I actually haven't gone to yoga since early August. This was mainly because I fell on my hand in August. Twice. The first time, I was on a 12-mile run to Prospect Park, across the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. As I approached Grand Army Plaza, I tripped on the uneven sidewalk and landed on my hand, scraping it up pretty badly. About a mile later, I realized that I also landed on my butt, as the Gu that I had been carrying in my Race Ready shorts had exploded and was running down my leg. Chocolate Gu. Gross.
I took the next week and a half off from yoga, since, as my hand was bandaged, I wouldn't be able to comfortably do the downward facing dog. The day before I was planning to return to yoga, I fell again. On the same hand. This time off of a bike. I was so annoyed.
It wasn't even my bike, and I was just trying to do a good deed. Dane had registered to do the Staten Island Triathlon as part of a relay team. He was going to do the biking leg, but he didn't have a bike. Jeff agreed to lend him his bike, but because of logistics, he had to leave it at my apartment. So, I decided to be a good samaritan and ride Jeff's bike up to Dane's house on a night I was supposed to help cook dinner for some runner friends. Anyways, Jeff has this Kryoponite bike chain thing that he had wrapped around the bike frame. I kept it there as I started to ride the bike. I literally had not pedaled 10 feet when the chain slipped down between the spokes of the front wheel and jammed the wheel, causing me to fly over the handlebars onto my left friggin hand. This time, I was immediately gushing blood all over. I grabbed a Village Voice to try to sop it up, but just made a big bloody mess. There was a Mexican street fair going on in my block. So I had to push my bike, and my hand dripping with blood, through about a thousand people to get back home. At home, I grabbed an old race t-shirt to wrap my hand in, and seriously thought about going to the hospital. Instead, I went to Duane Reade, with my hand still wrapped in the t-shirt, and bought a bunch of gauze and tape and crap, and dressed the wound at home. I then took a taxi to Dane's and left the damn bike at home.
So, anyway, yesterday was my first yoga session since then. My hand actually felt pretty good, as did my legs. I would have stayed in the half-pigeon pose all night because it felt sooooo good on my butt. I'm going try to go one more time this weekend to help my legs recover from the marathon.
One more thing. Going to yoga for the first time in three months meant that I finally got to break out my new yoga mat tote bag, which I made on my sewing machine. Look how stylish it is!
After yoga, I went down to the Lower East Side, to one of my favorite Chinese restaurants in the City, Congee Village. The restaurant serves consistently good Cantonese food, but their namesake dish, congee, is what I go for. Congee is basically Chinese rice porridge--rice is cooked in a large amount of water or broth until it becomes a soupy mush, and then additional ingredients are mixed in. It's often then baked and served in an earthenware crock.
Depending on what's mixed inside and when it's eaten, congee can be sweet or savory, served hot or cold. In the summer, a chilled sweet mung bean congee is a good choice because of the bean's ability to lower the body temperature and rid it of toxins. Lean pork and preserved egg congee is probably the most popular and classic version, although I rarely eat it because preserved eggs tend to gross people out. So yesterday, we decided on a non-offensive chicken and shitake mushroom congee.
They say congee is the ultimate comfort food, and really is. Especially hot congee on a cold night. We paired it with a Singapore mei fun (rice vermicelli), some red-braised tofu and some soup dumplings. Very tasty.
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