Disneyland Half Marathon 2009

Oh, how I love this race. It's the happiest race on earth, you know. Oh wait. This year it's a magical celebration from start to finish. My mistake.

We got up at 3:30 am to get over in time to check our bag. Yes, am. No, I don't like getting up early. Yes, I do like running.

It's been 51 days since I've been to Disneyland. That's just plain wrong.

Anyway, we bummed around a little before getting in the corrals. My poor husband did not have proof of time and was in the last corral, and now fully understands the horror. You can read about his run here.

But I ran last year in 2 hours and 26 minutes. I guess this, combined with it being my third year, granted me corral B status. Which, I'll confess, seemed a little generous. But as the race went on, it seemed like I was in the right spot.

I put on my headphones without turning on my iPod because some guy insisted on talking to me and telling me about how it was last year. I was polite but really, not interested. There were 13,500 people there to run, and they were all eerily silent for the National Anthem. Very awesome.

After the anthem and the big fanfare to start the race, my corral started moving up. Normally corrals and waves are one in the same, so I thought it was a little odd when people started running to the start line. Little did I know. My race start, in my head at least, sounded like: "Seriously, running? These people are really eager to start. Hm, we're awfully close to the archway, why are they running so fast OMG WE'RE STARTING!!"

I had a good but unremarkable 5k. This is actually important, because there's another 10 miles to go! Even still, I was just below a 10 minute per mile pace. The route through Disneyland was a little different this year, going through a part of the backlot I've never seen, where they keep horses! Funny how it smelled there, and yet, I've never smelled animals anywhere around the park.

Let me just say, my least favorite part of the course is the overpass over the 5 highway. It's probably the biggest "hill" and I hate it. A lot.

It's been pretty warm lately because of (or the reason behind) the recent fires. Here, the sun should have been up and in full force, but a miraculous marine layer had blown in just before sunrise. Thousands of people are thankful for that. Also around this point, I realized there were water/Powerade stations about every 1.5 miles. Excess, if you ask the girl who runs 6 miles without water. In the summer. But I also decided to walk through the stations to actually get water and because honestly, I was getting a little tired.

At each mile marker I checked the time, and I was still at a 10 minutes per mile pace. So I decided I should run as fast as I could the whole way and beat two hours. You'd think with all that time alone with your thoughts, you'd be able to do simple math.

One of the awesome things about the race is how many volunteers come out to entertain you along the way. The race goes through industrial Anaheim, which is kind of boring, and makes it seem like they just got lazy toward the middle of measuring the course. But there are
cheerleaders and dancers along the way, which really breaks up the monotony.

Around the Pond, down the bike trail, and up to the stadium. This was about mile 9, but I missed the marker. This year, we got to run through Angels Stadium to the cheers of hundreds of little boy and girl scouts. It was a real boost. Being on the field always reminds me of high school marching band, looking up into these stadiums that didn't seem so huge from the stands but were like mountains from the field.

We finished off through California Adventure, but the finish line wasn't at the end of Downtown Disney this year. Going by the hotels is a little less scenic, but we'd seen the finish line setup the day before so I almost didn't need mile marker 13. And for that 0.1 mile, I emptied out the last little bit of energy I had because honestly, I was kind of tired of moving. And around mile 10, my knees and hips started to go on strike. Thanks, knees and hips. I guess all your whining requires new shoes.

Normally volunteers attack you after the finish line with foil sheets and pliers to clip your chip off your shoe. This year, there was some winding around, but no chips to clip (where did these d-tags come from all of a sudden?). It was actually pretty calm. So I got some fruit and went to wait at our prescribed meeting spot.

A whole orange and a banana later, my husband hadn't shown up. Even though he started after me, he's much faster. Although I hadn't seen him pass me (our six minute time difference explained that later). He finally turned up utterly exhausted, and we loitered around a long time
before going home.
Such was my third half marathon. I wouldn't say I was in particularly good shape, but I'm pleased with my time. There's always the hope of breaking a major milestone like the two-hour mark, but with recent events, I'm pleased with beating my last time by almost a minute per
mile. In fact, I'd kind of forgotten a little how much I like to run. So, once we're settled again, the weather and location should be very conducive to running much more.

My only regret is that I wasn't more present in the moment while running. Although, my brain probably needed the break.

Pitas and Hummus

It's two for one!

