Running – Page 28 – GUTSy Performance Nutrition

Autumn, Nutrition + Health, Running, Winter

Roasted Sweet Potato + Beet Soup

September 17, 2016by RebeccaLeave a Comment

Sometime in the early months of 2013, I discovered a whole new genre of food blogs. At the time, I was coming home from work to an always empty house, laying on the floor for an hour to re-calibrate from my day, working myself into a 30 minute or so run, and then reading a couple food blogs over dinner (usually a sweet potato, roasted during that run, with black beans, salsa, and a pile of greens), working another couple hours just to survive the next school day, and falling into bed into a deep and dreamless sleep before my alarm clock wrenched me out and up and into another day that was much the same. I was exhausted and unhappy — but I was learning so much and I could tell if I could just keep putting one foot in front of another and trust my intuition, I’d end up in a better place. Also, I was learning a new way to eat and cook and it’s safe to say in my years-long shift in eating, a major one was slowly taking place.

One of the blogs I discovered during that time was Sarah Britton’s My New Roots, and it was from her that I first learned about the “holy trinity of flavor,” or what I’ve now learned is referred to as FASS. Personally, I like to call it the four corners of cooking.

Sarah shared about an experience in her cookbook of a chef thinking her soup was bland and teaching her that every dish needs to have an acid, a salt, and a sugar, or will taste a little less than ideal. This is Sarah’s holy trinity of flavor. In the four corners, a fat is added to that trio, to make FASS. For each of the four components, a little can go a long way.

It was soup week this last week in my cooking lab for nutrition, and we experimented with refining the four corners of our recipes. Flavor is a very personal thing, but I found that very simple recipes with few ingredients, a little fat, an acid, a sweet note, and some salt can work wonders in making a recipe taste delicious. After eating different types of soup for several days and using William as my second taste-tester, I felt the need to share the humblest of soups from this week. I say it is humble but it was also the one that absolutely hit the spot, more than once, after coming home late from long days of work, hard runs, and commuting.

I wrote up a description about working with the four corners of flavor for class this week, and because I think everyone should cook with flavor, I’ll share a rendition of it here: First, when refining flavors, make sure the dish is at the temperature you will serve it at, as the flavors will change, depending on whether you are tasting it hot or cold.

For any given recipe, it is likely that a fat source as either butter or an oil will likely be used in building the base. The fat type can add flavor, if it is intended to, or if added near the end as either a cream or nut cream, can add mouth feel and a change in texture as well. Adding a fat such as lightly toasted and chopped nuts can also be a flavor-enhancing garnish to round out a finished recipe.

As an acid component, a squeeze or two of lemon juice or one of the many types of vinegar can be added. The small amount of acid added at the end of cooking will enhance and sharpen the other flavors of the dish.

Salt, the third component, is likely the most important, and can really heighten the other flavors. The right amount of salt is a very personal thing, and it can easily be overdone to the recipe’s detriment, so add it in small amounts and taste as you go. You will know when you’ve added the right amount.

The fourth corner is sugar. Depending on ingredients, you might already have a sugar component. For instance, in this roasted vegetable soup, the roasting of the vegetables prior to adding them to the broth brought out their natural sugars through the process of caramelization. For this soup, I did not need to add any additional sweetener. The sweet flavor balances and rounds the soup and also will satiate the appetite, which is why if it is missing from a meal, we often finish wanting more, even though we’re physically full.

Roasted Sweet Potato + Beet Soup, serves 2-3
Feel free to use whatever root vegetables and beans are on hand or desired. Recipe adapted from Eleonora Gafton.

1 Tbs. olive oil
1 sweet potato, medium dice
1-2 large beets, medium dice
1 large carrot, roll cut
2-3 small turnips, medium dice
1/2 large yellow onion, medium dice
1 clove of garlic, minced
4-5 cups vegetable broth
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
1 sprigs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
2 Tbs. fresh parsley, minced
1 1/2 cups cooked black-eyed peas
sea salt to taste
ground black pepper
a squeeze of lemon juice, as necessary

Place all diced vegetables on a large baking pan and drizzle with olive oil and a pinch of salt.
Roast them in a preheated oven at 400 degrees F for 20-30 minutes or until the vegetables are soft.
In a large pot, add the roasted vegetables and herbs, along with the broth and beans. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes.
Season as needed with additional salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Serve with fresh chopped parsley, and if you’re in the mood, fresh baked scones or cornbread.

