42point195
By marathonerArchive for December, 2007
Christmas dessert
Christmas log cakes are a common sight in bakeries where I grew up. It is hence not a wonder that I grew up associating Christmas log cakes with Christmas, taking it as one of the delicacies that we get to indulge on during this festival.
Those were real nice cakes, the ones that I grew up admiring from the other side of the glass that separated me from them in the refrigerated case. Some were all white, like the logs you see on the meadow early in the morning after the sky dumped a thick layer of snow on them the night before. Some were brown with specks of white, like they were just touched by a flurry of frosted precipitation. They often come decorated with nice figurines such as little Santa Claus, little reindeer, little leaves and even houses. They simply looked so gorgeous that I almost could not bear to eat them.
It is not true that I did not want to eat them. On the contrary, I had always wanted a log cake for Christmas. With the sweet tooth that I have, those dark, chocolaty confectionery bearing a resemblance of tree trunks only set my imagination wild. I could not help but wonder just how delicious those chocolate cakes in disguise would be. Those logs that appeared to be darker, are they made of dark chocolate? The darker, the better, I would think. It mattered little to me that these cakes were only chocolate swiss rolls covered in a generous layer of chocolate cream.
Although I have nursed a long-time craving for them, I do not remember having eaten one until very, very recent years. I guess this was when I felt I was old enough and not stingy enough to spend some money on little seasonal indulgence like Christmas log cakes. No regrets, I have been very satisfied.
I have not seen many places selling log cakes in Atlanta this Christmas. Perhaps this does not really come as a surprise since the buche de Noel actually originated from France, and not the US. Anyway, there are not many decent American bakeries around (in fact, I cannot think of any) and as a result there are not that many places to look.
I had originally wanted to criticise the atrocious state of cakes in American cafes and restaurants and the lack of finesse in the manner pastries are prepared and presented – the way icing is smeared onto cakes as if it were a no-brainer affair, how a serving of pastry is often the equivalent of a slab of pastry, how the texture of cakes always turn out to be so coarse, and the list goes on. On second thoughts, I thought I would not do that (or had I already?), but instead talk about where my oasis in the desert is.
I found this cake at a Korean bakery in Atlanta. As far as I can tell, Korean bakeries are the only places here where I can find some respectable cakes. There are quite a few of them in town but only one of them had Christmas log cakes for sale.
Looks so lovely! This was dessert on Christmas Day. Not the whole log, but we had a few slices of it. We had to displace Santa to somewhere right next to the holly leaves so that we can slice of part of the log for our tummies. We ate up the first mushroom too. The remaining log is now sitting in the fridge waiting for the next round of lumbering.
Christmas meal
In Atlanta and much of the US, Christmas is a festival where people get to spend time with their families. Families get together, dine, exchange gifts and the kids have a great time unwrapping presents that Santa brought for them. I do not spend Christmas Day like the Americans do and Christmas has become a day where I can pretty much do what I want but would normally find no time to do.
I have been outraged, on visiting so-called Chinese food court stalls, by the manner in which the chicken dishes are prepared and then made to let the patronizing Americans believe that those are authentic Chinese dishes. Almost all Chinese food court stalls have a variety of chicken dishes. “Teriyaki chicken”, “lemon chicken”, “sweet and sour chicken”, “black pepper chicken”, “kung pao chicken” etc. are just some of of the names that you can come across. Though their names may sound different, these dishes do not differ much apart from the taste of their gravy. They are usually fried with exactly the same type of vegetables – celery, broccoli, carrots – and with the chicken diced in exactly the same way and same sizes. The only difference, as I said, is the type of sauce that goes into the dish.
