Tonight's dinner guarantees FAST run tomorrow!

Tonight’s little taste of heaven was Petto di Pollo con Indivia Belga e Prugne: Chicken Breast with Belgian Endive and Prunes served with rice and a little crusty bread.

This recipe, as handed down for thousands of years and no doubt polished to high gloss in the test kitchens of La Cucina Italiana by a team of Italian Master Chefs, was perfection itself. Probably.

We'll never know. Bev had to play with it. The rice was beige. The chicken was beige. The cooked endive was beige. So as I plopped the deep purple prunes into the pan one-by-one, I became increasingly enchanted by contrast in color. They started looking pretty sassy to me. I liked their dark moxie. So I added more. Lots more. Without bothering to calculate Pruneage Per Portion (PPP).

Blythe and blatant disregard for the PPP might have been a mistake with apocalyptic consequences according to Michael, our medical professional.

He says that the prune thing is NOT an old wives’ tale and that very likely, being over-pruned will create an interesting challenge tomorrow.

I choose to believe the threat of [that which we dare not speak, for we are Southern] will only serve to motivate us to run faster and perhaps closer to home.

Uh oh. Deepest apologies in advance to Michael and whoever is on the operating table tomorrow … or standing in the operating room beside him … or sitting behind him ... or in his way in the hall …





GOOD NEWS for later this week! Look what I found! Powdered Gerbil at $42.99 a pound.
(I wonder if it’s a diuretic?)

Is rodent Sicilian or Roman?

Michael is fishing with his buddy Chic in the Gulf for the next two days, so I'm off the hook for cooking tonight. (No pun intended.)

I DID notice that when the boy packed, he cleaned out our refrigerator, which means one of two things: Either he really loves all his Italian food and cannot be parted from it or he's pretty sure they're not catching anything for their dinner tonight. Either way, I'm good with it.

I took the opportunity of his absence to get the grocery shopping done for next week. La Cucina Italiana made my mouth water as I planned meals, but as we've discussed, I have to be meticulously selective. I am unable to find a lot of the ingredients required by these recipes. In fact, I can't even identify them by food group ... or genus ... or planet.

Today I needed chervil. I've heard of it. So in all likelihood, it exists here somewhere. But I have NO clue what it is. Thinking it might be a cheese, I went to Publix Supermarket and exhausted the cheese section. Not cheese. Then I tore up the produce section. Not produce. Finally exasperated, I asked a customer service rep where they stock chervil.

She said (and I'm not lying), "If we have it, it's over near pork. But honey, I don't think we do. Not many people eat gerbil."

I could barely choke out, "Thank you so much."

Somewhere this evening, there's a worker from Publix who thinks I'm just short of a cannibal, for Bev is apparently planning to prepare Sauteed Gerbil con Pomadoro with fava beans and a nice Chianti ... feh feh fehfehfehfeh ...

When I perfect my recipe, I'm sending it in to La Cucina Italiana. Let all those real Italian chefs try to find THAT ingredient! HA!

P.S. Should we serve this with PETA bread???

LONG RUN TOMORROW MORNING!!! (sort of)

Improv, Italian style

Okay, I'll admit it. Friday nights are problematic. Bev always finds herself in a coma, face down on top of piles and files and undone stuff. Freaking and fretting. Wanting the weekend to get going. Too guilty and exhausted to plan actual frivolity and fun. Knowing that the past week stopped being productive last Monday around 10:00 a.m. and feeling a sort of pressure that borders on the magma buildup under Old Faithful seconds before it erupts, but not in a way that inspires awe. In a way that inspires Xanax.

And to make it all worse, Michael was late getting home tonight.

So Project La Cucina Italiana got off to a really, reallyreallyreally bad start. BUT Bev swore on David's fig leaf that until our anniversary on the 21st, there would be an Italian meal on the table EVERY night without hostility. Amendment to the oath: " ... without (head-spinning, green-pea-soup-spewing) hostility." Okay, I was a little crazed tonight.

Plans went awry as plans do. This called for creativity. Being frugal, I had frozen a crazy-great tomato sauce from the pot roast thing last week. So it went into a fabulous improvisation over angel hair pasta sprinkled with cheese. "Improvisimo"? Good enough for me.

I call it Spa-gotcha. (Look! I'm starting to speak Italian kinda!) Because I dished it up with a flourish and the hovering grace of Aunt Bea, Michael was never the wiser. He didn't know it was a leftover. He doesn't know about leftovers. Remember: Up until a few days ago, he thought popcorn was a hot meal. There is never leftover popcorn.

Michael thinks I was in an apron between 6:00 and 7:30. I wasn't. I went for a run. This sweat isn't from chopping and stirring. It's from lumbering around the neighborhood. But don't tell the man. I like it when his eyes are filled with wonder. I like it when he's ... grateful.

TOMORROW LONG RUN AT DAWN WITH OUR FRIENDS!
SEE YA ON THE TRAIL!

Pasta touted as magic food

“FOR PMS RELIEF, EAT MORE PASTA.”

