Happy Day!

The sun is shining my friends! After a soul punching accumulating snow last Monday, I can not tell you how happy the sun and above freezing temperatures make me! Also making me happy is the OK from the physical therapist to start amping up the physical activity. Up until now I was ordered to only do non impact so lots of yoga, Pilates and elliptical-ling. I like doing all those but I was itching to do more. After two months of hard work we're at that point! Last night was my first time on the treadmill since before the race. I did 1.5 miles of fast walking and it wasn't bad! Definitely sore, definitely not healed all the way but the progress is encouraging!

Also making me happy right now is this.

I'm really trying to right the wrong that is so few chocolate recipes on here, especially since the hubby considers chocolate to be the other food group. Here, in all it's Dutch- processed cocoa powder glory, is Double Chocolate banana bread! I saw it on my favorite food blog, you know the one and couldn't help myself. I mean come on. It's CHOCOLATE! So the first free moment I had, which happened to be a friday I was staying home with MB, I made it! I had just bought some more dutch process which gives this "bread" it's dark, dark color and rich, intense chocolate flavor but didn't have any chocolate chunks. All I had was mini chocolate chips, figuring it would be the same dumped them in.

                            

I popped it in the oven and it smelled amazing the entire 55 minutes it cooked. I pulled it out when the tester came out clean, let it cook for 10 minutes and took it out of the the pan. Not being one to have any patience, shocking I know, I cut a slice while it was still quite hot. The flavor was good but the texture was off, It seemed under done somehow even though I knew it wasn't. Undeterred I thought "Oh, it's just to hot. I'm sure it will be great when it's cooled!". Well, it did not get better.... In fact it got worse as it cooled. It became a cold mass of mushy almost bread product.  I was crushed! It had smelled so great and I had such high hopes. I have never had a smitten kitchen recipe not turn out, never! I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I read and re-read and re-read the recipe trying to find the point that I screwed up but I couldn't. Finally the hubs came up with a theory I hadn't, maybe it was the chocolate chips. Hmm.... her recipe calls for chunks while I had used mini's. Of course! Our theory is the mini's had melted to much into the batter during the baking process and changed the consistency of the final product.

Reinvigorated, I left bananas to over ripen on the counter and tried this baby again. Just to be safe I didn't add any extra chocolate. Blasphemy I know, I wanted to make sure the cake part wasn't the issue. After smelling wonderful for another 55 minutes, I ripped that baby out of the oven, let it cool just until I could handle it without searing my fingers off and tried it again. YUM! First, let's not fool anyone here. This is a cake in a loaf form. There's no two ways about it. That given it is delicious! It's dense enough not to fall apart but not so dense that you feel like you've eaten a brick. The cocoa powder gives it a rich chocolaty taste that isn't to sweet. Honestly I would buy bananas just to make this....... and have. Twice. It's great. Make it, you won't regret it!

You'll find the recipe below. Check back soon because I finally completed a project that I found on Pintrest and it actually turned out pretty good! I'll also be talking about my future running plans! Any races I should consider?

Double Chocolate Banana Bread
(Originally from smittenkitchen.com)

3 medium- to- large very ripe bananas
1/2 cup butter- melted
3/4 cup brown sugar (dark or light will work)
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon table salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chunks or chips (Optional, but then it's not double chocolate)

Preheat Oven to 350F and butter a loaf pan.

Mash bananas well in the bottom of a large bowl. (You should have a little more than a cup) Whisk melted butter into the bananas. Add sugar, egg and vanilla, mix well. Add flour, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder to a sifter or fine mesh strainer and sift over the dry ingredients. Stir wet and dry together until just combined and then stir in chocolate chunks.

Poor into prepared pan and bake for 55-65 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10-15 minutes then remove from pan and cool on a wire rack. Serve warm or room temperature.

Banana bread will keep 4 days at room temperature.... not that it every does in my house.
Enjoy!!

To infinity and beyond!

Now that I've had time to reflect on the race, I thought I'd add my story and a bit of my perspective :-)

Getting up at 3:15 to head to the race was not really my idea of fun (especially since the time change from CA to FL was not working in my favor).  We managed to sleepwalk to the monorail, through bag checking, a portapotty stop, and make it to our starting corral.  That process easily tacked a mile or two of walking onto the race distance!  Since they were predicting hot weather, we all were drinking water to make sure that we were adequately hydrated.  Turns out that decision was a bit of a mistake: 1) We had to wait an hour after the race started to cross the starting line, 2) the lines for the portapotties were looooong, 3) there were plenty of hydration stations along the race, and 4) it was humid enough to drink the air.

Everyone was excited to cross the starting line and get moving!  We settled into our chosen walk/run ratio right from the start, and the first few miles went by pretty quickly.  Briana's janky joints started causing problems sometime in mile 3, and so we all slowed down to accommodate them.  The fog and humidity was pretty intense, but the loop through Magic Kingdom was just awesome to me - definitely one of the highlights of the race to run through Cinderella's castle and down main street!

Briana's ankle was obviously not doing well at that point, and she told me that she wanted me to finish the race no matter what.  My heart broke when she and Kyle fell behind the pacers, this was something she had trained so long and hard for, and it was so uncertain of whether she'd achieve that goal.  That was when I took off on my own to finish the race, trying to hold back tears of frustration and sadness.

I quickly settled into the walk/run ratio that I had done most of my training at, and found that I had to weave in and out of the crowd, which seemed to have given up on running entirely by that point.  The return to Epcot had a couple of long hills.  I am a bit of a strange person... when I see a hill, I see something that needs to be summitted, preferably as quickly as possible.  While the rest of the crowd groaned and muttered at the Toy Story drill sergeant, I kicked myself into high gear and practically flew out of earshot.

Heading into Epcot was bittersweet - I was so happy to be almost done, but I was also sad for Briana and the fact that her race wasn't going as planned.  Coming up to the giant Epcot ball was like coming home though.  Let's face it, for a nerdy engineer like me, Epcot is the coolest place in DisneyWorld.  The last 1.1 miles of the race seemed to stretch on forever, but the finish line eventually emerged.  I crossed it, smiling because I had accomplished my goal of finishing the race, but with tears streaming down my face because I was alone instead of by Briana's side.

I've always told myself that I can do anything once, and so far I've turned out to be right.  This race was my first half marathon, and I'm pretty certain that it was also my last.  I'm really glad that I joined Briana - I personally got a lot out of the training process.  In the midst of all my unpredictable life changes in the past year and a half, it was awesome to have this event to look forward to, and to force myself to stay physically active.  Unfortunately, my body really doesn't seem to appreciate running or endurance events; although I (surprisingly) didn't acquire any running related injuries, the process did affect some chronic conditions that I have in undesirable ways.

Although I'm hanging up my running shoes for the time being, I'll likely still contribute some food and fitness related posts as long as Briana will let me :-)  I'm so excited to see what goals she tackles next!

Cindy