recipes and ride reports

Hi! This is antimony/antimony's biking and recipe journal. It's mirrored on LiveJournal, but if linking, please link the Dreamwidth version.

I'm never sure what to say in bios; my current readership is a few friends, and y'all know who I am. But since I just submitted this to the RUSA blog feed, and thus might get some new faces: I'm a 3040-something randonneuse (long-distance cyclist) who loves to cook, although my job as a software engineer leaves me with far less time and energy than I'd like for both riding and cooking. My ride reports and recipes were hard to re-find in the midst of my other posts, plus long-format picture-heavy posts were kind of not fitting into my personal blog. So: separate blog.

My real name is Sarah; with that information and the rides I've described, my full name is easily discoverable but I'll request that it not be posted as searchable text in comments. Thanks!

Oops, didn't finish this post last weekend. I'm definitely not going to make all 8 rides this time around; there's just not as much joy in it when I'm putting people in danger just to have a coffee I didn't make myself. But I did have more errands to run last weekend that I could make coffee-adjacent:

Coffeeneuring #4: Technicalities Count

Strava link: https://www.strava.com/activities/4304357303
1. Where I went: Colleen's, 61 High Street, Medford, MA.
2. When: Saturday, November 7th, at around three.
3. What I drank: Nothing -- I went with the coffee ice cream option (coffee-fudge!) as I had had Too Much caffeine that week and didn't want much more.
4. After acquiring the ice cream, I walked with my bike up a street that I've never walked on, shaded with pretty fall colors, so that I could actually eat it while away from other people. Relaxing, after a very long week of election-tension and work doing long-term planning (so many telecons). No pictures of the pretty leaves as I had my hands full with ice cream and pushing the bike, and didn't want to get my phone sticky.
5. Total distance: 3.9 miles, including the walking bit.

Coffeeneuring #5: Construction Detours

Strava link: https://www.strava.com/activities/4309656702
1. Where I went: Donuts with a Difference, 35 Riverside Ave, Medford, MA
2. When: Sunday, November 8, around 11:30am.
3. What I drank: drip coffee (and a cinnamon roll)
4. Hit construction in downtown Medford that hadn't been there the day before, but got waved through and avoided town on the way back. Not sure what was going on; looked like a pipe problem or something, since they were digging a long trench in the road and nothing had been announced ahead of time.

On the way home, I realized I might have managed to sliiiiiightly overload even the cargo bike with heavy groceries; it was a bit wobbly, and I turned the power on mostly because more speed smoothed out the wobbles a bit. Given how heavy the bags were, I probably had close to a hundred pounds of groceries on there, which is lighter than putting a person on the back but was not as centrally balanced.

Also, to be honest, I still don't get the love for this local donut shop. It's way better than the omnipresent chain -- and a similar style, so perhaps it's just that. There wasn't anything wrong with my still-warm cinnamon roll, but it didn't have much flavor. Sweet, airy, warm, yes. Also the only other person in the donut shop besides the clerk when I walked in was a cop. I kid you not, although after a week of political doomscrolling my instant reaction was panic rather than amusement. Sigh.

5. Total distance: 7.3 miles. Outbound on the way to the donut shop and then the grocery, I was riding without the assist, so 3.4 miles if one only wants to count that.

I am not sure whether I'll get through all 8 coffeeneuring rides this season, because I feel like going out just for coffee is a bit selfish, but if I can combine it with another reason I need to go out into the world, then I don't feel so bad. So I did my normal grocery + coffee run this morning early enough to beat the rush (mostly; I didn't have to wait outside to get into the coffee line, but it was out the door when I came out with my cup.)