The headline jumped right out of Prevention Magazine’s promotional insert in our paper this morning! Once again, Bev is cutting edge. Gotta say …

Referring to the miracles of pasta, the little blurb expounds: “… like magic in soothing PMS symptoms, including roller-coaster hormone swings, up-and-down blood sugar levels, mood changes, insomnia, anxiety, food cravings (especially for sugary, weight-gaining foods) and other PMS symptoms.”

I regard PMS as the perview of amateurs on the Psycho Scale I use to measure my own "bad days," but unwilling to turn my back on claims like this one, I've declared that Michael is less cranky this week; he is not bloated; and I can't spot anything roller-coasterish in his behavior. Is this man lucky or what?


Tonight’s menu: Orecchiette alle Verdure (little noodles I couldn’t find anywhere, tossed with every vegetable grown in Florida). With a half pound of chopped, pureed spring onions as the dominant flavor, we nearly verged on over-scallionage. But with all the red and green, this festive dish was Christmas in July! In fact, I put on Christmas carols and hauled out a few ornaments for table decorations. Nothing says "COOL OFF, KENYAN RUNNER" like plastic holly. Michael has stopped questioning the trappings. He focuses now only on his plate. (This ability to hyper-focus and remain calm at the table is probably a function of his abated PMS symptoms.)

RUNNERS: GO HARD OR GO HOME ... and Buon Natale!

Did Parsley save Rosemary in time?*

The Goddess of Grigliata announces tonight’s menu:

Grigliata Gamberi e Pomodore con Riso Pilaf
("Portrait of Michael in Rice")

Runner Bev knows you’re getting a little bored with the endless blogging about tackling Italian cooking with olive-oil-soaked recipes printed from the Web site of La Cucina Italiana clutched in my fist, but until our anniversary on July 21st, Michael is getting dinner every night without my usual hostility. It’s a gift. It’s a stretch.

But it’s also novel in our household. And to be runnerish, these dinners are calculated to be part of our running programs. Low fat. High carb. Fresh. Healthy. Nutritionally, this new menu is superior to say … uh … almost anything else I might have come up with for dinner. This is good.

What’s NOT good is that Michael rushes home now after work. This is bad because he’s a Physician Assistant who operates with heart surgeons. I got the feeling tonight that there might be a guy alone, still on the table; Michael mumbled something about a working aorta being highly overrated and duct tape having many uses.

I couldn’t really understand him. His mouth was full.

And here’s what else is NOT good: I designed this project as a gift up to our anniversary on July 21st. What am I going to do on July 22nd? And can Michael come live with YOU?

But angst notwithstanding, here’s what I’ve discovered in the week that we’ve been all Tuscan Sun at night. A happy dinner hour makes for a happy runner family. And that, my friend, is worth peeling all the gazillion little leaves off the bitty twigs of thyme.

RUN STRONG!

*Apologies to Simon and Garfunkle. And many thanks to writer friend Darlyn Finch, who penned this question on a card during a Q&A at one of Paul Simon’s events and passed it to him. She guesses that because he deliberately skipped her card, he had heard the question before. I, on the other hand, had not. I found it HYSTERICAL!!!

Deck the halls with bowls of Farfalle la la la ... la la la la.

Still on the carbo loading kick. Still pawing through La Cucina Italiana and looking for magic.

Tonight we had Insalata di Pasta con Verdure e Salsiccia. Notice tonight that the new Italian dish's name trips lightly and chef-fortlessly o'er the tongue? Is it that Bev has, in one short week, become so Tuscan that she no longer sees the kitchen as the true Portal to Hell? Or is it that Bev has discovered that Italian wines provide superior hydration for the runner: all the liquid of Gatorade with all the anesthetic effects of Sodium Pentothal (including blabbermouthism)?

Don't ask. Won't tell.

Tonight's fare was interesting, but problematic. The three main ingredients -- Farfalle noodles, zucchini, and eggplant -- are all three completely without flavor. The recipe called for sausage, but I think sausage is evil, so I allowed only a little to sneak into my bag at the market and made it ride home in the trunk. I'm guessing the dish needed it. The tomatoes and basil had to work too hard to drag subtlety over the finish line. My bad.

No problem. I grow bold now. A little creative doctoring turned a confusing whisper of a meal into a PARADE!

Runner Boy's patience was magnificently rewarded. In spite of tonight's momentary delay and adjustment of recipe, he's finally started to trust that dinner IS coming to the table, and it's going to be spectacular (Italian translation: favolosa, leggendaria, mitica, straordinaria, incredibile)! At the very least it's not going to be popcorn.

Tonight I am once again a goddess. But goddess isn't good enough. I want to be a runner. I'm carbo loaded alla Farfalle, but I want to put this load on the road. How is it that the Italians are so thin?

Runner Bev is now officially a goddess.

Paccheri Imbottiti al Pomodoro. This is Italian for "Bev, you are a freaking goddess."

Michael, with shining eyes, approached the dining table slowly and whispered, "What is this?" I gave him the short version. He looked upon his plate as an altar upon which I had offered up LOVE spelled out in mushrooms.

Sorry. Runner Bev is supposed to be blogging about running. But sometimes running is about food. And sometimes food is about love. This is one of those nights.

The goddess may be the world's worst runner, but tonight she rules La Cucina Italiana without their knowing. Michael knows. And tonight, he is all who matters.

Tomorrow morning we run.