Dualing with shoes

As a fifth-year graduate student with an increasingly angsty dissertation advisor and a research grant that didn't quite pay my rent, I didn't have time for me - at least not live ones. Unfortunately, the dead ones could be just as frustrating as the live ones.
- The Seduction of the Crimson Rose by Lauren Willig

Somtimes you feel like something rather fancy...


How about a vegetable stack with a polenta base then topped with eggplant that got a bit shy (hence the fact it's hiding under the greenery), baby spinach, mushroom and tofu with roasted kumara and capsicum round the edges to make it super fancy?! Cool!

It's now only a few more days to go until The Dual. Feeling rather anxious but after a good training run out at the Hunua Ranges on Sunday I'm not feeling quite as bad as before. The question will be what footwear to use 'cause the terrain is just at that kind of middle-point between running shoes and off road shoes...which brings me to my new shoes!


Forgive the dirt splatters on my legs - it was after my run. I actually can't believe I took a photo of my feet but still, these are awesome shoes specially for off-road adventures. This is the Inov-8 Roclite 285 and 'cause they're red they must be fast!


A view from the lookout overlooking the Mangatawhiri Dam.

Anyway, it's definitely starting to get colder round here and there is a chill to the air once the sun starts to slip away. Winter, my friends, is well and truly on its way. One of the things about the colder weather is it makes me crave comfort food.

Like mac n'cheez (with stir-fried veges to give the illusion of a healthy meal!)...


Or nachos (with way too much sheese 'cause I got carried away when I was grating!)...


Or my absolute favourite, satay tofu which is going to be my dinner the night before the race this weekend. Not sure which is more exciting, the race or the tofu (okay, it's not that close to call...really)!


And lastly, you can never go past a good soup to warm you up...


This is leftovers from last night's dinner - Roast Pumpkin, Kumara and Peanut Butter soup. Delicious.

Bar baaa

‘I was a celebrity,’ droned the robot sadly, ‘for a short while on account of my miraculous and bitterly resented escape from a fate almost as good as death in the heart of a blazing sun. You can guess from my condition,’ he added, ‘how narrow my escape was. I was rescued by a scrap-metal merchant, imagine that. Here I am, brain the size of…never mind.’
- Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams

Tonight we are off to see Coldplay!!!

Moving on...

J has a small obsession with torpedo7 ever since we got our mountain bikes. This does have its benefits though as he spotted they were selling clif bars for an insanely cheap price for a couple of days. We ended up getting several packs (there was only one flavour - Chocolate Chip Peanut Crunch).


J's description: "I thought that bar was yummy by the way. Still tasted kinda ‘healthy’ i.e. not a chocolate bar, probably coz of the protein and stuff but still pretty good. No raisins!!" He doesn't like raisins (obviously). They haven't lasted long as we are already halfway through our order. Pity they're sold out now.

I've found them great for before evening orienteering events or afterwork training as they're not too filling/not too light. Just make sure you drink plenty of liquid with them as they're a bit dry (not that it's a problem since I've got to down a fair amount of water beforehand anyway).

Then today my chiropractor told me that the New World (one of the big supermarket chains in New Zealand) across the road was selling Lara bars in one of the checkouts so I had to go see for myself! They're stocking, maybe, 5 flavours in total?


Of course, I had to get some while I was there!

Anyway, I actually managed to squeeze in some excuses for some baking recently! First up was my orienteering friend's birthday so I made carrot cake from Damn Tasty Vegan (this is one awesome recipe) which we devoured at a night orienteering event at Ambury Farm Park. I love how the animals' eyes light up under your headlamp!


The following night I had some of my cousins round for dinner which was a challenge - one of them can't have gluten or any vegetable from the nightshade family. I think I wracked my brains until they exploded to think of something that fitted all requirements and and still tasted good!


Here we have corn bread (adapted from the recipe in Damn Tasty Vegan so that it was completely gluten-free), stir-fried veges with chickpeas and kidney beans topped with a cheezy sauce and rice salad (made by my cousin). It was actually surprisingly good!

