Sweet relief from the cold means I’ve been celebrating in lots of ways. Running in shorts (miracle!) and with the Indy Runners group. I like having running companions to keep my mind of off the actual run some days. Yesterday I showed up for the Tuesday run at Hinkle Field House on Butler’s campus ready to do four, maybe five, miles. Thanks to the girl I ran with, I ended up going six miles!

May is Race Month in this fair city and the Mini-Marathon is the kick-off for a month of festivities leading up to the Indy 500. Biggest half marathon in the country, what what? I opted for the role of cheerleader this year instead of runner, which I thought would be very difficult. I’m a pretty competitive person, especially when it comes to races. But I remembered how much I appreciated the support of my friends along the race course last year, and I was excited to cheer extra loudly in the places where I remembered feeling the most tired. My friend Sam and I biked to around mile 9 and then maybe .25 mile before the finish line. Extra perk? En route we go to see the wheelchair racers and the insanely fast top finishers (can you imagine running 13.1 miles in just over an hour?!), a part of a race that I never get to see as a participant. The sheer athleticism of these men and women blew my mind.

Our posters (yes that’s Ryan Gosling and Bob Dylan) got plenty of head nods and smiles from random runners, but we cheered extra hard for our friend Marnie and her fiance Jannson and my two other friends that we happened to see run by. We even ran along the sidewalk for the last .25 miles with Marnie, screaming her name the whole way. I am beyond proud of these two!

Can we talk about driving with the windows open and music blaring? It’s one of my favorite warm weather pastimes. Right now I could listen to Patty Griffin’s new album American Kid all day. The first song feels like the perfect summertime folky anthem to me.

Back to running. It’s cool, it’ll lead to epic spring food. In starting to think about training for the marathon I’ve signed up for this fall, I’m considering my diet. I know that the more miles I log, the hungrier I’ll be, but I do not want to just stuff myself with tons of pasta, as amazingly appealing as that sounds. So I’m focusing on fueling with lots of fruits and veggies and healthful proteins like beans and lentils. To kick start this fresh new diet I did a really great three-day juice cleanse from Natural Born Juicers. If you live in Indianapolis I highly recommend checking them out. I’m now a few weeks out from having finished the cleanse and am back to my marathon fueling diet. I’m actually really missing my morning juices and how awake and strangely full they made me feel, so I’m thinking of going in on a juicer.

On top of that spring has brought the most magical produce to the farmers markets. Slowly at first, but surely. A few weeks ago radishes and pea sprouts started to show up, and so I rejoiced. This time of year is perfect for buying lettuce and any other awesome vegetables that catch your eye and making a huge salad.

I’d love to give you a recipe for this, but I feel like that would just be limiting, so here’s a basic guide.

Pile your plate with lettuce (mine, year round thanks to hydroponics in greenhouses, is almost always from Eden Farms). I like a mix of lettuces to give my salad a little more flavor and depth.

Chop up a variety of vegetables, whatever is pretty and bright and catches your eye at the store or market. I went with pretty pink and white radishes and sweet pea shoots from Harvestland Farms. Never had pea shoots? Me either until this salad! They taste like peas, not surprisingly, but before peas come around. Like a pea preview. Maybe add a squeeze of lemon over things now. Add some fresh herbs if you have them on hand.

Any good salad, or meal in my opinion, is topped with a soft yolk fried egg (my eggs always come from Schacht Farm, I love them, eggs and people, so much). Fry one up with a bit of salt and pepper, or poach it in olive oil like Oh Joy, which is what I tried out for this salad. I liked this cooking option, because it a nice amount of olive oil to drizzle over the salad as dressing.

Break open that egg and let the yolk get all cozy with the lettuce. Heck yes, spring!

Two weeks ago I was running in full winter gear as snow flurries fell onto my tongue. This week I’m wearing shorts and tank tops. Not together. Let’s not get too crazy. Two and a half months ago I had my heart broken. Talk about chaos. A week and a half ago I remembered why I loved the mountains and a barn filled with horses—peace. And five days ago I crossed the finish line of the Shamrock Shuffle with a new personal record and the Chicago skyline rising in front of me. I felt this overwhelming sense of luck and joy, and that feeling just hasn’t gone away yet. Change is sticking.

