New York, New York

Well Mr. T and I finally made it to NYC while we during our tour of New England. We decided to stay on Staton Island and get tickets to a Broadway show, Wicked. We left on Friday and planned on staying until Monday.

After a grueling travel day, Mr. T and I decided to eat at Bonobo's in NYC. So we took the S.I Ferry over to Manhattan then boarded a train, then found Bonobo's (an all raw vegan fast food place). Anyway it seemed to hold promise. I decided on the nut pate sampler and Mr T had a nut patty over a bed of greens. My sampler was also over a bed of greens but it was not long until I was wishing that the greens to nut pate was reversed. Once back on SI, Mr T and I started to feel really ill. Fortunately nothing came "up" but lets just say our impression of Bonobo's is not good. We were disappointed to say the least.

Mr T went right to sleep when we finally got back to our hotel room after the Bonobo's experience. I however, was to nauseous to sleep so I watched the news. That is when I first heard that our show we came to see might be cancelled. Well I did not want to wake Mr T about this, but it sure made it more difficult for me to get to sleep that night. Fortunately, we will be getting a refund for our tickets!

So instead, we toured NYC. We went to the Rose Center for space and science, the metropolitan museum of art, the Guggenheim, and the Museum of Modern Art. We also went to Moo Shoes (a vegan shoe store) and picked up a book titled "A Vegan's guide to NYC 2008". Very valuable guide to have.

Since no Bway, we went and ate at Candle 79. Very nice ambiance and food, but not 20 bucks a plate nice. However I must recommend Angelicas. Food was just as good as Candle, but half the price! We tried to eat at Zen burger, but it was not open yet. Guess it helps to read the description in the book.... oops!

All in all it was a nice get away. Not very relaxing but definitely got my mind off the lab and other woes!

I packed green smoothies for Mr T and I along with salad for me with my beetnut dressing! Since it was sooooo cold out, we used our car as a fridge (too cheap to pay 15 bucks a day for a fridge in the hotel... probably would not be big enough to hold the volume of food!)

Orange Girl

At the lab they call me Orange Girl since my skin has an orange tint. This seems almost fitting since growing up I was called Pumpkin since I was born on Halloween. It is interesting how life can come to a full circle if you get what I mean. Needless to say, one of my favorite colors is orange or orange tinted things.




The day before my Bday, we went to Salem, MA -- home of the infamous witch trials in the 1600's. The town has definately played that claim to fame up! It was somewhat disturbing seeing the marketing and almost celebrating of the witch trials (a very horrible, horrible thing that happend to some very innocent people). However we must learn from our past to hopefully not repeat it. Posted above is our guide Herb, who gave us a candle lit tour of Salem (and told some haunting tales).
The Grasshopper restaurant is one of our favorite places to eat when we are around Boston. It is a wonderful vegan restaurant where one can closely eat ETL. My plate came loaded with Kale with some faux lobster. Awesome stuff!


Right around the corner is T.J. Scallewaggles, a vegan pizzeria and sub shop. We had to stop there and try some. Not ETL, but a definate treat.

Red Sux (Go Rockies!)

Well it was possibly fate that I would be living in Mass when the Red Sox played my Rockies in the World Series. So of course I had to walk and talk big the week prior to the series. But alas, I had to wear the shirt of the victors today. Ah well life goes on.... there is always next year!

This weekend was yet another busy one. I made two weeks worth of juice (collards, cabbage, apple, and carrot). I also dried 4 trays of sunflower seeds. I got the seeds from my farm. They grow a bunch and we can go and cut down the heads. Of course now I need to shell them. I will soon start doing pumpkin and other winter squash in my dehydrator. I used to do them in my oven, but sometimes I would forget about them and turn on the oven to bake something (like a pie) and they would get burnt.

Well I am off to take several baths to wash off any fibers that got on me from the Red Sox (or as we say... wet soxs) shirt. :)

More fun down at the Farm and other stuff

Wow this is a record for me. Consistant blogging. I really never kept a journal so this is a new experience. Actually I am taking a break from working on my poster and slide show for the Boston ACS meeting.

Our CSA has three pick up days: Sat, Tue, and Thur. I ususally go on Saturday to get the majority of our share. Then we go again on Tuesday to buy extra lettuce and greens to round out the week. Sometimes on Tuesday, I will do the pick your own crops, get flowers, and herbs. This Tuesday I was just planning on getting some more lettuce and flowers. But the shop must have sensed me coming because there was an unlimited supply of second tomatoes. And you guessed it, I brought home not one, but close to two flats of tomatoes. We really enjoyed the Tomato Bisque, so I thought I would try canning it. This meant going and picking some more parsley and basil.

