A Perfect Summer Meal...and Ultrarunning

The tomatoes and zucchini came from my garden.  I brushed the lengthwise-quartered zucchini lightly with olive oil,  sprinkled with fresh grated Parmesan cheese, and grilled them.  The tomatoes were also grilled, after receiving a generous dollop of pesto sauce.

The sweet corn came from a farm stand just down the road and was grown within a couple miles of my place.  The avocados, the one non-local item, likely came from California.  I cooked the corn in water, while the avocado was grilled (again with a light brushing of olive oil).

[image credit Gary]

The connection to Ultrarunning is that sometimes I crave a vegetarian meal (while both the bride and I are happy carnivores) after a long effort.  Intuitively that seems backwards--I'd think that meaty protein would be the preferred menu choice.  But sometimes a big effort suppresses my appetite for some hours, and a lighter, veggie meal is more in keeping with my druthers at that time.

Why Am I Not Surprised About Cat Treats?...and Ultrarunning

We currently have 3 cats, down from 5 as a brother-sister pair of 19 year olds went to the great kitty beyond within the past few months.

Anyway, the remaining 3 seem to have divided their preference for cat treats.  Of course, all 3 cannot possibly like the same treat at the same time, so we have to have more than one treat:

image credit Gary

One treat is hard and crunchy (Whisker Lickin's, on the left, with the awkward apostrophe that makes you think "typo" until you realize the word is missing a "g") and the other is soft (Pounce, on the right).

Just shaking the appropriate bottle brings the appropriate cat running.

Speaking of running--or more properly, Ultrarunning--there are some treats I especially love on the trail.  My all-time fav is peanut M+Ms, followed closely by chocolate covered coffee beans.  

These are for my pack.  When I run an organized event with aid stations, I tend to hit the cookies and pretzels early on, followed by "real food," meaning sandwiches and protein stuff later in a longer race.

Ultra Food

 

[image credit Gary]

For some reason, the bride is fascinated with Irish steel-cut oats.  Actually, "fascinated" doesn't begin to cut it--"obsessed" comes much closer to her actual reaction.  If she sees a can of said oats, say at a specialty store, or in a catalog, or in an on-line ad (thanks, Google, for the search-targeted adverts!), she goes on and on and on about how much she loves them, etc. 

The actual product looks much different than regular whole or quick oats: more granular or rounded, almost like barley.  I can't say whether Irish oats are a significantly different grain than the oats we see here in the U.S.

So...this year I made sure that her Christmas stocking contained the actual can of Irish steel-cut oats pictured above.  I just made us a batch for her birthday breakfast, as her birthday also falls over the holidays.

Her reaction was almost orgasmic, so I guess you could say that she enjoyed her bowl of porridge, 'cause that's what it is.

Actually, oatmeal (or porridge) is the perfect breakfast food: rich in nutrients and fiber, filling, and tasty.  A bit of brown sugar and milk makes this a great day-starter.  And since I am now officially in training for a 24 hour timed run in May, oatmeal will be one of my mainstays to get back on the right track with my eating.

 

Carbo Loading...and Ultrarunning

My opinion is that Carbo Loading is something that marathoners do that serves as a placebo to make their minds rest easier the night before a race.  I don't bother do it anymore in prep for an Ultra--I just eat whatever I feel like the night before.

Of course I did Carbo Loading when marathoning was my thing, and since I believed it helped me, it did help me.  I'm just not convinced now that there was really any physiological benefit to the ordinary runner.  I'll allow that maybe an elite runner might gain a smidgen of benefit.

All that said, I love to bake, and here was my carbo loading contribution for this morning, a holiday bread I bake every year:

[image credit Gary: Cardamom Bread]

 

 

Super Duper Ultra Food Finally Revealed

[photo by Gary]

From somewhere along the C+O Canal...the photo reveals my ultimate super duper food weapon:

Chocolate covered espresso coffee beans.

Available at many large groceries in the bulk dry foods section, or at gourmet food stores, this is a great way to get a caffeine jolt along with some concentrated sugar and fat in the chocolate.  Eating a handful of these beans has never failed to give me some zip when I was fading.  They're like peanut M+Ms, otherwise my favorite Ultrarunning food, only better.

Plus they taste good (at least to a coffee lover).

Now you all know, and the playing field is again leveled.

 

Cell Phone Tossing...and Ultrarunning

This from REFDESK, my home page, on 2 Nov 2011, which pointed me to The Free Dictionary, here, and this undervalued sport.

Mobile phone throwing is an international sport that started in Finland in the year 2000. It is a sport in which participants throw mobile phones and are judged on distance or technique. In addition, people sometimes throw cell phones in anger, such as model Naomi Campbell,[1] that gives extra points.

There are usually four categories in the sport:

--Original (also called 'Traditional'): an over-the-shoulder throw with the farthest distance winning (best of 3)

--Freestyle: contestants get points for aesthetics and creative choreographics

--Team original: up to three competitors have one throw each with their scores added together

--Junior: for children aged 12 or younger

Ultrarunning parallels include the GPS toss; the suddenly-unappealing-aid-station-food-you-are-carrying toss; and the fruit rind toss, to include banana skins and orange peels. 

And of course, the cookie toss, wherein you regurgitate the entire contents of your stomach, feel better immediately, and continue the race.

 

Turducken

As part of an extended Christmas season, we had friends and relatives over on Sunday.

Daughter’s boyfriend is a chef and did a TurDuckEn for us, and it was good. He deboned a chicken, stuffed it into a deboned duck, then put it all into a deboned turkey. Well, actually he used boneless duck breast rather than deboning a duck, but the principle is the same.

Oh, and he added some stuffing in and around the meat.

Here are a couple of cross-sectional shots I took of the bird(s):

And of course, Wikipedia tells you how to do it.

Parachuting Sheep..and Ultrarunning

I love me some Boing Boing, a website devoted to, I guess, tech culture, for lack of a better term.  If you like oddball stories relating to technology, this is the site for you.  On Monday they posted an article about parachuting sheep in the early days of WWII:

When the Italian army invaded East Africa in the mid-1930s, pre-packaged ration technology had not yet reached a point where one could carry a lot of food into a desert and expect it to say edible.

The fascists solved that problem using a little ingenuity, some sheep, and a bunch of little parachutes.

Now moving on to the original article in The Atlantic (also for photo credits):

When the Italian army advanced across the Danakil Desert in north-eastern Ethiopia during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, it was crucial that they travel with as little as possible. The desert, named by National Geographic as "The Cruelest Place on Earth," is pockmarked with volcanoes and known for its oppressive heat. With 120 miles of nothingness ahead of them, the troops had to move fast.

Enter the flying supply column, a new idea in warfare at the time, but one that would be used again in future conflicts. Twenty-five planes carried water, ammunition and rations for the Italians as they advanced on Emperor Haile Selassie's Army of the Ethiopian Empire. As they supposedly refused to eat the standard pre-packaged processed food that accompanied most armies and because fresh meat would spoil in the extreme temperatures of Danakil, the supply planes dropped living animals for the troops to butcher and cook. By the time the army had finished their trek, seventy-two sheep and two bulls had been pushed from planes, parachutes strapped to their backs.

Maybe we could adapt this technology for long solo runs--either parachute some animals to predesignated locations along the trail, or perhaps a runner could do a mini-sheep drive and take food along on the hoof.