Squash Killer [RECIPE]

You know I took down the Magnificent Squash Bug Attracter (aka the Ronde de Italia squash) long, long ago when I got tired of ker-smashing the beetles that were multiplying between its every fold, but alas, the farm share has ensured that I still have lots of squash.

And might I just say that THANK GOD I pulled that squash plant when I did because otherwise I'd be in big trouble right now with the fatness. 

Why the fatness? Well, let me tell you.

I've found the best way to get rid of loads of squash (zucchini, crookneck, whathaveyou) is to shred it with The More Trouble Than It's Worth Mandolin and put it into chocolate cake.

Because everyone loves chocolate cake and since they don't know that there's evil monster squash inside, they eat it all up like WOO CHOCOLATE CAKE and I go WOO THE SQUASH IS GONE and then WOO MY PANTS FEEL TIGHT because I love chocolate cake, too. Whoopsy.

But the satisfaction I get from stowing two or three huge squash in something that will be readily disposed of is extreme, and so I carry on. Let's hope my jeans make it through squash season. 

Wow. That's something I've never said before. 

ANYWAY.

If you want to hide all your squash in a cake (and let's face it, who doesn't? It's very fun.) maybe try this recipe from my favorite cookbook of all time so far, Serving up the Harvest by Andrea Chessman (thank you, Jeph!). 

This time around I actually almost followed the recipe to a T, or whatever, because it was the first time I made it, so I wanted to make sure I knew what it was supposed to taste like before I started fucking with things and got a cake that tasted like a good ol' horse's ass or something.

If you want to know what I'll do next time (you want to know. Go on now.), I'll be swapping the butter with nonfat plain Greek yogurt because The Pioneer Woman says so and also I did this on a recent brownie recipe and YUM. Later on that though, let's make the cake.

Or rather, the cupcakes. I find a whole cake is hard to give away, so I make cupcakes. It helps my jeans to fit.

Dark Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes
Adapted from the Dark Chocolate Zucchini Bundt Cake recipe

in Serving up the Harvest, Andrea Chesman

Ingredients

2 1/2 C flour

3/4 C unsweetened cocoa powder

2 t baking powder

1 t baking soda

1 t salt

1/2 t ground cinnamon

2 C brown sugar (make sure you have this before you make the whole recipe)

1/2 C butter (or, in the future, maybe nonfat plain Greek yogurt)

2 eggs

2 oz baking chocolate, melted + cooled

1 t vanilla extract

1 C coffee

3 C grated squash (WOO)

To make:

Preheat oven to 350

Grease your cupcake tins (this made almost 2 dozen) in whatever fashion suits you. I just tried that Pillsbury Flour spray or whatever and really liked it. There's some purported No Fat Cooking going on there, but who knows what that means.

Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a bowl. And really sift it using a sifter or something because it mixes it nice and gets rid of lumps. No one wants to eat a lump of baking powder, y'all. That's nasty.

I have no lumps.

Beat together the brown sugar and butter in a mixer and add the eggs one at a time until they're combined. Add in the chocolate and vanilla until combined and then switch off adding the coffee and flour mixture until it's all in there. Scrape down the bowl and then mix in the squash. 

Pour the whole mess into the cupcake tin and bake for approximately 30 minutes or until the toothpick does the Coming Out Clean thing. 

Allow to cool and watch for Cupcake Monsters that do shit like this:

Our Cupcake Monster is called Bubba.

And then, once they're cooled and you want to impress people, add some powdered sugar to the top to be fancy. If you want, you can use the FANCE method I learned while standing in line at the store.

See, as I was buying the brown sugar I thought I had but didn't and was soothing my aggravated soul with a free sample reading of Real Simple, I came across this month's New Uses for Old Things (best magazine section ever methinks) that was to use a tea ball to shake powdered sugar over things. 

I do believe I said aloud to myself: YES. I WILL DO THIS. 

And then I did. See below.

Tee dah! That shit is perfect.

But, if you're just going to be shoving all the cupcakes into a zippy bag and taking them to work to pawn off on your coworkers who still fit in their jeans, feel free to ditch the fancy ass sugar and just leave them plain. They're still real good. Promise. I even ate one in the car to prove it - so there.

Now go love on your zucchini. GO.

Does NOT taste like a horses ass

Fava Bean Hummus
Doesn't it look like wasabi? So green it made me nervous.

2 cups shelled and cooked fava beans/broadbeans/whatever the hell you call them
2 cloves of garlic
Juice from 1/2 lemon
1T Extra virgins
Salt and pepper to taste
Potentially a little H20

To cook your fava beans, remove them from their sleeping bag pods and boil them in seasalty water for a few minutes or until you see the outer skins start to split. Drain the beans and run cold water over them to cool their molten lava exterior so you don't burn the crap out of your fingers when you then squeeze each bean from its protective outer casing into a bowl.

In a food processor combine favas, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. I start with about a tsp of salt and pepper and work it out from there. I like things salty, so there ended up being a lot more than 1 tsp salt in the final product.

Blend the ever-loving crap out of it until it's a nice puree and looks like wasabi. If your mixture is not mixing, try adding a little water, more lemon juice or a little more olive oil to get it to smooth out. If you're really crazy and not as afraid of the fatness as I am, you could add some tahini because it would be really yummy I predict. HOWEVER, again, this could result in Horses Ass taste, for which I will not be responsible. But if you try this and it's good, tell me exactly HOW good it is and then I can decide whether it's worth setting aside my aforementioned fear of fatness.

Once your hummus is hummusy, I can suggest serving it with some nice toasted organic rye (thank you bread share), crisp radishes (thank you farm share), fresh arugula (farm share) and parmesan, sea salt and cracked pepper.