I needed something to take to a picnic besides some ribs. I'd been meaning to make hummus out of the two cans of chickpeas in the cabinet, and to try making bread on the stove. This seemed like as good an opportunity as any! Obviously it's easier to make a simple appetizer from scratch than to spend $5 at the grocery store.

Our grocery store just started carrying pitas in the last year. In fact, they now have a little shelving section to all different kinds of flatbreads. But I'd seen this article on baking without the oven after watching a silly video of a man making English muffins on an iron in a hotel room. Did this actually work?

While the (whole wheat!) pita dough was rising, I got to work making hummus. Hummus is one of those foods that you shouldn't use a recipe to make. I loosely based mine off of this recipe, but after a long and bitter battle with the food processor, I really don't know how much I ended up putting in aside from two cans of chickpeas and 1/3 cup of almonds.

That's right. No tahini. Just almonds on hand. Tahini is just sesame seeds whipped in to a paste, so it stood to reason another nut could stand in. There's a wealth of information on the internet about tahini substitutions. It worked out just fine. Over-filling the food processor did not work out as fine.

There was plenty of extra-light olive oil involved. Hm, I wonder how butter or margarine would fare?

Embarrassingly, it took probably about an hour to get the hummus blended. The dough hadn't really risen much, but it was time to get cooking anyway. I'm starting to wonder, though, if my yeast is too old. Or if it just didn't have enough power to lift up the wheat flour, which seems extra heavy to me. Regardless, I pressed out six inch flat rounds and threw them in a pan in some olive oil cooking spray. They didn't puff up, but they did cook in about a minute in a half on each side as advertised.

Whatever. It came out tasting good. And even though there were leftovers, I'd say they went over with the crowd pretty well.

Very, very simple. And it's pretty Martha to show up at a picnic saying "Oh, I just made some pitas and hummus to bring this afternoon."

Pizza III

I'm really getting the hang of this pizza-making business.


If this wasn't leftover, it would probably look tastier. The toppings here were turkey pepperoni and plain old spaghetti sauce. I figured if they make turkey dogs and turkey burgers, they must make turkey pepperoni. And indeed they do! Although it's what I like to call "food product." Meaning something that tastes like food, looks like a fair impostor of food, and yet has been so processed it barely qualifies as anything more than a mix of chemicals and flavors. But it's astoundingly low calorie.

Yes, I'm aware that pizza sauce ≠ spaghetti sauce. But I'd used up my canned tomatoes and tomato paste, and mixing up a pizza sauce suddenly seemed overwhelming on a hot night when I really wanted takeout pizza in the first place. Yet, I didn't want to make the emergency frozen pizza we always seem to have on hand. Perhaps we won't even need these any more!

Chicken Scaloppine II

This looks radically different from the last time I made chicken scaloppine. It's the addition of spinach and artichoke hearts.


Unfortunately, I didn't stop and think before I started cooking, so the sauce was a little watery. Always drain your spinach if you're using frozen!

Vegetarian Chili

Because a mild "vegetarian chili" sounds a lot fancier than a bean soup so I can lighten the load of cans in my kitchen cabinet.

Last year, I discovered Von's Stompin' Steakhouse chili. It was, by far, the best chili I've ever had. So of course, I set out to make it myself during a rousing football season. Many batches later, I sort of gave up. Not that we didn't have good chili during that time. It just wasn't the same.

Anyway, the news is out: we're moving in just a couple of weeks. I've been cooking at home a lot more in the past week or two so our move is a little lighter, at least in that respect. And between the chili experimentation phase and the Mexican-food-fiesta, I've kept a lot of beans around for just such an occasion (these will make a debut sometime, no doubt).

It sure would be nice if I shared the recipe for such a fantastic soup, wouldn't it? I didn't even think to look one up. So I'll just credit all of the random chili recipes I attempted last fall.

Vegetarian Chili/Bean Soup/Get it out of your kitchen stew:

• 1.5-2 cups Chicken broth (Oh shoot! That's not vegetarian! No worries, veggie broth would work.)
• 2 cans diced tomatoes
  
• 1 can corn
• 1 can kidney beans
• 1 can black beans
• onion
• garlic
• chili powder
• cumin
  
• salt

Cook the garlic, onion, and spices in about a tablespoon or so of olive oil in the bottom of your biggest pot. All the fancy recipes I've seen say to do this because it releases the flavors. Ergo, my recipe is now fancy.

