Miss Rachel

The race I did on Sunday was OK: I finished, and I didn’t come in last. I came in 457th out of 480. I walked the first two miles and ran the last (the miles were marked along the course). It was a flat course, and the scenery was beautiful, featuring one of my favorite things: old houses because it was in Old Wethersfield, a historic district in Wethersfield, Connecticut.

It was kind of a solitary race for me. I ran by myself, but I did manage to exchange hellos with a few spectators and a cop near the end who told me I was almost there. At the finish line, they announced my name – wow, way to make me feel special – so I put my arms up in the air. Then I collected a bottle of water, found some shade and managed to lower myself onto the grass and wait for Sweetie to finish the 10K. Even walking as much as I did I was pretty beat: I acted kind of like my dog Blue when I was trying to sit down on the grass afterward. He has 3 “regular” legs and 1 deformed leg so he always kind of flops when he lies down: thunk. I kind of “thunked” down too, and I don’t have a deformed leg. I was pretty hurtin’ there for a while, but I walked today, and I’m feeling much better.

I did manage to make dinner for us Sunday night: curried cauliflower and peas served over “jubilee blend” brown rice. Remember rice? I love quinoa and pasta so much I sometimes forget about rice, but it’s nice now and then.

We had a nice dose of cooler weather last week, but the summer heat has returned full force this week with potentially record-breaking high 90s. Fortunately, I don’t start school until the weekend after Labor Day weekend. Much as I look forward to returning to the beautiful campus, the current weather is not putting me in very back-to-school frame of mind.

In other news, I re-reading The Secret Garden, a book from my childhood and it’s even better than I remembered.

And I’ve bought a “season pass” on iTunes to Mad Men (now in it’s fourth season), and I’m loving it as much as ever.

I am working 4 10-hour days this week, and then I’ll have Friday off. My department likes to have a couple people to answer phone calls after 5 so that’s what I’m doing. I still want to work out though so I got the crazy idea to work out before work on Monday and see how it went. I’m generally not a morning exerciser, but it just seemed to make more sense to work out then instead of going to work then working out in the afternoon: changing clothes and showering in the middle of the day and then going back to work. In case you’re wondering why I wouldn’t just work out after work, it’s because working this schedule I’m done at 7 so even if I felt inclined to work out at the hour (which I highly doubt), the gym closes at 7.  The way I did it I came to work in my work-out clothes, stopped at my desk, put my things away, put my food in the fridge and then went down to the gym with with my work clothes in my gym bag. Then I ran intervals on the treadmill – 3 minutes of running and 2 minutes of walking for 25 minutes. Then I cooled down and stretched, took a quick shower, got dressed and was up at my desk by 9. It went so well I did it again today. And I think I will do it again tomorrow.

You know there are so many opportunities to make yourself feel bad, sometimes without even looking for them. For instance, I read a number of fitness and running blogs and people will say things about having trouble keeping up their 8-minute mile pace or one that said her friends said Runner’s World magazine is not for “real” runners – huh?   So there I was on the treadmill struggling through 3 minutes at a time at a 12-minute mile pace with Runner’s World magazine propped up in front of me.  Since I was running and walking I couldn’t really read it, but it gave me something to look at other than the machine.  And I felt good.  I have to remember that this is about me and what I’m doing and that I may be slow and that I may like to look at Runner’s World, and if some people who I don’t even know are critical of those things, then that’s about them, not me.

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In other news, I’ve been taking pictures of my food throughout the past 5 or so months, but not nearly enough of them have made it to this blog, and I think I need to change that. Therefore,  I’m thinking of doing a “meal of the day” or “what vegans eat” feature here  so I can start posting the pics of the ummy food I eat.

In the meantime, here’s a picture of the latest banana bread that I made.  This time I had 4 bananas  so I was closer to the right (2 cup) amount of banana pulp the recipe calls for, and the bread came out great, if I do say so myself. The thing is you have to bake it for a long time when you use that high an amount of banana pulp. The original recipe says 50 minutes, but I find you need to bake it for at least an hour so it’s fully baked in the middle.

It was delicious with some Earth Balance on it, but Blue proved it can even be enjoyed plain. While it was cooling on the table and I was out of the room, Blue managed to hop up and bite the corner off of it – !   I told him he was a bad dog, but he just wagged his tail at me.  Guess I have to keep a closer eye on delicious smelling foods cooling in the kitchen.

I made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies yesterday and they were delish. I like to make cookie dough and then bake only some of it and store the rest for later for two reasons: nothing beats fresh cookies, and I can control the amount I eat more easily. It’s kind of easy to go overboard eating these cookies if I do say so myself.

