Boy oh boy, I have a lot to post. I have been so busy that I’ve spent little time at the computer and a lot of time outside enjoying the warm and sunny summer weather.

When Saturday came, we really got into gear, beginning the day at Eastern Market, a farmer’s market and flee market near Capitol Hill where we spent the morning ogling fresh local vegetables and trying on sunglasses and jewelry. I even showed Rachel and Perry my Eastern Market pastime of walking down the long, tent-covered corridor between the vegetable stands and trying each of the samples that the sellers have sliced and set out on plates. Red and yellow tomatoes, strawberries, and peaches. Homemade salsas and dips and spreads. Here’s my secret: When I reach the end of the row, I turn around and walk through again for a second sample. (The salted and peppered yellow tomatoes are the best.) The market is always crowded, but now that it’s summer it seems like everyone is out there making their way through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, examining the vegetables for ripeness and chatting with the vendors about where the fruit was grown. Yum.

Later on we also visited the US Botanic Gardens, another great photo op. There was some sort of earth / global warming awareness project outside it that involved big sculptures of Earth that had been dressed up by artists to communicate different solutions to environmental problems. I really liked this one that focused on wind energy. Note the real windmill in the background.

For dinner, we had falafel at Amsterdam Falafel (which my dad says will make you feel-awful, but we disagree) and walked down to the Lincoln Memorial to see it (along with the Capitol and Washington Monument) all lit up in the dark.

On Sunday we packed a picnic and went to see the National Symphony Orchestra perform on the Capitol lawn for Memorial Day. Except they pretty much just played in the background of famous actors and politicians telling war horror stories, so we left after an hour or so.

It was more fun to go hang out with some friends (some of whom, it turned out, had also left the concert.)

On Monday, reality hit that this vacation was almost over. We tried to get to the zoo early, but got sidetracked by Starbucks and the allure of coffee. Still, when we got there at 10:30 the animals were pretty lively. We watched the famed Pandas, the gorillas, the elephants and some fascinating reptiles. The elephants did tricks, which was a little weird, since we weren’t expecting a circus. Hopefully, all the animals are living contented (if lazy) lives and do not dream of miles and miles to roam and graze.

After seeing all the live creatures, we hit up the prehistoric fossil exhibit at the Museum of Natural History. I hadn’t been to that exhibit since it was redone and it is incredible! The most amazing thing to me wasn’t T-Rex, but a giant ground sloth that was nearly as big. I don’t think I knew those things exhisted!

Next we headed to the east building of the National Gallery of Art, a beautiful building that houses some fantastic contemporary works of art.

We capped off the night with dinner at Thai Tanic (clever name, eh?). Thai Tanic is the restaurant I frequent most: I think I’ve been there four times now. : )

I had to work Tuesay, but took off early to see Rachel and Perry off at the bus stop that would take them back to Dulles Airport. I think they had a good time and I was certainly pleased to share my perspective of the city with them.

P.S. Rachel’s pictures should soon be posted here.

Yesterday I rose at 4:20 in the morning to carpool with my fellow running friends from church to Frederick, MD (near Baltimore) to participate in the Frederick Marathon Relay. The eight of us formed two teams, the First Trinity “Trotters” and “Pokeys.” Each team of four would complete a full marathon, passing of the “baton” (in this case, a time chip) between the four 6-8.5 mile legs.

I was on the Pokeys and ran the first, 6.7 mile leg. My running buddy for the Trotters, Greg, had just completed the Boston Marathon in, oh, 3 hours and 9 minutes or so. But he graciously ran at my snail’s pace, and it was fun to have someone to talk to the whole way.

We definitely had the best leg, through the level streets of Frederick’s picturesque downtown, park, older residential areas. The weather at the 6:30am start was also a perfectly still, misty 60 degrees. I don’t think I’ve had such an enjoyable run in months. (Hmm, maybe that means I should be pushing myself a little harder…) Mile 1 seemed a little slow-going, and at Mile 4 I felt find of tired, but then miles 5 and 6 seemed to fly past, and before I knew it we were passing off the timing chips on our ankles to Fran and Pastor Wendy.

While I may be slow, at least I was consistent: I took exactly 11 minutes to run the first mile, the sixth mile and every mile in between, finishing my part in about 70 minutes. (We kept running into the 4:45 professional marathon pacers, but I think we were paced even more evenly than they.)

I have never run that far in my life! To train, I was running up to about 4 to 5.5 miles. I skipped right past the 10K distance that has always intimidated me a little (6.1 miles) to go a whole quarter of a marathon! No more intimidation – I think I finally caught that “runner’s bug” all my running friends talk about. All I can say is, it’s about time. I’ve been hanging around these type of people for years and was beginning to worry that I was immune.

