The Religion of the Belly. Tofu and Garlic. Leek Soup.

A friend mentioned that she would like to go vegetarian once a week.  I thought, what an excellent idea!  And I think I know just the place to begin.
 
Sometimes I refresh my memory by dusting. 

Dusting off an old cherished book, that is! 

On a forgotten shelf in the guest room, I locate an old cookbook.

Did you know that there are 3 religious practices making up the Chinese culture? 


Me neither!  But there it is on the first page.

Confucianism, the mind, for thinking and judging;

Buddhism, the heart, for willing and loving; 

and Taoism, the belly, for intuitive wisdom as well as for digestion. 

Taoism is therefore the "religion of the belly". 


My dusty treasure is "A Taoist Cookbook" by Michael Saso, 1994.  I am happy I kept it.  (It's not from my vegetarian/boat hippie days.  No, not that far back!)  But everything I ever tried from this book is simple and tastes good. 


And that suits my personal "Religion of the Belly" just fine!

This tofu cooked with garlic was always one of my favorites.


 Dofu (Tofu) and Garlic


1 package firm white dofu, 14-16 oz.
2 or 3 cloves of garlic
1/2 c. water used to soak mushrooms (If you haven't been soaking any mushrooms lately just use plain water!)
2 or 3 T. mild soy sauce
1 tsp cornstarch
2 t. cooking oil


Take the tofu out of the plastic and drain off the water.  It can be laid on a paper towel to remove excess moisture.


Chop up two or three cloves of garlic.


Cut the tofu into small bite sized squares to cook with the garlic.


Take 1/2 cup of water and mix with the soy sauce and cornstarch.  Keep this aside to pour over the cooked dofu in the hot pan once it is cooked.


Heat a wok or frying pan and add the oil.  Put half the garlic into the hot oil to flavor it.  Then place the dofu squares into the hot pan.  The pan will sizzle and hot oil may splash, so cover the pan immediately with a lid.  Turn the heat down to medium and let the dofu brown for about 2 minutes.  The take the lid off and turn the dofu over, so that the other side may brown as well. 


Throw the rest of the chopped garlic over the dofu and cover again for 2 minutes.

This is the basic way of preparing tofu for a vegetarian meal.  Serve with a dash of soy sauce splashed over the surface of the tofu.  Or, for a fancier version pour the mushroom water, soy sauce and cornstarch mixture over the tofu in the wok and stir as it thickens.


If you really want to "go green", garlic tofu tastes awesome on a bed of freshly stir-fried spinich. 

Tonight I use broccoli because our garden is overflowing with it.  You can see I am a day behind, it's already beginning to flower!  (Yes, Broccoli flowers are good to eat too.)

Here's the recipe for spinich.  Do broccoli the exact same way, except you might want to cook it a few minutes longer.  Oh yeah, chop it first.

Stir Fried Spinich

Remove the tofu from the pan, set aside, keep warm.  (The spinich only takes a minute or two.)

Buy a big bunch of fresh spinich, wash it well.


Shake the water from the leaves, leaving a few drops, and place it in the hot frying pan.


Stir so all sides of the leaves reach the hot garlicky oil.  Cover and let spinich simmer for 1 minute.  Stir the spinich again.


How does it look?  Spinich should not be allowed to overcook.  Bright green is what we're looking for.  Cook another 30 seconds if you like.  (It shouldn't take more than that.)


Take it off the stove, and if desired, chop the hot spinich into bite size pieces on a chopping board with a big chopping knife (so as not to burn your fingers). 


Put the spinich on a dish and place the tofu on top of it.  Splash with 2-3 tablespoons soy sauce and serve sprinkled with sesame seeds if you like them.  (I like a little vinegar too.)


I always really loved the look of the bright green with the browned tofu, and the contrast of flavor and texture makes it even better!   

Here's tonight's version.

Tofu is versatile stuff, even for a non-vegetarian day.  Since I was browning some up, I threw it into the leek soup I was making with the leftover beef broth from the Guinness Pie.