I once thought bran muffins were ridiculous. I worked at a coffee shop in Raleigh and we sold muffins. The bran were always left at the end of the day, and honestly I didn’t blame our customers. Why would you opt for healthy, tasteless bran when you could go the blueberry or carrot?

Over Christmas I got Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole Grain Flour by Kim Boyle, a cookbook I had read about over and over again on my favorite food blogs and had been coveting. In fact my favorite regular weekend pancakes come from this cookbook. I decided to buy one new whole grain flour at a time and jumped into the weirdest and most unknown chapter: amaranth flour. In fact I’m not even sure how to pronounce this flour. Look for it with the other specialty flours in your grocery or co-op. A bit about amaranth, in case you are as clueless as I was.
“It’s fragrance is strong and unique, grass with subtle undertones of chalk or stone, more like hay than a freshly mown lawn. … it’s those seeds—a single amaranth plant is capable of producing about 50,000 of them—that are ground to make the flour. … Its seeds are gluten-free and high in protein, lysine, and fiber. … Amaranth pairs very well with strong-flavored sweeteners like honey, molasses, and muscovado sugar.”
With a whole bag of this new flour to use up, I was going to have to make every recipe in that chapter, including the bran muffins, which also include prunes. Prunes + bran … please insert poop joke here.

Now despite all of this negative talk about bran muffins, I am still posting this recipe. Why? They are fucking amazing. True story. I am a changed woman. I am on Team Bran Muffin. They’re totally bursting with a bright and full flavor from the amaranth flour, molasses, prunes, and orange juice and zest. They’re filling but not even remotely heavy. And they’re particularly good cut in half, warmed up in the microwave, and slathered in honey. They freeze well, too, and make a great on-the-go breakfast.

Embrace the change, weird or spectacular, and especially when it takes you by surprise. Oh, and make these muffins. Duh.

Orange Bran Muffins
makes 10 muffins
from Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours

Ingredients
For prune puree
1 cup orange juice from about 3 oranges
1 1/2 cups pitted prunes

For muffins
1 1/2 cups wheat bran
1/2 cup amaranth flour
1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups buttermilk
1/2 cup molasses
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 egg
1 tablespoon orange zest from oranges used for juice

To make the prune puree, bring the orange juice and prunes to a boil in a small saucepan. Turn the flame off; cover; let steep until the prunes are plump and have absorbed some of the juice, about 30 minutes. Using an immersion blender (or regular blender or food processor), puree the prunes and juice in the pan until smooth. (Note: you can actually do this ahead of time and keep the prune puree in the fridge in a container for a week or so.)

Preheat the oven to 350°. Rub every other muffin tin in two muffin pans with butter (this gives muffins room to spread while baking).

Measure the bran into a medium bowl. Warm the buttermilk over a gentle flame until just lukewarm. Don’t let the buttermilk get so hot that it separates. Pour the warm buttermilk over the bran, and set aside.

Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl, pouring back into the bowl any bits of grain or other ingredients that may remain in the sifter, and set aside.

In a small bowl whisk the wet ingredients together with 1/2 cup of the prune jam, making sure that the egg is thoroughly mixed in. Add this mixture to the softened bran and milk, stir, then add the entire wet mixture to the dry mixture.

Scoop the batter into 10 muffin cups. The batter should be slightly mounded above the edge of each cup.

Bake for 30 to 34 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through. The muffins are ready to come out when the bottoms are a dark golden color (twist a muffin out of the pan to check). Take the tins out of the oven, twist each muffin out, and place it on its side in the cup to cool. This ensures that the muffin stays crusty instead of getting soggy.

