Chicago Marathon Val

Good morning everyone!  Here’s my recap from yesterday:

After a delicious juice (unpictured), I tried some of my banana chips that I had put into my Excalibur dehydrator on Sunday evening.  They weren’t bad… but I think they needed to stay in there even longer!  When I was little my Grandma used to send us homemade dried banana chips, and they were a lot more dried out and hard, so next time I’ll leave them in their longer.  She also gave me a great tip to dip fruit into fruit juice before dehydrating so they don’t get brown

My next dehydrating attempt was a big success!  I modified my energy bar recipe to make these:

- 1 c. chia seeds

- 1 c. almond butter

- 1/2 c. flax meal

- 1 c. unsweetened dried coconut

- 1 T. coconut oil

- 1/2 c. maple syrup

- 1 tsp. vanilla

- pinch saltI dehydrated these from Sunday til Wednesday, which seemed to be just the right amount of time – at 105 degrees, which is the desired temperature to “maintain the food’s nature enzymes”, according to those who know these types of things!

They came out very good.  A bit crumbly when I tried to cut them, but this was a good pre-spinning class snack!  Spinning was tough yesterday but awesome… I will miss my morning spinning classes once I head back to work next week!

(PS, I told you that I meant to show you a picture about these raw flax-pepitas chips… and Mike ate them all before I could get a picture!! Sorry about that!! I’ll have to make them again soon!)

After spinning I ran some errands, including getting an Eye-Fi from Best Buy – Mara told me how much she loves hers, and it sounds like it may be a MAJOR time-saver, but unfortunately so far I’m having a hard time loading it on my computer!! I went through all of the steps, but the icon won’t show up on my task bar to get it started… any ideas how to get this to work?

I snacked on some delicious stacked eggplant for lunch.  There was also a bit of leftover creamy tomato sauce, and I dipped two carrots in it.  Yum!  I’m absolutely in love with this sauce!!

For dinner, I threw together an Asian sauce of sorts with bok choy.  I say Asian sauce because it’s kinda Thai, kinda Indian…. and has a ton of ingredients so I’m not sure what to call it!

Here is the gorgeous, and enormous onion from the CSA… isn’t it gigantic??!My first time using tempeh!Lovely local, organic baby bok choy from my CSAAnd here’s the final product!To make the sauce:

- chop 1 large onion, throw into pan with a bit of EVOO

- add 2 cloves garlic

- add sliced tempeh

- 3 T. tomato paste, concentrated

- 1 can light coconut milk

- 1 T. tamarind paste (this was my first time using tamarind paste… it has a very strong, concentrated flavor!)

- tiny bit xanthum gum…. I stirred this into the coconut milk before adding it to the rest, but just make sure it gets stirred in well

- 1/2 tsp curry powder

- 1/2 tsp turmeric

- 1 tsp. dried mustard

- salt to taste

- 3 T. miso, stirred in well to dissolve

-Simmer all ingredients until the flavors meld together and become amazing!

Mike and I devoured this dish… it was excellent.  I also nibbled on some vegan double chocolate cookie dough for dessert… the recipe to come soon

Now I’m off to try to figure out my Eye-Fi…. I’m not the best at technology, can you tell?!?!!  I bought it to save me time writing my posts since sometimes it takes well over an hour to make just one post since the pictures take so long to upload.  What is your favorite way to streamline posting and to make blogging easier?

It’s a rainy day here in Chicago…. hope you all have a great Thursday!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 9:25 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.