The browned tofu cubes probably would have been good to take as a nice salty snack for work tomorrow too, but there's just not going to be enough left.

Oh well, there is always a next week, and the week after that.  After all, the Religion of the Belly is forever!

The Sights You See When You Ain't Got a Gun

Just in case anyone's thinking that all we did around here this week was eat....

Trail running in Wickham Park:  A pine tree on an obscure trail  decorated for Christmas?  I was happy to see the decorations are still intact in the final days of January.   Thank you, whoever decorated it.  It makes me laugh to see it, and a happy run is a good run.

The Three Bridge Ride:  Taking to heart a certain observation that snowbirds might not flock as thickly on the mainland, the ride is an easy twenty something, including the Eau Gallie, the Pineda, and Mathers Bridges.  

Eau Gallie Causeway to Pineapple Ave. and US 1.

See the lumps on the beach?  Fish kill washes ashore in the Indian River along US1.  The manatees aren't the only creatures that die when it's cold.  There will be no snook fishing this year.

Half a Causeway.  The west end of the Pineda to Merritt Island.

Mather's Bridge open.  Cars, pedestrians, cyclists wait.  Where the heck is the boat?  Another unsolved mystery.

Double the fun!  Eating and riding.  Field testing the protein balls while taking notice of some of the old structures left at the Econ.  The bikes are leaning against the old bridge trestles on the Flagler Trail.  You know - where the old suspension bridge used to be.

And since they built the new bridges, we usually blow right by this little single plank bridge.  It's just not part of the main trail anymore.

It's great to have retired friends!  Especially when it's slow at the bike shop and I get a surprise Tuesday off.  Scout and I get in a nice chatty twenty down to Melbourne Beach.

Home sweet home.  Around here we aren't exactly famous for early departures.  Not so our backyard buddies!  Pelicans and Cormorants just before morning takeoff.

Adventures in Pie - Beef and Guinness and Green Tomato Pie

Adventure: to engage in daring undertakings.  That's Webster for ya.  He never goes into the wonderous implications.

I say, adventure is to engage in daring undertakings of which you do not know the outcome.

Adventure racing, Xterra, even Ironman are not really adventures.  If you've trained enough, you pretty much know how they're going to turn out.   And if you haven't trained enough?  Well, you know pretty much how that will turn out too!

Sometimes a ride a round the block can turn to an adventure, or a trip to the grocery store, or bringing in a bowl of green tomatoes and broccoli flowers from the garden....

The broccoli flowers went home with the Chickenless Chick. (TheChickenlessKitchen.blogspot.com)  

She had a project in mind that required edible flowers.  Yes, they're edible - and beautiful on  salad.  But, that was a past adventure. 

Today the adventure is pie.

Green Tomato Pie.

Beef and Green Tomato Pie.

Beef and GUINNESS and Green Tomato Pie.

Yeah!  Now we're cookin' up an adventure!

There's a lot of recipes for Steak and Guinness Pie floating around out there in cyberspace.  Grab one, not that you're going to use it.

Recipes are merely jump off points for adventure cooking.  Including this one, so do what you will with it.

(Oh.  And take the day off.  We're talking major time suckage here.)

Beef and Guinness and Green Tomato Pie

1 1/2 pounds stew beef

2 T. flour

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp pepper

2-4 T. sesame oil

1 medium sweet onion, chopped

1 1/2 c. mushrooms, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

3 T. water

3 cups green tomatoes, chopped into 1 inch chunks

1 1/2 c. baby carrots

1 c. frozen cut green beans

1 1/2 T. tomato paste

1 c. Guinness

1 c. beef broth

1 T. Worcestershire Sauce 

1/2 tsp dried thyme

Pie dough for 2 crust pie

2 T. Minute tapioca

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Put flour, salt, and pepper in a zip loc bag and mix it up.

Put the beef cubes into the bag with the flour and shake to coat.