Today, I have only a hint of tightness in my quads, but boy are my feet sore. Ouch. I am not used to pounding the pavement for such a long time, and the bones in my feet feel like those little parasols they put in tropical drinks. Spindly, delicate, and very, very bendy. Yikes.

Still, I decided to limp down to the Jewish Community Center (my fitness center) and stretch out my muscles with a few laps in their pool. Which quickly turned into a mile long swim, but felt great.

I just hope my feet feel better within the next couple days. I can’t wait to go for another long run…

…and road her everywhere on Thursday and Friday.

Don’t worry, she won’t have to sit on this porch too often. : )

Yesterday I made the trek out to Arlington to check out a road bike at the house of this guy, Joe, who restores old bicycles. He has been fixing them up in a shop in his backyard for awhile and just launched a website in March. His business has already been so popular, he’s going to have to open a real workshop soon. (“Not that I’m complaining,” he said.)

I tried out this vintage 1970s Peugeot Mixte that I’d seen on his website (and about which I’d called him 3 or 4 times) with index shifts, new breaks and handlebar grips and (the clincher) rainbow red-orange-white lettering and ended up bringing her home with me.

Today I road to work for the first time, which was a little scary in the city, but I managed by taking a long route on smaller roads and using the sidewalks when necessary. I don’t think I’m ready for Massachusetts Ave. just yet. (Or ever… We’ll see.)

I am currently deciding on a name. Shana’s bike is named Skippy and Skippy’s precursor was Dolly. Our neighbor Megan has a bike named Paulie. I previously acquired a bike named The Galaxy that I had wanted to fix up before I got this one. But that’s another story. The point is, a bike around here needs a name.

I am sensing a feminine vibe from this Peugeot, if you couldn’t tell. She needs a retro name, obviously. And she’s French.

Here are some ideas. Feel free to weigh in:

Minnie
Francoise
Lola
Libby
Lorraine (Lo, for short)

I thought of a few others since posting:

Bernadette
Geraldine

Just wait ’til I get a dog someday… What a naming process that will be.

Yay for bikes. Back to work.

It’s Earth Day, and I wanted to do something to commemorate it.

I couldn’t really think of anything to do, though, so I simply put on some workout clothes and hit the sidewalks, jogging down to the national mall where the trees and the grass are. After two days and three nights of rain, Earth really came through for me on its special day; it was sunny enough to make you squint.

This evening, I bought some organic vegetables and mushrooms from Whole Foods and made a spinach asparagus quiche. It was extra yummy. No big to-do, just a little nod toward the ground for producing such delicious and nutrient-rich food, when we let it do its thing.

In the spirit of Earth Day and spring, I also planted some vegetable seeds last Saturday. Carrots, radishes, beets and basil are beginning to sprout on my back deck, happily quenched by the weekend rain. I haven’t done any gardening, other than helping my mom and dad in our yard back home. But I’ve found that I love carefully figuring out when to plant which seeds, watering them every morning before I go to work, and planning how I can expand my small potted garden. Most of all, I love having a small hand in growing something.

I bought my seeds from an organization called Seed Savers Exchange. Their mission is to create a network of farmers and gardeners who save and share heirloom seeds, the kind that are passed down through families instead of spawned in laboratories.

“When people grow and save seeds, they join an ancient tradition as stewards, nurturing our diverse, fragile, genetic and cultural heritage,” the Seed Savers website explains. Saving seeds and exchanging them with others, farmer-to-farmer, protects the genetic diversity of our amazing living earth by helping to ensure that unique species don’t die out just because they aren’t planted by the major food production companies. Planting heirloom seeds could be the saving grace of our earth, if it ever catches on. Seeds that are harvested from healthy plants have the best resistance to diseases and pests that they’re ancestor seeds have been exposed to over the years, and are more likely to survive under harsh environmental conditions that their genetically modified counterparts.

But there’s an even stronger, deeper reason I love my container garden. It really is a miracle, the way I tucked a few dozen flee-sized seeds into soil last Saturday, put them in the sun, watered them and let the rain wash through them, and watched them poke up tiny sprouts before the week was up. With any luck, they’ll continue to grow, and I’ll get to be part of the network of people who grow some of their own food, keeping alive diverse species of vegetables that you can’t find at your local grocery store. (And hopefully eat some yummy vegetables while I’m at it!)

It’s easy, in our hectic world of smog and CO2 emissions, natural and human-caused disasters and daily news about global warming, to become an alarmist. It’s easy to get caught up in damage control, trying to use less gas, less water, less electricity, less packaging, less plastic, less paper. But sometimes it’s more life affirming to add to earth instead of subtract from it, to plant seeds, to make things grow.