Here is a snoring pup and a snoozing cat. A gin, tonic, and mango juice beverage. One pound of bacon vs. one girl. The Rhythm Center with one of my favorite almost-four-year-olds. March Madness. And cake, because as Julia Child said,

Jan of Poppytalk

I have a cake recipe for you to, you know, help you avoid meetings. It comes to you from the Joy the Baker Cookbook. I’ve passed the recipe over many a time, probably because it looks so simple. I’ve passed it up for the fancier carrot cakes, avocado cupcakes, brown butter chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chocolate muffins … uh, maybe I just passed it up for chocolate.

You should probably bring this cake to your next meeting at work, because every office could use a midday party. And it is the perfect cake for a spontaneous meeting-gone-party. So simple and unassuming in its cast-iron skillet (though you can make it in a cake pan, too). It most importantly is easier to make than going to the grocery to buy a cake. If you bake or want to start baking, the ingredients in this recipe are ones you either always have in your kitchen or ones you should buy, because you will use them in any other recipe you’ll make. It smells just like a simple, perfect cake should—buttery, warm, vanilla-y. Buttermilk is key here, making the cake lovely and tender.

And the praline topping? It looks like caramel, but it’s so much easier. Trust me. Caramel and me do not have a good relationship.

But as this topping boils on the stove, your kitchen starts to smell like a candy store. I may have stood over the pot just breathing in the sweet scent.

Sweet and simple cake like this is perfect with a cup of coffee after family dinner on Sunday night. I guess that makes family dinner a party.

Here and now is pretty good.

Recipe after the jump!

Buttermilk skillet cake with praline topping
Adapted very slightly from the Joy the Baker Cookbook

Ingredients
For the cake
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup buttermilk (or 3/4 cup milk + 3/4 tablespoon vinegar)

For topping
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/4 cup heavy cream or almond milk
generous pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

Place a rack in the upper third of the ove, and preheat to 375°. Grease and flour the bottom and sides of an 8-inch overproof pan (preferably a cast-iron skillet) or 9-inch cake pan.

Make the cake. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside. In a bowl of an electric mixer fitted with beaters or the paddle attachment (if you have a stand mixer), beat butter and sugar until well incorporated and lighter in color, about 3 minutes. Add egg and egg yolk, beating after each addition for 1 minute. Beat in vanilla.

Turn the mixer down to low. Add half of the flour mixture, followed by half of the buttermilk. When the flour is just combined with the butter mixture, add the remaining flour. Beat on low speed until almost all of the flour has disappeared. Remove the bowl from the mixer and finish incorporating the ingredients with a spatula. Spoon batter into prepared pan and spread evenly. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until a skewer or butter knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

While the cake bakes make the praline topping. In a medium saucepan, combine brown sugar, butter, cream, and salt over medium heat. Bring the mixture to a soft boil (that’s just small bubbles) for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and add vanilla and nuts. Stir. The topping mixture may seem too loose for the cake, but let it sit in the pan for 20 minutes. It’ll firm up.

Pour the topping over the warm cake. If you baked the cake in a cake pan instead of a cast iron skillet, remove the cake from the pan, place it on a plate, and then pour the topping over it. Spread evenly. Serve at room temperature

I play music as I do things around the house on this unrushed, mostly unplanned Sunday morning. Lately I think I’ve been trying to catch the wind. Futile most likely, but for some reason I can’t seem to stop. Wind, leave me alone. Come back when you’re a pleasant breeze.

Sunday is pancake day. This morning pancakes broke me. (Sorry Joy the Baker, I cannot get your single lady pancakes to work!) In one stupid moment pancakes almost ruined my entire day. Just breathe, though, right? Turn to a favorite pancake. Funny how the same food that brought me to tears one minute, is perfectly golden and doused in maple syrup the next. Sometimes it’s good to stick to our favorites.

Sunday needs to relax, because Saturday was spent being busy. When one of your best girls is getting married in August some Saturdays are busy. Find bridesmaids dresses, have margaritas and beers, accidentally make off with diamond bracelets from my parents’ jewelry store, visit the reception location.

This is The Sanctuary on Penn.

Stained glass windows everywhere.

