better job. 

LUCKY!

Tahoe A-Go-Go

Last year, Ace raced in the Xterra National Championship, held every year on the north end of Lake Tahoe.  I went along, not knowing much about Xterra events, and was blown away by the challenge of just the 3 mile run course.  How people are expected to run under logs, over boulders and through creeks boggled my mind.  As he competed, I was again blown away by the beauty of the venue as I rode the 70 miles around Lake Tahoe.

Ace swore off mountain bike races after the world championship last year, because he could never seem to complete a training ride - much less a race - in one piece.    

But this year I caught him sneaking out three or four times in the last couple of months to ride mountain bikes with our friend Dr. Phil, and he confessed that he was "thinking" of competing in Tahoe again.  I was kind of excited to ride around the lake, because of how beautiful I remembered it was last year, so I asked if I could come along. 

We left Friday at the height of rush hour a totally reasonable time, and spent four or five hours getting to Auburn, perhaps an hour of which was me trying to guide us to Ikeda's when in fact I had no idea where it was.  (I wanted to get something local; the sands in my Eat Local Challenge hourglass were running out.)  Their raspberry pie was excellent; their pumpkin bread was the best I've ever had.  And their home-grown peaches were slurpy and sweet and the size of softballs.

As we approached the Donner Pass, traffic stopped.  I don't mean it slowed, I don't mean it was creeping.  I mean people were  getting out and walking around, and riding their bicycles up and down the highway.  For an hour and twenty minutes we sat there.  One clever driver thought to turn his headlights off, and lights up and down the road extinguished like dominos.  It was eleven o'clock at night.

I finally walked up and rapped on the door of a truck in front of us.  I asked whether he'd heard any news of what was going on over his C.B.

"Depends which report you believe," he said.  "Could be an accident, could be weather.  They say it's whiteout conditions over the Donner Pass so the police are stopping people to check for chains."

Chains!  We'd left the Peninsula and its 80-degree weather that afternoon, and now we were talking about needing chains!

There wasn't much we could do, so we waited until traffic moved again, and as we crested the Donner Pass, we passed through a tunnel of semis a mile long, a hundred trucks parked on both sides of the highway who had been refused passage for the night.  The wait was apparently caused by all those trucks being pulled from the road and having to find a slot in the gauntlet in which to bunk.  As a by-the-way, Ace informed me that trucks don't have bathrooms on board.  (Yellow snow.)

As traffic surged over the hill, I tried to imagine what the original Donner Party would have thought of the thousands of us all cheesed off by a two hour delay in our journey.

So we got into Tahoe at about 2 in the morning, and stayed at the cutest little cabin-type motel on the beach.  Everything about it, every decoration, painting, lightswitch plate, lamp and blanket was bear-related!  The air was bracing as we unloaded three bikes and all our gear, but we heaped the spare blankets on the bed and fell asleep immediately. 

When Ace's alarm went off for the race, he went outside and took this picture. 

Then he climbed back under the blankets. 

We spent Saturday having a leisurely breakfast in Tahoe City; he rode the bike course of the race, and I ran some of it.  If last year I was blown away by the run course, this year I was staggered by the bike course.  I ran along a narrow ridge (1-2 feet wide) with a sheer drop down to the lake on one side and was in terror of stumbling and slipping to my death.   "The Flume Trail." 

I was thinking, "I can't believe anyone would attempt to traverse this path on a bicycle, never mind RACE it."  And then I stood aside, gripping the limestone boulder between me and a steep cliff face, to let pass a young man on a unicycle.

Ace later said, "that's the easy part."  He also sent me this picture of what he had avoided on race morning. 

Don't forget that this ride was after a dip in the 58 degree lake.  The weather had had hit a record low of 23 degrees.   A friend of his said afterwards that she had the hardest time getting her shoe clipped into her pedal, and discovered it had completely iced over.

We rode around the lake Sunday, and it was still beautiful but I didn't enjoy it as much as last year.  One, I'm out of shape, so it felt that much harder and longer.  Two, we got a late start, and traffic was substantially heavier - stressful when there's so little shoulder.  Three, about a third of the way through the wind picked up and demoralized me for a good hour as I rode into it down by Stateline, before terrifying me as I was creeping up precarious climbs with the wind gusting me alternately into traffic and towards the edge of the precipice.   

I finally got back in time to fill up on Xterra leftovers (which were awesome, btw) and Ace began the long drive home. 

It was different from staying home in every possible way - the weather, the leisurely mornings, the stars close enough to touch - and I couldn't have asked for a better way to kick off Autumn.

Also, Ace thought it was funny to compare the styles in which we eat prime rib.

Ring around the Cybex

Oh, surprise, surprise, 24 Hour Fitness sucks.  Some venues suck less than others; my particular location sucks more.  However, an old roommate clued me in a few years back (after I had already belonged for some three years on the month-to-month payment plan) that if I paid for 3 more years up front, I could get every year subsequent for $50 a year.  I knew I'd be in the area for a while, so I did.  So I'm stuck. 

But dude, $50 a year! 

As basic and grungy as it seems, sometimes it's the only way I get any exercise at all in the dark of winter.  And occasionally they have stellar group instructors who make it all better.  Eric, who used to teach spinning several years ago, was so motivational (while also tough) that you had to get to the gym an hour before class to have a hope of getting on the signup sheet - and there was still a line of wannabes at the last minute.  Eric hated the management, as most employees seem to, and went off to start his own gym that focused on spinning, kickboxing and yoga - the only group classes I've ever cared about - which, as far as I can see, is doing really well.  (I'm thrilled for him, but am too cheap to pay for coaching and clean equipment.)

And then there was Robin the Yoga Instructor, on whom I harbored a (not-so-secret) crush.  She had a way of teaching free yoga to the unwashed masses that made you feel like it was a one-on-one, twenty-dollar class, and she wrapped in little bits of inspiration and thoughtfulness that made it more, well, yoga, and less cookie cutter workout.  She left, too, but I think she's teaching somewhere else so maybe I'll find her again someday.

Anyway, a gal at run club was asking about where to swim around here, and somebody suggested the Mountain View 24 Hour. 

Everybody laughed. 

I piped up, "Yeah.  I just don't like swiming in all the Band-Aids and the hair."

The woman said, "Yeah.  I had to quit them.  I got ringworm repeatedly there off the mats."  It sounded awful.  For a year (it kept coming back) she had to change her sheets every time she slept in them, change her towels every time she used one, and drain several cans of Fast Actin' Tinactin! until it finally went away.  It sounded like a true ordeal.

Conversation turned to a discussion of various other fungal infections and skin conditions, and the group proceeded to dinner.

But man.  I haven't been to the gym in a couple months now, but...gross.  I was just usually annoyed that the spinning bikes are always falling to pieces and the treadmills are generally threadbare, and gritted my teeth and ignored the clumps of hair in the drain and the people washing their feet in the sinks and the fecal matter ringing the toilets.  I mean, we're in a first world country.  Surely it just appears gross. 

But I've developed a plantar wart on the bottom of my foot, and now I'm convinced that's where I got it.  I'm not sure whether that means I should be more conscienscious about wearing flip flops in the shower... or if I should go barefoot and do my part to spread it around.

I'm kinda busy right now

Amuse yourself with these.

(This one has no sound.)

(The following has a little sound.)

(The following has sound.)

Or answer this question:

Why are people in puppy videos always wearing their pajamas?