Yes, I'll have some cheese with that

A strained muscle in my shoulder and shin splints on my left leg have made it official--I am seriously asymmetrical. Ramping up my milage slightly this week while continuing to lift (mostly an even mix of core, upper-body free weight, and body weight core/upper circuits) two or three times a week has made it really obvious that my right side above the waist and my left side below are both considerably stronger than their counterparts. I thought I was addressing this with my asymmetrical exercises like one legged squats and dead lifts and doing extra sets on traditionally one-armed exercises. This, however, doesn't seem to be the case.

I'm not as bad off as this guy, but I do think I have a couple of those symptoms. Oh yea, God save me from pube dysfunction.


I've noticed that at an 8:30 or slower pace I don't feel anything too bad, so I'm going to try to keep doing LSD, some tempo runs with long war up periods, and some short, explosive intervals while I figure out what I want to do about my lopsidedness. At some point I hope to be able to explain why the strong side flip flops at my waist. Right now I'm going to guess that it's like a cantilever where one side counterbalances the other.

Curried Tofu Dinner

The cool thing about tofu is very few people will come over to your house and eat your stash. The other cool thing about tofu is that it's an ancient food, whose migration across Asia and into the western world is deeply connected with the movement of Buddhism. It's a low-fat source of protein and iron and, if you get the right kind, you can avoid all the isoflavones that act like estrogens--try finding beef at your local supermarket that is both free of synthetic hormones AND massive amounts of antibiotics.

Anyway, my curried tofu is best served over basmati rice, but noodles (rice, glass, or wheat) will work if you prefer. If your tofu doesn't come already cubed go ahead and cube it into smallish pieces. I think about a half inch square is fine, but the size doesn't really matter as long as the pieces are relatively uniform. Next, spread them out on an oiled cookie sheet (I use a dash of spray oil, but you can use anything). Bake them at a very low temperature (say 150F) for about half an hour. This helpd to dehydrate them, so they'll absorb more of the curry flavor and give them a slightly puffed texture that I find pleasing.

While the tofu is in the over you can prepare your vegetables. I chop carrots, green or red peppers, and red or white onions. You don't want to overwhelm the curry with too many ingredients--a lot of different things will work in a curry, but I find that after about four things it gets too busy. If your knife skills cut the mustard (ha!) you should still have a few minutes to get the rice started before the tofu is ready to come out of the oven.

Remove the tofu from the over after about half an hour. Set it aside and prepare your curry spice mix (remember: terrifying crocodiles gulp careless and rash children). Warm a large skillet over medium/medium-high heat and start with the onions. Once they start to caramelize you can add the carrots and baked tofu. Once they brown, add the peppers, spice mix and a cup or cup and a half of coconut milk. Simmer for a few minutes while stirring until the sauce starts to reduce.

Your rice is probably done by now. If not, move the skillet to a burner on the lowest setting and wait for craters to form in your rice. Once ready, serve on a warmed plate with mint a splash of sesame sauce. I usually add some rooster sauce to mine, so you might want some of that handy.

Boring update

I'm running again--clocked almost forty miles last week and should get about the same this week. The plan right now is to aim for about 125 miles in September and then start a more formal training plan with an interval day and some tempo days and what not. My running partner moves out of town on Friday, but he'd been of pretty limited use in that function since he started smoking again. Anyway, I've always found that it was easier to run alone, except on those cold mornings when I needed the extra excuse to get out of bed before spring.

I'm not going to weigh myself for a long while. The weight lifting I've been doing has sort of changed my ideas about how much I should weigh anyway. I think I gained five or six pounds of lean muscle over the summer and that's suggesting a broader scale of good possibilities than I thought there were.

I'm also flexing my teacher muscles again now that school is back in session. Nothing much to say about my students yet, but go ahead and pencil me in for some complaining in a later session.

In the second chapter of Genesis, God creates Adam by forming him out of dirt and "breathing" life into him. One way to talk about this is by saying God inspired Adam.


At its root, the word inspire means to be filled with God's influence. I'm not one of the faithful, but I often find myself thinking about the story of Adam's creation while I make bread. You start with a lumpy substance not unlike dirt. You work it with your hands until it's the right shape and then you leave it alone to become inspired. It's like magic.




Discussing the eighteenth-century English disdain for the potato (and most other things Irish) Michael Pollan writes:

Like the potato, wheat begins in nature, but it is then transformed by culture. While the potato is simply thrown into a pot or fire, wheat must be harvested, threshed, milled, mixed, kneaded, shaped, baked, and then, in a final miracle of transubstantiation, the doughy lump of formless matter rises to become bread. This elaborate process, with its division of labor and suggestion of transcendence, symbolized civilization's mastery of raw nature.1

I think Pollan is right, within the context of the English imperial world view, but today bread and its amazing transformation more aptly signifies a sort of ecstatic joining with the non-human. Approaching it more along the lines of Buddhist transcendence of self than western ideas of conquest or mastery, that moment of inspiration during which dough miraculously becomes bread serves highlights our limitations--reminds us that without the aid of yeast one of our most basic foods simply wouldn't be available to us. We do not make the bread, Saccharomyces cerevisiae does and none of our base mixing and squeezing and kneading can ever replace the spark it provides.

