A little Rumpass in Bumpass!

Well it was a great weekend for my season opener. With several things on the agenda for the weekend, I couldn’t have asked for the whole To-Do list to have gone much smoother!

The weekend started on Friday afternoon (after school) with the Boss going and renting/picking up our hotel for the weekend. See, primarily we were heading down to Bumpass, Virginia (about 90 minutes south of Washington, DC) for the Olympic distance race on Saturday morning, BUT we were also signed up for the USAT Officials Certification clinic Friday night and Sunday morning (sprint distance race). Both the Boss and I decided that it would be crazy stressful to try to drive back and fourth each day for the different events…instead we decided that RV-ing (for the first time) would be a better idea for the race weekend!!!

The Boss slash “Driver” for the weekend

In my opinion, sometimes the most stressful part of racing is making sure that you ACTUALLY make it to the start of the race! You I spend over half of my night’s sleep waking up every 20 minutes wondering… “is it time to go?”, “$%&! what time is it”, “should I get up now and try to go to the bathroom?”, “go back to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeep”. By staying over night in the RV, it was near impossible to miss the start of the race… heck we were parked right where all of the athletes driving into the race were going to park; we could hear the cars as they filled in and athletes un-racked their bikes.

YUP, our plan was genius. Not only did we cut out the early morning commute, but we all enjoyed cutting out some of the other “race morning stresses”- including packing up the car, the dreaded “did I bring everything?”, mixing nutrition, parking, AND let us not forget… having your very own Porta-Potty!

Ahhh morning light…

Race morning accommodations

   Bike setup

I have to say, it was REALLY awesome laying in bed  on race morning, all cozy under the covers, and being able to hear outside the other athletes’ cars pull up, doors opening an closing, athletes stretching out a LONG drive from DC, Maryland, or Richmond. HA, I think that sleeping in that late the morning of a race is a close to cheating as I’ll ever let myself get! “Oh, I’ll just hit snooze one more time!”

Finally I did pull myself out of bed and decided it was time to wonder down to the packet pick-up (a mere 100 meters away) to set up transition.

Transition is all set up! Which I think now is a great time to insert a quick note about transition setup:

One of the more functional rules I picked up at the USAT officials clinic was regarding transition setup. This is an area that clearly freaks people out when a USAT official is coming near, and to be fair this is a section that is not a clearly defined as some people might like. The BEST way to know where all of your crap should go is to remember “Wheel down, Gear Down”. Here when I say “Gear” I’m talking all of the gear that you need to complete the race. Bike shoes, running shoes, race belt, race nutrition…. and for some of you… hair brush, lip gloss, sun screen, PB&J sandwich, and wash bucket!!!

I even put together a little diagram for you… do NOT hate on my bicycle! Please note that it does NOT matter what wheel is touching the ground. AND unless there is a sticker or tape on one side of the bar that has your name/ race # on it, it does not matter what side of the rack your bike is positioned on.

yes those are shoes and race belt on the towel

Back to MY race! Where was I?…. right, transition is all set up, and I’m heading over to the water for a dip before my wave start. Also this put me in a good position to swim out and see the start of the Boss’s swim start.

Over all I was really happy with my swim and bike, although the swim was a little bumpy and I did swallow a good helping of nuclear water… we’ll refer back to that during the “run” portion of the race… the race up until T2 was pretty successful!

What happened in T2 you might ask? Well remember that nice looooong sleep I had the night before, and casually getting up and wondering down to the race site, and how everything was a little too nonchalant for a race morning? Yeah, well I didn’t realize that I had actually left my necklace on during the race. A white gold, diamond pendent necklace that my parents gave me for graduation. Not exactly something that I would rip off and deal with finding later. Yep… it did what any necklace would do during a bike ride when leaned completely forward in aero position… yep… it tangled itself into my helmet strap clip… YEP I found this out when trying to unclip the aero helmet. For any Non-triathletes reading this, transition is a wild exchange between sports where you try to go as fast (and smooth) as you can to take off the equipment from the last sport and “transition” into the new gear for the next sport… also an opportunity to pick up time of slower athletes who like to sit down and dry their feet! So now I find myself having to find the clasp, get my hands steady, undo the clasp, untangle the chain…wooop don’t drop the pendant… find a place to put the necklace so I can find it later… and run out to the run course!