 

Heat oil to hot.  Brown beef in batches.  Set aside.

Using the same pan, add the mushrooms, onion, garlic, and water, and cook til the onions are soft.  

Add tomatoes, carrots and green beans.

Add the tomato paste, stir.

Add beef broth, beer, Worcestershire, and thyme.

Add beef.

Bring to a simmer.

(Breathe this in. Ahhh.)

Pour it all into a cassarole dish, cover, and transfer to oven.

Cook 1 1/2 hours.

Go for a ride or a walk or something.  You're going to need the calorie deficit!  :)

After 1 1/2 hours, remove and let cool 20-30 minutes, while you roll out two pie crusts. 

Or you could just forget the pie crust, get a bowl, and start eating now. 

But I choose adventure, so I go for pie:

Turn the oven up to 425 degrees.

Scoop your beautiful brown Guinness'y stew into a pie plate lined with crust.

Sprinkle 2 T. tapioca over the filling.

Put the top crust on.  Seal the edges, trim the excess dough.  Poke a couple vent holes in the top crust.  Brush with egg wash.  

Bake 45 minutes. 

Make your salad while that's cooking.  You are having salad, right?

*Put some aluminum foil around the edges of the pie crust after fifteen minutes in the oven, or it could get really dark, especially if you used spelt flour in the dough, like I did. 

And if you forget the egg wash, which I also did, be warned, unvarnished spelt crust is pretty ugly.

Ugly or not, take a moment to breathe this in.  The aroma is incredible. 

And the taste?  Oh yes. Heaven on a plate.

Hmmm, now what to do with leftover beer??? 

No adventure there.  Popeye's home from the gym.  I know that outcome!

A Little Protein for Your Pocket!

This is a total experiment.  In no way am I claiming that this will be good, or work for anyone else.  Field testing happens tomorow.  I was just so excited that concocting this stuff turned out so easy and fast, I couldn't wait to post it!

If you have been experimenting with something similar, I'd sure love to hear about it!

I have been promising myself for months to work on a protein bar that would be pocket friendly for the trail. 

Sometimes the stars align and one has to take the hint!  Three separate prompts arrived on the same day. 


The Chickenless Chick's Renaissance Cooking Challenge deadline is Tuesday. (TheChickenlessKitchen.blogspot.com)


Northstar, in search of an alternative to commercial energy bars, sent me this link for making peanut butter balls.
http://www.fitsugar.com/7000880#read-more


The new Clif Rox protein balls arrived at the bike shop, which we purchased, passed around, and pronounced "not bad".  But at $3.99, a little cost prohibitive!

Now, as delicious as the above recipe for peanut butter balls looks, Popeye and I have, from experience, fairly stringent requirements for protein, carb, and fat ratios. 

We find 18-20% protein to 80% carbs, and a very small percentage of fat works well on long rides. (3+ hours) 

Since we normally ride in heat, the snack should ideally include some salt, electrolytes, and potassium as well. 

And last but not least, the stuff has to hold up in said heat for more than a couple hours.  

Once those parameters are met , the whole concoction has to be sticky enough to hold together, yet dry enough to not turn to goo.

Whew!  Good thing it was so easy!  We're riding in the morning!

Here's the result of our first run at an experimental, and as yet unnamed, protein trail food.  It took about 10 minutes - start to finish.  

As Yet Unnamed No-Bake Pocket Protein Balls

In a food processor, pulse up:

2/3 c. pitted dates (no added sugar)
1/2 c. tart dried cherries (no added sugar)
1 tsp honey
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp lemon juice
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 c. high quality protein powder (about 40 gr. protein)
1 c. Kashi Oat Cereal
1 T. all natural peanut butter (no hydrogenated fats!)

Pulse until the mix is coarsely chopped. 

Grab up a bit, smash and roll it into a ball in your hands.  It should form a firm ball and hold together. 

We thought ours was just a little dry, and added water a tsp at a time.  2 tsp water, and it seemed perfect!

