The first time was from running in the halls. 'Swhy they tell you not to!

What I really love about how I jog right now is, there are double the milestones. See, I have a "speed" run, where I get to finish under 10:00 miles! I have long runs, where I get to run over 4 miles! And I have, um, the "miscellaneous" day, where I do things like forgetting that the human body includes one of the most sophisticated cooling mechanisms of all living things, and wind up jogging in a t-shirt carrying ten pounds of sweat. But then I can pretend that day didn't count.

All on a treadmill, of course. Wouldn't want to be serious, or anything.

So, yesterday, I hit 4.25 miles, and to celebrate, I... stumbled outward on my right foot and can't rotate it without soreness, now. But after THAT, there was a running shoe producer giving anyone who asked a full foot analysis (to determine the idea level of support in their shoe) and a free t-shirt. Awesome!

Oh, the twisting? Pah, nothing to see here. It's a chronic problem, and it's already much better than yesterday. We won't dignify it with our usual histrionics. Today.

No, I don't want new running shoes. I'm actually quite happy with what I've got now, and ever since I started using cords in place of actually tying the laces, all of the pressure pain on top of my feet has vanished. Still, while I'm always reluctant to take advantage of an obvious sales tactic when I have no intention of making a purchase... they had a foot scanner! Geez, it was the coolest thing ever. Back, conscience! Begone with you.

And the results! A whole lot of "average," actually - average ankle flexibility (with a sprain? Am I a superwoman, or are the salespeople mildly indifferent?); neutral leg axis; normal connective tissue flexibility. I do over-pronate a bit, and I've got a narrow foot with a high arch, which excites the heck out of me because I believe it's the least common foot type, but on the other hand, it probably explains why I've been twisting my ankles so regularly and severely that my whole foot turned purple during summer camp before ninth grade.

Hey, did I tell you about the time my whole foot turned purple?! ...yes? Many times, and always unsolicited? Oh, go stick your head in the sand.

A task for us with stunted olfactory abilities.

Step One: Chop up extremely cheap organ meat.

Step Two: Combine meat with chopped/freeze dried vegetables.

Step Three: Cook until soft.

Step Four: Mix in some cooked rice.

Step Five: Inform your dog that she's luckier than anyone else she is bound to meet in the near future.

The hardest part is shoving the cat away with the side of your foot.

I, um, don't actually have a Darling Only Child.

It's like the setup to an old joke:

What did you eat for breakfast? Chirashi-zushi.
What did you eat for lunch? Chirashi-zushi.
What did you eat for dinner? Two helpings of chirashi-zushi.
What did you do all night? Slept an hour and a half later than usual and woke up with unprecedented Foggy Brain, why do you ask?

Clearly, my version loses momentum on the punchline, but yeah. This stuff was tasty.

It really started a few weeks ago, when a Minimalist column focused on raw fish-less sushi. Now, look, I've been around the block, sushi-wise - I've had it prepared a la carte with sea urchin, salmon roe, and squid; I've played chicken with conveyor belt sushi, grabbing what appears to be onions on a blanket of pink foam resting on it's white rice bed; my crab and miso-loving heart has been seduced into ordering a place of "kani-miso" sushi, only to recall too late that A: The Japanese eat EVERY part of anything from the ocean, and B: "miso" can also mean "brains." And it cost me a buck fifty for two tiny pieces and I was surrounded by Japanese friends who had been too polite to ask if I knew what I was ordering, so yes, I have eaten crab brains.

That said, even in Japan, where they sell clearly marked sashimi-quality fish at every grocery store, I never tried to prepare my own raw-fish sushi; it just feels wrong. This is something you leave up to the professionals. I did, however, try my hand at inari-zushi, little packets of vinegared rice stuffed into sweetened fried tofu packets. The recipe I followed had me mix the rice with seasoned hijiki seaweed, which didn't do much for flavor or even texture, but created a peppered effect and probably provided a few vitamins or a gram of fiber or something.