At this point, you can start dumping. I drain and rinse my beans because the water they're canned in seems sort of gnarly. After 30 minutes of low boiling, you'll get this tasty soup:

Of course, it's summertime and it's hot, so a soup isn't as appetizing as, say, chopped melon. But once the temperatures cool down, you'll want to be making this. It makes a large quantity in a very short amount of time. And if you play your cards right, it shouldn't be too expensive all-told.

And it's suspiciously like Von's chili....

A California Weekend

There's quite a bit going on in my little household lately.

Last Friday we started packing. Actually, the weekend officially kicked off with a stop at the gym, which becomes important later. Since I was already sweaty and dirty, I started to bring up the boxes we've been storing in the carport. These boxes have made many moves with us, and hopefully this will be the last for many of them. We spent the rest of the evening trying to wrap our brains around packing while keeping some things accessible. About three boxes in, I was done. It was a long work week!

Saturday we got up extra early for an adventurous day. It was set to be a very hot and dry weekend. Which means fires. I'd seen a smallish fire in San Gabriel on my way home Friday, and as we made the trip up toward Oxnard Saturday morning there was a new plume just north of the city that neither of us had heard about yet.

As promised, the first 0.7 miles of the Point Mugu trail were brutal. Not to mention the fatigue from my Friday night date with the stairstepper. Oof. The rest of the trail was pretty mild, although you can imagine the way down was a little rough as well. We had a whole troop from all over to check out Southern California living.

What better way to finish off a hike than to jump in the ocean? We camped out at a Malibu beach for the hotter part of the afternoon. It's astounding how much cleaner the beaches are there compared to those closer to where we live. The water was terribly cold but it made the oppressive heat a little more bearable.

Meanwhile, on the trip home, the little plume of smoke just north of LA had become something of a nuclear explosion. Especially heartbreaking for us, since we'd done some hikes around the Mount Wilson area earlier this year. Angeles National Forest is an amazing place.

Sunday we had brunch with a friend at La Creperie, then were invited to join some of our new neighbors to hear a country band perform at our new local park. It was a fantastic night out of the heat, with introductions to lots of new people. We never really met our neighbors at any of our past addresses. It became a potluck picnic with wine, pitas, hummus, and ribs.

On the way home, we could see the fires glowing in the hills. If I can see them from my stomping grounds, that means they are too close! We even fired up the TV to hear a little about it, then called it a night.

The next few weeks are going to be pretty hectic, and hopefully the weekends will be fun despite all the work involved!

Blueberry Quick Oat Bread

Much like bananas in my home, it came to be that I had a substantial amount of blueberries that were not looking as appealing for my morning cereal.

So, like bananas, it only made sense to bake them. Right?

And lo and behold, here's a recipe that asks for blueberries and oats. Doesn't it just sound like breakfast in a loaf?

Normally this recipe wouldn't see the light of day in my kitchen because it requires buttermilk. As much as I like buttermilk, it's something that I don't use enough to justify buying. It'll just go bad. And then I caught wind of a magical, mystical invention: powdered buttermilk.

And sure as sunrise, there it was in a nice little can at the local Ralph's. It has to be refrigerated, but a little internet research shows it lasts forever. Plus, there's the extra possibility of freezing, as regular milk fat gets damaged when frozen.


The only thing this recipe was missing was that crunchy, sugary topping that appears on all worthwhile-calorie muffins. I just used a quick streusel recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook. It's essentially 1/4 cup flour, 1/4 cup brown sugar, a few tablespoons of butter, and cinnamon. It shouldn't be this melty; for some reason I was convinced it wouldn't stick to the bread if the bread was almost finished cooking. But of course, the butter in the streusel melts and gets sticky! I'm glad I finally cracked the book open for this. It's the perfect substitute for frosting or glaze. This is too much for this size of a loaf, but like sweet, sugary, buttery topping was ever a problem.

I also kept in mind a lesson from earlier to go ahead and destroy those blueberries. This is a chunkier bread, though, so it's not as important.

And oh, what a wonderful bread. Highly recommended for work potlucks, especially if it will make you look like a domestic goddess to your coworkers.

An interesting story about my loaf pan: it's a little smaller than you'd expect. It's over 50 years old. Back then, banks offered extra little incentives to open an account, much like how they give out ipods or $25 now (I'd totally go for the bakeware). It sat in my grandma's attic for years in its original, unopened packaging. Sure, I'm probably adding a healthy dose of lead or asbestos to our food, but if it isn't the little trooper of a pan!