I find cookies easy to make. I know they may not be easy for everyone, but for me they are. Pie crusts are my nemesis. For me, the hardest part of making these cookies is measuring out the peanut butter because it’s messy. Here’s the recipe:

Miss Rachel’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/2 cup Earth Balance (I use the soy free kind)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 cup unsweetened chunky peanut butter (the kind you have to store in the fridge to keep from separating)
1 1/2 teaspoons of Energ-G Egg Replacer mixed with 2 tablespoons of water
1 1/4 cups regular flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
~1 cup of chocolate chips

Cream the Earth Balance and sugars, then add the peanut butter and blend well. Then add the egg replacer mixture and blend that well. Add the flour and baking powder and once that is almost completely incorporated into the mixture, add the chocolate chips and mix until the batter is uniform and the chips are evenly distributed.

Drop by tablespoon-sized (or larger) blobs (blobs? OK, blobs.) onto a lightly greased cookie sheet.  Press down on the tops of the blobs with a fork to make a crisscross pattern  on each and then bake in a 375 degree oven for 12-15 minutes. Allow to cool on the pan for a few minutes and then remove with a spatula. I confess that I forgot to grease the cookie sheet yesterday, and the cookies still came out fine, but it’s usually best to lightly grease it.

These are cookies that actually taste better once they are no longer hot so allow to cool for a few more minutes and then enjoy. Store the rest of the batter in an airtight container in the refrigerator so you can make fresh cookies again. That’s it.

Of course, these are all gone by now.

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On a completely unrelated note, yesterday I also but bunny ears on Blue. I know Easter is over, but it’s never too late to put bunny ears on your dog.

So glad last week is over. I am mostly against wishing away time, but since last week is now in the past, it’s already away, right? It was just a tiring week. I HAD to stay up and watch the Ladies figure skating event so that entailed staying up late both Tuesday and Thursday nights to watch it live. I don’t have a DVR and besides, who doesn’t want to watch an exciting once-every-four-years event like that live?! So I was already a bit sleep-deprived, and I was also fretting over the paper I had to write for class this week (yes, there was a paper this week AND the week before), and was having trouble getting it out. I also had to make cookies for my boss’s birthday Wednesday night. My birthday was on Wednesday and hers is on Thursday and we have a rule that the person who had the last birthday handles treats for the next birthday. It’s usually not as close as mine and hers, but oh well. So on my birthday night, I was making cookies for someone else’s birthday. I could have just bought something, but I wanted to share the delights of vegan cookies with my coworkers (more about that later). By Friday, it was D-day for my paper so I ended up pounding serious coffee and taking a half day at work, and finally finishing it. Then that night Sweetie came home… ahhh….. cue hearts and flowers and angels. It was so good to see him again, and it’s great having him back.

I’m not the only one glad he’s back. So is Woody.

This guy, probably not so much. He likes to have me all to himself.

I was so tired I toyed with the idea of just going out and buying a cake for my boss’s birthday, but I decided I wanted to share (and show off) how good vegan cookies could be so I made them for my boss’s birthday treat. She took one bite and said, “Rachel these are reallygood.” Everyone else on my team tried them, and said things like, “They’re as good as regular cookies.” Some people asked for the recipe and for information on what egg substitute was so I emailed the info to them. I use Ener-G brand egg substitute. Here’s the recipe for Rachel’s Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies:
1/2 cup of Earth Balance
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg’s worth of egg substitute
1 T vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
3/4 cup chocolate chips

Bake in 375 degree oven for ~10 minutes (you may need more or less time depending on the size of the cookies).

Note: the cookies in this picture are actually cookies I baked another time. The ones I made on Wednesday, I didn’t add walnuts, and I made a bit smaller so there would be more individual cookies to go around. Of course, I also HAD to do a taste test to make sure (ahem) that they would be acceptable so I had a few warm out of the oven on Wednesday night.

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Blog news! I’m switching to WordPress. Blogger has decided to stop allowing people to FTP their stuff, and while they have a good reason for doing so, there really is no reason for me to stay with them so I’ve decided to switch to WordPress. Evidently, I will be able to migrate my old posts from Blogger to WordPress, and maybe I’ll even figure out how to make my archives page work. I’m excited about this change, and I’m also excited to continue blogging with my new focus: vegan food and lots of photographs. Some of my most favorite blogs feature these two things, and I figure if that’s what I like reading about then that’s what I want to post about too.

Hopefully, the migration will go smoothly. I’m not sure how my page is going to look, but it’s not as if my domain name is changing so my readers, few though they may be, will still be able to find me here. I’m going to try to make the switch today. See you on the other side!

EDIT: I did it.  I am now on WordPress.