Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Cooking and counting down to the half marathon

Roanoke has some great ethnic markets primarily along busy Williamson Road. Housing prices are reasonable along this street and close proximity to the interstate makes it a convenient area for working class people to live. I'm happy to say I live here too and can walk to many of these shops - isn't that great!

I recently stopped in one of these markets and picked up a variety of tofu and seitan products. Craving Thai food today I decided to try to put something together with the ingredients I had on hand. Tong's Thai is fabulous and I stop in every week or so for lunch but I have all this great food at home....

I sliced a yellow squash, onion and garlic and sauteed in a little veggie oil. I added some chopped fresh jalapeno to the mix, let that saute, then added the mushrooms and seitan mix (ingredients from the label: fried gluten, soy sauce, golden mushrooms, shiitake, sugar, soy bean oil, salt).


Stirring that around, I added a little cornstarch dissolved in water to thicken up the broth and added plenty of fresh basil and ground black pepper towards the end. Served over rice and yummy! My version of southern fried yellow crookneck squash with a strong Thai influence....



Now for the rest of my doings....Busy schedule this week with classes in the morning and working evening shift Monday - Thursday. Did a brisk 2 mile walk yesterday and plan to do a easy ~3mile run after class tomorrow. Trying to get enough sleep and drinking plenty of water in prepearation for the half marathon this weekend. The literature I've read suggests tapering off a little the week of an event to prevent injury....we'll see how it goes!