Some friends and I did a Meatless Monday potluck yesterday. Unbeknownst to me, our one night venture into vegetarianism coincided with Meat Week: The Holiday Time Forgot. Rather than chalk it up to being a bizarre coincidence, which is exactly what it was, I'm going to pretend we knew this to be the case and planned our potluck on this day as an act of defiance.

I decided to take the easy route by offering to bring sides. Not some fancy side like roasted tomatoes with garlic, pesto & goat cheese. I considered that for all of 5 minutes before saying "Eff that, I'm doing mashed potatoes"

And that's exactly what I did. But I at least gave it a twist of sorts by adding some cooked kale & onion to the potatoes. On top of that, rather than adding just milk, I let the milk steep with some bay leaf and diced carrot prior to adding it to the potato/ kale mixture. The exact recipe is as follows:

4 lbs russet potatoes
1 large bunch of kale, coarsely chopped
1 small carrot, diced
8 tbs of butter
1 large bay leaf
1 chopped onion
1 cup milk

In a sauce pan, bring milk and 2 tbs butter to a low simmer; add carrots and bay leaf. Remove from heat and let it steep while you prepare the other ingredients.

Saute onions in 1 tbs of butter until they're light brown; add kale and cook on low heat until soft (about 25 minutes).

Peel the potatoes and cut into one inch pieces; boil until soft (about 25 minutes). Hand mash in a bowl, then mix in kale & onions.

Lastly, drain milk into the potatoes and stir to fluff. If they aren't creamy enough for your liking, you can add the remaining butter (I opted not to).

I swear it looked better in person.

I also made roasted asparagus, using an olive oil/ lemon juice/ salt & pepper mix. I just winged this so there's no recipe to share but I do have this picture.

Prettttyyyy.

I really liked the potatoes but I'll say this much: they're not half as tasty when they're cold. I wish I had heated them up a bit longer last night before serving them because they weren't hot enough, which made them seem lumpy. I can only hope my dinner companions enjoyed them anyway.

Lumpy potatoes or not, I think I speak for us all when I say dinner as a whole was great. We had Bloody Mary meat(less) loaf; corn casserole; warm goat cheese salad; and cous-cous with tomatoes and Mozzarella.

Mmmmmmmm.

To top it all off, we had mini apple pies for dessert.

 Not pictured: the cup cake and banana pudding I also ate

This was hopefully the first of many more potluck dinners, meatless or otherwise. I enjoyed trying a new recipe and spending time with friends. Plus, it's nice getting to eat all that food and all I had to do was basically boil 'taters. Yeah!

My last two entries have been about food which makes me feel like a total fat ass. I figure now would be a good time to talk about marathon training. Except there is no training to speak of so instead I'm going to show you a picture of what I had for dinner last night.

It was delicious.

I suppose to say there's been no training isn't entirely accurate. It would probably be more accurate to say there's been no training I want to talk about. It's been sporadic at best; I haven't had any stellar runs thus far and have failed miserably at all but one long run attempts.

In thinking about why this has been such a god-awful experience for me I've come to this conclusion: I do not want to run a marathon. I'm not happy running the distances necessary to prepare my body for a 26.2 road race, so I can't imagine actually running a 26.2 mile road race will be different. Ask me why I signed up for a marathon in the first place and I'll tell you it's because I felt like I should.

I can't quite explain it because it's not as if anyone has directly stated I need to run a marathon. I guess it comes more so from being friends with a lot of runners, most of whom have run marathons. It's easy to feel this unspoken (and unintended) pressure to join the club. I just wish joining was as simple as ordering a marathon medal from Ebay and wearing it everywhere.

I also have to consider that I've set and accomplished other running goals so, on some subconscious level, I feel like a marathon is the next logical step. It's kind of a silly notion, especially considering I'm not really a runner, but I imagine it comes from the innate human desire to never stop moving onward & upward. Even though I'm not happy doing it, I can't seem to stifle this urge to improve upon my last accomplishment (which, for the record, I consider to be the half marathon I ran nearly one year ago).

All this rambling is how I find myself here: not really wanting to run a marathon yet not being able to throw in the towel. It seems a bit dumb for me to force myself along because of some self-fabricated sense of obligation, but that's exactly what I'm doing. I have no doubt if I do go through with it, it will not be a fun experience.

Maybe by saying that I'm condemning myself to misery or maybe I'm simply being realistic so as not to feel discouraged when it turns out it is miserable. I just hope I come out all the better for it, no matter what happens. And if I should find myself in possession of a non Ebay acquired marathon medal, you better believe I am going to wear it everywhere.

This recipe, much like the previous, involves ricotta. However, unlike the previous, I did not make it because I found a container of ricotta in the fridge. I saw the recipe on back of the container I found it the fridge and decided to give it a go as a lazy date night dinner for me and Ben.

Ingredients:

16 oz of penne or ziti (I used penne)
2 lbs asparagus
12 oz ricotta cheese
1 oz olive oil
4 oz butter
1 cup Parmesan cheese
3 eggs

Prepare the penne or ziti for half the direction time stated on the package. While it's cooking cut the asparagus into 1 in pieces then saute in 3 oz of butter; salt & pepper after cooking. Mix ricotta with olive oil and put aside.