I can tell you that, to me, it did not taste like a horses ass. It also didn't taste exactly like your average hummus because, well, it's made from fava beans rather than chickpeas/garbanzo beans/whatever the hell YOU call them, so it tastes like fava beans. I predict that if you like fava beans enough to eat them by their lonesome, then you'd like fava hummus. And if you layer enough stuff onto a big piece of toast with your hummus then chances are even better you'll like it.

I won't say who Bubba, but someone with whom I was dining enjoyed a good amount of pepper and parmesan on top. Then there's me. I liked the hummus so much that I shunned the bread and just started dipping radishes right in the hummus so that I could legitimize the amount of hummus going into my mouth.

I figured jamming my finger right in it or getting a spoon from the kitchen wouldn't leave me a lot of wiggle room in the "Everything in Moderation" department. A concept with which I am constantly doing battle.

My thought is this, if I really like something (Nutella, pie, green olive tapenade, brie, gin, Lay's potato chips), there's no use in trying to satisfy my craving AND exercise restraint at the same time. It just always ends in disaster because if I try to trick my craver by having a tiny bite of brie smeared onto a big old cracker, I'll just go back and have a hundred crackers with the same tiny bite of brie on them in order to get to the big slice of brie I wanted in the first place.

Had I just had my big slice of brie and none of the pesky crackers in the first place, it probably wouldn't have been as naughty in the calorie department as that same amount of brie on top of a hundred crackers. Right?

SO - I just go ahead and have the big slice of brie or the big slice of pie or the big scoop of Nutella
or the double G&T or all the Lay's I can eat before Bubba snatches the bag from me, and thus, save myself the unsuccessful trickster calories I would have eaten in crackers, toast, fruit or sandwiches. (Bubba's rule is that you only eat chips when you're also having a sandwich).

I think you understand my crazy girl math on this one.

Anyway, we had this for dinner on Saturday after we tried to kill ourselves with pupusas for lunch. It was a nice light dinner and went well with the local Syrah gifted to us by our lovely neighbors. It also didn't fight with the pupusas in the belly, which was a bonus. Those bitches can get feisty.

There's a bit left in the fridge, so I imagine that I'll finish it tonight, along with a slice or two of the leftover rye and arugula and radishes so that I can make room for whatever the farm share doles out this PM.

Also - coming soon I will have a very important Adopt a Crop update that you will not want to miss if you like cucumbers, garden ramblings and the probability of dick jokes.

Running is the anti-Snoopy

In an effort to stave off any more guilt, I went back out for a run this weekend so that I could say that my Post-Race Break Week was just a little more than a week, but not TWO weeks because that would be ridiculous.

It would have also been fabulous, luxurious, relaxing, productive and a lot of other really great things, but the thing I was most focused on was Fatness.

Because when weighing the pros and cons of going for a shortish-long run all the pros (see above) were outweighed by the very heavy con (Wow. Awful pun.) - Fatness.

Even though, during an impromptu dinner date night with Bubba on Friday (Fun! We went out with three dimensional people! I wore jewelry!), I admitted that since my last race, I've lost 4 pounds. Even though there's no way that can be anything other than 4 pounds of muscle since HELLO look at these oysters on the half shell spread out before me - it's not like I've been eating low cal during Post-Race times.

That would be insanity.

Anyway and also - I had a wedding to go to over the weekend and wanted to wear my new and never-yet-seen Supah Tight dress with my sparkly Wedding Going Shoes (I can't find any other occasion to wear them. Due to the sparkliness.) and wow is that one dress where a Lunch Snoopy isn't welcome.

Thank you to my good friend, Kiesha, for that apt naming convention.

Given the tightness of the dress and the likelihood of a Post-Race Break Week of Oysters and Other Assorted Naughtiness Snoopy, a run was definitely in order.

So, run I did.

I went out for a six miler at the not so early hour of around 7am and it was fine. A little humid out for my tastes and there was that pesky sun ball again and wow there sure are a lot of cars on the road at this hour, but the run itself was, like, pretty nice.

Especially since it was only six miles and it was acting like Fall around our neighborhood this weekend, so I got to crunch leaves with my feet, appreciate pumpkin vines crawling out from under people's fences and think mean things about those fuckers who already have Christmas decorations edging their Jack-o-Lanterns off the porch.

I think I was out for around an hour, since I did my usual 6 mile route, but since I didn't wear my Garmin (OH THE FREEDOM OF RUNNING FOR THE HELL OF IT RATHER THAN FOR TRAINING) I didn't get any exact times or elevation charts or splits or fanciness like that.

I can say, though, that when I put on my Supah Tight (but still appropriate for a wedding because I brought a wrap, OK) dress, there was no Snoopy to be seen. Yay. The run did its job.

Of course, after having lunch, cocktails, appetizers, dinner and a hundred drinks, I'm sure I looked like Snoopy after Thanksgiving Dinner, but I have to assume that everyone else was drunk enough by then to let such details pass before their eyes without recognition or memory.

Plus, it's not like I was the only one who had dinner and those bacon wrapped scallops, so I'm sure there were other Snoopies to see. Just saying.

And since the run went so well and I will have to make my way through a 5K next month and because I'm going to Palm Springs this weekend instead of putting myself through the Silicon Valley half marathon like my neighbor is, I'm going to go back to my weekly morning short runs in an effort to maybe best my 5K time on Thanksgiving.

Because lord knows I can't go a week without a new annoying goal.

Mass Murder Menu

One thing I've come to love when dealing with the farmshare is a menu that kills off a lot of different stuff.

Because that means all that stuff will stop haunting me in the crisper and I can relax until YIKES it's Thursday again (tomorrow - SHIT) and the crisper fills back up.

I will admit that there have been times with the farmshare where I've come to understand the mania that drives postal workers to do that thing they're so famous for doing under the pressure of THE MAIL - IT JUST KEEPS COMING.

But, worry not, friends - I don't own a firearm or the burning desire to use one - so you are safe.