Strava link: https://www.strava.com/activities/4236912598/overview
Where I went: Quebrada Baking Company, 208 Mass Ave.
When I went: Saturday, October 24, at around 7:30 am.
What I drank: An iced regular coffee (pastry: mushroom croissant)
Ride Recap: Cargo bike is still awesome. Swallows up my two giant reusable grocery bags and hauls it home without bothering with the e-assist. (The two reusable grocery bags are, since I DNFed PBP, my PBP souvenir -- we went to the grocery for ride snacks and had to buy bags.) It does still need a coffee-cup holder, which I may get later today; D needs something from JoAnn Fabrics, which is right next to Cycle Loft, and I will tag along and pick up one. (D does not drink coffee and does not understand the necessity of this on the bike. Alas. I don't need it as much right now because I can't sip coffee on the go with a mask on, but this way I can bring coffee from the sidewalk outside the shop to somewhere nicer to drink it in future.)
How far: About 8.4 miles -- Strava thinks it's more, but that includes the GPS bouncing around while I was in the grocery store.

The Arlington Water Tower, looking somewhat baleful under clouds, and which reminds me I should ride more hills:

My other eggplant party recipe, which came out fantastic.

Eggplant Picadillo Empanadas
based on a variety of recipes on the internet, including:
https://wandererunderthesun.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/eggplant-picadillo/
http://eatlikeayogi.com/vegan-picadillo/
https://www.recipenova.com/2018/07/cuban-beef-picadillo-picadillo-alvarez.html
https://www.laylita.com/recipes/how-to-make-empanada-dough/

1 onion
6 cloves garlic
1# eggplant (one large)
1 red bell pepper
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup green olives (used pre-pitted castlevestrano). Get something packed in brine.
2 Tbsp capers (only had about 1/2 that left, added a few extra olives to make up the difference)
3 bay leaves
2 tsp ground cumin
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 cup tomato paste (used reconstituted tomato powder)
dash allspice + nutmeg
1 Tbsp fresh oregano
1/2 cup vegetable stock
olive oil

Sautee onions, garlic in olive oil until soft. Add spices, eggplant, and bell pepper, continue to sautee. Add remaining ingredients and simmer until soft and flavors melded (was probably ~40min). Remove bay leaves. Hit with some extra brine ~2 Tbsp from the olives or capers at the end. Check for salt levels; broth + brine + salty ingredients was enough salt in my case.

This will make more than you need for the amount of dough below.

Empanada dough

3 cups AP flour
12 Tbsp/6 oz salted butter (1 1/2 sticks)
1/4-1/2 cup cold water or milk
2 eggs (one for dough, one for wash)

Cut butter into flour (food processor fine). Add one beaten egg and drizzle water in until it is clumping but not entirely together (as you would with pie crust). Chill before rolling out. Makes 12-15 medium empanadas. (The better you are at rolling thin and working with thin dough, the more filling you can get in; the later ones in my batch were much nicer. But the sad-looking ones still tasted great.) Brush with beaten egg + a little water, prick with a fork, and bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown all over.

Serve with chimichurri (cilantro, parsley, lime juice, olive oil, salt).

More rides, both in Zwift and out on the streets; got a tiny bit of sunburn on my legs yesterday when I went out for a 50k/31mile ride because I forgot that that was a thing that happens. dphilli1's allergies were acting up, while I wanted to get some more miles & hills in. Plus knock off a 50k for George Swain's virtual brevet series, although I doubt I'll finish the challenge as I'm not sure I really want to spend an entire day doing loops from home to rack up 150k or 200k, and I started too late to manage 8 50ks before the end of May. But 50k is generally a nice ride length, and needs no water refills, so I'm sure I'll do a few more of those.

I headed out to Walden again, the hilly way (Belmont Hill/Concord/Trapelo), and then made the way back a little less flat this time. Legs feel good; set a few PRs and silvers on Strava, which means that I'm probably ahead of where I was last year, hill-wise, even if by this time last year I'd ridden most of a SR series. I do think the climbing and intervals indoors are helping -- I dragged myself up the Zwift replica of the Alpe d'Huez in just under two hours, which I was proud of (although if I'd gone just over I'd have a better carrot to strike for next time, oh well):



Mostly, it was just gorgeous out, with New England being its lovely spring self:



Today, instead, I rode indoors with friends and then cooked and baked -- made some enchiladas (no photos) for dinner for the week, and since I ran out of the lovely hipster english muffins I had been eating (Stone & Skillet), I made my own. These came out phenomenally well, to be honest; I wanted something edible and these far surpassed that. I did singe the first few I grilled but not too badly. And my sourdough starter is definitely not active enough; great flavor, no lift, so you'll see notes in here on how to either salvage this recipe halfway through, or how to just give it some yeast to begin with and just use sourdough for flavor.



