At first, I was considering not going to the physical therapy. Butt exercises are pretty straightforward, and I probably get plenty of that from all of the warrior poses they do at Yoga to the People. But I checked out the website of the physical therapist, and it seems like the guy in charge there really knows about runners' injuries. Michael Conlon, the lead physical therapist, has run 14 marathons, including three Boston Marathons, and also completed two Ironmans. On top of that, he coaches the NYC chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training. So I think he'll be a good person to talk to about my butt. I'll keep you updated.
Monday was a rest day. Instead of running or Yoga, I took a walk to Western Beef. My favorite thing about Western Beef is that in the evenings around 7:30ish, they mark down their rotisserie chickens to $2.99. I'll sometimes buy a few, and portion them out for lunch for the rest of the week. Or I'll take the breast meat and make a delicious Chinese peanut butter and mustard chicken salad (it's tastier than it sounds). I often save the bones to make stock.
I was happy to see that on this night, there were plenty of $2.99 rotisserie chickens left. I decided to pair one up with some soul food inspired sides. My friend Serenity was with me, and she said she would cook some collard greens (she's from North Carolina; they know their collards there). I had some white rice left over from chicken curry night last week, so I figured I could use that to make a black-eyed peas and rice side.
Serenity suggested we buy some applesauce to tie everything together. I gasped at her proposal to buy applesauce...why on earth would you buy flavorless, industrial grade, preservative-laden applesauce when we can just make our own. So I got a variety of apples to show her how easy it would be.
Serenity's collard greens came out fantastic. She said she ideally would have put in some bacon for extra flavor, but my bacon was lost somewhere in the deep black hole that is my freezer, so we skipped it. Being from the South, Serenity likes to cook her vegetables to death. I would have stopped at this point when there were still bright green and delicious looking. But hers were actually better.
The peas and rice I made was so simple I'm almost embarrassed. I just sauteed some garlic and onion, and then dumped in a can of black-eyed peas and my leftover rice. I added a couple of spoonfuls of Goya recaito (a cilantro-based sauce), salt and pepper, hot sauce, and a ladle full of leftover pot roast juice. It turned out quite good.
I think the biggest surprise of the night was my applesauce. I blended together three different varieties of apples, added some cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, and brown sugar. The granny smith apple that I used gave it a fun tartness that is maybe better characterized as an "apple chutney" than applesauce, but but it was super tasty, and brought all of the different flavors together.
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