Last up on the cooking agenda were some cookies for J and his friends to take to the beach. I settled on the Chocolate Peanut Butter Shells from Damn Tasty Vegan (again! Yep, this book got quite a workout that week!). You can find the recipe here but I find that the dough mixture ends up being too sticky to work with so I add another 1/3 - 1/2 cup of flour. Maybe our flour is more moist...?


This is a pretty shocking picture (these were the leftovers a few days later) but they were, well, damn tasty (I had to have a sample before I sent them off with J - quality control you understand).

We're off to see Coldplay!!!!!!

That's all...

Food to Revel in

And now, at last I had found the way, or thought I had. At the next darkness of the moon I would find out whether my years of study had been in vain. I would realize my heart's desire or I would find my hopes dashed to pieces...
- The War of the Flowers by Tad Wiliams

I have a new find!! There is this cafe on K'Road called Revel and they have heaps of vegan food! I can't believe it! The worst of it is that I used to live just round the corner from this cafe and walk past it every day on my way to work and I never even went inside!

I didn't really look at the menu but the cabinet was filled with delicious vegan delights. I spent ages trying to decide what I wanted (okay, to be honest, what I really wanted was to have ALL of it!). In the end I decided on this...


A mini chocolate cake with berries and a lush chocolate icing. It was divine. I cannot even begin to describe how delicious this was.

The next time I stopped by I was in need of a takeaway lunch and their vegan sandwich caught my eye.


Filled with a decent amount of veges and hummus, it was perfect heated slightly in the microwave at work.

I couldn't go past a sweet treat too...


...a Chocolate and Pumpkin cupcake! It had a kind of a jafa flavour to it which was cool.

I got an apricot and almond cupcake another time I popped past Revel which was pretty good (although there was something about the taste that was a bit weird...too much almond flavour perhaps?).

Now, beans on toast always remind me of this old TV ad about being a poor student living on baked beans and weetbix and many weekend lunches as kids of baked beans in our toastie pies. I'm guessing it was probably a Watties ad but I can't remember. Anyway, I was in Revel this morning and feeling rather down and in need of a good breakfast and I was faced with a choice and one of them was beans on toast. Normally I would pass this by because it always seems to sound so boring but after Moira from An Auckland Vegan gave them such a highly favourable review on her blog I thought I'd give them a chance (after all, she did say it was the best vegan brunch in Auckland which seemed like pretty high praise).


So what did I think? Actually, I think it might quite possibly be one of the best breakfasts I've ever had! Sorry about the bad photograph but basically it's a mixture of several different kinds of beans in a delicious sauce of some kind sitting on deliciously thick grainy bread and topped with a whole lot of different toasted nuts. I cannot even begin to describe its awesomeness! Definitely improved my morning! Eat this if you are ever anywhere near Revel okay?

By the time I'd finished breakfast it was hosing down with rain outside and I wasn't really that keen to head out on my way so I picked up a sweet treat to look forward to once I got home.


This is their Midnight Chocolate Cake (well, it's more of a tart really but hey, names aren't really that important). Very rich but oh so good. Chocolate could brighten my day just about any time!

Keep up the good awesome

'I could tell you my adventures - beginning from this morning,' said Alice a little timidly; 'but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.'

- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

I'm so excited I can barely sit still to type this...my piano arrived a couple of hours ago!! It stayed at my parents when I moved out but I finally have room for it where we're living now so after many years apart (okay, so I would go round to their place pretty much just to visit my piano!) we are finally reunited...and I've been playing pretty much nonstop since then!


The keys look like slabs of white chocolate with licorice strips...I must be hungry! Actually, it reminds me of when I was quite little and my eldest brother made me a piano cake for my birthday. Mum joked it was his first engineering masterpiece!

Anyway, as you may know, J and I were away last weekend competing in the Great Lake Relay round Lake Taupo. The night before we left for I had dinner out with a group of friends at Thai Eden. Thai has to be one of my favourite foods. You can't go past a creamy coconut milk curry filled with tofu and veges. Fills in all the gaps.