Even the bathrooms were lovely.

Have you ever been somewhere that just breathes a person? The Sanctuary on Penn fits my friend and her fiance perfectly in the history, the stories, the details, the scuff marks, the light, the many rooms, the leather chairs and dark wood bars, the fact that I can say bars plural.

Good luck penny floors.

Perfect. Wandering around this old church and picturing it filled with their guests was easily my favorite part of the day.

A mug of tea or a cocktail? A favorite sweatshirt or song? Your friends, your family? Pasta or cookies? Maybe even a memory?

Sometimes the memories, those are the worst when you’re searching for comfort.

Smells comfort me. My running shoes and my yoga mat bring me comfort. So do family and friends and my dear, sweet Mira and Lola.

And food, though different food for different situations. Sometimes I need a fresh loaf of bread. It’s homey, warm, simple, and good. And no matter how many loaves of bread I make, I still feel an incredible amount of satisfaction when I take the bread pan out of the oven and slice myself a piece. It’s a miracle to me every time that I can get the yeast to work.

I was out of bread last weekend and craving something different from my usual whole wheat sandwich bread. Something white and crusty. I found a recipe for a no-knead bread via Pinterest and decided to give it a shot. Not many ingredients, no mixer or kneading required, and I could let it rise its required 12-18 hours overnight and put the loaf in the oven in the morning.

Nothing beats a house filled with morning sunshine and the smell of baking bread. Wait, warm-from-the-oven bread with avocado and a runny fried egg—that almost beats it. Talk about comfort, plain and simple.

I’m on my second loaf of this crusty gloriousness, and I’m going to tell you, it cannot be easier to make. You may say yeast scares you (please, no yeast jokes, I know at least one of you is making one in your head.), that making bread is a difficult process. Trust me, it’s not.

The woman whose blog this bread comes from has a whole slew of FAQs and helpful tips on her site. If you want some support in your bread endeavors, check them out.

I have just one tip for you, one that made my bread making much less stressful: use a thermometer. Active dry yeast, which is what I use in all my bread, needs to be woken up, or reactivated, with water and sugar. The package will give you directions. It will tell you to use water that’s 110º-115º F. Stick your instant read thermometer under the faucet and turn on the water, and only fill your measuring cup when it’s reached that temperature. Any other water used in the recipe should be that temperature, too. If your yeast does not get foamy and smelly after five minutes, dump it and start over. No shame.

Please, make this bread. Start it one evening, let it sit, even for up to 24 hours, and bake it in the morning. Invite over a friend or your momma. Fill your life, or the life of someone else, with a little bit of crusty bread comfort.

Crusty White Bread
recipe from Simply So Good

3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon sugar
3 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups water

1. Prepare the yeast. Measure out 1/4 cup water at 110º-115º. Add the sugar and yeast and let sit for up to five minutes until the mixture is foamy.

2. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, salt and yeast. Add water and mix until a shaggy mixture forms. It’ll be quite sticky and not dough-like. Do not fear! Cover bowl with plastic wrap and set aside for 12-18 hours. Overnight works great.

3. Preheat the oven to 450º. When the oven has reached 450º place a dutch oven or cast iron pot with a lid in the oven and heat the pot for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, put the dough onto a heavily floured surface and shape it into a rough ball. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit while the pot is heating. Remove hot pot from the oven and drop in the dough. Cover and return to oven for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes remove the lid and bake an additional 15 minutes. Remove bread from oven and place on a cooling rack to cool.

So far 29 has taught me…

that cinnamon sticks do not light on fire and therefore cannot double as birthday candles, and also smell not like cinnamon when burning.

sometimes taking care of a sick person can be a blessing in disguise. It’ll lead to lots of cuddle and couch time.

a good birthday present to yourself upon turning 29 is disinfecting the entire house.

birthday parties at this age include some little people who may not even be able to join in on the conversation. This does not make parties any less enjoyable. We may be growing up, but everyone is still game to adjust their grown up schedules so we can all still hang out and be friends like normal.

time goes by so. fast. In the blink of an eye I’m a year away from 30. I remember when 30 sounded so old. Now it feel like NBD, just the next thing that’ll happen in this life.

