Out With The Old, In With The Chex Mix!

So, 2009 comes to a close – not just the end of a year, but a whole decade! And what a year it was – I started this blog, committed to running the marathon, and generally had a pretty good year in spite of it being kind of lousy for a lot of folks I know. Still, there’s always room for improvement, and I’m hoping that 2010 will bring even better adventures!

That said, I’m a big ol’ traditionalist, especially around the holidays. For New Year’s Eve, that means staying home, playing board games, and Chex Mix. When I was a kid, my mother, who’s a nurse, always had to work New Year’s to make up for the fact that she took off Christmas. Since she usually worked the graveyard shift, that really meant working New Year’s Eve, so she and my dad never went to parties – she went to work, and he stayed home with us girls, which he always turned into its own kind of party. We’d have ginger ale in champagne flutes (and he’d have Asti Spumante, since he likes it better than champagne) and tons of snacks, none of which was more sacred than the Chex Mix. He made it (yes, children, once upon a time you could not buy Chex Mix in a bag but HAD to make it yourself) in massive quantities according to the recipe used by his aunt, Mary. Great-Aunt Mary’s recipe is fairly similar to the one that Ralston-Purina’s been putting on the box since 1952, but with a few key variations.

First, the pretzels should be stick pretzels, not minis. This change is necessary to mesh with the other one, which is that Cheerios need to be added to the mix. Until recently, Chex and Cheerios had two different makers, so this was a rather scandalous addition, but an important one. For starters, the Cheerios suck up the butter sauce that coats the mix like nobody’s business, resulting in delightful little flavor-bombs. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, without Cheerios, what would you use as the wheels of your tiny Chex car? (See? The pretzel sticks are the axles!)

We’ve been making little cars out of our food as a family for as far back as I can remember, but one year it got totally out of hand (by then most of us girls were adults). My best friend came over and we sat with my parents and ended up making an entire Chex town, complete with a pig pen and a bus stop. Keep in mind that we were over 21 years old. I wish I had the pictures to show you, but alas, this predated my digital cameras. It was an utterly ridiculous evening, and one of the best New Year’s Eves I’ve ever spent.

These days I stay with Mr. Menace in my own apartment, but I still insist on Chex Mix as part of our celebrations. It’s a symbol of love, family, and enough salt to cure your tongue in your mouth. Happy New Year, y’all – let’s make 2010 the best year yet!

A 20 Mile Week!

Forgive this marathon update coming on a Monday – the holiday has put me a bit behind the 8-ball. Still, it was lovely to rest and enjoy some time with family. Speaking of which, special thanks to Christine and Vin McGrath and Bonnie and Gerry McGrath for the wonderful donations! I just need a little over $500 to hit my next goal – 50% of target!

The mileage for our runs has started climbing as well, with the long run this week at 9 miles, and the total mileage for the week at 20. This is where I really start noticing the effects of my runs – they’re more exhilarating, but more exhausting as well. For my 9 miler I decided to revisit my favorite hill and extend it by adding another, smaller hill at mile 8.

As promised, I brought my camera and took a picture of the fantastic view of the city from Park Ave:

Breathtaking, isn’t it? Though I was certainly breathing better on this trek up – this week’s jaunt felt a lot easier than two weeks ago, a good sign that my training is paying off.
And just for fun, here’s a picture of the water tower!

The weather was unusually good for the end of December; a bit gray but extraordinarily warm at 50°. For the first time in weeks I was able to run in shorts!

Clarendon Street, the mile 8 hill, is much smaller than Park Avenue, but I remember when I first started running three years ago how difficult it was. I think my favorite part of running as a sport is how much better one can become simply through perseverance and dedication. I’ll never be fast, but I’m stronger and faster than I was and it’s really gratifying. Here’s the view from the top of Clarendon:

It looks a bit less steep than it is because there’s a plateau smack in the middle of it. Just as you think you’ve crested the top, there’s another half of the hill to climb! It’s a fine lesson for training in general – no resting on your laurels – there’s always more of a challenge to be had.