Further experiment: A few balls got shaken in a plastic bag with a tsp extra protein powder to coat.  The thinking on that was to help keep the balls dry on the outside and moist on the inside. 

Know Your Numbers:

Yield: 16 balls, slightly smaller than golf balls
Serving  size: 3 balls
Protein: 9.75 gr.
Carbs: 38.4 gr.
Fat: 1.5 gr.
Calories: 189

Ready to go.
Tomorrow.
Test ride.
Test eat!

Post Script:  Field testing went great!  Did not need to dash to an Orlando restaurant the minute we left the trail.  Got a big thumbs up on taste too.  'Course it could have been the "free food factor"....

Got Cheese?

Whine, whine, whine.

No matter where you are, riding angry is a bad place to be. 

And sometimes, where you are turns into such a bad place to be, the riding turns angry.

The snowbirds are here!  The beach is covered with em, they flock our restaurant entrances.  They squawk from the sidewalks and the roads, and leave their mess on condo balconies.  They ride bikes pulled from the trash and drive really big cars.  They don't look and they can't hear.  They are a menace in the grocery store isles.

And they spell death to my little neighborhood cycling route!  

(Ok, I am a bike snob.  But seriously people, did the Cadillac cost so much you have to pick the trash for a bike?)

They yell from the road, "Use the sidewalk!" 

From the sidewalk I yell, "Are you blind?" 

They roll their really big cars out of the condo drives, straight across the walks through their own little tunnels of oblivion - into or over anyone foolish enough to be there.

The Snowbirds are here and the rest of us would go elsewhere if we could.  But elsewhere on our coast is far worse, so we find the nooks and crannies in which to ride and hide and wait them out.  

Hope they don't discover my favorite (walk-to) beach entrance!

So goodbye beach riding for the next few months, and thank goodness for the mountain bikes!  We can escape traffic for singletrack, at least on weekends.

Now if only we had our own Publix....  

Tomatoes Fall Like Rain. Green Tomato Chili.

Long ago and far away, up in the Finger Lakes area of New York State, we never, not once, not ever, considered eating a green tomato.  Southerners were rumored to fry them green, but who would do that when, if only you waited, they'd turn a succulent red?

At last the veil is lifted from the mysterious southern custom of eating green tomatoes.

We grow our tomatoes in the winter, that's why. 

In July it doesn't freeze, even in upstate New York. 

Here, once in a January blue moon, it does, and this is what happens to tomato vines when it's 30-something degrees for a week.  Red or green, the tomatoes fall from the dying vines like rain.

And so, even this Floridian, the most un-southern of all southerners, is about to eat her tomatoes green!

And am I glad I did!  Because green tomatoes are different.  They're tangy and have a great taste all their own! 

Green Tomato Chili

1 small onion, chopped 

1 small green pepper, (also a garden victim) chopped 

2 garlic cloves, chopped fine

Mushrooms, if you like 'em

Green, and/or red tomatoes, a couple pounds (if you don't have that many just fill in with canned tomatoes later)

1 lb lean hamburger, browned, well drained

1 can dark red kidney beans, well rinsed

1 tsp cumin

2 T. (at least) chili powder

1 T. beef bullion, less if you aren't into salt, more if you are.

Saute the garlic, onion, pepper and mushrooms in a little olive oil til softened.  Set aside.

Chop up green tomatoes, and any red or reddish ones you have and saute them in a little olive oil or water.

*The green tomatoes take way longer to cook than the red ones, so if you don't like varying textures, cook the green ones first, then add the red at the last minute.

Once the veggies are softened, stir the whole mess together into one big pot.  If you don't have enough tomatoes for your taste, add a can or two. 

Taste, taste, taste. 

Adjust spices and bullion. 

Eat, eat, eat. 

Fire setters! Inspector Gadget Saves the Econ.

Another sunny Sunday at the Econ. 

While we were riding, trees were falling and fires were being set.