THEN, I finally depart T2 to start my run… the first 1mile was okay. Then miles 2-4 were God awful as my stomach decided that it didn’t want to play anymore. Let me insert here that my legs were feeling GREAT! There is nothing worse than getting a bad stitch/ cramp that you can’t run out. I guess I took in too much “hydration” on that swim course… it is nuclear water after all, what did I really think was going to happen! Then, as I come to the water station at the last turn around I had a saving moment when a simple movement of turning my head brought about projectile pukeage (still running of course!). After that I ran a few more steps, then a few more, and finally I thought “Wow I feel GREAT”. From here I ran as fast as my little tootsies would carry me back to home plate. I even heard one man that I passed say to the guy next to him “where is she going?”. I think I averaged around 6:10 the whole way back! I was really hoping to finish the 10k portion of the race with an average of around a 6:35 pace… instead I was just about a minute off with a 7:24 pace…OUCH! But at the same time on that last home stretch I managed to pick off 7 other girls in my age group! (Yes I counted!)

Almost to the finishers shoot!

After the race the Boss came to congratulate me… I was kinda peeved at the time with how the run went, and I’m sure I wasn’t super friendly with him at first. But I also knew that he had a great race (I saw him on one of the turn around loops… did the math, and realized he was in the lead pack) so I turned the attention to him as we went to eat and wait for his award!

Well I guess it was a good thing that I sucked it up for that last spurt on the run… because that ladies and gentlemen was the difference between 10th place…. and 3rd!!

Delightfully surprised picking up my award!

Then of course there’s the Boss on the right with his 2nd place age group finish!

That’s about all folks… I had a great weekend! I highly recommend the RV strategy… I think it was the great nights sleep that gave us both the edge on our competitors!

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Buy 1 get 2 Free!

On Monday, I was perusing at the near by Harris Teeter and found a strawberry aisle that said “1lbs California Strawberries, buy one- get two free”…. WHAT?? My first, and logical, reaction was “Are they still good to eat? Why would they give me 3 pounds of strawberries for the price of one?” Then, my second and most important reaction was “Strawberry Short Cake”!!!

So onward I went with my 3 packages of strawberries left to scratch my head on how can I put a twist on my strawberry shortcake? So I went straight to one of my favorite cupcake books to look up a recipe that I have wanted to try for some time now. This is a recipe for a edible cupcake bowl; originally geared toward an ice cream cupcake, but I figured with all of the whipped cream and strawberries this would be good for holding it all together!

Here’s how it starts:

Then, after just a short time in the oven, you get the honors of pulling and peeling the hot sugars off of the parchment paper and then trying to shape it into a bowl before it takes on its incredibly fast, world record, “hardening ability”!

Hot HOT Hot!!

The “bowl” did not work out quite as planned 

Then it was time to get the cupcakes made… plus I really just want to take this opportunity to show off the picture of me mastering my 1-handed egg break! Yeah… I got that down on the first try! And there were zero egg shells to be found in the batter!

Voila!

Once all of the cooking was done it was time to decorate the cake!

Yummo!

And here I present to you Bertie’s Bakery’s first attempt at a contemporary approach to Strawberry Shortcake. I know it may look a little blah, but it sure tasted good!

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A Trip to Home Depot!

After 1 year and 8 months, The Boss and I are going to be sharing mailing addresses! Since I’ve basically lived at his place for the last year, we’ve decided that it only makes sense to make it official. So I’ll permanently move my junk over in a month or so when the lease it up… but before that can happen, we need to make some more space! Doing this will involve BOLT CUTTERS!