The vegs, however, are at the mercy of my Mass Murder Menu.

Now, I won't go into my weekly menu planning strategy right now (though, I suppose I could at some point, if anyone was interested, but I'm not sure it's that super special that I'd be doing you any favors...anyway) but when it comes to mass murder of the vegetable kind, these menus sort of fall together. And they're awesome. And they include dessert, which is an important part of a balanced meal if you're Bubba (or me, who are we kidding?), so they're usually big winners.

Thankfully (I think), the farmshare usually includes some fruit so we're not left completely dessert-less and I don't always have to be rummaging in the back of the cabinet for that one Reese's egg that fell out of the bag when we were hoarding Easter candy or anything like that.

For last night's Mass Murder Menu, though...

I came home from getting my hair did and took the full Iron Chef approach to dinner: Open crisper, identify thing that must be eaten otherwise shame will befall our house (beautiful broccoli), identify other thing that must be eaten otherwise grodiness will befall the crisper (stupid mizuna), set items on the counter, determine most efficient/edible method for dispatching said items.

What I ended up with was pretty fucking good, actually, and I got to fix up a recipe we'd tried before but found to be lacking in a certain porky area. SCORE.

Also SCORE was the fact that I got to use some fruit from a friend's tree (Thanks, Elke!) and reuse the bowls four times in one meal.

That sounds gross and like a strange thing to strive for in a meal, but it happened and it seemed like an interesting new approach to not doing so many dishes (even though *I* don't do the dishes, so what do I care?), so I'm going with it. Don't try to ruin my good time, y'all. Or Bubba's - with the dishes and all.

Broccoli Killer

Roasted broccoli and walnuts with prosciutto

Recipe adapted from RealSimple's Orecchiette w/ Roasted Broccoli and walnuts

Just make the recipe as shown, but sub out orecchiette for whatever small-ish pasta you have on hand (I had whole wheat penne), stir chopped prosciutto (YAY! PORK!) into the mix when you add the broccoli to the pasta, and toss with a bit of asiago, provolone and parmesan. And if yer real fancy-like, add a bit of black truffle oil. BUT ONLY IF YER FANCY-LIKE.

Mizuna Killer

Citrus salad with goat cheese

Recipe by moi

Ingredients: (Makes 2)
Bunch of mizuna
2 oranges, peeled, cut into small wedges
1/4 cup of crumbled goat cheese
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil

To make:
Rinse the mizuna really well, making sure to knock off any remnant dirt from the farm. Trim off excess stalk at the end (I just don't like it. You can do whatever.) Fill a couple bowls with the mizuna, add goat cheese and oranges, pour on a bit of olive oil (however much you, personally, like - this isn't rocket science), a bit of salt and a healthy grind of pepper.

I like a lot of pepper on this. It's good with the sweet oranges and smoky goat cheese. And it makes me sneeze, which is good in a cleansing way. Just don't sneeze on the salads because, ew.

Apple Killer

Apples and honey

You don't need a recipe for this

And if you're wondering where the fourth bowl use came from, well, Bubba had a slice of that chocolate beet cake in his bowl after the pasta and salad and apples, so that counts as four. I, however, did not have any cake because I was full.

And I've heard that is a good reason to not continue eating. Although I had a hard time coming to that conclusion as I watched Bubba carving off a head-sized slice of cake and lowering it into his bowl with a forklift.

That man, he fears no cake. Nor does he fear The Fatness. I, however, fear The Fatness enough that I was able to resist this fourth bowlfull of dining goodness. Even though it would have brought my Mass Murder Menu to even greater heights.

I'm a woman with limits, people. Limits, I say.

Boss Lady

Last weekend I went out to the backyard with the intention of showing the tomatoes who was boss.

And wouldn't you know that there were some dissenting opinions, so that showing has continued into this week.

Meaning that there were so many fucking tomatoes on those plants that I'll be showing them who's boss all week as I freeze/cook/puree/slice/chop/boil/toss them.

Thankfully, at the end of this week, I fully intend to have Boss Lady status - at least as far as the tomatoes are concerned. My status with the other members of the household (yeah, tomatoes are pretty much members of the house now, what with their reserved space in the cupboard and all) is up in the air, I'm sure, as Rocket has informed me that I'm "on the bubble" since she knows her Pelt Removal appointment is fast approaching.

Anyway.

In order to be The Boss of the Tomatoes in an appealing and satisfying way to more than just moi, I decided that I'd just work tomatoes into every single day of our weekly dinner menu so that Bubba could appreciate Boss Man status among the tomatoes, too.

Also, he is good to have around in food surplus situations because he is a boy and therefore can eat impressive quantities of food, even though he keeps up a super svelt frame. The fact that he keeps ratcheting back to the skinner holes on his belt whilst he hoovers up all the leftovers and snacks and always has dessert is just something I'm not going to cover right now because it friggen irks me.

HOW ARE THESE THINGS POSSIBLE? And, how come they don't happen to me?

Moving on...

To first give you an idea of the amount of bossiness I have to force on these plants, let me tell you that during my Saturday morning harvest, I walked away with 32 lbs of tomatoes. I really have to update the tracker with the recent harvests because they've been big ones and I think we may be approaching the 200 lb mark with tomato harvests this year.

In this case, it was more than my cardboard TJ's flat could handle, so I had to call the old broken bucket off the bench.

Put me in, coach!

And in case you can't really appreciate the magnitude of this harvest based on the angle of this photo, this is how much room they took up in my sink as I rinsed them. Which is to say, ALL of the room.

The tomatoes are two and three deep in there. Yeowch.

So, to go about handling all 32 lbs here, I thought first that I'd just freeze them all. Or, maybe, I'd can half and freeze half. Or maybe I'd have a canning-A-THON and can them all. And then rent out one of those POD things for storage.

But then I realized that I'm stupid.