To date I’ve run 94 miles, and it feels pretty great. However, there are 482.2 to go before I cross the finish line on April 19th, and it’s good to remember that every day I need to keep getting stronger and better. Likewise, I’ve raised $1,439 for Boston Partners in Education – but that leaves $2561 to raise if I’m going to meet my goal. So keep your eyes and ears open – in the next week or two I hope to have some fun fundraising activities to share with you all! And if you’d like to make a New Year’s donation, you can always do so at http://www.firstgiving.com/erinmcgrath. Thank you all for your support!

Holiday Happenings

I mentioned in the “Snowy Day” post that I would fill you in on the further details of our cookie decorating party, and here they are!

This is a tradition that started about four Christmases ago, when I was getting ready to prepare my usual cookie plates. A large bulk of the cookies are decorated sugar cookies – they’re festive and fun, not too difficult, and have a sweet simplicity that people seem to enjoy. However, in large quantities, they are horrifyingly tedious. Sugar cookies are refrigerator cookies – the dough needs to be chilled, then rolled out with a pin and cut into shapes, or rolled into a log and sliced into circles if you’re less ambitious. The baker then baby-sits umpteen cookie sheets at about 5-8 minutes each, finally decorating them when they’re cool. I prefer to make a simple icing, color it, and paint the cookies. Which is fun for about five cookies or so, but when one is making five dozen becomes the most boring task imaginable. I found I’d often resort to dipping cookies into one color or another just to be done. The joy was being sucked out of my holiday preparations!

Then, in 2006, it struck me that what I needed was help. Not only to reduce the number of cookies I was icing, but to inject a little fun into the proceedings. I decided to throw a party – not a cookie swap, I didn’t need cookies coming INTO the house, but a decorating soiree, complete with savory snacks and mulled wine! (Mulled wine is a sure-fire way to make your house smell like Christmas, as well as to make a $14 box of wine a completely acceptable beverage to serve to your guests. I’d link you a recipe, but I just use a tin of mulling spices and follow the directions on it. My only real addition – orange slices.) That first year just four folks came over, but we had such a grand time that I vowed never to ice alone again.

We’ve come a long way with this party – more participants, better snacks, and prizes for arbitrary categories of my choosing! This year I even made different sorts of sugar cookie – a regular batch, a double-vanilla batch, and a spiced batch. I nearly didn’t hold it this year, what with all of the Marathon baking, but I’m really glad I did. It’s a wonderful way to celebrate the season with good friends!

Here are this year’s winning cookies!

Best Traditional Cookie: Shaded Snowman

Most Creative Use of Shape: Coyote from Dragonfly:

Best Use of Color: Trout

Most Evil Cookie: Blue Ghost

And last but not least…

What?!: Trojan Horse

Thank you to everyone who came out this year and celebrated with us! Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, and to those who don’t, Happy Year’s End!

Snow Day!

Sunday was the first big nor’easter to hit the Boston area for the season. Since it was a weekend, rather than being a horrific nuisance, the storm became a boon – the perfect excuse to remain in the house and pajamas all day and just cook!

And cook we did! Since we were having a cookie decorating party the next day, I decided to prep most of the snacks and of course, bake all of the cookies. Snacks included:

Deviled Eggs: these are made with homemade mayonnaise. If you have a food processor this becomes the easiest thing in the world, and tastes much lighter than what you buy at the store.

Devils on Horseback (I didn’t intend a devilish theme, it just shook out that way!)

Rosemary Roasted Walnuts: On the sides of the above picture. These are hopelessly addictive, and just about the easiest hors d’oeuvre I can possibly imagine. A little salty, a little sweet, with the resinous must of rosemary and the bite of black pepper, they’re a perfect cocktail snack.

There was also cheese and some chips and dip, the latter serving primarily to showcase my awesome chip and dip bowl. See?

The pictures of the cookies will be revealed later in the week (or in my Flickr right now if you’re impatient) but I will tell you that it takes a good hour and a half and a solid rolling, cutting, baking and removal system to get them all done. The house smelled enchanting!