( Sourdough Cinnamon Raisin English Muffins )

It's my first season as RBA (Regional Brevet Administrator), theoretically running brevets.

Well, that's obviously not happened. Someday, I'll ride with other randonneurs outside of Zwift. Hopefully.

But at least Zwift somehow got the secret handshake to talk to my somewhat-ancient CycleOps exercise bike; I didn't pony up for the smart one but I did get the one with real power, so I can race people virtually. Still so few women that, amusingly, in the race I did yesterday, I was 4/7 (4/11 for most of it but I guess the last 4 didn't finish) in group D. If I'd ridden in group C I would have been 2/2, no one at all raced B, and I would have *won* group A as 1/2. Long-term paying for both Peleton and Zwift and often going for months using neither is probably not actually the right plan but for now it's fun.

However, this is mostly a baking, not a biking, quarantine post: for once I made myself birthday cake, since buying a treat wasn't happening, and I have all this time that I'm not commuting.

It's mostly faithful to the recipe in my retro-reprint Betty Crocker, but I made a few tweaks and thus feel free to rename it, as the original one is a little "ooh we added some spice and made it ~exotic~ (even though it has less spice than the applesauce spice cake a page before that is not given a vaguely ethnic name". Except I haven't thought of one yet. (If you want to google the original and other variants, it was listed as "Araby spice cake", and this repost of it is accurate to my cookbook.)

( Unnamed chocolate spice cake with mocha buttercream filling and White Mountain frosting )

I contemplated various flavorings for the frosting, but I love the classic plain White Mountain. Could try doing the mocha thing like the filling with it too, or go for contrast with orange blossom water or something, but I'm also just as happy I didn't, since we only just finished eating the rosewater-and-pistachio vegan aquafaba meringues I made recently.

Oh, right, recipe for those, too:

( Vegan pistachio rosewater meringues )

Evidently you can do cooked frostings with aquafaba, too, but that's an experiment for another day...

Pictures later when I figure out where I'm posting them now that my Flickr is out of space, including the one of a half-eaten meringue that everyone on Facebook thought looked like I was eating a minature dinosaur skull, evidently...

There will be a next time, although only after I've done a domestic (cheaper) 1200k and at least one hilly, ride-straight-through 600k, I think. (Yes, these are common wisdom. But PBP only comes around once every 4 years, and I didn't want to wait for the next one to make the attempt.

1. Definitely do the cutting back on coffee ahead of time, because caffeine withdrawl migraines suck, and I got those all taken care of in late July.

2. Don't have caffeine on the ride, except maybe ONE small cup at breakfast to make it "morning" (it does not have to be morning), and only if I've actually slept.

3. Carry powdered something sweeter-than-Skratch; I desperately wanted my usual redflavor gatorade as it heated up in the day. (Enough Skratch to brew it double-strength would also probably work.) That was a big reason I was drinking things other than the packets I had with me.

4. The snacks I carried the first night were good choices. Though more salty ones that weren't nuts might be a good plan -- the cheetos I had in the drop bag should probably have been in my pocket.

5. Plan out food stops even more: there is jackall in France for vegetarians open that time of year in most places. Also, if those automatic pizza vending machines are still around in 2023, get a map of them; there was one just by the bakery in Villaines and I would totally have murdered an entire pizza then. The veggie burger place in Fougeres was perfect, though. This may also include having a support car at more stops. And getting dinner food ahead of time that can be reconstituted with hot water or something.