Northstar, Tomcat, and Inspector Gadget all prefer the west trailhead.  Fine with us.  Popeye and I always welcome a little extra mileage.

IG is late, but for the rest of us it's a quick 2 miles down the multi-use Flagler Trail to the bike trails along the river.  First stop, the Gator Pond.  No gators in sight, just one brave heron.  No snap of jaws, no squawk, no splash, at least while we are watching.  But I am convinced, if Big Bird stays put long enough, it will happen!

We swoop through our favorite and familiar loops, and head back for our reward.  As if the sunny day isn't reward enough, we get to eat too!

But on the way back out, the Flagler Trail is chopped up and lumpy.  Horses. 

We come up behind 5 riders, and they tell us to go ahead without pulling their horses off the trail.  "The Paint is the only one that's skittish," the last girl in line says looking down at us from the saddle.  She seems a long way up. 

I am never happy being that near the back hooves of a stange horse, especially when my pony is made of weird smelling aluminum.  I try my best to act like a human and not a cougar.  I stay on trail and keep talking in a normal voice.  Popeye doesn't stop to take a photo and I don't blame him!

The next obstacle is a good sized tree down across the trail, which had to have fallen since we came in 2 hours earlier.  We lift the bikes over and ride on. 

And there is Inspector Gadget waiting at the parking lot, flying a kite. 

Okay.

On to dinner, where the Inspector tells his story.  Broken spokes early on turned him around.  In the distance he said he saw "dust" rising from the trail ahead. 

We all assumed he had seen the tree immediately after it's fall.  But no, what he saw was 2 adult men running away from a fire they had set on the trail! 

He stopped to stomp out the fire, and then tried to follow them, but came out into a nearby suburban development, the firestarters long gone. 

Thank you, Inspector Gadget!  It's dry as heck in there.  You probably saved a big chunk of our favorite state forest!  I think we all owe you a dinner!

Syrup and the Calorie Conundrum

Another weekend breakfast rolls around. Still stewing about keeping the calorie deficit going. 

The sweet tooth jeers, "So whatcha gonna do about it, huh?  Huh?"

Blueberries.  That's what I'm gonna do about it!

Blueberry Maple Syrup

1 c. frozen blueberries

2 T. pure grade B maple syrup

lemon juice

cinnamon

Microwave the blueberries and the syrup together, until thawed and warm.  Mash them a little or a lot.  Add a squirt of lemon and a sprinkle of cinnamon.  Stir it up and pour it on.  

1/4 c. Maple Syrup = 210 calories

1/4 c. Blueberry Maple Syrup = 44 calories

Take that, Mr. Sweet Tooth!

   

In Search of Peacocks, Cat Trick

OK, it looks like a ditch with a couple rocks in it.  But those swirls are manatees floating just under the surface.  Fifty plus manatees ahve been holed up all week in a little canal by the town ball field. 

It has been cold - a week with temps in the thirties.  Manatees may look like they have plenty of blubber, but that's not fat, that's mostly air bladder for buoyancy.  When it's cold, manatees die. 

Townsfolk, snowbirds, news crews have been keeping watch all week, wondering why the heck they chose this ditch instead of deeper spots with more vegetation/food. 

Whatever the reason for the gathering, eventually someone figured out that the water had gone down in the Satellite Beach ditch since they entered.  The manatees were trapped and couldn't leave.

The very good city of Satellite Beach got a back hoe down there yesterday and dug out the canal.  All but a few are gone back out to the river, where hopefully it will be warm enough for them to stay.

If it gets that cold twice in one winter, I say it's time for us all to move further south!

  

Peacock Ride

One stop is about all we are good for when there's maybe 2 hours of daylight left and rain clouds closing in.  We choose the short and sweet Peacock Ride. 

At the north end of our little chunk of Tropical Trail, live a dozen or so peacocks.  They hang out in trees, front yards, and often stroll nonchalantly up and down the road. 

We scan the trees and the yards, and even though we do hear what we think is a peacock cry, we don't see any.  So back we go to Mather's Bridge....