But wait, there’s more! In addition to party prep, Mr. Menace and I prepared not one, not two, but THREE meals to be enjoyed this week! First, using the amazing turkey stock that I’ve been telling you about, we made a lovely soup. This served two purposes, in that besides having excellent soup to eat this week, we also did a bang-up job in cleaning out the fridge! This soup is chock-full of vegetables, barley, and oyster mushrooms and is so filled with umami goodness that you wouldn’t even notice that we didn’t add meat!

Next, Mr. Menace made some outstanding stuffed manicotti. Ground beef, cheese, onions and mushrooms all stewed together gently before filling pasta and baking under a blanket of mozzarella cheese. This was our Sunday dinner and it was very satisfying on a cold, snowy evening.

Finally, we took the remaining ground beef and made mini-meatloaf! The larder is stocked!

All in all it was a grand day in, and a much-needed rest in the middle of holiday madness. Capping it all off was the most glorious sunset I’ve seen in some time:

What did you do with your snowy day?

Running Cold

Week 5 of marathon training comes to a close, and what a week it was! I raised about fifty more dollars due to the wonderful guys at Comicazi – you rock!

The weather took a turn for the frigid, with highs of 11° for much of the week. When the mercury drops, people are suddenly surprised to hear that one continues to run outdoors. “Is that safe?” seems to be the typical response, the asker looking faintly aghast at the prospect.

The fact is that it’s perfectly safe if you prepare appropriately and use some common sense. The morning there was black ice on the roads, I ran home from work instead. A simple chill, however, can be defeated with proper layering! The lovely C at Posit Design had a post this week about how layering is necessary even just to commute to work properly, and the principal is the same for running in icy temperatures, with a few important specifications.

The first is that you’re going to be about 20° warmer while running than you are just bopping around doing your holiday shopping. There’s no need to pile on the layers until you look like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. The second is that those layers should keep the moisture off of you – cold and wet is deadly. For those of us running in the Boston area, 2-3 layers on the top, depending on how cold it is, are plenty. On Thursday, the day of my coldest outdoor run, I wore:

1. A hat! This is key as the wind was fierce, and even through the hat my ears became earsicles. Next time I will add a thermal headband.
2. Gloves. Totally necessary – you can lose up to 30% of your body heat via the extremities. In addition I have terrible, terrible circulation and when my fingers get cold the blood rushes out of them, leaving a faintly cadaverous look to them that’s probably an indicator of Raynaud’s Syndrome and seems slightly dangerous. Better to wear the gloves – they’re easily removed if you get too hot!
3. On Thursday, I wore 3 layers on my core. If it’s a bit less cold, 2 are fine. The first was a form-fitting Brooks long sleeve shirt. It wicks away moisture so that sodden clothes aren’t hanging on your body, trapping cold, and the tightness prevents my skin from being exposed. Over that I wore a looser long sleeve shell, still wicking, to add a bit of warmth. The final layer is an Adidas wind breaker – totally needed to repel the bitter wind that was slicing through me.
4. On the bottom, tights are almost always enough. I like the Under Armour tights with elasticized ankle cuffs to keep out the drafts.
5. Socks – it is so key to have wicking socks – again, wetness is the enemy in the cold. I like these Thorlos. They’re cushy and the height adds a bit of extra warmth on the legs.

Once you’ve got all the right gear and are off and running, the cold becomes a minor nuisance. Still, I do feel pretty tough when I brave such conditions. As I ran along on Thursday, I was stopped at a light with some other women who were out running. One woman said to the other, “Look, someone else is out!” The other woman said to me, “Thank you for running today! I thought we were the only ones!” I just smiled and told her it needed to be done, but it was nice, like we were part of a secret group – those who know it’s not so bad.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Today’s post is inspired by the always awesome M of Travel, Eat, Love, who recently wrote a post about things she’s loving right now (she also just moved her blog over to her very own domain! Go check it out!). It made me think about some of my favorite food items and places, and given that it’s the end of year, a traditional time for lists and wrap-ups, I figured I’d steal her idea write my own list! Keep in mind that this is ever-changing; it’s just a sample of what I’m enjoying at the moment.

