Running Chick

Check out my new spice rack:

My old spice rack was a plastic lazy susan and a bunch of bottles of various sizes that didn’t turn properly and took up a ton of space. It drove me nuts. I mentioned to Josh that I wanted a new spice arrangement and he came up with this idea (smart!).

I found these little containers on the web (of course). All sorts of places carry them, but I got mine here. The lids are twist off and have a clear plastic top.

Josh found these little magnets on Ebay, and they worked perfectly. I can’t believe how strong they are, either. It took me forever to pry one off of the rest of them so I could take a size reference shot.

Why my hands look so wrinkly, I do not know.

We spent one evening gluing the magnets onto each container. Josh made up a template so that each magnet went in the same, perfectly centered spot. And he accuses me of being OCD. Sheesh.

Josh got a piece of tin from the local tin piece store. I made that up, I have no idea where he got it from. Some place where guys shop for guy stuff, I assume, because no store that I patronize carries it.

He cut it to size and screwed it to the cabinet door and I spent the rest of the afternoon going crazy with the label maker and emptying old spice jars into their new containers.

Then, presto! New magnetic spice rack!

Except for one unfortunate incident with the peppercorn container – note to self: make sure the lids are securely closed before pulling the containers from the board – it’s been working pretty well and I now have a ton of extra space in my cabinet to fill up.

As usual, Scout is super impressed.

Time for half marathon training, that is. Hooray!

I’ve been laying low for the last few weeks in order to let my foot recover from whatever was bothering it. I still don’t know exactly, but I’m pretty certain it wasn’t a stress fracture. Maybe a ligament or tendon strain? Whatever it was has mostly passed and my flipper is feeling much better now. It’s still not back to 100%, but it’s close. In any event, before our run today, I taped it up using KT Tape, pulled my laces tight on the top & bottom only and kept the middle loose, and iced before I took off (on the advice of my doc) and iced when I got home.  I felt a few twinges during the run, mostly when I was on uneven surfaces where my foot moved around, but for the most part when I was on flat pavement, I couldn’t detect any discomfort.

Josh has decided to train for the same HM, so we’re using a 16-week Jeff Galloway program.  I think that’s a pretty decent program for a first-timer, and I like that the longest run is 14 miles instead of the usual 10 or 11 that I’ve seen in other programs.  After I ran my first HM and about died in the last three miles, I swore that I’d do longer than a ten for my longest run just so I’d be more prepared for what the mileage felt like. Everybody said that if you can run ten, the next three (point one) would be no big deal. LIES. It was a big deal and it sucked.

Our first run was a really easy three-miler. It was close to 50 today (yes, 50!) so the roads were wet, but mostly bare.  Josh ran in a just light t-shirt and shorts.  I wasn’t that brave, but I did shed my gloves about 5 minutes in. Great run, great day.  Winter is supposed to come back for a visit starting tomorrow, so Thursday’s run will be a little more interesting.

In other news, look who’s getting his big boy teef!

Disclaimer: YES I KNOW I took a picture of my kitten’s teeth. I’m a crazy cat lady who has no kids and I’m not ashamed. SO THERE.

He’s lost his bottom baby teeth, but his top razor sharp baby canines are still in there. The adult teeth are working their way down, so I imagine one of these days I’ll look in his mouth and they won’t be there anymore. *sniff*  They grow up so fast.*sniff*  I never found Spencer’s baby teeth, but I did find one of Simon’s that I kept so I’m hoping that I’ll find one of Pippen’s (see disclaimer above).

He’s growing by leaps and bounds but still has a ways to go to catch up to Scout. Mostly in girth, though, because Girlfriend is seriously rocking the pear shape.

He ventured into the snow for the fist time. Scout was smart and stayed inside. Actually, I’m pretty sure she just shoved him outside into the snow and when he turned around to see what happened, she pretended that she was looking at the birds flying around (there weren’t any).

They seem to be getting along pretty well. Aside from one incident with a dumped over garbage can, they spend most of their time looking like this:

And this:

Rough lives, I’m telling ya.

Today, I made nisu (also known as pulla) and it didn’t suck.

I used my grandma’s recipe, which is probably older than I am (old!) but scaled it down to make two loaves instead of five.

I got to do two fun things during the course of preparation. The first was scalding milk. I’m pretty sure I’ve done this before on accident, but I never realized I was doing something other than “boiling the milk”. The second was smashing the begeezers out of cardamom seeds with a mallet. I suppose I could have used ground cardamom but NOT AUTHENTIC so I bashed those little seeds to within an inch of their life.

So, outside of making the dough, the process isn’t really too tricky, just long. You make up the dough, then let it rise until it doubles in size, then you knead it for a bit, cut it into sections for braiding (in my case, six sections), braid it up, then stick it back in the oven to rise again. Then you bake it for 30 minutes and when it’s done, brush on a syrup of coffee & sugar.  I used the oven to do the rising, first warming it up to 200, then shutting it off and popping in the dough. The first rise took around 90 minutes, the second around an hour.

Here’s the dough after it’s been braided and it’s risen for the second time.

And here’s the finished product. I somehow ended up with one giant loaf and one normal sized loaf so clearly I failed in the dividing up the dough equally section, but overall they look normal ...

… and taste gooood.

Kitties were impressed.

Happy New Year!