Hill Running & Damn! I’m a great cook!

I officially hate running up hills. Or at least running up, down, up, down, up, down the same hill over and over again. This morning I met my running group at 5:30 am, and we did hill repeats. 8 minute warm up, 7 minute cool down, 32 minutes of hills. 8 x 2 repeats. That’s 2 minutes running up the hill, 2 minutes running down the hill, 8 times.

Last night I made dinner for Nick. I love to cook, but I don’t get to do much more than turkey tacos or spaghetti usually. I also love to try new recipes, which has sometimes in the past proven dangerous and disappointing. But not last night. It was the best dinner I’ve turned out in quite a long time, and my chance to return the romance favor. Dinner, music, wine, candles. Yep, very nice.

The menu:
Hummus & pita
Lamb kebabs with onions and potatoes
Okra sauteed with tomatoes and onions
Asparagus with goat cheese sauce
Chocolate Orange Flan
2 bottles of red wine; Spanish reds, Mano a Mano and Abrazo

The hummus rocked. It was a bit garlicky, but that’s my fault…I love garlic. Can’t get enough of it.

I’ve never cooked lamb before. I ordered it from the butcher, pre-cut for kebabs. Seasoned it, skewered it with the potatoes and onions and grilled it over open flame. Fantastic!

I’ve never cooked okra either, and it turned out very tasty. I will definitely make this dish again. Maybe modify it a bit to make it a little more soupy, and add in some rice to make a stew.

I eat asparagus all the time, but the sauce was new. Goat cheese, mayo, milk, salt, pepper and crumbled bacon. Delicious!

The flan was a work of art. Despite losing much sleep over it the night before, it was so worth it. The recipe said it would take an hour to bake. It ended up taking two and a half hours to bake. I don’t know whether this was because of my oven, or the secondary pan I baked it in being to small or what. But, I was just very pleased that it turned out so well AND came out of the baking dish in one piece.

The wines were pretty good. World Market carries a lot of wines, and I was very pleased with the two I selected. These were both Spanish wines. The first, Mano a Mano had a little bit of a tart aftertaste, but was very drinkable. The second, Abrazo was beyond excellent for the price. Rich, ruby colored, smelled like roses, had a strong taste of dark red berries. Exquisite.