Favorite snack: Lately I’ve been mixing either almonds or walnuts with dried cranberries. Properly measured out this is a pretty low-calorie, high-protein snack, it transports easily, and it tastes amazing. The almonds in particular are elevated by the cranberries – their sweetness really brings out the almonds’ perfume.

Favorite “alone” food: Oatmeal with sauteed kidney beans and tomatoes. It’s totally hideous to look at, but throw a little blue cheese on top and you’ve got this intense umami bomb topping soft, bland oatmeal, a contrast that is oddly and wonderfully pleasing.

Favorite bar for the drinks:This one’s a little obvious, I realize, but it’s Drink. I’m quite enamored of the vintage barware, fresh ingredients, and perfectly balanced cocktails. I tend to think of Drink as the place to try new cocktails – since I know they will be done in their purest and most correct forms I can judge them on their true merits.

Favorite fancy eating establishment: Let it first be said that I’m not a huge fan of the name, but T.W. Food is my go-to spot for a splurge. Every time I’ve eaten there I’ve received a perfect marriage of gorgeous presentation, fresh local ingredients, and truly transcendent food. Their teeny-tiny location tucked away on Walden Street, rather than being a deterrent, makes T.W.Food seem special and private. Now that I see they’re offering a $39 prix fixe they are also not so extravagant as to be out of reach!

Favorite bar menu: This was the hardest self-imposed category; I’m a bar-menu lover in general, as I think it’s the best way to experience a nice restaurant in a more casual and cost-efficient manner. Right now, for the way it exemplifies in miniature the rest of the menu, I’m going to have to say it’s Craigie on Main. A factor may be that it’s winter, and I can think of nothing more glorious than a plate of crispy pig’s tails and a nice red wine as a way to enjoy a cold evening.

Favorite home-cooked food: This is ever-changing, but I think right now it’s the turkey stock that we made from the Thanksgiving leftovers. I’ve glazed vegetables with it, made a terrific pot-pie, and the other night used it in beef stew!

I know, you’re thinking, “wouldn’t you use beef stock in beef stew?” but the fact is that this stock is so meaty and rich that it didn’t matter that it was poultry-based. This came of literally hours of simmering and really quality ingredients going into it.

So, let me put the question to all of you: What are you loving right now?

One Month Down!

Today marks the end of one full month of training! I celebrated by running seven miles, with a hill smack in the middle – Park Avenue. It’s a pretty serious hill, about three quarters of a mile long and rising, from what I can figure out from GMaps elevation setting, almost 200 vertical feet – the summit is 380.5 feet above sea level! To put that in perspective, Heartbreak Hill has a rise of only about 88 vertical feet – its difficulty stems from where it falls in the marathon, rather than how high it is. I figure tackling Park Ave as part of my training will help gear me up for the marathon’s challenges. It was strange to run up it alone – I’ve done it many times before with my dear friend and training buddy, Nandi, but this was the first time I mastered the beast solo. When I crested the top and rounded the large water tower that marks the summit (an exact copy of the ancient Greek Arsinoeon of Samothrace), I noticed for the first time that from that vantage point is a perfect view of the Boston skyline. I’ll try to bring my camera with me the next time I run up – it was absolutely breathtaking (though running up the hill may have had something to do with that).

My other big accomplishment this weekend has quite a bit more to do with the theme of this blog – I earned another $250 towards my goal by selling baked goods at the always amazing Comicazi-Con and Bad-Ass Bazaar! There’s a true pleasure in large amounts of hard work paying off, and I think it’s great to have these mini-victories before the final big ones of raising my goal and finishing the marathon. Two of the items I baked this year were from old family recipes – pumpkin roll and lemon squares.

The first is something my mother makes every Thanksgiving, usually to be consumed the next morning as it’s the perfect breakfast treat. A thin pumpkin bread is slathered in cream cheese frosting and rolled into an absolutely beautiful spiral. Mine came out pretty well considering it was the first time I’d baked it!

I sold it by the slice and it did pretty well, particularly in the morning with vendors looking for some breakfast.