6. A less aggressive plan, or intentionally DON'T make one, because falling behind the plan was making me really upset, and that wasn't helping me fall back to plan B, when I did have almost three hours built up at that point, I just wasn't going to have enough at Loudeac for three hours of sleep AND leaving with a cushion; write up the no-cushion bare-bones plan and then I can be delighted to be AHEAD of it if I am.

7. Faster uphill -- lift and do hill work over the winter. Do more hilly rides in season. (I am intentionally not putting "lose weight" on this item.)

8. Get more sleep ahead of time, and really, really sleep in on departure morning. Not sure whether to look at an earlier start time (i.e. less trying to sleep in departure morning) or later (puts potential sleep stops closer to when I'd want to sleep), or similar. I'm never likely to be an 84-hour starter.

9. Learn from experience on other long rides as to whether taking a nap at Fougeres would have been a ride-salvager. I wasn't sleepy then -- it hit me ten miles later, but if that had been the plan perhaps I could have slept. Or if I'd planned sleep at Tintineac, I probably could have pushed harder to get there.

OH LOOK I'M POSTING. Hurrah!

I'm writing this from the Mercure hotel in Saint Quentin en Yvelines, where I'm chilling and waiting nervously for PBP to start. We got in on Tuesday morning, after a fairly uneventful flight -- the bike had a TSA note, but unlike many friends' bike cases, they seem to have left everything alone in there after taking a peek. My main suitcase was a little more shaken up; they didn't like the mochi and kẹo mè xửng huế (Vietnamese soft sesame candy) lurking in the bottom.

Amusingly, the Carrefour near the hotel had both mochi (although green tea flavor, not red bean) and the candy in their international aisle, but I didn't want to count on it. (We'd gone over to the international section mostly to see what the "tex-mex" section contained for giggles.) But that's later in this travellogue...

Saw my first fellow randos at the car rental -- one guy in a Randonneurs Brazil jersey, and a group of four guys with bike boxes, but I was exhausted and didn't go say hi. We got a small five-door car just big enough for the bike box, and went to the hotel for quick naps. My bike was the first into the bike area in the garage! After napping I reassembled the bike, while chatting with a tandem team from Florida who'd arrived an hour or so after we had. (We ended up eating dinner with them as well, when we all had headed out to find what was open before 7pm in SQY and had discovered the same two options.)

Then we did two days sightseeing in Paris; on the second one I spotted at least two, maybe three fellow riders -- a pair of guys, one in a SF Randonneurs jersey, locking up at a cafe, and a guy on a very West Coast Rando Bike (boxy front bag, looong fenders and flaps, etc) in a jersey the color of Seattle Randonneurs (but I couldn't read it) aptly navigating the traffic-circle-of-hell around the Arc de Triomphe. Now we're hanging out in the hotel with a day to kill; we'd sort of planned to go into Paris today too, but neither of us want to walk around a lot, and Versailles tickets were sold out.

We bought snacks and beer at the Carrefour; right now our Paris souvenirs are a sweatshirt (D was cold in Paris yesterday) and two reusable shopping bags. :) Bike check tomorrow; am probably going for a short shakedown ride this afternoon. Possibly we may drive down to the start and check it out even though we'll be there tomorrow, too.

I am vacillating between nervous and excited to get rolling.

It had been A Week and I was not really looking forward to getting up early to drive for a ride, but the weather was supposed to be fabulous and, having done it last year, I knew the route was great, so I set my alarm for brevet o'clock and headed down to Providence for the first NER 200k of the year.

The Bays & Bridges route is more forgiving than a lot of our routes; no big hills, no really steep ones, and both times I've done it there's been wind but mostly-constant wind, so at least you're not fighting it the whole way.

