Sunday, April 22, 2007

Day 111: Cheese Party

Workouts. . .
60 min. walk with the dog


George and I hit Whole Foods today for a lunch excursion. I needed to buy a cheese for our party tonight. I ended up getting St. Anthony’s, a mild brie, to accompany my fig spread. It turned out to be delicious. But the real reason we wandered over is that George had smelled the WF barbecue beef on the last visit and finally decided to give it a try. So we stopped by to grab some lunch. Of course, I also got some bulk items: raw sugar, whole wheat pastry flour for some of my Martha recipes, and sushi rice to try out a recipe I saw at Barnes and Noble in the new Cat Cora book (it looked easy and I already have the rolling trays). Anyway, I ended up getting this pepper-glazed spicy grilled tofu with a side of cucumber-sesame noodles. Mmmm. Way better than George’s sandwich looked, although I was jealous of his cracked pepper potato chips and had to snatch a few of those. They were good.

We attended a wine and cheese tasting tonight, with lots of snacks brought potluck style, and had some really great veggie things. One person brought these really great little mini quiche-type things with sweet walnuts in the middle. I don’t know who brought them, or I’d have gotten the recipe. We also tried about eight kinds of cheese that I could not recall the names of to save anyone’s life. But someone made broiled mushrooms with red pepper and a smidgeon of fresh mozzarella, which was a really great idea and also filled the house with a delicious smell for at least an hour — nothing better than roasting mushroom smells. I’ve decided that I must not be a fan of soft cheeses. I thought I was, really. I love a good brie or camembert, but the two I tried last night I truly wanted to spit directly out onto my plate. I swallowed one chunk whole so I wouldn’t have to chew it, which I’m not sure I’ve done since third grade. That’s how awful I felt it was. Nobody else seemed to have these issues, and they didn’t follow me thru the rest of the cheeses. I even tried a St. Patrick’s day colored chunk of cheddar mixed with sage and lots of food coloring and a weird type of blue cheese with actual blueberries in it. These were not new favorites by any account, but I didn’t have trouble keeping them down. My friend Heather brought the Humboldt Fog goat cheese that I adore, but like the grown-up I attempt to be I had only one small slice. I was also pleased with myself for trying the absolute boldest blue cheese I’ve ever had before. It was so sharp you could smell it when you entered the room. They had a really nice orange-scented honey to coat it, and with that it was even better, but I did eat a small piece plain, just to try it. George was impressed. That was his favorite cheese, of course. He loves blue cheeses.

So the downside of this week has been that I’ve fallen behind on my triathlon training already. I realize now that I need to move the swimming days to suit my schedule a little better because I can only find time to swim once during the week, not twice. If I can switch the days around to swim once on the weekend, I think I’ll be better able to attack this. My rear end still hurts from the biking attempt last week, so much so that I skipped the second biking day. I’m sure that’s a bad idea, but I feel like crying when I sit down in general, much less on a bicycle seat again. I think I will take a small step backward and repeat this first week of training. I should have at least biked once before embarking on this thing, but I was too gung-ho about having a goal for once. Taking a step back is far better than quitting, right?

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