Side note: The conversation that took place that spurred the “let’s move in together” started when of a mean neighbor at my apartment complex taped a really obnoxious note to my car. The neighbor was cursing at me for taking a parking space when in their mind “I didn’t even LIVE there”. Our Conversation went a little like this:

Me: “Read this note some jerk pasted to my car. They didn’t recognize my vehicle, so they assumed that I don’t live at the apartments”.

The Boss: “But you don’t don’t live there anymore.”

Me:”What? I do live there. I pay rent each month!”

The Boss: “Yeah, but you don’t actually live there”

Me: “$850 a month says I LIVE THERE! and I don’t officially live here?!?!”

The Boss “I kinda forget that you have another apartment since you’re always over here. Sorry… do you want to live here?”

Annnd that is as romantic as it gets in these parts folks! Back to “Making space”.

Original state of the closet

Everything OUT of closet!… “Keepers”.

Garbage from closet…Destination Garbage!

Of course you have to get everything out the closet before you can build anything good inside of the closet!

Then it takes a little bit of elbow grease and teamwork to make it all come together in the end!

Teamwork!

And the finished product!

I know that about now you are awing in my success with this closet. But before we get too far gone in day dreaming about the ease of “spring cleaning”, let me show you a little bit of the back work that went into clearing out stuffy debris that has been brewing for, I’d say, about 6 YEARS! Do you know what builds up over six years? let me show you:

The Boss… not too enthused about getting sucked into my Spring Project!

Off to the Recycling Center!

After a long day of hard work, we did something that we haven’t done for years (we actually both did the math…it’s been 6+ years)

Yes we did!…

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Tastes Like Compost!

So The Boss of the house has left for a week of work on the West Coast… leaving me the kitchen! If he only knew the trouble that I get into when he’s gone, I swear he’d never leave (at least without turning on the spy cam!). So what will I do in this week of bliss with an entire kitchen to myself? I’ve been reading a few new (to me) blogs, and this one guy I think is great…The Amateur Gourmet. He had posted what LOOKED like a lot of fun to bake and experiment with, “The Compost Cookie”.

Now if you are not really sure what is meant by the a “compost cookie”, you probably should stay away from Dictionary.com for their definition of what the term compost means.

Compost- a mixture of various decaying organic substances, as dead leaves or manure.

Yikes, with that in mind, the main idea of this compost cookie is to take an array of ingredients ranging from Salty to Sweet and compile them into a great cookie batter for a mess of good taste!

Here goes:

The Ingredients

The Goods

The carefully balanced Sweets to Salties

Basically I found anything that has been lingering in the cupboards over the last few months that you really don’t want to toss out (but you know deep down that as soon as they can be deemed “stale” they’re gone!) and quite literally tossed them in the compost!

In my stash of Salties:

Utz Thin Pretzels

Salted Pistachios

Planters Salted peanuts

In my stash of Sweets ALL that is GOOD!

Dark Chocolate Twix Bar

Toll House Milk Chocolate- Chocolate chips

Raisins

Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Bar

Then you have to “incorporate” all of the basic cookie ingredients (sugars, butters, eggs…) AND THEN once everything is incorporated you get to whip the hell out of them for 10 minutes! 10 minutes? Wow… okay.

The Incorporating Steps

I did not get a picture of the wild fluffiness that presented itself after 10 Minutes of mayhem… I was too excited to put the Goods in the mix!

Yummo!