It starts out with a long stretch on a bike path, which generally means big packs because it's flat, speed is limited a bit by other users, and everyone is warming up and feeling sociable. When we hit the end, the folks in front of me with wider tires chose a fairly rough way back to the real road, which meant I had to stop pretty quickly because I couldn't bunnyhop that curb. I signaled it, but it did cause a little accordioning behind me (and thus irritation), though no actual contact between humans/bikes. In embarassment, I fussed with nothing until the pack had departed, at which point I started cruising on my own. I instantly felt slow -- I hadn't picked up on the difference in the wind, and I *was* on a false flat with terrible pavement, where I'd lost the pack the previous year after hanging on a tiny bit longer. But I didn't feel bad, just slow, and so I kept chugging along to the Bridge That Eats Tires (aka the Mount Hope, where I again walked the expansion joints because I do not want to be a cautionary tale).

It was also warming up quickly; way warmer than anything yet this year, and I saw 67 degrees on my GPS several times, although mostly it was around 62-64. Flowers were taking advantage of this to show up all over; I was not the only person who took this picture, though this was a bit later:

( pictures and much more text :) )
9:37, boom. The road to PBP is off to a great start. Now I have to spend my birthday packing for the Florida brevet week. And square away a couple last details for the 200k/300k I'm organizing in June -- found reasonable-looking parking for people driving into the start, now just have to see if the hotel is going to be chill with us starting in their lot.

The 600k was awesome! Ride report maybe tomorrow. But now, figuring out the list of things I need to do between now and Wednesday, when I drive over to NY again for the Lap of the Lake 1000k.

Done:
new brake pads
new cleats on shoes
handlebar tape re-taped
put rack on bike
hotel reservations

To do today:
remove rack from bike (drop bags were announced very late) DONE
around-the-block+ shakedown ride for cleats, brake pads, tape DONE-ish (checked cleats on spin bike)
buy snacks/canned coffee DONE
drug store for prescriptions, more sunscreen, batteries DONE
change taillight batteries DONE
wash bike clothes DONE
put solas tape on fender stays/fender DONE (kind of a terrible job but it should still work)
make sure new usb converter/charging cables work DONE

To do tomorrow:
oil chain DO IN NY
long-ish shakedown ride with David DONE
wash post-ride clothes (incl. sleeve that was worn riding) DONE
pack bike clothes (mostly already clean) DONE
repack on-bike bags (pack more bag balm more accessibly than on 600k!),
pack day 1 prescriptions on bike DONE
mow lawn DONE (not bike related but...)

To do Monday/Tuesday:
copy passport DONE
grab more single-serving aspirin packets...oops
get Canadian currency DONE
clean up GPS tracks and put them on GPS DONE
pack non-bike clothes DONE
charge powerbrick and pack chargers DONE
pack everything else DONE
maybe go to yoga SKIPPED


Packing lists: Drop bag
clothes for day 2, day 3 PACKED
powdered drink mix (4 bottles worth) PACKED
protein-containing snacks (tofu, protein bars)
caffeinated beverage (at least one for day 2, day 3 has breakfast options) PACKED
additional sweet bike snacks PACKED
sunblock, bag balm, stridex pads, deodorant PACKED
spare tire? if it isn't on the bike. PACKED
same for rain jacket PACKED
toothbrush/toothpaste PACKED
glasses case and glasses WILL PACK WHEN REMOVE GLASSES
topical painkiller PACKED
phone charger PACKED
powerbrick charger PACKED
GPS charger PACKED
prescriptions for day 2, day 3 PACKED
SPD sandals in case of massive hotfoot PACKED
underwear for sleeping in if needed + maxi pads PACKED

Pre-ride:
sleeping bag, sheet, pillow, air mattress
book and puzzles
additional phone charger
day 1 shorts

Post-ride bag:
clean clothes, maxi pads, towel, warmups (if I don't want to shower), flip-flops (will get deodorant and glasses from drop bag) DONE

Hotel bag:
Wednesday/Monday non-bike clothes, day 1 jersey/bra/socks, shampoo/conditioner, deodorant, toothbrush/toothpaste, actual shoes/socks, prescriptions DONE