I mean, all winter we make do with homecanned and frozen tomatoes, all the while longing for the coming summer's harvests of fresh tomatoes so that we can have things that you can't really have with canned or frozen tomatoes. Like, say, tomato salad and tomato pie and tomato sandwiches and basically anything you need a fresh tomato to achieve.

You can't be thawing out a frozen tomato to slice up for a salad because that is just nasty and weird.

So, DUH, I finally wrote up a menu of favorite fresh tomato dishes, parceled out the number of tomatoes I'd need to fulfill them and then processed (ie. cut out the stem holes) and froze the rest into gallon sized bags to feed the chesty.

That's eight gallons of tomatoes, there. Yah. Anyone up for chili?

It's funny how the chesty is nowhere near capacity. This thing is fucking scary.

I'm afraid to start stacking stuff in there because it'll get lost and will have to be hauled out with a crane someday.

So far, the menu's working as planned. We started the Tour de Tomato with the "Use While Fresh" basket looking like this:

And last night, after three tomato-heavy dinners, it looked like this:

And in case you're tired of me talking about all these tomato things rather than telling you what we've been doing with all these tomato things, here's the menu.

Sunday night: Tomato Pesto Pie (sans sausage because the store is so far away)

And rather than making a pie PIE, I made individual pie pockets. Well, you'd have to have really big pockets for these, but the crust forms something of a pocket, so just go with me, here.

If you like time-lapse photography, check this shit out - the tomato version:

Slice the dough > Add pesto > Add tomatoes > Add cheese > Add pesto > Add tomato > Cover/Crimp > Bake > Slice > EATYUM

When I make it again, I'll just make it the normal way.

Monday night: Creamy Tomato Soup

This didn't turn out as creamy as promised (by the recipe) because I pussed out and used 2% milk rather than cream but before you get all USE CREAM YOU RETARD! I just want to say that this was due to laziness (I had 2% in the fridge and the cream was all the way at the far away store - see "Sunday night: Tomato Pesto Pie") rather than Fear of Fatness and had there been cream in my fridge I so would have used it.

But, as it turns out, my Fear of Fatness makes the likelihood of having cream in the fridge so slim that I'd advise that you not hold out hope. We'll have to, instead, hope that one day my laziness subsides.

Still good enough for Bubba to eat a gallon of it for lunch.

Tuesday night: Ratatouille with sausage

This is an old standby recipe for those times when I have a crisper full of farmshare and nowhere to turn.

This time I spiced it up with jalapeno sausage from good ol' TJ's and piled on a lot more parsley than you see in this photo. Because I'm self-conscious of my over-parsleying ways, OK.

DON'T YOU JUDGE ME.

Judgers.

I served Bubba's over rice, but this is mine - 100% ratatouille

As for tonight and tomorrow and the day after (and after and after...), we'll be having BBQ brisket and beans courtesy of Chesty and a loverly tomato salad. Tomorrow I think I'm making this tomato bruschetta again and Friday we're having pizza.

And, with any fucking luck, we'll hit the weekend with an empty basket on the counter and HEY just in time to refill it with the ripe ones from the garden because OH MY HELL I went out there this morning and there's more.

Imagine if I'd planted SIX tomato plants? We'd be moving into a POD right now just to give them room.

And when did I become so obsessed with PODS? Weird, that.

A really good vegetarian thing we had in Munich. No, really. [Recipe]

I guess the first thing you think of when you're going to Munich, or Germany for that matter, isn't "Oooh! I wonder what kind of great vegetarian restaurants they have!" because, duh.

Frankly, until our local friend suggested we get on the U-Bahn and traipse across the city to this "vegetarian place that's one of only two in the city and supposed to be really good", it hadn't even occurred to me that vegetarians (or vegans, as our friend is, for that matter) could even survive in the Wurst Everywhere capital of the universe.

Seriously, friends, to estimate that I ate 50 wursts during our short stay in Germany would probably not be much of an overstatement. Also, I love wurst. And beer. And pretzels. And maybe I shouldn't get carried away here because none of those things (well, maybe beer) lived at this vegetarian restaurant we visited when we slowly stepped back from the biergartens for one single solitary meal at the behest of our lovely wurst-free friend.

I think Bubba and I would have been perfectly happy to eat wurst, pretzels, beer and maybe some Obaztda at every meal, three meals a day, for a week. Or, for that matter, the rest of our fucking lives, but it's probably good that we didn't and won't because can you imagine the fatness? Yikes. It would be extreme.

This is Obaztda and it is The One of pretzel spreads.

Anyway! One day we ate a meal that didn't have any meat, in a really nice little restaurant run by one very enthusiastic and sweet woman and in this restaurant we had a soup that we've been talking about ever since. The moment I tasted the soup, even, I knew I was going to have to recreate it at home. To the point where when the nice and very busy woman came back to see how we liked it, I very nearly held her hand while asking her for specific details about the making of the soup so that she couldn't run away.

I didn't hold her hand though, because that would be stalker-ish and I've been told that's a no-no. Also, I have been told that Germans are not "touchers" and, so, holding her hand may have garnered me an awesome kick to the face. Who knows? Those guys can be a little unpredictable what with the drinking and all. Even the vegetarians I bet.

Enough about that though. I don't want you to get the impression that all the Germans we met or left un-molested in the city were anything other than lovely and non-abusive because they were. Probably because we didn't try to hug any of them or hold their hands.

See! I can learn! Also, I learned that when you step onto an escalator, say when you're coming up from the subway for instance, you better get your ass over to the right if you plan to stand there like a useless lump because GOD HELP YOUR MOTHER FUCKING SOUL if you're standing on the left when a trainload of Munichers want to descend the escalator of their own volition and find it blocked by your dumb foreign ass.

This is Germany, friends, and there are rules and those rules are to be followed OR ELSE. You know. It's Germany.