So yeah, this was old news to me, yet it struck a cord: removing the raw fish seemed a tidy way to eliminate the skeevy factor that keeps many from attempting to branch out into a new - by which I mean, long since integrated and increasingly popular in the US - cuisine. And thus, lately I've been promising everyone and anyone that should they ever be fortunate enough to find themselves at my dinner table, I would "make them sushi rice." Everyone! Anyone! Piles of sour, sweet, and starchy buried under fresh, crisp cucumber, creamy, rich avocado, and not to worry, because even the nori seaweed shall, for one night only, remain verbatim.

And then mom defrosted some fake crab meat and I figured, what they hey, tonight's the night.



With memories of the colorful vinegared rice topped with slices of seafood that always seemed to take on an air of celebration at my dorm back in Tokyo (and that I, myself, always eyed with a wary disappointment - adventurous eating is still pretty new to me, too!), I immediately combed the ever reliable Cookpad for chirashi-zushi recipes (and, later, kinshi tamago - strips of thin omelet). The name literally means "sprinkled sushi," and the result looks not unlike a confetti cake. Look - it takes work. I seriously simplified my version, yet I probably spent a good hour and a half thinly slicing and parboiling carrots and snap peas; straining cornstarch-stabilized eggs to make thin omelets to be rolled up and cut into julienne; boiling konbu seaweed (YES, the Japanese use a lot of seaweed) and dried shiitake mushrooms in their own soaking liquid with soy sauce and sugar, then slicing those up, too. I steamed some rice - 2 cups of water to 1.5 of dry grain, people, if you don't want to eat mush - then cut in a quarter cup of vinegar, a couple tablespoons of sugar, and a couple teaspoons of salt, before mixing in the strips of egg and vegetable and letting it all sit a few minutes more. I served it with the crab on the side. If I had wanted to be really fancy, I'd have topped it with pearls of salmon roe and briefly boiled shrimp and served it as part of a huge bento lunch to celebrate my Darling Only Child's latest school club gathering under a cherry blossom tree in full bloom. However, for a late spring dinner with my mom when the weather is convinced that it's mid-summer already, I think I went comfortably beyond "well enough" last night.

Notice that I gave all the measurements for the rice, itself, and nothing else. If you don't have an hour and a half  in your spare pocket, consider going for 20 minutes. Mix in a few tablespoons of sesame seeds, then top it with thinly sliced cucumber and cherry tomatoes, then tell everyone about it. The stuff is tasty.

I made it to 3, at least. I mean, I'm not THAT smart.

I learn so much about running every time I get on the treadmill.

Like, today, I learned that when it's 90º Farenheit already at 8 AM and you're running indoors and you need to get your bangs trimmed and you haven't done your laundry yet so you just put on an oversized t-shirt and your jogging bra's on the snug side and you forgot to get a drink of water so all you've had since 9 PM the previous night is a cup of fully caffeinated coffee, and for that matter your feet were a little stiff and you're trying to run medium speed for a quarter mile longer than usual?

You're pretty lucky that you made it to the water fountain before common sense smacked you senseless, because clearly, you weren't doing anything with those senses.

See? Now my fancy book smarts are supplemented with awkward memories of the guy in the parking lot reassuring me that, "At least you worked up a sweat!" Us girls, we pride our sweatiness. ("Sweatiness" might not be a vivid enough adjective. Think, front row of the killer whale performances at Sea World. Be sure to summon your olfactory imagination.)

Instant gratification.

I don't always wait forever to follow through on my Brilliant Plans.

Moving to Japan? Well, let's just say that after the idea struck me, I spent a good six years with a sore cheek. Tasting new foods? The goal was to start that at ten years old, which seemed SUPER mature at age seven, but it turns out that twenty was a better fit. Writing enough to justify attempting it for a living? Er, this would be day three, attempt... forty? Along those lines.

And that's just the mundane! All of the stories that were never written, the projects never started! I'm itching to knit a pair of knickers surrounded by tuille, and to create a batch of "I can NOT be the first to think of it" Taco-yaki. I have every intent of following through as soon as possible, but don't wear out your mouse hitting the "Reload" button in your eagerness for pictures.

Every now and then, though, something comes along that actually happens, and happens quickly. It helps if the supplies are easily obtained; it helps if the process is so straight-forward that it's finished before I have a chance to hesitate.