  

....where we see birds of a different feather!  Dozens of pelicans are roosting on the support structure of the little swing bridge.  It's not the thriving numbers of twenty years ago, but it's more pelicans than I've seen in one spot in a long time, and it feels good to see it. 

Cat Trick

Home again before the squall.  But the squall outside is nothing compared to the brawl inside.   It's been 2 weeks and Gypsy is still not feeling the love.  A little research by Popeye provides us with a few tricks to make all 3 cats more comfortable with each other. 

He builds them a condo out of boxes, and he cleans the scary cat doors so they get the best possible visibility.  (You never know when a territorial Pepper is waiting on the other side to whap you.  It's enough to make a new girl want to pee in the house.) 

We feed them all at the same time in the same room to associate positive feelings with proximity to one another.

But the best thing we do is sprinkle baby powder over every spot of territory they fight over, the couch, the chairs, their new condo.  And then we sprinkle them too!  All three of them now smell the same.  And like magic, the spits and hisses lessen. 

Hat's off to Popeye!  It's a Cat Trick!  He shoots! - he scores! - in this crazy new game of herding 3 cats.

And finally, a few peaceful moments.

Counting Calories, the Bitter Truth about Salty and Sweet

Sugar and butter, potato chips in chocolate, whipped cream and nuts....  Salty and sweet gets me into caloric trouble every single time!

The seasonal Eat-Fest is over.  It really is January - mid January!  It really is time - high time!  Sigh.  Cutting back is so unfashionable.  Don't ya just want it to be effortless?

The Last of the Double Trouble Cookies

(See "Christmas Presents" - TheChickenlessKitchen.blogspot.com)

Reality Bites.

 Soooo, when it came time for this morning's fuel up brunch, normally a blissful eat-til-you're-full mid morning hiatus, I decided to PAY ATTENTION. Not just to nutrition, but to portions and calories as well. Burning a thousand calories on a day off isn't so hard. But I suspect that staying under the normal 3000 calories will be. Let alone under 1800, which is my Plan Of the Day!

Out with the Old, In with the New.

A little bit of homework changed this Old Fashioned Pancake Recipe into a New Fashioned Pancake Recipe.

Old Fashioned Pancakes

1 1/2 c. flour

3 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 T. sugar

1 1/4 c. milk

1 egg

3 T. butter, melted

Yield 9 small (4 inch) pancakes.

You know the drill.  Combine dry ingredients, mix in the wet, fry the pancakes up in a nice buttery pan...  If you keep the milk at 2%, that comes out about 120 calories per pancake. 

Increasing nutrition was the original purpose of changing the recipe, not reducing the calories, although it does work out on the happy side of that equation as well.

New Fashioned Pancakes:  First question.  You do make a pot of steel cut oats for fast breakfast microwaving during the week, yes?  Got a little left?  Good!

(Uh oh.  Does the teapot reflection make me look fat?)

New Fashioned Pancakes

1/2 c. white flour

1/2 c. spelt flour

1/2 c. cooked steel cut oatmeal

3 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 T. sugar, honey, or pure maple syrup

2 egg whites

1 1/4 c. skim milk

Yields 9 small (4 inch) pancakes.

Stir dry ingredients together.  Mix in egg whites and milk.  Stir in oatmeal last.  Don't stir too much.  Small lumps are ok.

Pour 3-4 inch dollops in a non stick pan and cook in a minimal amount of extra light tasting olive oil.  Flip when surface bubbles and cook on other side til light brown.

Option:  Before flipping, sprinkle some walnuts onto the batter side.  Walnuts add aprox. 50 calories per tablespoon.  1 New Fashioned Pancake = 84 calories.

So, adding up the whole brunch plate:

168    2 pancakes

  25    olive oil for pan

100    2 T. walnuts

210    1/4 c. grade B natural maple syrup

  25    dollop of plain yogurt

  70    2 oz. ham

  30   strawberries

628    total calories

(That syrup was sure good!  Truth be told, I would normally have had more than a quarter cup.  Very, very, small victory.) 