Perfection is not something that comes on the first time. Well, rarely anyway. Who among us can say their first time having sex was awesome? Bad first date that turned into many more amazing dates? Who doesn’t feel there was some room for improvement in the first real job they took, the way they handled themselves in their first job? Perfection, let’s be honest, 29 years have taught me that it doesn’t exist, thank God. But ecstatically amazing, drool-worthy, break out the happy dance? That does exist. Twenty-nine says it exists if you admit to your mistakes, learn from them, don’t kick yourself, and give it another go.

Perfection did not exist in the first peanut butter pie I made for Michael, and at the tender age of 27 I did not know how to admit that. For the last two years I have heard endlessly about the perfect peanut butter pie from Smokey Bones.

Oh you’ve bought edible perfection? I can replicate that at home, bitch! I will now conquer the peanut butter pie. It must taste rich, but not overwhelming and peanut buttery with a layer of chocolate (milk chocolate, Julia, come oooon!). It should be topped with whipped cream. Above all, it must  have a firm texture and not be a peanut butter pudding in a pie crust.

I think this pie went through about four iterations. This year, for Michael’s 31st birthday I gave him a peanut butter pie that he deemed amazing, heaven, blissful, orgasm in his mouth even.

Do you see the list of requirements up there that I had to achieve in this pie? I feel like I reached perfection, even if that was not one of the adjectives Michael used to describe it.

So here is a peanut butter pie, one that taught me, one that will bring me into 29 with confidence.

Perfect Peanut Butter Pie
adapted from A Beautiful Mess

Ingredients
A single Pie crust (my favorite of which I use a bit more than half)
3 ounces milk chocolate (plus a little more for garnish)
1 cups whipping cream, divided
8 ounces cream cheese
1 cup smooth peanut butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Prepare your pie crust. Preheat the oven to 400°. Roll out the crust and press it into a pie pan with about 1/4 inch hanging over the edge. Fold the edges up and pinch or crimp them with your fingers or a fork. Press a piece of aluminum foil, either buttered or non-stick side down, onto the crust. Fill the aluminum foil covered crust with dried beans (you won’t be able to cook with them again) or pie weights.

Bake the crust for 25 minutes. Take it out of the oven and remove the dried beans and foil. If any of the crust has bubbled up, gently press it down with the back of a spoon. Put the crust back into the oven for 10 minutes, or until it’s lightly browned. Remove it from the oven and let it cool.

Put the chocolate and 1/4 of a cup heavy cream in a small pot. Melt over medium heat, whisking frequently to make a ganache.

Put the chocolate and 1/4 cup heavy cream in a small pot and melt over medium heat, whisking often. Pour into baked pie crust.

In a mixer combine 1/4 cup of remaining whipping cream, cream cheese, peanut butter and brown sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add the last 1/2 cup whipping cream and vanilla extract, and beat until stiff peaks begin to form.

Spoon filling into pie crust and carefully spread it out without mixing in the chocolate layer on the bottom. Using the large holes on a grater, grate chocolate curls over the top of the pie.

Put the pie in the freezer for at least two hours. Serve chilled.

I want all this inspiration in the start of the new year. I’m really thankful that my friend Sam got me this really cool journal, 642 Things to Write About, because I want to be inspired, but in small and not overwhelming doses. I want to plan big for 2013, but big plans give rise to anxiety. I did make one successful plan: I signed up for a marathon in November. A mother fucking marathon. Oh shit.

This is the year I turn 29. One more til 30. Instead of resolutions I’m making a 30 before 30 list. Thirty things I’ll do this year. Number 26: Run 26(.2) miles by completing a marathon. Number four: Send flowers to four friends. Number 12: Go to shabbat services 12 times. Number 20: Take pictures of 20 of my favorite things. Do you have any things to add? I need helping filling in the numbers. I’ll post my whole list next week, after the birthday happens.

