Seitan Parmigiana

So this week, in my post-marathon high, I agreed to participate in two events, both of which kind of terrify me beyond words.

First, I told my brother, who is in California, that I would go on a bike ride with him on Thanksgiving Day when I'm out there visiting my family.  It was only after I agreed to do it that I learned what the ride would entail...4300 feet of climbing over 18.4 miles.  It's part of a series of bike rides in the San Francisco bay area deceptively called "Low Key Hillclimbs."  The ride is up Mt. Hamilton in San Jose, and apparently the last 7 miles of it is at a 6% grade.  So, if by "low key," they mean that I'll be walking my ass up that mountain pushing my bicycle, then I guess I'm ready for it.

Second, I decided to register for the 2010 Metroman Triathlon in Asbury Park, NJ.  I did this Tri this past July, and had a less than ideal experience with it.  The race is a 1500m swim, 21 mile bike and a 10k run.  The problem is, the swim is in the ocean.  And I'm afraid of waves.  I had never done an ocean swim before, and the salt water, the darkness of the ocean, and the roughness of the waves completely threw me off-guard.  And, it was an out-an-back course, and I was in the first wave, so it meant that the people faster than me were crashing into me as they were going back, and the people in the next wave were crashing into me as they were passing me.  And I had a crazy time sighting which meant I was zigzagging all over the place and swimming way more than I needed to.  Oh, and I also got lost, and turned to go back to shore before the actual turning point and had go back and swim way more than I needed to.  Of the 190 people doing the Tri, I was 189th in the swim.

This is me, coming out of the water at Metroman, delirious.

So, yeah.  I'm not really sure why I signed up for Metroman again.  But hopefully it'll go better than last year.  The bummer, though, is that it's the same day as the Nautica NYC Triathlon, which I had really wanted to do next year.  But I've swim in the Hudson River before, and I feel comfortable doing so.  I feel that with the Metroman, it'll give me a chance to confront my fear of ocean swimming.  Plus, it's about $200 cheaper than the NYC Tri.

Last night, I went to the Wednesday night fun run.  It was my first run after the marathon.  My legs are actually feeling pretty good.  Of course they're still tired and sore, but it doesn't seem like anything that bad.  I only did three miles yesterday, at an easy pace.  Hopefully by the Saturday run, I'll be able to do the full 6 mile loop.

After the fun run, I went to a birthday dinner for my friend Maggie.  As I mentioned earlier, Maggie's a vegetarian.  We went to a vegetarian place in the West Village called Soy and Sake.  As the name suggests, it's asian-centric, though not exclusively asian.

I feel like there are two types of vegetarian restaurants.  Those that focus on vegetables themselves, bringing out an inventiveness and creativity to vegetables that restaurants focusing on meat dishes tend not to present, and those that that find ways to substitute meat with non-meat ingredients.  Dirt Candy, in the East Village, falls into the first category.  When I went there, I had this crazy portabella mousse cube that was so weird and delicious, like nothing I've ever imagined before.  Soy and Sake is the other kind, where you can order up a plate of soy buffalo wings or a General Tso's wheat gluten.

I found it quite tasty.  As a meat eater, I really didn't miss the meat.  Perhaps it was because I ordered two "chicken" dishes...  the buffalo wing appetizer and a bourbon "chicken."  And the portions were huge.  The wings, believe it or not, were very meaty, and their sauce was tangy and sweet.  The bourbon chicken was less successful, as I felt the texture was a little dense, the flavor was mostly on the outside of the slices of soy product, and though it came with various dipping sauces, the soy itself was somewhat dry.  The other dishes that I sampled, including sweet and sour "pork," a beef stir-fry, and a green curry chicken, were pretty decent, and no worse than their real-meat variations at your everyday trendy pan-asian restaurant.

I think my favorite dish was one of their non-asian offerings.  Fatai ordered a soy chicken parmigiana.  I only had a bite, but the soy chicken patty was expertly prepared, crispy and delicious with an equally delicious basil marinara sauce.  And since Soy and Sake is not a vegan restaurant, you get a choice of real or non-dairy mozzarella.  I think the real mozzarella was the right choice.  :-)