The lemon squares are a recipe that my Nana, Stella Reczek, used to make for special occasions. Nana was a decent cook; she mostly made standard 1950′s housewife fare. There were certain recipes, however, that she just nailed, and these lemon squares are included in that category. The most important difference between her lemon squares and those you usually get, as any of my siblings will tell you, is that they are properly sour. They actually taste like lemon! There are few things more disappointing, in my opinion, than an overly sweet lemon square. The second secret is that the crust incorporates coconut. While I’m not usually a fan of the stuff due to the creepy texture, in the lemon squares the shredded coconut acts to break up the extremely buttery, shortbread-like crust, adding a needed airiness and texture.

In addition to these and other goodies, I held two raffles! One was for another holiday pie baked by me, the other for my mother’s famous cheesecake. And the winners are:

For the pie: Kelly Strauch! You DID win your apple pie at last!

For the cheesecake: Garth McMurray! Congratulations!

Thank you to everyone for buying tickets and supporting my cause!

Joint Project

I am not the easiest person with whom to share a kitchen. Sure, I might let you chop up some vegetables, and certainly any help in washing the dishes is greatly appreciated. But by and large, I am a territorial kitchen beast who will politely but firmly tell you “No, thank you,” should you offer to assist in the making of a meal.

In part this is due to my tendency to make a gigantic, frantic mess while cooking. I’ve got nine things going on at once and it’s way too stressful to tell you what’s going on in my head so why don’t you just let me do it!

However, I am trying to be more enlightened in my approach and learning the joys of joint projects, because while not many people realize this, my guy is a pretty good cook in his own right. Additionally, if we’re going to spend time together it only makes sense to do some collaborative projects. I’m not going to sculpt with him, and he’s not going to learn to knit, but we both cook and eat, so it makes sense that I learn to make room for him. So we’ve been working on projects that play to our individual strengths. Pizza is our crowning achievement – I make the dough, he stretches it. He cuts onions, I caramelize them. There’s a beautiful harmony to our work together. So we recently branched out, and I’m delighted to say it was a huge success!

This weekend, my fella and I made chicken pot pie together! Not only was it a great pot pie, but it highlighted the true importance of collaboration; namely, a pot pie is a lot of dang work, and I think either one of us would have been exhausted and frustrated to tackle it on our own.

For starters, we made our own stock for the gravy from the carcass of his family’s Thanksgiving turkey. That took several hours of boiling and pot tending – I took the first shift, and he the second since he stays up quite a bit later. The result was some of the richest, most beautiful turkey stock I’ve ever seen or smelled. I braised some endives with just a bit of it and it was all I could do not to lick the pan.

Next, the pastry needed to be made for the pie. This was my job, and while it didn’t take too long thanks to my glorious food processor, it needs to be done well ahead of time to be effective. The gluten in your pie crusts needs to rest, otherwise it’s all short and tough! I used the crust from this recipe. Alas, we didn’t have enough ingredients to use the filling listed in that recipe, nor any need for so much pot pie. So further work went into researching a new recipe for that. We did mash up the recipes into a sort of uber-pot pie. Incidentally, only one of the multitude of cookbooks we own had any recipe for pot pie. What’s up with that, modern cookbooks? Do people not make pot pie from scratch any more? Is it because you need at least THREE hours to do so?

But I digress. The crust completed, my guy took on the task of creating the filling, rolling out the dough, and baking our little treasure until it was golden brown. I came home from work to that beauty cooling on the stove. Just look at the inside!

Absolutely gorgeous. With results this good, how can I keep the kitchen to myself?

Baking and Baking and Baking…

Week three of training is complete! We had our second coalition run this week, six miles that went by surprisingly quickly. Running with other people is essential as the mileage creeps up, otherwise the time can feel extremely long and tedious, despite the fact that I actually like running.

Yes, I will freely admit it. I LIKE TO RUN. People ask me all the time if I do, in this slightly incredulous tone, even more so now that I’m training for the marathon. “So, then do you LIKE to run? I mean…you must…” and then they trail off and look at me as though I were some exotic species of insect. Well, yes, I like to run. The first mile is never fun (our team coach, who has run some ridiculous number of marathons, also said this, so I know it’s not just me.) but there’s joy in the movement of a run for me. What can I say, I’m a lousy dancer, but this, I can do. In any case I’m rallying our team to meet on the weeks that the coalition doesn’t so that we can continue to support each other and keep the fun coming, even on the off weeks.