Thought I processed all the tomatoes last night, I did not get to do the actual canning . (I had to get back to the lab and take care of an experiment).
The mixture needs to cook down more and I need to check about adding lemon juice ( tomatoes are on the cusp of being acidic enough for canning). With all of the ingredients, I filled my 7 quart PC to the brim! So tonight I am going to cook it down in batches and hopefully start the canning process. Nothing like homemade tomato soup on a cold New England night!

Its Canning Time Again

Saturday is my day to go to my CSA and pick up my share. This week I was able to choose beets! I also procured broccoli, onions, cucumbers, 4 zucchini, 4 cantelopes, 3 watermelons, radiccio, 6 lettuce heads (2 were part of the share ,the other 4 I bought), a bag of tatsoi, 6 tomatoes, and 9 ears of corn. I also bought 12 pounds of collards and red leaf kale, plus 2 boxes of blueberries. We also got to pick 1/2 pound of purple and yellow beans plus 2 quarts of cherry tomatoes. I also picked some basil to make the Tomato Bisque

They keep the beet greens attached to the beets but if other people do not want the greens, they put them in the bucket for compost. This is like a gold mine to me. I go through the compost and get all the beet greens along with the broccoli greens. I use most of these greens to make our smoothies for the week. And since last week I had made two weeks worth of juice, I was able to steam and freeze the 12 lbs of kale and collards! Yeehaw!

Also they had a lot of "second" tomatoes or "sauce" tomatoes. They told me to take as much as I wanted. So I did, an entire flat!

With all of that produce, there was only one or two things to do: make soup and sauce. I made Dr. F's Anti Cancer Soup and Tomato Bisque from the recipe section with some variations. I broiled some red peppers and 1.5 lbs of tomatoes ( I used 3 lbs total in the bisque). After broiling, I removed the skins of the peppers and tomatoes and blended away! It came out really good.

With the rest of the tomaters, I made some sauce and canned it. I mostly followed the recipe in the Ball Blue Book of preserving. Except that I used the rest of my fresh basil (and parsley) blended in. I also did not have any more onions, so that was omitted also. I did add 1 T of lemon juice to each jar before steam pressurizing. The recipe did not call for it, but the booklet that came with my canner says one should add acid to tomato products to ensure that nothing grows in the jar. We will see how it goes. But now at least I have 6 jars of no salt added tomato sauce!

The days after Ironman

Once we got back to the hotel (well after midnight), I took a warm bath to help with the leg cramps. Yeesh they were bad this time. I went to bed, but was only able to get a small amount of sleep due to the legs cramping up all night.

Fortunately the next day I had schedualed a post race massage. Yessss did that ever help. Before, my quads and hams were just giving me fits and making it difficult to walk. However after the massage, I was able to shuffle around better, albeit slowly. At the sight for the massage was the awards banquet. Since I was a participant, I was able to go and see what they had for grub (part of my entry fee). Curious to see what my money went towards, I walked into the tent. I was a tad astonished what I saw, but not necessarily surprised. Keep in mind the triathlete moto is 'to lead a healthy life' or something like that. YOu would think that they would have some nice fresh fruit or maybe whole grain something, but no. What was available for the athlete was an omlete with a big chunk of cheese in it, french toast, pastries, pasta salad, more gaterade, orange juice (like the ones they serve at school), ham, oily potatoes. Seeing this I was really glad we did not buy Tim a ticket ($30 yikes!)

After the massage, we went and walked around town. Walking around afterwards is a great way to start your recovery. Found some light grub then caught a movie. Went back to the hotel after a late dinner and watched the TdF and planned out our next few days. We decided to stay through Tuesday night at that hotel. Fortunately I had made enough green smoothies to get me through the next couple of days.


On Tuesday, we made the drive up to the Ausable Chasm. It was about an hours drive through the Adirondaks. The Ausable is on the New York side of Lake Champlain. It is a very beautiful area and well worth visiting.









As you can see, have smoothies and will travel!














We walked about 6 miles that day. We meet another IMLP competitor while there. He commented that I was sure moving pretty well since the IM. He was really limping along. I suggested to him to get a light massage. I am now more than certain and will advocate that a post race massage does wonders for the body. Of course one should not doubt the power of green smoothies!

Some more nice views of the area. One a couple of them, you are going to have to rotate them in your mind. Have not figured out how to do that on blogger yet!









On Wednesday we checked out of the hotel then went a few miles down the road to High Falls Gorge. Spent a couple of hours there walking around and taking photos. We walked probably around 3 miles.

Again, another smoothie shot. Oh yeah, gimme those lovely greens! And the waterfall was great also