Running to Western Beef. Next stop, the marathon!

I'm happy to say that after my relatively successful run today, I've decided to go through with the ING New York City Marathon!  OK, it wasn't the greatest run ever.  But I finished it (albeit slowly) and felt good at the end.  I'm not going to be setting a new PR next week, but I feel like I can run it painlessly and without messing up my legs, and have a good time while doing it.

Today's run took me from my apartment down the WSH, across the Brooklyn Bridge, and back around the Greenway up to 16th Street, where I ended up at the market to buy groceries for a dinner party I was hosting tonight.  The run itself was OK.  I did it with Dane who's running his first NYC Marathon next week.  We took it pretty easy, and had to slow down considerably on the Brooklyn Bridge because there were a zillion tourists there taking in the first nice fall weather that we've had in a while.  My butt issue (which I've self-diagnosed--with the help of Alison, a Front Runner who's doing NYC three weeks after Steamtown--as Piriformis Syndrome) was noticeable, but not in a big way.  I also felt some tenderness on the top of my right foot towards the end of the run, but I think I can massage it out during the next week.

The run was a little slower and longer than expected.  And Dane and I spent way too much time at Western Beef buying groceries, which is easy to do since it is the best supermarket in all of NYC.  By the time we got all of the supplies to my house, it was 7:15, and we had to shower and make two lasagnas before a group of hungry gayrunners arrived at 8:00.  That was a pretty stressful 45 minutes.  To top it off, we had completely forgotten to get ingredients for a salad, so we had to get Ryan to pick some up on the way to my place.  I'm not sure how we did it, but a vat of sauce was made (decicious meat sauce with onions and mushrooms; I also threw in some ground up carrots for texture and Vitamin A), and by the time the first guests were arriving, the two lasagnas were assembled and in the oven.  My sauteed broccoli rabe and garlic bread were on schedule too.  And we were ready to eat by the time Josh arrived fashionably late at 8:30.

Because of the time constraints, some corners were cut with the lasagna.  I should have taken the foil off before it finished so the mozzarella would brown a little.  Instead, it was a bit of a gooey mess.  And adding to the gooey messiness factor, the ricotta in the lasagna was running all over the place after scooping out each piece.  I usually mix an egg into the ricotta, which I think guards against this exact situation.  Oh well, it was tasty anyway.

Somewhat less successful was the garlic bread.  For one thing, I had not baked it for long enough, so the not-fully-cooked garlic chunks were a bit overly pungent, to put it gently.  But even worse, something happened during the cooking process to turn all the garlic an unappetizing shade of bright green.  I have no idea why this happened, although it has happened to me once before.  The garlic had just been purchased today, and it looked fine after being put through the garlic press.  Was it because I used olive oil instead of butter?  If anyone knows, please leave a comment!

To finish off the meal, we had a plethora of desserts.  Mike Terry brought over some homemade rice pudding.  It was sweet and delicious, topped off with a silky meringue.  Derek brought over a sweet potato pie, which I really love this type of year.

And Ryan, urban planner by day and home brewer by night, brought over a homemade mead, which is a honey-based alcoholic beverage.  I had never had mead before, and am sometimes skeptical about home brews, but this was quite delicious.  It was sweet but light, a perfect dessert beverage.  I think Ryan said he just used honey, water, yeast and some raisins.  It sounded so easy to make that I might have to try brewing it myself sometime.

Heinz Ketchup Shrimp and Other Authentic Chinese Dishes

My first food-related blog entry is about a dinner that I cooked last Friday.  It's only first because my friend Serenity who came over took some pictures with her iPhone, and I think it's good to include pictures with my blog entries.  (Note to self, from now on, take pictures of everything I eat).

On the menu for that night were my world famous ketchup shrimp, Chinese long beans with ground pork, and jalapeno beef with Chinese sacha sauce.  Dinner wasn't ready yet when Serenity and J. came over, and they wanted to help out, so I put them to work assembling some vegetarian dumplings (I had some filling and store-bought wrappers left over from dinner the night before; my friend Maggie is a vegetarian).  As you can see, they did a pretty good job with the dumplings:

I, however, was having a hard time in the kitchen.  I was stir-frying the jalapenos for my beef dish, and I wanted to get them really caramelized so they could be eaten and not be too spicy (I had taken out the seeds and membranes before stir-frying).  Apparently, I got them a little over-caramelized (ie, burnt) because spicy pepper smoke started permiating the air.  I have no ventilation in my kitchen, so the smoke just lingered there for a while.  I opened the door to try to air out my apartment a bit, but it didn't really do much good.  J. started having a coughing fit and had to stick his head out the window in order to breathe.

The smoke eventually settled, and I was able to work on my other two dishes.  It was my first time cooking with Chinese long beans, which I love but for some reason have never used.  They're similar to green beans except they're about 12-18 inches long and have a slightly dryer texture.  One reason I like them over regular green beans is that, because they're so long, you use fewer of them, which means you save time because you don't have to cut the stems off a million little green beans.  They're also tastier, I think, especially since the dryer texture means they can absorb more of the delicious sauce that they're cooked in.

The last dish I made was one of my favorite dishes.  It's a sweet and tangy shrimp dish.  I put lots of garlic, ginger and scallions in it, along with soy sauce and sesame oil.  But the secret ingredient that makes the dish is Heinz ketchup.  It adds a sweet Chinese flavor that you can't get from anything else.  My grandmother made this dish.  (She also taught me to use ketchup in my fried rice, which I think is pure genius).  BTW, Laurent Tourondel uses Heinz ketchup in his cooking too.  Oh, I usually add some Concord Grape Manischewitz to it, for some extra sweetness (something tells me that ketchup shrimp isn't exactly Kosher for passover).  But I was out so I made do with Franzia instead.

All in all, a pretty tasty meal.