Speaking of the sauces, that is what makes me fume even more. The sauces used for each dish are merely concoctions of what the cooker (note: I am not calling that person a chef or a cook) thinks appeals to the taste buds of the stalls’ clientele. So, Mr Customer, you like the taste of teriyaki sauce and soy sauce? Great! These shall go into the recipe and let’s call it “teriyaki chicken”. Now, Miss Customer, you like spicy tastes and you think this sweet sauce tastes delicious? Sure, we shall create another dish with them and we shall call it, uh, “chicken with chef Chan’s secret sauce”!
What a disgrace it is to not just Chinese cuisine, but any form of cuisine, that no thought and respect goes into the preparation of the dish! This Christmas, I decided to bring some justice to Chinese chicken dishes. I wanted to cook an authentic Chinese chicken dish. Let me present my Hongzao Ji (红糟鸡), or Hongzao chicken.
By the way, this smelled very good and it proved to be very delicious. I do not know how to translate Hongzao in English but it is actually the residue left after the fermentation a sort of red wine from glutinous rice. This ingredient can typically be found in Fuzhou (福州), and sometimes Taiwanese, cooking. The chicken needs first to be marinated in the Hongzao and some wine, with a little sugar, salt and soy sauce as seasoning before bringing it to the wok. Frying some ginger slices in the oil before the chicken adds to the fragrance of the entire dish.
This was a simple meal on Christmas, which was easy to prepare and mouth-watering good! So, that was the main course. What about dessert? I will write about it in the next post.
Marathon training plan (11) – Training in winter
Well, winter is not officially here yet, but winter temperature and weather in Atlanta should not differ much from what we are having now. What the shorter periods of daylight in winter and its lower temperature mean to my training are that 1) I do not get to run outdoors after work since the sky is already dark by 6 pm and it is cold and 2) I have to start my weekend long runs early enough so that I can make it back home before it gets too dark.
Adapting the timing of the weekend long runs is simple. I either did my long runs in the morning or I simply made sure that I started my run with enough daylight left in the day. To do a 4-hour run, for instance, I could start around 8 or 9 in the morning and finish around noon or 1 in the afternoon, or I could start around 2 in the afternoon and finish around 6 in the evening. The only problem with either of these schedules is that in both cases, I have to spend a couple of hours running under the mid-day sun, which, fortunately, is not that bad in winter as it is in summer. No, it is really not that bad, especially since I do NOT do 4-hour runs all the time.
It is the weekday runs that require some persistent self motivation on my part to keep myself engaged. With my preference of not running outdoor in winter evenings, the other option available for me is to train in the gym. Fine, you may say, making a trip to a gym is no big deal! It may seem all the more so, knowing that the gym I go to is a mere 5 minutes’ walk from my place. So, what is so difficult about taking that 5-minute walk to my workout place, and hey, am I not supposed to be a marathoner, one who does far greater distances than that?
In the cold weather of winter, a 5-minute walk to the gym for a workout is not just a 5-minute walk to the gym for a workout. It is a multi-step process of first putting on my running gear, then wrapping myself up in layers of pullover, jacket and long pants, stepping out of the house for the 5-minute walk to arrive at the gym, next stripping myself to my running gear in the changing room before I can begin my workout. The prospect of a workout that consists of running 40, 50 or 60 minutes on the treadmill does not make the outing any more appealing. Fancy doing a 10k on a treadmill?
Oh, I loathe the treadmill so! Running on one is extremely boring! Nonetheless, there is just one thing about it that I can appreciate. That is that it forces me to keep to its pace, one thing that I find difficult when running by myself. Training on a treadmill can help me progressively increase my pace and running on one regularly can help me internalize this pace. For this reason, I will have to continue running on treadmills, even when winter comes and goes and spring arrives.
Back to the topic of training in winter, I do find that there is a little more hassle to it. At the end of the day, I think it is a psychological thing and one should be able to live with it if one has the end goal in mind and is motivated enough. A conclusion I draw out of this is that if I want to avoid the winter training blues next year, I will have to select a race that does not require me to train through winter. I already have a couple of candidates in mind, but let me finish the one in January first.