Birthdays come with cake. Always cake. My favorite part of birthdays. I love making cake for other people.

I hate asking other people to make me cake. I always lust after these complicated layered things, covered in frostings, drenched in flavored syrups. And it’s not that I don’t trust my friends to come through, I just feel bad asking for something complicated.

After all, a birthday cake should be filled with a good, joyful energy that you bake into it. Not a stressed out, this will never live up to expectations energy. In reality, I’m a fan of a simple cake, a cake with good flavors, one that I can even make on a weekday, because sometimes that’s when birthday celebrations happen, but that looks and tastes dang fabulous.

One that I am proud to put on my pretty silver cake stand, but that didn’t take hours for me to make, because, after all, we are busy. It’s a fact of life. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to shower cake on our loved ones on their birthdays. So, simple and lovely cakes for busy people who are looking in every corner for simple inspirations and have birthdays to celebrate!

This is a chocolate cake of EPIC birthday proportions, but without EPIC preparations. This is the chocolate cake of my childhood, the one that my grandparents’ cook made, by request always, for our birthdays. What kind of cake do you want for your birthday this year? Mattie’s chocolate cake. It never failed.

A few years ago I called Mattie, who has retired and is in her 90s, and asked her for the chocolate cake recipe. It’s perfect, even still today. This is a chocolatey cake without being intense. It’s sweet without being overwhelming. It’s not dense or moist, it’s light and friendly and easy. It’s made with pieces of chocolate, melted, instead of cocoa powder, which seems to be fashionable for chocolate cakes. Mattie always frosted hers with a milk chocolate frosting that I absolutely love.

For this birthday, though, the birthday girl (one of my best girls, Marnie) had requested something with raspberry, so I found a raspberry buttercream. Holy hot pink awesome frosting! Girly, tangy, and perfect.

Chocolate Sour Cream Cake with Raspberry Buttercream
buttercream from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

Ingredients

For cake:
5 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cup or one stick butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 cups cake flour (or 1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour + 1/4 cup cornstarch)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla

For raspberry buttercream
1 cup fresh raspberries or drained frozen raspberries
2 sticks or 16 tablespoons butter
4 cups powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 350°. Butter and flour two 8- or 9-inch round cake pans.

Fill a pot with about two or three inches of water and bring it to a simmer. Put the chocolate in a heatproof bowl and set it on top of the pot. Let the chocolat melt, stirring occasionally. Set aside to let cool slightly.

Cream the butter and sugars with an electric or stand mixer on medium speed. Sift the flour, salt, and baking soda. Mix into butter and sugar mixture on a low speed. Add eggs one at a time, mixing in between each egg. Add milk, sour cream, vanilla, and chocolate.

Divide batter into the two prepared cake pans. Bake for 30 minutes, checking at 20 for doneness with a knife. When the knife comes out clean, take the cakes out and set them on a rack cool for 15 minutes in the pans. Carefully remove the cakes from the pans and cool completely before frosting.

While the cake cools, make the frosting. Puree the raspberries in a food processor. Set aside. Beat the butter in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in the sugar 1 cup at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the raspberry puree and beat until fully incorporated.

When the cake has cooled, you can first flatten any domed tops on either of the layers by carefully evening things out with a bread knife. Carefully slice off any domes to make the layers flat. Frost the first layer and set the second layer gently on top. Frost the second layer and edges.

If you are a traditionalist and prefer to make this cake chocolate on chocolate, here’s the chocolate buttercream recipe!

Ingredients
1 stick or 1/2 cup butter
4 cups powdered sugar
4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate
1/2 cup milk

Melt the chocolate over a pan of simmering water just like you did for the cake. Beat the butter until light and fluffy. Beat in the sugar 1 cup at a time. Add the melted chocolate and milk and beat until just incorporated. Frost away.

I’ve been inspired by all of these things at one time or another. A few weekends ago it was the ingredients, two of my purchases at the Indy Winter Farmers Market—the eggs from my favorite Schact Farms (where I also purchased some leaf lard that for pie crusts same weekend!) and some delicious greens from a farm that I’m embarrassed to say I don’t remember the name of.

