Spicy quinoa with black beans and spinach topped with salmon and mango salsa

It is no secret that I love cooking. I love experimenting with flavors and coming up with unique combinations. I love Ethiopian, Mexican, and Indian foods. These foods use lots of flavors and spices. They give me inspiration for when I make my own creations. The following recipe I made for Lavender and I the other night. It’s full of flavor and healthy. If you are worried about it being too spicy take out some of the red crushed pepper. If you are looking for a vegan dish, leave off the salmon. This is the first time I created this but I will make it again.

Spicy quinoa with black beans and spinach topped with salmon and mango salsa (serves 4)

Make the mango salsa first.
2 fresh mangos peeled and chopped up
Handful of cilantro
4 garlic cloves minced
1 jalapeño pepper
3 Tbsp. of lime juice
Black pepper to taste
Combine all ingredients and store in the refrigerator until time to use.

Next start the quinoa

1 pablano pepper chopped
4-6 garlic cloves minced
1 cup of quinoa
2 cups of water
½ tbsp. of olive oil
1 tbsp. crushed red pepper
Onion powder and black pepper to taste
Sauté pepper and garlic in the olive oil. Add water and let boil and quinoa and the rest of the ingredients. Lower heat, cover, and let sit for about 15 minutes.

Salmon

1 pound of salmon cut into four 4 oz. pieces
2 tbsps. Of freshly grated ginger
6-8 curry leaves
Black pepper
Rub ginger and pepper on salmon. Place salmon in foil packets with 1 ½ -2 curry leaves. Bake at 425 for 14 minutes.

And finally….

Black beans and spinach
1 can of black beans
1 vegetables buillion cube
1 tbsp. of crush red pepper
½ tbsp. of onion powder
3 cups of spinach
Heat up the first 4 ingredients then add the spinach cook just until the spinach is wilted.

Now put it all together!
Put 1/4 the quinoa on plate, 1/4 the black beans and spinach, 1 piece of the salmon on top and finish with the mango salsa.

Enjoy. Your mouth will be happy.

Goodbye 2011! Hello 2012!

Two years ago today I decided to make a better me. It took a few months to overcome my biggest obstacle. At this time I didn’t even know it was a problem for me. I couldn’t leave my house and walk around by myself in my own my neighborhood. Past problems and relationships left me with such overwhelming anxiety that the furthest I would walk outside my door was to the car. I walked with Lavender when she was home. We went out almost every day she was home no matter the weather. By spring I was stronger physically and more importantly mentally as I had begun working through some of my emotional baggage. I started venturing out on my own.

Fast forward to this past year, I have continued to work on myself like it was a job. (It really has been my job.) I painted more, I took Zumba classes, I danced in public, I ran a marathon, and I graduated from college. This a far cry from a person afraid to leave her home.

I am going to continue on my journey towards a better me but this year I am going to start a new journey towards better relationships. If there is one thing I learned from running a marathon is that you don’t do it alone.

I feel like I have really great relationships. I have great friends, a fantastic daughter, and a loving supportive spouse. I don’t want to take them for granted. I want them to know that I am grateful for them. I want to know them better. I know from hard work that good gets better and just when you think it is as good as gets if you just work harder it gets even better. I have feeling relationships are the same way.

I am starting with my marriage. It is great. I know that I am loved and in everything I do Lavender supports me. I am in love and enjoy spending time and doing things with her. I never thought I could have this great love. It is because of this that I want to work to make it better, deeper, more meaningful. We have talked about this but we haven’t decided exactly what kind of things we are going to do to be more purposeful in our relationship. Whatever things do I am excited. Those things that I feel work well (and are sharable) I will share with you. If you have done something, that has brought deeper meaning in your relationship than I would love to hear about it.

2011, what I have learned from you is that life just keeps getting better IF you keep working on it! 2012, I can’t wait for you!

When I was a Boy

When I was a boy, I drove tractors and played in the mud. I caught snakes and climbed trees. I burped, belched, and farted whenever I needed to and sometimes just when I wanted to; except of course when my grandmother was present because not even boys do those types of things in front of their grandma.

When I was a boy I drove a go-cart with no brakes. I used my feet for those.

When I was a boy I cherished my bruises and scrapes. I wore them like a badge of honor.

When I was a boy I got my haircut at the barbershop and my jeans from the Tractor Supply Store. To get dressed up, I would wear my darkest blue jeans, nicest cowboy boots, and my cowboy shirt with the shiny buttons. That’s how I knew it was a nice shirt, when it had shiny snap buttons.