Number 12198
The marathon weekend program finally arrived! It is a nicely-printed booklet that includes the course maps, instructions for runners, logistics arrangements and a good deal of advertisements. Together with it comes a card with which I have to bring to th race expo to exchange for my race pack, including my bib. I will be running with the race number – 12198.
Actually, I am not as excited about receiving the program as I may seem to sound. Probably because I know that there is still some hard work waiting for me in the final stages of training, and that I know I need to juggle it with my work.
Marathon training plan (10) – Long runs
What a runner experiences when running the distance of a marathon is very different from when he/she is running a 10k or even a half marathon. A 10k may be an easy run for me now, but a marathon is definitely not just a matter of multiplying a 10k race by 4 and adding on to it another 2 km or so.
Being on the road over such a long distance and for such a long period of time, certain things can happen to a runner and these are things that the runner may not have encountered if he/she is running shorter distances. Citing some examples – chafing (or irritation to the skin due to abrasion with clothes), pains at various parts of the feet and legs, blisters, poor hydration, need for energy replenishment and, not to mention, fatigue. The runner will just have to deal with these as the race goes on.
There is always an element of uncertainty in a marathon, like what some of the more seasoned runners said at a clinic I attended recently, “You never know what is going to happen, especially from mile 17 or 18 onwards”. However, one aspect of training for a marathon is to prepare yourself to be familiar with such situations, or at least reduce the risk of letting something happen, which ends up hampering the run.
This is where long runs come into the picture. During long runs, I try out my running clothes and figure out which are the ones that I can run comfortably in. I run in both pairs of my shoes to see if the older pair can still provide me good enough support or if they are too worn out and I should simply stick to the newer pair. As for hydration and nutrition, I have been taking water, Gatorade, energy gels and bars. They have been working fine for me and so I did not try out other combinations, except for sampling the different energy gel flavours to find the ones that are the most appealing to my taste bud.
I did the longest run of my entire training today. By this time, I have got my choices of clothes that I can possibly wear, my shoes and my hydration and nutrition options pretty much figured out. The thing that I wanted to try out with today’s run was how I could minimize/deal with (since I already ruled out the possibility of eliminating them) my knee pains, that have been bothering me during all my long runs.
I have read about a “run-and-walk” technique for runners. The idea is to give the runners’ legs some recovery time when he/she walks in between runs so that they are not fatigued too early in a run. I have always been hesitant to adopt this technique because I felt that the walking stints break my momentum and may make me lose my determination to finish my run.
It was after my long run last week that I started to have second thoughts. Then, my knees were still hurting towards the later part of the run and I knew that I definitely have to do something about it. During that run too, I made regular hydration stops at grocery stores and pharmacies along my route to buy bottled drinks. After those short rest periods, I found that my legs felt relatively fresh when I started running again and I could last for about another 30 minutes before the pain in my knees slowed me down again.
The plan for today’s run was to introduce walking stints of a couple of minutes for every 30 minutes of running. The pains did not go away altogether, but I would say that the results were better than if I were to push myself to keep running all the way. I will stick to this plan for the race.
It was a 4-hour run today, on a sunny morning with temperatures up to 22 degrees C and humidity up to over 80%. Provided that it will not rain, I am expecting race day’s weather conditions to be similar, or maybe even warmer. It was a tough and tiring run. Having to run the final hour past all the restaurants along my route around lunch time and inhaling the aroma from whatever was brewing in their kitchen, all while having only the syntactic tastes of energy gel and Gatorade lingering in my mouth did not help make it better.
This run, however, did help remind me of the possible physical and mental state that I will have to battle through during the race itself. To add on to that, the race will probably take me another 1.5 more hours or so to complete.
“You never know what is going to happen, especially from mile 17 or 18 onwards”. I know. I will be running with the tastes of energy gel and sports drink in my mouth and I will be looking for all ways and means to keep myself going. It is going to be tough!