Autumn, Running, Summertime

Moroccan Tagine with Sweet Potatoes + Beets, food for runners (or this runner)

September 1, 2016by RebeccaLeave a Comment

There is nothing like a few days spent living with others to put into perspective how truly personal is our choice in food. While I will happily eat roasted broccoli or leftover kale salad for 9am snack (and frequently do), even the idea of kale salad at a seemingly more appropriate time of day might leave others running for the door.

This point is driven home in my frequent conversations about food with others. My work at the university has often left me chatting about the differences between foods here in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world–how everything is just sooo sweet–and how diets inherently change even without the individual really attempting to when taking up residence here.

In sharing this recipe, I’ll make a point in saying first that I question the title and definitely the authenticity as I’ve never been to Morocco and have only eaten at one semi-Moroccan restaurant. And yet I love the flavors of “Moroccan” foods, particularly the tagines with sweet, savory, and spicy notes. So I’ll take liberty and call this my own version of a Moroccan tagine.

Second, I can see some camps loving this and others, again, running for the door because whoa, there are tooo many vegetables and don’t get me started on Rebecca’s fondness for spices.

But basically I call this the type of food that I like to eat to fuel my running life. Or more adequately, it is the food I tend to crave before a big run or race. So when William and others were packing sandwiches for our relay race a few weeks back, I found myself making and then eating Moroccan sweet potato + beet tagine with quinoa to fuel my runs and turning to it again a few more times throughout the ensuing weeks.

It is also a recipe I know I will adapt and make further into the fall season and the months (and miles) to come.

Moroccan Sweet Potato + Beet Tagine, serves 6-8
Inspired by Vegetarian Everyday

Though I tend to use a heavy hand with the harissa, I haven’t yet purchased or made one that has been nearly as spicy as the kind I’ve had in a restaurant–and its flavor tends to get muted by all the sweet notes of the apricots and currants. Use more or less, or even leave out, as you see fit.

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 inches fresh raw ginger, finely grated
1 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
sea salt, to taste
2 tablespoons harissa
4-5 large tomatoes, diced
zest and juice of one lemon
3-4 beets, sliced into 2 inch pieces
1 medium eggplant, sliced into large pieces
1 medium zucchini, sliced into 2-inch pieces
2 medium sweet potatoes, sliced into 2-inch pieces
10 dried apricots, each sliced into about six pieces
2 cups cooked garbanzo beans
1/4 cup currants
thinly sliced fresh mint, to serve
cooked millet, quinoa, brown rice or other, to serve

Directions:

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan and sauté the onion for a few minutes until it becomes soft and translucent. Add the garlic and ginger and the spices and allow to cook for about 30 seconds more.
Stir in the harissa, diced tomatoes, lemon zest and juice. Bring the sauce to a boil and then lower the heat to simmer.
Add the beets, eggplant, zucchini, sweet potatoes, and apricots. Stir well so everything is nice and mixed, then cover and simmer for about an hour. Keep it covered as much as possible, but stir a couple times throughout the hour.
Once the vegetables are tender all the way through, add in the cooked beans and currants, cook for about 5 minutes more to heat through, and then season with additional salt and pepper, if needed.
Serve over cooked millet or other grain with a garnish of sliced mint on top.

Journal, Running, Spring

the healing power of running to music

May 15, 2016by RebeccaLeave a Comment

I have music playing, nearly always. I have eclectic taste and listen broadly. But I’m often drawn to the beautiful, slow, sad songs that others might call depressing. I can wile away hours laying on the floor listening to music and doodle-journaling. Doing so was a hallmark of my teenage years. These days, I’m more likely to get to that immersive experience with music when it’s combined with prayer, with yoga, with writing, and in a round-about way, through running.