This week I made one of my all-time favorite baked goods – granola bars! I always feel like I am contributing a little bit to my house’s quest for simplicity, and maybe even making the world a tiny bit better by not buying those prepackaged kinds that use up a lot of plastic and cardboard, not to mention the costs of shipping and handling. Baking granola bars for my house also gives us a yummy snack food, something that is often hard-to-come-by.

I started with a recipe from my friend Megan Woods (who is an incredible baker, by the way!) and I’ve been revising it over the past few months. I think I finally have it down. In fact, I’ve committed it to memory!

Without further ado,

The “gooey” ingredients:
6Tbsp. vegetable oil
1c. crunchy peanut butter
1c. brown sugar
1tsp. salt
1/4c. water
2 egg whites

The dry ingredients:
2c. oatmeal
1c. of your favorite cereal (I like to use Kashi Go Lean or Post Honey Bunches with Oats.)
2/3c. of another add-in – raisins, dried cranberries, chocolate chips, white chocolate chips or chopped nuts, or a combination of these.

What you do:

• Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

• In a large sauce pan or wok, add vegetable oil over low heat. Add in peanut butter and brown sugar, salt and water (all gooey ingredients EXCEPT the egg!)and continue to heat slowly, stirring with a wooden spoon.

• As soon as the ingredients are melted, thoroughly mixed and simmering slowly, turn off the heat and continue to mix occasionally as the gooey mixture cools.

• Meanwhile, throw all the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Toss them a little with your hands to make sure the different elements are mixed up evenly.

• When the gooey mixture has cooled a bit, whisk in the egg whites. (I like to test the temperature by adding a small drop of egg white first to make sure it doesn’t scramble at first contact, then add the rest in if the goo is sufficiently cooled.)

• Once the egg whites are blended, pour the gooey mixture over the dry ingredients. Stir until even.

• On a baking sheet with an 1″ rim, spread the mixture across one side, flattening with your fingers. Shape it into a long rectangle about 1/4″ tall. You may want to perforate the bars with a knife, slicing them halfway through into 1.5″x4″ pieces.

• Bake for 45-50 minutes, until they are a gleaming, crunchy golden brown.

• Cool, and then slice through with a sharp knife. Store sustainably in a Tupperware container or cookie jar! (No need to refrigerate.)

The only warning about these things is that if several people will be eating them, you might want to put a label on the container you keep them in, with an estimate of how many bars there are per person. Otherwise (if your household is anything like mine), they will be gone in a matter of hours!

That’s it for now. Maybe next week I’ll post a recipe with lentils. : )

For one reason or another (we’re blaming the economy and the price of gasoline for the higher food prices), my house’s joint bank account ran dangerously low in funds before the end of March and the next round of paychecks. We use this account to pool our earnings so that we can pay for food, internet and phone services. We’ve never had trouble budgeting before, but for whatever reason the last couple months haven’t quite added up.

Bottom line (sorry, bad pun) is, we had to get creative and embrace simplicity in our meals as we neared the end of the month. Here is a laughable breakdown of dinners:

Date: Wednesday, March 19
Chef: Shana
Meal: Lentil Loaf (Like meatloaf, minus the meat)and a salad.

Date: Thursday, March 20
Chef: Luke was supposed to cook, but he went home to Whidbey Island for Easter.
Meal: Leftover Lentil Loaf.

Date(s): Friday and Saturday, March 21 and 22
Chef: N/A; weekends are fend-for-yourself
Meal(s): Leftovers, including lentil loaf and quesadillas. I didn’t pay much attention to what I ate because I was too busy watching basketball.

Date: Easter Sunday, March 23
Chef: Everybody – Easter Potluck!
Meal: Ham, scalloped potatoes, spinach salad, hard boiled eggs, crescent rolls, and… lentil salad!

Date: Monday, March 24
Chef: Shana
Meal: Lentil curry and Asparagus.

Date: Tuesday, March 25
Chef: David
Meal: A distinctly different option: Tuna Salad. Way to go, David. Busting the trend.

Date: Wednesday, March 26
Chef: Me
Meal: There is NOTHING in the pantry or the refrigerator. I dig around in the freezer looking for anything that’s even remotely edible. (Frozen jalapeño peppers and pie crusts don’t count.) Aha! There are still ham bones from our downstairs neighbor (and godsend), Sister Marla. I make ham bone soup with (what else?) lentils! (Along with some garbanzo beans, garlic, carrots and rice. But nary an onion.)

P.S. I looked on the bag at the nutritional facts of lentils and one serving contains 9 grams of protein and 8 grams of fiber. Not such a bad thing to include in a diet!