By the time we ordered I was starving so I shared a starter with another of my friends doing the relay with us...Pak Tod, a selection of tempura vegetables with sweet chilli sauce. They even had tempura baby corn!


For my mains I decided to indulge in the Panang Tofu, a rich coconut milk red curry. When I make curry at home I don't use nearly as much coconut milk so it's a real treat when I go out to a Thai restaurant. Not the best of currys but hey, it was still delicious.

The weather was not looking too promising when I got up on Friday and our drive down to Taupo was often in torrential rain. But arriving in Taupo itself the weather seemed to have cleared up quite a bit and there was definite promise of some easing in the weather. Our event started at 2am (the start times depend on the grade you are entered in - anywhere from 9pm on Friday night to 3am on Saturday morning) on the Saturday morning so the night crew (J and I included) were up by 1am and piling into our support van to get to the start.

The early hours saw us pulling out some crazy "encouragement" for the other runners and our team mates. "Keep up the good awesome," and "The sun rises from the East for everyone," were some of the most memorable ones.

Fueling up on a lara bar before my first run at around 6am - a 10.1km leg mostly of steady uphill as the sun came up. See the leg here. The best thing about this leg is you start off in the pitch black and as you run the sun slowly comes up so by the time you get to the transition area it's broad daylight!


Above was our first view of the lake after several hours on the road. It must have been about 9:30am but it felt like the afternoon considering we'd been up since 1am! The first part of the course winds along farm roads and it's not until you turn onto SH41 and head up the hill that you finally get a view of the lake (and a sense of scale of what you're doing since you can't see the other side of the lake except for the odd misty shadow on the horizon.


Above is the grind of Hatepe Hill, a steady 3km climb in the middle of my 6.1km second leg around 1 in the afternoon. Pictures always make hills look flatter than they really are! You can see the leg here.


Here's Lake Taupo near the finish line as we wait for our final runner to come past. What was scheduled to be a cyclone never really turned into much. Look, blue sky!

Coming in with a total time of 13 hours 1 minute and 39 seconds we came 30th out of 157 running teams and were nearly 40 minutes faster than last year - we rock!

Speaking of the lara bar I mentioned above, Katie from Chocolate-Covered Katie (which is a truly awesome name because being covered in chocolaty goodness would be delicious...and did that just sound really weird?) has this amazing competition going at the moment to win a box of Jocalat bars (they're kind of like the chocolaty, decadent version of lara bars). Go here for more details.

Back to my piano now...

I promise I'm not crazy

It's important to know that no one can give you self-confidence; nor can you give it to someone else. You can't inherit it or hand it on to your heirs. You can't borrow or steal it; nor can anyone take it from you. Confidence is something that only you can give yourself.

- The Confident Woman by Marjorie Hansen Shaevitz

How do you fit training into an incredibly busy schedule? Well, you incorporate it into your daily commute (okay, not every day but once a week?). J meets me at Mt Eden and we run the rest of the way together. The best thing is some times I get to pass traffic. That's enough to keep you buzzing the whole way home.

Of course, with all that training you've gotta have some good food to fuel you up. Training often doesn't leave us that much time to cook anything exciting during the week so nights with takeaways or eating out are always exciting. There's a food court near J's work in town that has claypot.

What could be in here I wonder?

It's spicy tofu and vegetables on rice - one of my all time favourite dishes to have when we eat out. I love how the rice goes crispy on the edges of the pot!

Pizza is also awesome. Though nothing beats homemade pizza, Hell is not too bad. Plus they do kumara chips which I can never pass up.

Here is their vegan pizza, with the enticing name of Sinister, with added mushrooms and cashews served with kumara chips and sweet chilli sauce on the side. Awesome (and quick)! Of course, this only shows about half of what I ate. It's pretty easy to devour an entire snack-sized pizza especially when you've had a hard day.

Of course, I have been concocting the odd thing in the kitchen...cupcakes!

These are based (very loosely) on the hazelnut cupcakes from VCTOTW. They're more almond and coconut cupcakes with mocha vanilla mousse filling and a plain vanilla icing. I've never seen hazelnut meal in our shops and I didn't have the time to make my own so almond it was.