Ummm,  I gotta go now. 

I've got ridin' to do, don't you?

  
 

Home again the same day... San Felasco blown.

Darn!  And Double Darn!  I forgot to leave the @#$%&**^%$ KEY for the Critter Sitter!  I didn't just forget, and remember again a block from home.  Oh noooo.  I remembered at 9PM all the way up in Ocala with less than an hour to go to the Cabot Lodge!  (The Cabot Lodge....  with it's huge circular ski lodge-type fireplace, free cocktail hour, and a whole bunch of our friends wondering where the heck we were.)

It's a long story, but we stopped in Ocala to eat, talk it over, and just happened to track around in some raw sewage besides.  But to make a long story short, we turned around, darn it!  The new kitty is not acclimated enough to leave for 24 hours, let alone a second night.  We are afraid she will wander off and not remember where her new home is.   

Home again the same day. 

Well not quite.  It is 11 minutes after midnight when we pull in.  A 20 mph north wind blasts me when I open the car door. 

It is raining when we wake up, temps in the mid thirties.  Yuck!  The weather channel says Alachua is currently 30 degrees and chance of "rain".  Even if it snows it would instantly turn yucky-mucky, but DARN!  I do hate to miss a ride!!!!!
 

Prepping for the Tour de Felasco, Home Made Sports Drink

To prepare for the Tour de Felasco is a feat of patience, requiring the sorting of one's most unused and unreachable drawers, closets and cubbies.  The clothing for this ride is the clothing we use once, and only once, a year, because no one in his right mind would go out the door when it's as nasty as it is in northern Florida in January! 

It's not pretty up there.  There's no snow to brighten or insulate the lanscape.  It is more often a barren brown forest, 35 degrees and rain, which to me,  is the nastiest combination since the invention of putting mint into chocolate chip ice cream, and twice as cold.

We are so unaccustomed to cold weather it's a lengthy process.  I have bought new toes warmers and a neoprene hat to go with my three layers of jerseys, the old tights, and the new gloves.  I even finally put cleats on my extra-size-bigger shoes so I can wear two pairs of socks!  If I were still living in Plattsburgh, no doubt I'd be laughing myself silly right now!

Once the clothing issue has been addressed, the bikes get their turn. 

First, a little extra air pumped into the shocks, cuz they are gonna compress in the cold.  Whacking your pedals on every root can get annoying.

Then, to remain tubeless, the tires need new Stan's.  (If you haven't tried Stan's No Tubes, do!  Awesome stuff!)  Popeye gets on that after work on Thursday.  He's gotten so good at this that he can do it in under five minutes per bike when all goes well. 

Sometimes all does not go well.  You can tell where the air leaks out by watching for the soap bubbles.

If the bubbles don't quit right away, it usually means a do-over.  Three tires go perfectly.  There's always one bad apple!

So one more time, clean the rim with the soapy rag...

Pour in the Stan's and blow some CO2 to fill it FAST.  And it holds.  Whew!  Because we have just used the last drop. 

Sports Drink - Make Your Own! 

Then on to the kitchen.  If you read the ingredients on your can of orange powdered Gatorade, as I did a few months ago, you may be shocked to see partially hydrogenated oils!  

It took a couple months and some research, and not a little tweaking, but you can make your own sports drink, and you can make it better.  And it won't cost you Six Million Dollars either.

Home Made (Non-Reptile) Ade 

Per 24oz. sports bottle:

3/4 to 1 cup orange juice

1 tsp apple cider vinegar

1 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp honey

1/8 tsp sea salt

Put it all in the bottle and fill with ice and water.

Shake well!  No one wants a slug of salt in their last sip!

I am making ours for tomorrow, for two 70 oz. camelbaks, so I make a big batch and put it in a jar.

 

Tomorrow morning, we just shake it up and add water... 

And this time, I think we can skip the ice!