While I have to say that the cookies were fun to make… batter tasted GREAT… There is a solid let down that you have to freeze the dough for an hour! A little anticlimactic if you ask me! Anyways, in my hour of waiting what did I do? Did I clean up the mess I had made in the kitchen? Nope! I sat and read further into The Amateur Gourmet’s Compost Cookie Comments. I continuously read that the cookies go flat, the cookies go flat, the cookies are not as soft as people had hoped, one person even said she was “mystified” at how hers came out so flat, burnt, and chewy! Oh NO… I’m thinking this is going to be a huge let down. How can I correct this problem before it happens to me? Well if the problem is the dough spreads too much, leading to flat, chewy, crispy cookies, then don’t let the dough spread! Genius! So I took the frozen balls of cookie dough, and placed them in a muffin tray…

Well, they certainly didn’t flatten out! The size and softness of the cookie was actually quite nice! With all of that being said and done… the cookies tasted like crap Compost… I really would not make these again! I’ll stick to my Good Ol’ cookie recipe, and change up the fixin’s if I’m feeling like! Valiant effort though!

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Turkey Cupcakes… Gobbled in record time!

So I’m really only starting to get into this whole “blogging” trend, so pardon the fact that Thanksgiving was months ago!… I didn’t know how to blog back then!

So the morning started with our annual Turkey Trot 5 miler. I love the Turkey Trot for the simple fact that somehow by running 5 miles in the morning it excuses the mass amounts of Turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, wine, veggies, more wine, rolls, pumpkin pie, and sweet potato pie that one can stuff into their body!

With the race under my belt I made my back to the kitchen to fight for my counter space! If you have two cooks in your house you know where I’m coming from!!!

And this was only the start…

 

I found my own little nook to work in, but somehow I was scammed into peeling potatoes first? And then somehow I was booted out all together, and resorted to the kitchen table…

If it is unclear, the plate on the lower right contains the Turkey’s Gobblers!

Not a whole lot of space, but I made it work! Yes, I know the main course takes priority, but with so many people coming over I felt the biggest priority should be making sure that every one knew where to sit! And thus we have name tags at the table!

The turkeys took a lot of time, but everyone was more than impressed with their very own edible name tag and turkey.

The food was great, wine was a plenty, and the company of fellow runners makes this one of my favorite meals of the year! And to be clear, I was indeed caught several times while sitting at the table…admiring my own work. Gobble Gobble.

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My 1st time… at the Magnolia Bakery

Some of you might be unaware that this heavenly bakery exists in NYC, but some of you might be very, painfully,  belly achingly aware of the Magnolia Bakery. I have been in love with baking for many many years, and cupcakes have been the front runner of my ambitions! One quick trip to the Big Apple, and my love for the kitchen was further intensified.

  Deliciousness from Magnolia Bakery!!

This bakery is open until midnight on the weekends because it sells thousands of cupcakes a day along with other incredible decadents. We visited the bakery on two different days just to experience the crowds at different times. Well there was no difference between 11:00pm at night and 11:00am! Lines upon lines waiting to get their taste of the famous desserts.

Now I have had the latest edition of the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook since the summer, but since I have been so pleased with my own cupcake recipes I have only dabbled with their “other” desserts. Upon return to my home kitchen I felt it was time to break open the cupcake recipes!!! Mmmmm did they ever turn out delicious!

 

My rendition of the “Vanilla Chocolate Cupcake” 

Well that is it from my bakery for now. Be safe and eat cake!

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New Meaning for the Penguin Suit

Good friends of mine are GETTING MARRIED!!! And since they are going with a “smaller, more intimate” wedding we decided to throw them a party of our own! Lots of people chipped in to bring appetizers, salads, MEAT, and other Pot Luck food sorts. Then of course, the the dessert category (for the most part) was left up to me… lots of pressure! So I put my thinking cap on and really wanted to give something special to the Mr. and Mrs. to be!

I went to the drawing board to get some ideas…

Top Hats for the Gentlemen

With all the wedding accessories in place, it was time to create!

 

I present to you the Bride and the Grooms…

And, for the record, that was the an ENTIRE afternoon well spent! I had a blast creating these little creatures, and everyone at the party had a great time playing with eating them!

….and they all lived Happily Ever After!

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