And, as another aside, I love this about Germany because I love rules and I love them more when people follow them because then everything works so well and then you can accurately predict when your train will arrive because the schedule says it will be there at 12:03 and hot damn if it doesn't show up at the stroke of 12:03.

Not 12:02. Not 12:04. 12 FUCKING OH THREE.

Love you, German People - you make my heart sing with your efficiency. Also, your beer, wurst, pretzels, biergartens, bike lanes, Oktoberfest, Black Forest, flowers planted in every window, ham and...what the hell was I talking about again? Oh yeah, vegetarian food.

So, this thing we had at the one of two vegetarian places in all of Deutscheland was the boring sounding, "Pumpkin Soup" which sounds boring like I said.

But, I do love fall soups, soup in general and pumpkin, so I was basically already going to order it until the very nice and busy woman running this show all by herself told me that it was thickened and made creamy with marscapone and then topped with pumpkin oil and pumpkin seeds.

I would like you to sit there and appreciate that EVEN THEN, after she told me these delicious sounding details, I stillSTILL did not try to hug her or even touch her arm meaningfully as if to say, "Thank you, nice Germaness, for creating this masterpiece of pumpkinness that I am sure to love. I am certain that it will enrich my life and, in so doing, will add an unexpected element of joy to our vacation."

No, that would have been too much. So I didn't do it. And I want for you to recognize the significance of it.

OK, we're done with that now.

So, we had the soup, and it was fantastic and we also resisted licking the bowls because we were sure there must be a rule against doing that because, in addition to being Wurst Land it's also Rules Land and our working theory was that if you *thought* something might be against the rules, it probably was and you'd be best to avoid enraging the rules.

Don't do it! They do not fuck around! We are told, anyway. We don't speak German, so what do we know about anything.

Anyway, as you know, we went on with our vacation and ate many other delicious things (which were mostly not vegetarian at all) and then came home and I thought about this soup.

Every time I saw a pumpkin (which is a lot because people around here grow them in their front yards and also it was Halloween and now it's nearly Thanksgiving) I thought of this soup.

Even when I saw one in a tree in Freiburg.

So, this weekend I went out on a hunting expedition for the ingredient I thought would be findable at Whole Foods, land of the niche food bullshit, but alas went home with unrequited pumpkin oil desires.

So sad.

ButBUT I did find marscapone and that's the real key ingredient here and FOR THE LOVE if you like pumpkin and you can handle marscapone (super dairy and fatness) please make this soup. And if you can't find pumpkin oil, please don't despair, because I made the soup without it and it was good.

Like, ruuuuuuuuuully good. Like, when I asked Bubba whether he wanted to have pork chops (his fave) tonight or just have reheated pumpkin soup and arugula, he didn't even blink an eye before he shouted, "PUMPKIN".

Which is big. The man loves pork chops and he's calling for pumpkin before pork chops. That's what a crazy person would say. OrOR someone who loves this soup.

And, I had to love it, one bite of the soup and I was magically transported back to that cutesy little tiny ass restaurant in Munich with the darling gal in her Dirndl offering up her little menu with Kürbis soup right on there. (For the record, I have no idea if it said Kürbis, because, again, I don't speak German, but I assume it did because that's what it was. Whatever. Stop looking at me like that!)

So, don't you want to make this? Because it's really easy. And, for real, only took about half an hour from start to finish.

AND I bet, if you don't have a starter for your Thanksgiving dinner and want to be all festive and shit, you could make a big pot of this soup and serve it up before having the barftastic turkey (if it's not smoked, I do not like it) and everyone will still be your friend even after they've eaten themselves into a painful Thanksgiving food coma.

Though, they SHOULD be your friend already if you just cooked and served them a giant meal. I mean, who are these ungrateful guests that get pissed that they're so super full from the great food you just slaved over for them? Jerks.

Pumpkin Marscapone Soup

Adapted from this recipe

My changes in bold

Ingredients
1/4 cup butter, salted, whole
1 cup chopped onions
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/4 cup dry Sherry
3 cups vegetable broth
2 teaspoons dried thyme

1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves

1 Tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
3 cups pureed pumpkin
1 cup mascarpone cheese
Much salt and some black pepper to taste 

White truffle oil

Salted roasted pumpkin seeds

To make
1. Melt butter in an 8-quart saucepan over medium heat. Add the onions and garlic and cook until an aroma develops. Add the sherry and cook until it is reduced by half.

2. Add broth, dried thyme and thyme leaves and pumpkin puree, and simmer on medium-low heat for 20 minutes. Stir in the mascarpone cheese until incorporated completely. Add a good amount of salt (DO NOT UNDER SALT, DAMN YOU) and some fresh ground pepper to your liking and serve hot with a bit of truffle oil, fresh thyme leaves and pumpkin seeds on top. Plus, some fresh hot No-Knead Bread.

Get ready to love. 

A lesson from Finny: Don't do shit for stupid reasons

Let's be honest for a second, OK?

Let's think back to when I started out this year with my fresh new goal of Hey! I'm going to run two half marathons this year rather than my usual single solitary one. Remember that? OK, good.

So, when I set that goal, of doubling my slow-going running career to go for a full 26.2M spaced out over two 13.1M courses and divided by a sweet three month water break, I had a variety of inspiration driving the decision.

Firstly, I'm kind of a goal-oriented person. Like, in the sense that I totally am. And back in the day when I started running regularly and taking it seriously enough to go out and buy proper shoes that didn't blister the EVER LOVING HELL out of my feet, I started setting goals for my running self. Like, if I am going to be running like this I should probably train for something so that I don't get bored or just flake out like a big fat loser on the mornings when it's chilly out or I just feel like laying in bed contemplating Bubba's ear hairs.

And so, I signed up for a 10K. Which was followed by a half marathon and a 5K Turkey Trot for good measure. That was 2007.