For years, I ran with music exclusively. And then when I got an iPhone, I gave it up. It’s been almost six years and there hasn’t been a single run since where I desire music instead of the birds and the other sounds of nature, of listening to my own breathing combined with all my often swirling thoughts. For the past couple months though, I find I’m often running to music. I’ll be three-quarters through a run and suddenly realize I’ve been singing a song in my head the entire time, repeating lines that I need in a moment.

And I often listen to music while in my car. Recently I was listening to a song that is among my favorites. Though it’s a sad song about someone who has passed, I had never related it to a particular person. I have been thinking often and missing my grandma these past couple months, thinking about her life and how I can grow into being more like her. That particular day in my car with a good half hour of driving ahead, I burst into tears as I listened and then was brought back to one particular phone conversation with her, a few months before her health went downhill.

It was dead week at UCD, early-December, and a couple weeks before I was to return home from Ireland. I was alone in the pomology lab classroom in the Ag Block, my study materials strewn across the long lab bench, and in the middle of filling the white board with a semester’s worth of horticulture knowledge. I had music playing in the background and though I can’t remember the song specifically, Taking Back Sunday was my study music of choice that term. The phone rang and I picked it up. It was my grandma. There was a little crackle in the reception, and I could tell we were talking from a distance. I imagined her sitting in her house, so far from where I was standing with my expo marker in hand. She asked how I was and whatever my response, almost immediately followed with, You don’t want to come home, do you?

Something in me gave a little at the question. I missed her, of course. She was one of the most formative individuals in my life, unselfish and living almost entirely for service to others. She is a lady I continually strive to be like. And she knew me well. I did not want to come home. Since my first run in Dublin, sans phone, GPS, map or any other form of technology to guide my way or inform others where I was located, I felt like I was finally at home and at peace, almost as if I had been there in some lifetime long ago. That’s a weird thing to think or say, I know, but maybe being in an old country with a lot of ancestral history has that effect. I ran a lot that term, around the winding streets near Belfield, and around the turf pitches and through the forested areas on campus, up to 10 miles some days. I ran often without technology, as it both scared and thrilled me to be completely untethered, to not have a single soul know where I was, to not know entirely myself where I was, but to be at the same time completely comfortable and at home in my new place. And I ran to the music of SPIN103.8’s Top 40 station, as the only portable music I had was the radio on my Irish phone.

I’ve wondered often these last few months, am I trying to run away from my eating disorder, from my trouble with food, my physical and controlling self? Or am I running toward something, God, the new self I’m creating, or something else? I never quite felt that any answer was right until one day I realized I’m running these days to discover who I am. Maybe I always have been. Running to music over the years, letting BarlowGirl’s Psalm 73 (My God’s Enough) drown out any thoughts of measuring up, or The Pussycat Dolls’ When I Grow Up, or Tiësto, Akon, Colton Dixon, The Digital Age, or lately, the simple words of Jonny Diaz, Breathe, Just Breathe repeat in my brain, has been exceptionally healing.

Music can be a powerful tool in moving us through a process, of centering our monkey-mind thoughts, of, like running, helping us figure out who we are. And through running, through writing, and through the healing power of music, I’m settling into acceptance that I can’t go back to that first special run in Dublin, or that day on the phone with my grandmother, or a time before I became a not-hungry starving girl who lost a lot of friends in the process. I’m at a point these days where I’m sifting through the individual dramas of the past and the insecurities of the present as they come to the surface one by one, as if pulling out people, places, memories from a magical toy box, and deciding which ones to hold on to and which ones to finally let go. That girl who was running away from herself to BarlowGirl is not the same girl today, even though the song still moves me and is a reminder of how far I’ve come. I don’t have to feel ashamed of that girl, what she went through, or now has become. And the happy memories—of walking through the forest as a child, listening to the quiet melody of the place, my grandma Neah’s hand holding mine, pointing out the beauty of the birds, or a long-distance phone conversation with her about finding the place that feels like my place—those are ones I can hold on to.

That day in the car, tears streaming down my face while listening to The Blizzards’ Postcards, I realized I was crying because my grandma, though no longer here, is still alive in me. And through the process of discovering who I am step by step in the forest with the only music being the sounds in my head or the birds or the creaking of the trees, or song by song as I live and breathe through each day, I am becoming more like her. And finally, I’ve becoming more of myself.