Above is a terrible photo of the inside. We now have a whole lot of mousse in the freezer waiting to be eaten. Don't you love how battle-worn our kitchen bench looks?!

It's only a couple of days to go until the Taupo Relay and I'm already lacking in sleep. Since the grade we're entered in starts at 2am on Saturday I'm not exactly hopeful of catching it up before the race. I can't wait but it sure could get interesting with a tropical cyclone on its way!

Anyway, for those of you interested, we spent our Valentines day putting in some mountain bike training. Funny that!

Just a little stroll around the mountain

The sun struggled feebly with the mist, tried to impart a little warmth here, shed a little light there, but clearly today was going to be just another long haul across the sky.
- Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams

J and I have several events that we are training for in the coming months which is certainly keeping us busy (and in a constant state of tiredness).

The next big event is the Great Lake Relay, a running race around the edge of Lake Taupo in the central North Island. J and I are the team organisers (part of this role is organising who does what leg which is always a logistical nightmare). Another part of our role is getting the team motivated (or at least trying our hardest!). As most of our 10-person team is based in Auckland some of us have been doing team training runs round One Tree Hill in the weekend (random fact: U2 wrote a song named after this hill).

The best part of the team training is, of course, the indulgence afterwards...


How about waffles with berries, various indulgent sauces and topped off with various chunks of chocolate? I love my waffle maker (so does my team naturally!) ☺

Our last team run was on Friday, Waitangi Day over here. What better way to finish off a training run than with a traditional kiwi BBQ in the summer sun.


An awesomely huge vege burger filled with baby spinach, avocado, grilled mushroom, onion, grated sheese, J's Mum's spicy tomato sauce and this very tasty new vege pattie J's Aunty discovered for us in the freezer section of the supermarket. We stocked up and bought several packets!

As an aside, at the Ocean Noise presentation last night all the food was vegetarian...I was quite amazed! Also impressive was the almost full house. Yay!

Whale songs and leftovers

Every day, I choose, sometimes gamely and sometimes against the moment’s reason, to be alive. Is that not a rare joy?
- The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon

Not that there are many people who read this from Auckland, but if you are then please think about coming to this event. Whales are embedded deep into traditional Maori and Pacific history and culture and thus into the hearts of many New Zealanders. At work I have been working with images taken during the recent whale stranding on Perkins Island in Tasmania and it's pretty heartbreaking.

Right...moving on to food.

Despite having quite a lot of refried beans and nachos while I was away one of the first meals I made upon returning home was nachos!


Admittedly these were a lot more luxurious than those on the trip with Pico de Gallo flavoured corn chips and sheese grilled in the oven. Gotta be one of my favourite dinners (plus it makes leftovers for lunch the next day although J and I have to fight over who actually gets to take the leftovers)!

The smell of curry is always tempting and when you don't have much lying around in the pantry and fridge, well a chickpea curry solves everything (we always have some green curry paste in the fridge - it's so strong that you can only use one heaped teaspoon at a time!).


Curry is also one of the prime candidates for leftovers since I always end up making heaps. Leftovers for lunch at work are like paradise!

It's been really hot here recently so often you don't feel in the mood for something heavy at dinner. Homemade pizza is awesome (I swear the heat is turning my brain to slush so I can't form decent sentences)! 


The dough mixture I make is usually enough for two medium-sized pizzas (one for J and one for me) and if you're good and don't eat the whole thing at once then you'll get leftovers (yes, I like leftovers)!

I haven't had quiche in a long time and had been eyeing up one of the recipes in The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook.


I couldn't be bothered making the crust so I decided to attempt it without one. It kind of fell apart when I tried to serve it (hence no pictures of it on a plate 'cause it looked more like a scramble by then!) but I still thought it tasted okay. Could definitely do with some tweaking though.

Of course, if you don't really want to cook, you can always pop to your nearest Indian grocer (we have two only a few minutes walk away!) and pick up something there. Put some couscous on while you pop out and by the time you're home and your meal is heated it'll be ready to serve!