When I was a boy I could pee farther and longer than Jimmy Wallace. That’s how I knew I was really cool.

Than in fourth grade my step-mother came along and told me I needed to behave like a lady. I couldn’t belch or fart. I had to get my haircut by a beautician. It was unacceptable to wear clothes from the Tractor Supply Store. I tried to explain to her that those clothes were just made better and didn’t rip and tear as easy but she had none of that.

Gender identiy was so much easier for me when I was 7 and the only thing I needed to be was me. I found this quote about a year ago-
"I want to live in a world where the words male and female are flexible and subjective, even redundant. A world of perpetual transformation, where sexuality and gender become obsolete as people begin to question why they should be the same person, day in, day out. A world where the overriding ethos is to question and explore your sexuality and gender without the restrictions prevalent in 'normal' society. Questioning what is masculine and what is feminine is about redrawing the boundaries (or removing them altogether) surrounding activities that are seen as inherently male or female. I long for a world where the old oppositions of male/female, masculine/feminine, heterosexual/homosexual have dissolved. I want to live in a world where I am free to be whoever I want to be, whenever I want to be, male, female, other or neither." - unknown

I leave you with a link to Dar William’s song “When I Was a Boy.” Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE5YzRr9yPo&feature=related

Post-Marathon Blues

I received my official finishers’ certificate from the marathon about a week ago. That was cool. I ran an 8k Turkey Trot in Chicago on Thanksgiving beating my time last year by 5 minutes. That was cool. My daughter was a volunteer at the Turkey Tot and it was great seeing her 3 ½ miles into the race. I have enjoyed sleeping. I have also enjoyed being able to hear my wife preach on Sundays. Since I don’t have to wake up early I have enjoyed some late nights out and a few extra margarita’s to go with those late nights.

It was hard training for the marathon in the middle of my crazy busy year. There were times when I thought not only was I going to go insane trying to ‘do it all’ but that I was going to make my family insane with me.

Here I am now a month and half later and I miss training for the marathon. I miss the long runs. I miss the time by myself. I miss the runners on the trail. I miss the therapy it gave me. I miss the pain in my body. Yep, I miss the pain. I miss the joy of reaching a new running goal.

When people ask me if I will run another marathon the answer is “YES!” I want to run again next year but I am not sure I can commit to the training this upcoming year but I already have dreams of destination marathons in my future. I can’t wait to do it again. Who would have ever thought I would say that?

Right now I have the post-marathon blues but I know there is another marathon journey around the corner and I hope when it happens my friends and family will not be sick of hearing me talk about running and journey with me again.

Run On!

Introducing the Amazing Susan!

This past weekend my spouse and I accompanied our high school senior on college tour. All I could think about is when she was two and would want to play stage with me. It was my job to say in a loud booming voice, “Introducing the amazing, the talented and the wonderful Susan!” She would then come out on to the ‘stage’ dressed in that way that two year olds think is fashion and entertain me for a few minutes with a dance or a song. I would clap and then she would be ready to do it again in a new outfit and new act.

It’s hard to believe she is now planning for college. She is an amazing and talented person. She was diagnosed with a learning disability in the third grade. She struggled with school and the label. However, she never let that label define or limit her.

In seventh grade she called an emergency IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meeting when she found out they would not let her take band. Talk about guts. She was ready to take on the whole school. She spoke in a very grown-up way at the meeting and explained that she knew what was best for her. They let her take band and she did great continuing on into high school when she lost interest.

Knowing how hard school was for her in high school I actually encouraged her to take easier classes but she had other plans. Against the advice of her school counselor and teacher of record she decided not to take any more LD classes. The amazing part was not that she decided not to take LD classes but that she decided she would be earning an honors diploma and taking AP classes.

All of the professionals that tested her, retested her, and reviewed her scores and advised her to do the opposite of what she did; she proved wrong.
Walking around the campus of that college and thinking about her being two I just wanted to scream out, “Introducing to the world the amazing the talented, the talented, and the wonderful SUSAN!”

Look out world.

Weighing In

It will be two years in January since I made the choice to lose weight. The actual weight loss journey started the year before that. It started when I decided to be honest with myself.

I avoided scales. I told myself that I was more than a number. I didn’t need a number to define who was or what kind of day I was going to have. (I still believe this.) The honest truth to that statement at the time was that I was not ready to be truthful with myself. I wasn’t ready to admit that my weight was a sign of other things gone wrong in my life. I was not ready to admit that my weight made it difficult to enjoy certain activities. I didn’t want to see the number on the scale because I didn’t want to know the other truths.