When I hit 2008 and everyone started getting all, "What are your New Year's resolutions?" and what not, I started think about it. Not that I was going to set any resolutions, because I have resolved not to resolve since it has never done me a damn bit of good, but I started to think about what I wanted to achieve that year. In other words, I set some goals. Like, I wanted to best my half marathon time (check) and run a few other races, one out of state (check).

Then I got to January 2009. People started saying the same New Year's things. I reminded myself of my self-promise not to make resolutions. I instead set some goals. But setting those goals was harder because I hadn't left myself a lot of interesting room within which to move.

Meaning, I could just try to best my half marathon time again by running the same race in October OR I could up the ante. But since we all know I've had no designs on running a full marathon, that wasn't going to be my tact. No, instead I settled on running two half marathons this year (check and check)- in essence doubling my previous years' efforts. And then I'd throw in a couple random races just for the hell of it (check) and hey let's make one of those half marathons an out-of-stater.

And when I chose these two half marathons to complete my yearly goal, would you like to know how and why I chose them? Because it's a pretty sad and ego-tastic reason...

Well, first I'll tell you that I chose two races from the Rock 'N Roll series. Which doesn't seem like that big of a stretch since the other part of my goal was to run a half out of my state and they have a Rock 'N Roll in Seattle (an inaugural one - special), which happens to be where my fiesty sister mama lives, so if I ran it then I'd also get the chance to go hang out with her for a few days and do some sister-type stuff like eating falafel at the Hot Guy Falafel place, salted caramel ice cream at Molly Moon's and Thai peanut chicken at Thai Tom.

But this isn't about my pre-race eat-a-thons. Even though I highly recommend all three of those Seattle eating establishments. Strongly. And with great fervor.

OK.

So, even though I'm not always motivated by food (which would have been a good reason to choose Seattle now that I think about it), I am effectively motivated by physical representation of achievement.

Which is to say that I like medals. And trophies. And plaques. Basically things that say that I did a good job and deserved physical proof to that effect.

I'm a small person, what can I say.

Anyway, that character flaw plays into this scenario because part of the reason I chose the Seattle Rock 'N Roll to accompany my San Jose Rock 'N Roll was because if you run two half marathons in their series in one year's time, they give you ANOTHER medal, on top of your finisher's medals awarded at the finish line, to say that "HEY! Good job, person! You finished two of our races this year!"

And you know I like that. All that "Good job, Finny"-ness and all.

Now, clearly that extra medal wasn't going to be able to get me all juiced up to train for two half marathons all in itself. No. I'd need some real dedication and motivation for that.

Which is where my other inspiration for running these two big races came from. Things like avoiding The Fatness and getting in good backpacking shape and just trying to motivate myself to keep running on a regular basis - stuff like that. Stuff that makes sense to people without the giant gaping character flaw that I believe some folks call Pride or Vainglory or Vanity or the lack of modesty or whathaveyou.

Thankfully, I don't concern myself with biblical classifications, so I'm not too concerned with descending into the pits of hell because I earned an extra finisher's medal which, dontchaknow, sits with the others collecting dust on my bookshelf in all of its anti-climatic glory.

So, truth be told, I held that extra medal out there as a nice icing on the inspiration cake, so to speak, and didn't really tie much of my motivation to it.

And I'm pretty glad I didn't because when it showed up in the mail, I just plain laughed.

Talk about your anti-climatic moments.

I guess it can't be all engraved placards and bowing townfolk.

Yes, in a plain brown paper envelope, much like one would expect to accompany a lustful type of adult internet order or black-market Cialis, arrived my series medal and a scrap of paper the size of a standard Post-it declaring a trite little congratulations.

Now, having run only two half marathons and not, say seven marathons to become a Rock Legend or some such nonsense, it wasn't that much of a diss. I already had my two finisher's medals and a PR gained on my first hilly half marathon course. BUT, this pithy little package had me laughing pretty hard.

And I was really glad that I'd done all that training and running and sweating and not drinking on Friday nights before my long training runs and all that other shit for reasons other than this. Because if I had done it all for this scrap of paper and sketch package then WHOA would I have been sad.

Though, one has to hope that they put a little more spice and excitement into awards going to people who've run, like, 180+ miles after paying those incredible registration fees, but who really knows.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share that moment of "Don't do shit for stupid reasons" with you all because this was really one of those moments that brought it home for me and made me glad I was running for fear of Fatness and making my 2008 running self look slow rather than for the glory of a handsomely presented award declaring my greatness.

Phew. Dodged that shame bullet pretty narrowly, now didn't I?

Running update: I hate the road. QUICKLY.

I have a list of things to post about, but all of them require photos, so instead of those you get this: I'm still running.

HOORAY, I know.

But it is actually not the most useless topic for me to post about since some of you might still care about running even though I haven't talked about it in ages. And I've talked about training even less, so there you go. Be happy that I'm coming back around to this topic at all because if I weren't I'd be veering off in a new disgusting direction called, "I'm a fat ass and can't fit into my jeans. Send gin."

Yes, people, despite what some other running blogs may claim (because they are written by liars. Fit, fast ab-having liars), I run because it keeps the fatness at bay. It doesn't necessarily usher in the era of visible abs or toned ass cheeks, but it at least keeps me in my jeans and lets me wear shorts during the months of the year which Bubba has deemed acceptable for me to be in them.

He gives me mean looks when I trot them out in December with my flip-flops because he obviously wants to crush my soul.

Whatever. I love my shorts. And flip-flops. And tank tops. And I also love bikinis, but we haven't quite found the right combination of running, strength training, not drinking a dozen cocktails a week and race fries to solve for that equation, so I'm sticking really close to my shorts and tank tops in the hopes that one day the stars will align and I'll be able to put on one of my many bikinis (not looking like Jennifer Aniston has not deterred me from buying 100 bikinis) and not shriek in horror.