Enter moyashi.



I'd considered this before (and there I go disassembling the foundation of my very point), but the catalyst was an entry from The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl in which she waxes poetic on sprouting. There were canning jars in the sink; they sold mung beans for spouting at Whole Foods; I'm a little hooked on weeding right now. All this was enough to turn my thumb green for the four days it takes to make a batch o' bean spouts.



When living in Japan, I had a period of slight infatuation with these critters. They're pretty pleasant to munch on, with a watery crunch evocative of snap peas (though cooking mellows out the raw flavor and, frankly, is the route to take if you're less lazy than I.) They're all kinds of healthy; beans are good enough, but there's a mindset that sprouting grains and legumes makes them easier to digest and increases absorption of nutrients. (Or so I've heard, and Google kind of affirms that, well, it's holism. Beans are still healthy!) They're - what's the word? CHEAP - even in the US, you'll be hard pressed to find a hefty bag for more than two bucks, but there were places in Japan throwing around half a pound for 20 yen, around 15 CENTS. (The seeds resulted in a bit more than that, and all at the low low price of $2.50. I wonder if it'd work with normal mung beans.) And, finally, they're great in soups or stir fries, the type of veggie that sucks up all the flavor around it and adds a little texture and heft for your trouble.

Plus, they're adorable! Lookit!



Doesn't it just remind you of a mussel peeping out of it's shell? (And nothing else - ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE - stop thinking like that!) Precious, precious, oh I love it.

I may be the only one raised in this country to think so. When I pressed my Facebook network to tell me what to do with a jar of mung bean sprouts, the very first commenter said he would "throw them out." A subsequent brilliant mind seconded his opinion.

So I just parboiled them, then mixed in a little soy sauce and a little curry powder and everyone was very happy. And the naysayers can't have any. So there.

Priming the pump.

Yesterday, I went to a party populated predominantly by the family of a family friend; today, my darling great-aunt and great-uncle from out of town visited. None of these are people I converse with frequently, and thus, I spent half the weekend answering some variation of, "What are you going to do with your life?" Innocent questions born of good intentions, no doubt, but I was no good at answering as an 18-year-old high school grad, and eight years later, I'm not much better. Quite frankly, if asked today, I'd probably say... I want to write, or to study nutrition. If none of that works out, I'll settle for baking bread.

I'm back in DIY-mode for the time being, and I've got a spiral scarf and a half-finished bikini top and plans for a frilly skirt, once I find a pattern; and I've been weaving sandles, and some of them aren't even half bad, and the next pair WILL have a Minnie Mouse theme, just you wait; and I've finally learned that if I run two miles at top speed one day, and four miles at skip-to-my-lou pace the next, then no one set of muscles gets burnt out, so the jogging is back on! Mostly, though, I'm back into the cooking loop. The past week alone, we've had Japanese red beans and sticky rice, known as osekihan and excellent for creating choking hazards; ultra soft but hardly squishy hot dog buns, which made the supermarket ketchup-topped hot dogs within halfway healthy, per Michael Pollan himself; baby castella, officially christening my puff pancake pan only weeks after insisting I'd do so any day now; and, as of today, Smitten Kitchen's brown butter Rice Krispie Treats, and good luck not following suit now that you know they exist, even if it takes you, um, seven months what is WRONG with me.

I find it hard to accept that I can't do escapism for a living. If all else fails, couldn't I live with my crafts and work the rest of the time?



Pst. Jingle-jangle.

Ultimatum!

I want to be a writer, and writers must write.

(I know I'm stealing that quote from someone, or a lot of someones, but given that I have no idea from whom, let's just attribute it to... IOU?)

So! Rather than trying to think up topics from my life, like four mile jogs, or amazing hot dog buns, or amazing-er kaiser rolls, or job hunting For Serious This Time? I got a book of writing prompts. And I WILL be using it, and I WILL be promising entries on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It's part of my job now.

Honestly, if the little couch potato can run a ten minute mile, she should be able to write at least HALF as often as she did in tenth grade!