I came home starving and ready to just throw some food together. I’d reached the point of hangry, AKA the point of no return, AKA I need food simply to fuel my body and am no longer concerned with how it tastes. This is the point at which I sometimes stand at the counter and eat dry granola from the box.

Thank God I accidentally made the best breakfast/brunch meal ever.

This is just a pile of simple and good ingredients. We’re talking greens with flavor (if you’ve only eaten iceberg lettuce or a bagged salad mix, brach out to some fresh and not bagged other greens like arugula, butterhead lettuce, or mustard greens. Mind-blowing.), earthy potatoes, spiced chickpeas, mushrooms, and peppers (leftovers in my kitchen from chickpea and roasted vegetable fajitas), all topped with bright yellow runny yolk eggs. This is delicious, easy, healthy fuel. This is what you should be stuffing into your face on a weekly basis.

Potato Chickpea Breakfast Hash
Serves one person

Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 small/medium potatoes (not baking potato size, that’s too big), cut into 1-inch cubes
Salt and pepper
Half of this chickpea and vegetable mix
2 eggs
butter
2-3 large handfuls of greens
1/4 cup grated cheese (perhaps smoked gouda from Trader Joe’s)

I had leftovers of the chickpea and vegetable mix. If you are not in that situation, hop over to the recipe and make yourself a batch. If you’re cool with dirtying two pans, you can get to work on the potatoes at the same time.

In a skillet (I love my cast iron skillet), heat olive oil over medium heat. Put the potatoes in the skillet in one even layer, and season with salt and pepper. Let them cook for 3-5 minutes, until they start to brown. Flip them all over and cook for another 3-5 minutes, until they’re crispy and tender when you stick a fork in them. Add in the chickpea and vegetable mix and cook 2 minutes.

Put the greens on a plate. Top them with the potato mixture.

Cook your eggs. This can be done in one of two ways. I poached mine in an egg poaching pan like this. Butter each cup and cook the eggs until the whites are just hard, about 3-4 minutes. Set them on top of the potatoes on your plate. I cannot poach eggs in a pot of water. Don’t ask me how to do it.

You can also make over easy eggs. Melt maybe half a tablespoon butter in the skillet you used for the potatoes. Crack the two eggs into the skillet without breaking the yolks. Cover the skillet with a lid, preferably a clear one, so you can keep an eye on the eggs. As soon as the yolks are covered with a thin layer of solid white, remove them from the skillet with a spatula, and set them on top of the potatoes on your plate.

Sprinkle the entire breakfast hash with the grated cheese and maybe some salt and pepper. Add hot sauce if your spicy heart so desires.

We crossed the walkway from the parking garage into Banker’s Life Fieldhouse (home of the Pacers) and secured jingle bells to our shoes.

And we ran. We jingled through the streets of downtown.

Here’s the thing. I’m a huge slacker and this race happened last Saturday. As in over a week ago. But I’m still writing about it!

So this was the Jingle Bell Run, which raises money for arthritis. All participants were encouraged to wear festive holiday outfits, and everyone got two jingle bells to tie to their shoes. Marnie did the 5K, and I did the 10K.

The morning really was gray and wet, but not too cold. Thankfully for my phone, which I carry in my hand so I can obsessively check my time, the rain stopped right as we started. My goal was to finish the race in around 52:30 with an average pace of 8:30.

I have this problem of getting swept up in the moment of the start of a race and running my first mile fast, which only makes miles three and four kinda hard. I can pace myself no problem on just a regular run, so I know what my 8:30 pace should feel like. I just get swept up. Maybe I’ll start doing more interval training so that I can practice running all out and then coming back to my regular pace and holding it for a few miles.

Anyway…6.2 mile course was nice. It was different than all of the other races I’ve run downtown, which I appreciated. We wound around the Eli Lily buildings, on and around Mass Ave, around Monument Circle, and finished back up at the Fieldhouse. At around mile 4 or so we met up with the 5K runners.

