Hello again from my current mileage of roughly 0. I have a physical therapy appointment for an evaluation in April but have seen progress from doing many of my 2019-injury exercises at home and in our building’s gym. I ran Friday the 5th when the temperatures reached into the 60’s and felt amazing. The breeze in my hair! Tank top! So hopefully I get this weak left hip under control and can in fact eye a 5K or 10K this spring/summer then maybe something longer in the fall. I also want to hike more and do more trail running; all the things I listed in my 2021 goals post. I ran again on the 20th as part of an Asian anti-violence solidarity run with some teammates in the city and hit 4 miles. Seems promising?
What else am I doing, if not running? Still on my weekly RowHouse class as well as Sunday morning Zoom Yoga for Runners most weeks. Our gym got two new spin bikes; they’re sadly Echelon Connect and not Peloton, but they’ll do.
My main hobby (other than reading and attempting to watch Oscar and Golden Globe nominated new films) is of course cooking and baking. I have a catch-all Google Sheet for meal planning, but have over the last year added additional sheets to list out my cookbook collection (currently hovering around 65, half digital), pantry/fridge/freezer inventory (which was indispensable at the height of spring 2020 quarantine), new recipes I’ve tried the past year, and my current cookbook project. I’m trying to cook my way through A Common Table, the book from blogger Cynthia of Two Red Bowls. I bought it in 2019 and had already tried about 6 of the recipes but am turning it into a project this year. I’m up to two dozen recipes and use the spreadsheet to better plan it all out.
I’m also in a Cookbook Club (as well as two regular book clubs) and while we can no longer meet in person safely, we’re having Zoom meetings. I sadly missed the meeting for Jubilee, which I’ve had for over a year but still haven’t cooked anything from. Up next is Plenty by Yottam Ottolenghi. He’s famous for super long ingredient lists but incredibly well executed food. I checked out his book Simple from the library (but didn’t make anything) then bought his newest, Flavor, late last year. Still haven’t made anything from that. So some of my purposeful organizing is to get myself to cook from my growing collection. The area where I am weakest about all this is actually taking photos of my food. This used to be a thing I would do more regularly (remember all my beautiful food-centric posts from 2019?), but the light situation in our apartment (and the last one) is lacking. And I don’t quite have the commitment to do this with enough regularity to actually get a handheld light for this.
I also signed up for SnackCrate, which ships a box of international snacks to your door from a different country each month. I got the Germany box first, which is mostly chocolate-based. Also doing a snack exchange with folks in other countries (Netherlands first) plus always trying new stuff from Target and H Mart.
East Coast Appetite 