But what, I hear you thinking, does any of this have to do with baking? Well, in my endless quest to raise funds for this adventure I am going to be selling baked goods at a truly fabulous event, the second annual Comicazi-Con and Bad-Ass Bazaar!

Take one-half comic book convention and one-half holiday craft fair and stir – that’s Comicazi-Con! Some truly amazing artists and crafts people presented last year, and it looks like this year is going to be bigger and better than ever. My own humble little table will be groaning with the fruits of my labors – chocolate chip and ginger cookies, fudge, and other goodies all made from scratch. There will also be another pie raffle and just maybe a chance to win my mom’s amazing cheese cake! It’s all happening on December 12th from 10-4 at the Dilboy VFW Hall in Davis Square, so come check it out! I would be delighted to see all of the local folks who read this blog there.

Please note that I’ve added yet another team member’s blog to my round-up! Check out Laurelin’s blog for updates from our most far-flung teammate! Laurelin is a former employee of Boston Partners in Education and a super-fast runner, so her training adventures should be well-worth the read.

Speaking of reading, I’ve just taken Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running out of the Boston Public Library. Murakami is one of my favorite fiction writers – The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle remains one of the most lovely and strange novels I’ve ever read. The transition from fiction to non-fiction can be tricky, so we’ll see how Murakami fares, but he’s off to a good start in the foreword with a quote (the specific source isn’t stated) that really spoke to me – “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.” This sums up beautifully my philosophy not only of running, but for life. It hurts sometimes, but yes, I like to run.

Inspiration

Many people I know claim that they can either cook, or bake, and never the twain shall meet. There’s a seductive logic to this theory; after all, cooking leaves room for tremendous creativity -throw in dash of this, a splash of that, and let’s see what happens! Baking, on the other hand, favors an exact approach – this is chemistry, by gum, and we need to be precise! So I can understand why folks might be strongly drawn to one or the other.

That said, to me it was never an all or nothing proposition. It was only when became an adult that I realized that for many people that this was a war, the battle lines drawn, and that I was expected to pick a side. I’m happy cooking AND baking – any act of creation in the kitchen is a thrill to me. As I thought about why that might be, I realized that I have my mother to thank.

You see, that lady never chose sides. She’s a whiz in the kitchen on both sides of the equation. I’ve waxed rhapsodic far too many times about her turkey soup – it’s like a pot of liquid gold whenever she makes it. But then there’s her cheesecake – her cheesecake is to die for. To be honest it’s normally not my favorite dessert – but when she makes it with that hand-crumbled graham cracker crust, how can I say no?

Her influence can be seen on my kitchen handiwork in other ways, as well. In both the examples above, she makes everything from scratch, creating soup stock from leftover turkey and painstakingly hand grating orange peel to give her cheesecake just the right zest. While I won’t say that she never took shortcuts in the kitchen, when she was making something truly special it was always with the best ingredients she had, and always by hand.

My mother taught me to cook, but it wasn’t really by sitting me down and going through a step-by-step process. Instead, from a very early age, she involved me in what she was doing in the kitchen. One of my earliest memories is of standing on a chair in the kitchen, helping to stir a big pot of homemade peanut brittle. (Another is of waiting for her to fry up some doughnut holes – but you wouldn’t let a small kid near a deep fryer!) When all of us girls (there are four of us) were small, she was always coming up with projects to keep us entertained, and many of them involved baking or making food. I think that part of my joy in the kitchen now comes from the good memories of that time spent in the kitchen with my mother.

There’s a real value, I think, in having the mental flexibility to perform both of those skills with enjoyment. Most of the folks who prefer either baking or cooking can certainly muddle along through the other, even do them well. They just don’t care for it. I feel so lucky to have both, and to feel the need to try new things just for the sake of doing them. Thank you, Mom!