I love the end of a race. The part where you see the finish line and runners kick it into high gear. I witnessed my favorite race moment as I approached this finish line. I was running alongside a dad and his son for a few seconds. The dad looked down at his 10-year-old and said, “There’s the finish line, buddy. Wanna leave me in the dust?” Of course the kid said yes, and took off. I can only assume the dad slowed down a bit so his son could kick his butt. The competitive runner in me thinks that’s about the sweetest thing. Taking a hit in your end of race sprint so your kid can leave you in the dust.

So how’d I finish? 52:20. That’s an 8:25 pace. RIGHT ON! The results seem to think I finished 10th in my age group. I find that somewhat hard to believe, but I’ll take it! And 175 overall out of 576 runners.

This was a fun race. It was very family oriented, but as a kid-less runner out to hit a time goal, I didn’t feel out of place. Hopefully Marnie and I can both do the 10K next year!

There are days when I crave french fries, when all I want to do is stop by Yats, this yummy Cajun-Creole restaurant in town, and pick up some chili cheese etouffee. I have weeks where jet lag is clearly a real thing, but I refuse to admit it exists. I will not be weak. Winter starts to creep in, days get shorter, and by the time you get home, the sun has set, the dog still needs to be walked, and despite the fact that it’s only 6 p.m., it’s much too dark and late to make real dinner.

Do not give in to the urge to get french fries or your city’s equivalent of chili cheese etouffee from Yats. Instead make tomato soup. I bet you have all of the ingredients in your house. If not, this weekend stock up on canned tomatoes, buy a spice container of cloves and a jar of Better Than Bullion, and make a habit of always having an onion or two and some garlic in your house.

This tomato soup is special. Twice a year we would see my grandparents who lived in Holland. My grandmother, Oma, would make this soup with little mini meatballs floating in it. I remember her standing over the stove in her green kitchen making this soup. We would have it or her chicken noodle soup before every lunch in wide bowls with wide rims. My grandfather would pick up his bowl and always slurp out the last drops. I looked forward to Oma’s tomato soup every time they visited us in Indiana. She’d make a big pot first thing and we’d have it before dinner every night.

Even now that Oma is gone, Opa still eats soup every night. When he was here over the summer he gifted me Oma’s cookbook. It’s an old green, hardcover notebook with pages of handwritten recipes. Oma took a cooking class when she was young. Each night she would come home and tell Opa the recipes of the day. He then carefully wrote them down in the notebook.

This tomato soup is a cinch to make. It requires maybe 10 minutes of hands-on time and 40 minutes of simmering, flavor melding time. This tomato soup has been my go-to meal this fall on nights when I can’t muster up the energy to make a full-on dinner. Plus I happened to be given the glorious gift of a HUGE amount of tomatoes at the end of the summer, which I canned into 10 quarts of tomato awesomeness. Make a pot of this. Double the recipe. Triple it. Curl up with a bowl of it as the days grow shorter. For me, it tastes like childhood. I hope for you it tastes like an easy and healthy dinner on a night you just couldn’t squeeze out one more drop of energy.

Oma’s Tomato Soup
Serves 2

1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon butter or olive oil
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1 tablespoon dried basil
salt and pepper to taste
2 large tomatoes or a 28 ounce can diced or whole tomatoes
1 1/4 cups chicken or vegetable stock (or water + bullion)
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons rice or a good handful of thin spaghetti like vermicilli

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed sauce pan over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, and spices, and saute until the onions are translucent and soft, about five minutes. Mix in the tomatoes and cook for a minute. Add the chicken or vegetable stock and bay leaf. Bring soup to a boil, then turn the heat down to medium low and simmer for 30 minutes.

Puree the soup either in batches in a blender or right in the pot with an immersion blender until you reach the smooth consistency you like. Put the soup back in the pot and on the stove if you’ve taken it off, and add the rice. Cook until the rice is done, about 10 minutes. Test the soup to see if it tastes good. You can add more spices if you’d like.