More food

So in spite of my posting incessantly about food this week, I AM still training and racing and stuff. But I'm on a roll with the food thing and people seem to enjoy the ideas I float their way, so I'm just gonna keep on.

I'll finish the week with my XC Race report from last week, which was AWESOME. I think it's one of the hardest things I've ever done, actually. Like, I could honestly say it was just as hard as my half-IM. Except in this case I knew it would be over really quickly. Anyway, more on that later.

So last week when I picked up the CSA Veggies from Tierra Vegetables, we got LOTS of Roma tomatoes. What are Romas good for? TOMATO SAUCE!!!!!

This great recipe comes from the San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook: Perciatelli with Spicy Tomato Sauce


What I find amazing about this recipe is that you don't have to spend hours on the sauce. Usually, a really good tomato sauce comes from stewing for a couple of hours. But this one only took about 30 min to prepare/cook and it was soooooooooooooooooooooo YUMMY!!! I picked up some fresh pancetta from the market and it was a home run all the way.

The only substitution I made was the pasta - for some reason they didn't have Perciatelli (also known as Buccatini) so I used Fusilli. I like using this pasta with this sauce because the little nooks of the fusilli catch the sauce and pieces of pancetta.


We paired it with a 2006 Trentadue Sangiovese. Um...if the sauce itself was a homerun...then this pairing made it...well...a GRAND SLAM!!! OMG. I kept saying "wow...I have to just savor each bite because I never want this to end. This is sooooo good. So much happy in my MOUTH!" I know that's cheesy but when you find the right wine to go with some good food, the combination is just unbelievable. And that is why, as an athlete, I cannot give up wine. I just won't do it.

After dinner I thought "you know, I haven't made chocolate chip cookies in awhile..." so I decided to make those, too. And a full batch off the back of the chocolate chip bag is HUGE so I make it and then freeze the dough into little balls and once they're frozen I put them in a big Ziploc bag. Then I can take 2 or 3 out at a time, let them thaw and bake them - fresh chocolate chip cookies on demand!



As for training, I went to yoga last night and I was really glad I went. It meant that I had to forsake Tuesday Track workout, but I was okay with it. I love yoga. And for the last 3 weeks, I've managed to get it in twice a week. I'm beginning to see the results. My balance poses are better (Warrior 3 and Tree Pose, especially). I'm practicing on my arm balances a lot more often so those are improving (Therese says it's not an issue of strength for me, because, she swears, I HAVE the arm strength! It's my coordination...doesn't surprise me).

It's encouraging to see the difference, which is helping me stay motivated to keep getting it in every week.

Speaking of encouraging, I had the BEST swim workout yesterday morning, so I was so excited to get there this morning, too! I THOUGHT I had set my alarm, but then I woke up at 6:15...and practice was already 15 minutes underway. WTF? Either I shut the alarm off in my sleep (quite possible) or I set the time but forgot to turn the alarm on (also quite possible). Damn.

ANYWAY, that's it for now. I'm SO excited because I am going down to SF tonight for an appointment and then having dinner with my friends Jessica, Kristen and new friend Kathleen! THEN I'm staying at Jessie's and I'm going to teach spin at the Embarcadero (SF) YMCA tomorrow morning and SEE ALL MY OLD FRIENDS/STUDENTS! I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!! I've been looking forward to doing something like this for awhile. I really miss the folks at the SF YMCA and it will be so awesome to see my old morning crew that I came to know and enjoy so much.

Happy Hump Day!