Mint Julep

School starts tomorrow, but this is the only lesson I feel like teaching tonight.

First:
Simmer a cup of filtered water in a small pot. Add three quarters of a cup of powdered sugar. Stir it a lot to make sure the sugar is fully in suspension. Once it's completely dissolved let it cool to room temperature. This is called simple syrup (I sometimes make a three cups of this and keep it in the fridge so I'll have it on hand).

Next:
Drop a fifteen or twenty mint leaves into the bottom of a Collins glass. Add about a tablespoon of water and muddle vigorously.

Then:
Add three ounces of bourbon or rye (I prefer Maker's Mark, but almost anything will do). Pour this into a shaker using a strainer to remove the mint leaves. Pour the now leafless mixture back into the Collins glass full of ice and top with simple syrup until the glass is full. Shake or stir and serve with your choice of garnish.

Big Meat

So, I did the math yesterday and was a little shocked to see that I've only been getting about .5g of protein/kg of body weight, which means I've really only been getting about half of what I need. Having been a mildly athletic vegetarian for twenty years, I always scoffed at those folks who warned me about low protein, but I'm wondering if some of my exercise-ennui lately isn't maybe connected to a protein-related failure to recover. That said, I'm going to try to drop some carbs from my diet (if you can call something as disorganized as my eating habits a diet) and replace them with protein with a daily goal of 100 grams of protein.

According to many sources, including probably the stoutest Ph.D. I've ever seen, the standard recommended daily intake of the big P workes out to between 1.4 and 2.0 g of protein per kg of body weight. A quick trip to a metric conversion calculation on the web pegs me at 88.9kg, which would suggest that I should be eating between 124 and 178 grams of protein every day. The big guy's article goes on to say, however, that new research suggests that people of the athletic persuasion might actually make more efficient use of protein than sedentary types. So I don't really need that much, right? No. He goes on to write, "those of you who staunchly believe that you're only required to eat enough protein to meet your needs,go right ahead and reduce your protein intake from 2.0g/kg to 0.65g/kg. In the meantime, I'll be encouraging everyone else to actually increase his or her protein intake beyond the current 2.0g/kg recommendation"1. Following this advice I'd need to jack up the protein in my daily diet to almost 200g.

Ok, so how did I come up with 100g? Simple--I thought about what it would take, given my vegetarian eating, to come up with 200g of protein and one day might look like this: eleven eggs, one cup cooked pinto beans, three eight ounce protein shakes, 1 cup Qinoua , a box of tofu, and a bagel with peanut butter for a grad total of 2300 calories and 201 grams of protein. Once I stopped laughing I decided that I can just boost my protein intake a little at first, and see if I get any results. If so, maybe I'll feel motivated enough to do the sort of dietary gymnastics it would take to get it higher.

We ended up going out last night so the curry I was planning for then will probably be what hits the dinner table tonight.

If the cat's don't keep me up late again, I'm going to try to fit in a run, lift, 100g of protein, and a couple of hours at the office tomorrow. Whew, I'm already tired.


p.s. The curry turned out so well I have to boast a little:

and for the cook:

So I'm lifting weights--something I haven't really done since around 1998. For the moment it's a motivation thing. I feel like lifting more than I feel like running, so I'm lifting more and running less (I'm still managing about fifteen miles a week). My next race is a 5K in October, which I'm using as a tune-up for the half marathon in early December so I'll shift my focus back to running in the next couple weeks and probably have a decent chance at a 20-21 min 5k.

On to the food:

The garden is producing a lot of okra right now so we'll probably have some sort of okra curry over naan for dinner. I love making curry because of the way the spices combine both to the eye and the palate.
The best curries have turmeric, cumin, garlic, coriander, red chile, and curry power (of course). I remember it my reciting the phrase "terrifying crocodiles gulp careless and rash children." (My ninth-grade biology teacher taught me the mnemonic for Linnaean taxonomy and I've been making up my own ever since). The ratio of spices depends on the taste your after. I like mine kind of sweet and spicy so I add a little extra coriander and chile powder. Throw in some some tofu for the protein and a beer for the cook and you're doing ok.

So I'm Back

I didn't really do that well with the last round of posts. The problem, as best I can determine was in the software rather than the hardware. I was trying to deny myself food while what I'm really prone to do is enjoy food. So maybe the thing to do is to enjoy food differently. To whit: the new hungry month--in which I try to reorient my relationship with food, drink and exercise. This time it's blackberry tarts.

First, go find a bunch of wild blackberries. If you live south of Canada there's no excuse for buying blackberries in the summer.



Second: combine 3 c. flour, 1 tsp. salt 3/4 c. canola oil, stirring cold water one Tbs at a time until the dough begins to form. Divide the dough into twelve equal pieces and press each into an oiled muffin pan as if they were mini-pies. Pile blackberries on top of each piece of dough and bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees.




As far as exercise goes, I'm lifting weights again for the first time in years and rebuilding my base in so I can start training for a December half marathon which I hope to finish under two hours.