And so I run.

Except when I do a trail race and roll the ever loving fuck out of my ankle to the point of an audible meaty crunch. Then I sit the sidelines for a few weeks until the persistent gnawing pain subsides enough for a quiet run sans-Garmin/speed goals. Then I run all quiet and gentle like for another week to make sure that the painlessness has settled in enough to go back out with the Garmin and dreams of 23 minute interval runs and sub-60 6 mile runs on the weekend.

BUT ONLY THEN. Not sooner. And it's a bit of sweet annoying torture to sit the bench when you know all the while that the longer you wait before going back out the more painful it's going to be and the more likely it is that your shorts will stop fitting right because your Ab Hider 5000 (AKA belly) will re-emerge right when you were getting ready for Shorts Acceptable weather.

So, as you can see, training while recovering from an injury is a tedious process.

And that's where I'm at right now. Front and center in Tedious Race Training for the upcoming Wharf to Wharf in July.

A 10K race held on a road even though I said to you guys and, more importantly, TO ME, that I would stop racing on roads because I hate it and even more than I hate racing on the road, I hate training on the road because people always try to hit you with their cars because they're way too interested in drinking their Starbucks, beating their backseated children or checking the game on their iPhone to watch out for reflectively dressed runners just trying to get in a quick 6 miles before it becomes monstrously hot in San Jose, CA.

My hatred is very specific.

Also, training on my city's roads is suffocatingly boring. OH MY GOD is it boring. I can change up my route all I want, wear a costume, sing out loud in the faces of babies, give everyone the finger, pull candy from my pants, do intervals of skipping and hula hooping and STILL it would crush my soul with its boringness.

I've become very attached to my trail runs, folks, and man does it show when I have to go out and run the roads.

Based on the looks I get from oncoming runners, I don't seem happy or approachable. That whole, "We're all in this together" vibe that I used to occasionally experience has gone out the window. I'm definitely projecting a, "What the fuck am I doing here?" vibe and it doesn't sit well with all these fast and apparently content runners who are out trotting our city's streets with a pleasant look on their sweaty faces.

Perhaps they haven't been nearly creamed by a minivan yet. Or perhaps they've never experienced the sheer joy of sprinting down a mossy shaded trail protected overhead by a thick canopy of trees.

Either way - we're not the same anymore. I don't understand you people and I barely understand me.

The only reason I can come up with - as to why we're all out running the streets instead of some lovely trail through the woods or along the coast - is that we're all trying to defend some road-based PR for some road-based race that we signed up for without flipping on that important Brain switch before hitting "Register".

I mean, I have my sub-60 10K PR. I got it a year ago and I thought I was going to hang that up forever.

10K - 58:15. Done. Forever.

But, no. I signed up for another 10K and I just can't go out there and fail my PR because then I'd start thinking bad things about myself and then I'd have a lot of cocktails and then HOLY SHIT what are my jeans doing with that giant blob obscuring the belt loops ohmygoditsmybelly.

You see the vicious circle I've created for myself then, yes?

So, I'm training for this 10K. On the road. And I'm not running in the hills because I don't have time from all this running on the road business. And it's yucky. And I'm mad at myself for signing up for a road race even though it's supposed to be one of those races that *everyone who's ever called themselves a runner* does. And even though last weekend I went out to do my first training run in preparation for this race after meatily crunching my ankle running in the blessed hills and BAM...

Killed it in 56:15.

Oh HOT DAMN.

Then, just before that, I did my 2.5M interval training run in 23:05, which is 2 seconds faster than my fastest interval training run ever.

HOTTEST DAMN.

It's funny how I'm suddenly sorta almost maybe looking forward to next Saturday's long run because this week's didn't suck as mightily bad in the time department as I thought it would.

Yeah, funny that.

BIGHUGETHINGNEWS

For a second I was all, “I wonder if it’s even going to seem like BIG HUGE THING NEWS anymore after all of this hype and waiting around and not helpful tweets like this one.”, but then I realized that, No Way.

It’s totally still BIG HUGE THING NEWS.

To me.

And since this blog is all about me and that’s what you guys have been reading about for the last seven years (still wows me, that number), I think you’ll still see it as BIG HUGE THING NEWS, too.

Because the BIG HUGE THING NEWS is all about me and my life and also Bubba and our life and how I’m apparently doing my damndest to change it all.

I’m throwing a curveball, friends, a big fat life curveball and I’m hoping for the best while also knowing that there’s a very real Worst out there that could take over these best intentions of mine and set me back on my ass, OUR asses, like nothin’.

To give you an idea of the big fatness of this life curveball I’m throwing (and let’s not forget for a minute that I have zero eye/hand coordination and that throwing’s not my game to begin with), I already had (and have) a pretty sweet life.

One that didn’t, from an outsider’s perspective, probably need a big fat curveball thrown right at it. No, I imagine that most people looking at my life would have been like, “Hey, that’s pretty sweet. Great job, amazing husband, cute dog, evil cat, fun times galore, much drinking and misbehavior. Good going, weird girl.”

Not, “Ugh, what are you doing with your life, weird girl? Get your shit together. Throw a curveball. Change everything you’re doing because WOW you’re really fucking shit up.”

Which is what I’ve always thought was the premise for changing one’s life - the act of majorly fucking it up for a long time and needing a big fat curveball of change to shove everything back onto the rails.

But my life was great - IS great - and yet still, I’m shoving and curveballing and basically, if looked at on paper, fixing what’s not broken.

Except on the inside, I knew it was broken.

I was, in my early 30s, still living the life that I designed for myself when I was a teenager. Which, if you think about it, is what a lot of people do because that’s what we’re sort of guided along to do, right?

We go through school, all the while being prepped for the idea of college and trying to do things to get into the college that will serve us best in the long run. Which means deciding what we Want To Be.

When we’re, like, 12 years old.