Once the pasta has cooked, drain it thoroughly then toss with 1 oz of butter and 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese. Layer 1/3 of the pasta in a deep, lightly greased casserole dish, followed by all the asparagus, another 1/3 of the pasta, all of the ricotta mixture and the last 1/3 of the pasta.

Whisk together the eggs and 1/2 cup of Parmesan then pour the mixture over the top layer. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Viola! I sauteed some butternut squash with olive oil, salt & pepper as a side and finished off the apple bread left over from the soup. I actually forgot to salt & pepper the asparagus after it was cooked, which left it sort of dull to the taste; a dash of seasoning once it was on the plate remedied that problem right away. I don't think I'll make this again, or at least no time soon, though. It's a tooootally unhealthy dish and, while it was yummy, I personally didn't find it yummy enough to make it worth the calories/ fat/ etc that surely come from a pasta dish made with half a stick a butter and a pound of cheese.

I stumbled across this recipe while trying to find a way to put to use a container of ricotta cheese I found in the fridge. Short of eating it straight from the cup with a spoon, I don't think it could have gotten any easier than this.

Ingredients:

1 lb carrots, peeled & sliced
1 cup non-fat ricotta cheese
1 medium onion, diced
16 oz of vegetable broth

I am pretty lazy when it comes to... well, everything. So while this recipe called for carrots peeled and sliced, I opted for a bag of organic baby carrots. I also took a short cut with the onion, by grabbing a container of already-diced onion. My eyes are normally ultra sensitive anyway and being that I just had LASIK, I figured if I could avoid chopping an onion that would be best, lazy or not.

As you see, I did chop the carrots so they would cook more quickly. But that was the extent of my knifing action.

Add the carrots, onion and broth to a small pot. Bring to a boil and leave at a boil for about five minutes. Reduce the heat and let it simmer until the carrots are tender. This took about ten minutes in my case.

Remove from heat and allow it to cool for another 10 minutes. Throw the mixture into a blender and blend until smooth.

If ever there was a time to plug my Magic Bullet Blender, this would be it. I split the mixture into two parts and blended it using the Magic Bullet, which made for much ease and little mess. I really do love this little contraption. I originally got it so I'd have a quick way to make smoothies but have recently started using it to grind my own coffee beans, prepare simple dips and, now, make soup. Anyway, the Magic Bullet company isn't paying me for this so let's move on.

After blending, add the ricotta cheese to the mixture and blend some more. I wanted to add the cheese after blending the carrots on the slight chance they were soft enough and I needed to cook them a little longer. If you're more confident than I am in your ability to determine if carrots are soft enough to blend, this part might not be necessary.

Since I split the mixture (which was necessary since the blender cups are the size of normal cups, i.e. wouldn't hold the whole mixture in one cup) I just halved the cup of ricotta into each cup. Another perk to the Magic Bullet is that it comes with lids for the cups, so really, it could have been as simple as me blending in the ricotta, putting a lid on it and serving it up later for dinner.

Instead, I opted to dirty up a separate container with what looks like carrot flavored baby food (bust tastes much better).

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what Ben and I consumed for sustenance last night. I picked up a loaf of apple bread and goat cheese from Reid's, and also added some leftover cold beets as a side. Just an FYI: apple bread topped with a smear of goat cheese and a slice of beet is yuuuummmmyyyy.

For the cost and amount of effort put into this dish, I couldn't be more satisfied. However, if it wasn't so simple I might have been disappointed, being that the soup was a little bland. I actually thought to add some roasted corn for flavor, as well as texture, but I had no corn and didn't feel like going back out to get some (remember that part about me being lazy?).

All in all, it was quick and cheap enough that I'll likely make it again. If I do, I plan to add corn and also play around with spices. Any suggestions?

My happiest moments as of late can be summed up in the three Bs: Ben, bikes and bitches.

Alright, j/k on that third B. But the first two Bs are indeed a source of much joy for me. I'm sure it's even more so for the fact that the two go hand-in-hand, being that Ben introduced me to, and is guiding me along in the word of bike-cycling. 

A good man and a pretty bike. What more could a girl ask for?

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.” 

-Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Some people think New Year resolutions are silly, and maybe they are. Why wait to improve the situation? But there's something refreshing, something so official about the beginning of a brand new year, at least for me. I usually have multiple resolutions and this year is no exception. 

Within my checklist of things I'd like to do before January 1, 2013 are lots of new and exciting opportunities - LASIK, a trip to Sweden and my first marathon to name a few. It's hard to believe 2012 could be better than 2011, but when I think real hard about it, I don't see how it could not be. The best laid plans of mice & men often go astray but with any luck, 365 days from now I won't be eating these words.

In the meantime, Happy Twenty-Twelve, friends. In case you were curious, I saw out with the old and in with the new in the company of my sweet boyfriend Ben, and close friend Jeremy at The Avett Brothers show in Greenville. It was a good time. The performance was lively and at midnight Ben gave me a kiss that took my breath away. I got a hug from Jeremy that was nice, too.