Lavender moves in. She is the most honest person I know. (If you don’t believe go ahead and take a picture of yourself next time you want an honest opinion on how you look in that outfit.) With her honesty and her stuff came a bathroom scale. I was honestly surprised when I weighed in at 260. I sat with that information for a year. Then I decided to do something even more honest and I agreed to let Lavender take my measurements. Honestly, it felt good to be honest with myself. However, it was hard.

Over the next few months I got to know my body. I knew that I was going to ‘gain’ five pounds before I started my period. That for some reason the right combination of salt, lime juice, and tequila the night before would show up as seven pounds on the scale but that it was no reason for alarm.

I watched the pounds leave my body. I met my goal weight and then some. It was when I was training for the marathon that I knew I needed to use the scale for a new kind of honesty. I needed to make sure I was feeding my body. Eating enough food to maintain my weight with all of the running I was doing was sometimes scary. I used the scale to keep myself in check.

I think scales are a tricky thing. I think weight is a tricky thing. It is personal. I say if stepping on scale does more harm than good for you, you should stay away. This doesn’t actually go here but I also want to warn people at the harm they do when they call a certain weight fat. I don’t care what the number is for a healthy weight. Where do you feel healthy? That should be the question.

I am not a number on the scale. When I wake up and see a +7 on the scale instead of panic, I try and remember a fun night of margaritas.

One day I hope to be honest enough with myself that I don’t need a scale. Until then I hope I can use it honestly as a tool and not against myself.

Running is Not a Solo Sport

Running is not a solo sport. I discovered this long before the day of the marathon.

There were mornings when Lavender would gently nudge me out of bed telling me that I would feel better if I got up and ran. When I was having a really hard time getting out the door she would offer to run with me or ride her bike beside me.

Friends gave me encouragement by asking me about my training and making positive comments. Relatives and friends came together to donate to Children’s Memorial Hospital the team that I was running for. Every donation that I got gave me extra motivation and energy. In the end, I raised almost $1100 for Children’s Memorial Hospital with everyone’s help.

Fellow runners that I met on the path were other sources of energy. We would say encouraging things to each other as we crossed paths or if we were taking a break and walking we would often share our running stories with one another.
I don’t think I could have trained without all this awesomeness around me.

I know I couldn’t have finished the marathon without ‘my team.’

Lavender and Erin met up with on mile 2. I was feeling strong. I stopped to kiss Lavender and I am pretty sure I had a big goofy grin from excitement. I took off running and they took off on their bicycles to catch up with me later. I saw them again at mile 6. I had even more speed behind me and I was feeling good. I waved at them and ran on. The next time I saw them it was mile 12. I was still feeling fine but slowing down a little.

When I reached the half-way point of 13.1 miles, the sun came out and started beating down on me. My stomach was killing me. The fact that I hadn’t eaten enough was also becoming apparent. Exhaustion was also setting in; I had been awake since 2AM. (It’s hard to sleep the night before a marathon.)

Lavender and Erin were waiting for me at mile 14. This time I stopped and hugged Lavender. She was literally holding me up. I was having huge doubts about finishing. I struggled to make it to mile 16 where Lavender and Erin were once again waiting to encourage me.

Then at mile 17 I was surprised to see my friends Bill and Dianne. They walked with me as I complained about my stomach issues (probably in too many details). They left me at the bathrooms and waited for me where Erin and Lavender was also waiting.

When I met up with them, Lavender walked with me until the 18 mile. Walking with her was just like any other long run where she would ride her bike out to meet me, offering me fresh water and encouragement. After that, I was back in the marathon and ready to finish.

Erin ran with me at mile 20. It was the encouragement that I needed to keep running. Lavender was waiting at mile 21 and they rode off together.

Mile 24 I met up with them again. This time when I saw them I was crying because I knew that I did. I knew that I would finish. I knew that the little girl in gym class that always got picked last for everything was about to finish a marathon.

I was more aware of my surroundings and present in the moment during those last 2.2 miles than at any other time during the race. I talked to spectators and runners. It was the most painful, rewarding, and beautiful 2 miles that I have ever ran.

I saw Dianne and Bill again at mile 26. I know I was smiling goofy because despite the pain I was feeling good. I saw my daughter, Alison, and their friend Ian at mile 26.1 holding up signs.

I cried as I ran over the finish line and they placed the metal on my neck. At that time all I wanted was my team. The people who made sure I crossed the finish line. Running is not a solo sport. I couldn’t have done it without them. I am forever grateful.