So, shit that’s important and shiny and fun when you’re 12 is what you end up basing these decisions on.

And when I was 12 and impressionable and watched MTV (at my friend’s houses, we never had cable) and went to the mall and did whatever, the shiny interesting shit was what was on TV and blasting out at me from billboards and the radio (terrestrial, since there wasn’t satellite radio then - savages) and Cosmo and what not.

Which is to say - advertising.

I really absorbed a lot of advertising. And not the messages, necessarily - like I was running from one parent or store to another going, “I MUST HAVE THIS THING.” - but the concept of it and its power.

I saw that advertising did, despite folks’ intentions, influence people. It spoke to people. It got into their heads and got them moving. Albeit in some of the most tragic and ill-advised directions, but it got people doing shit.

And not for nothing, the stuff was sorta glamorous and shiny and cool and rad and all of those teenagery things, too.

I wanted to be a part of that. When I was 12.

So, I set out on a crash course to become part of that world. I took special classes in high school for graphic design, I went to junior college courses during high school to get ahead, I chose my college based on where I could major in Advertising and Marketing rather than just “Communications”, I steered myself right back to San Francisco’s Financial District as soon as I graduated so that I could work in one of the ad agencies I’d been ogling since my youthful days of traveling to Giants games with my mom, I then worked many long hours in various ad agencies and, when the age of internet advertising came along, I went full force into that world. Then I worked at the hub of internet advertising for nine years all up to my ears in it.

It was fun, thrilling, sucky, stressful, interesting, boring, exciting, depressing, awesome, lame and every other emotion in between. I cheered, I cried, I swore LOTS, I met some cool people and some shitty people and I changed.

Over the time I was living this self designed life of my 12 year old mind, I totally changed.

I mean, truly, I was probably working on this change my whole life, but didn’t really pay attention to it until I was sitting in a meeting in a conference room on The First Day of Spring and couldn’t stop thinking, “I should be outside.”

“I should be outside and my manicured hand that I’m now looking at typing away furiously on this keyboard should be balls deep in my garden knocking down the cover crop that’s rapidly going to beans so that it will have time to break down enough to feed my summer vegetable plants when I put them in the ground in a few weeks and...”

I’m in there with my laptop open, trying to contribute to a day long brainstorm session about online advertising operation strategies with my four inch heels jammed into the low pile carpet while routinely bashing my knees on the sunuvabitching table brace as I swiveled back and forth from looking at the overhead projector to my teammates to the laptop and, eventually to the window so that I could let my little inside voice get a word in edgewise for a little moment.

That was a few years ago.

I was still fully up to my eyes in internet advertising, the world of online technology and all the things that come in that burrito.

And it had started to feel not right.

I started to feel like maybe one day I was going to have to change burritos. I’d been an al pastor for most of my life and maybe I wanted to try being a bean and cheese for a while. Or a carne asada with pico de gallo. Or, maybe what if I was something completely different like a brandywine caprese salad with buffalo mozzarella and lettuce leaf basil...

What if that?

And then the little inside voice started to get not so little and then, eventually, not so inside.

I’ll spare you the intense, mind-numbing, extremely boring-for-people-who-are-not-me rehashing of the very self-reflecty and soul-searchy years that took place during my wind up - from the time when the little inside voice got too loud to ignore and when it became an outside voice making choices and throwing life curveballs and I’ll just cut to those curveballs...

BIG HUGE THING #1
Five months ago I enrolled in college (never thought I'd say that again) to get a horticulture degree in Organic Agriculture and Crop Production.

That's right. I'm going to be a farmer.

BIG HUGE THING #2
At the same time, I started building a business model for the kitchen garden coaching company that I’m about to launch.

BIG HUGE THING #3
And almost two months ago, I quit my job. My very great and lovely job at the very great and lovely company for which I’d worked for nine years.

And then came the pitch: Walking out the doors of the Great and Lovely job and into a life of uncertainty and excitement and passion and dirt and closed toe shoes and let me teach you how to test your soil and can your tomatoes and sow a cover crop and then WHAT THE FUCK HAVE I DONE.

Except, the WHAT THE FUCK HAVE I DONE part has not yet occurred. I imagine that’s on the horizon somewhere.

For now, I’m just basking in the glory of the pitch on its way to the batter.  The curveball is an unpredictable pitch that can throw off a batter something fierce and, in the case of my curveball hero, it breaks late and wears a disguise until it crosses the plate, so you never really know what you’re getting until it’s too late.

Also, I do not know when this became a baseball analogy, but since I do like baseball and I expect you not to argue with me while I’m pouring out my BIGHUGETHINGNEWS soul to you, I’m going to keep rolling with it.

So, quiet you baseball haters. I don’t understand you anyway.

The point is that Bubba and I - and let us not gloss over, meanwhile, the amazing, heart-swelling, superhuman husband strength that this man possesses which is pushing this whole life curveball over the plate that I will cover in many future posts - are changing it up.

(Now that I think about it, I should have used the changeup as my pitching analogy of choice, but I think that the world understands a changeup even less than a curveball, so I’m going to give myself a pass here, so nevermind this.)

We’ve both changed jobs, I’ve started school and a business and we’ve set our futures on a completely different trajectory than it was when we first got together a dozen years ago. We still want to end up in the same place, but our road to get there just now looks a lot different.

And he has finally gotten his true deep-down wish - I am forced to wear proper shoes. 

I will wear proper shoes. BUT ONLY FOR THE FARM TOUCHING. And only under protest.

You just can’t wear flip-flops while working on a farm. Which I was told in no uncertain terms during our first outing to the department's farm for my organic ag lab in my Reefs.

The next week I showed up in my Van’s, worn Atlas gloves and ballcap and promptly shoved my arm shoulder deep into a pile of compost.

I was home.

And now you all get to watch as I take a swing at this life curveball. Enjoy.