Spaghetti Carbonara – Super easy!

So, I work with an Itallian. He is always talking about food and wine and how easy it is to cook fantastic food.

I have always enjoyed carbonara and even attempted to cook it once. I made a roux, added cheese and cooked ham, combined it with the spaghetti and quite enjoyed it.  it was garden work though…

My Itallian friend laughed at this and quickly corrected my attempt. He emphasized the use of parmigan cheese, freshly graded so it didn’t smell like sick.  He also stressed the simplicity of Italian cooking, where generally you only need one or two pans.

His method was dead easy and 100% authentic:

1. Put on the spaghetti to cook as per the packet.
2. Grate parmigan
3. Beat 2 eggs together
4. When the past is a couple of minutes from done, fry some Bacon lardons in a frying pan.
5. Drain the pasta and throw it in the pan with the bacon
6. Take the pan off the heat and mix the pasta and bacon
7. Add eggs and mix
8. Add cheese and mix.

You shouldn’t need to return the pan to the heat or the eggs will scramble. 

Serve. How easy is that?

3rd Kyu

I recently took the aikido 3rd Kyu grading. As before we watched novices up to 4th kyus grading first. Soon it was my grading partner and I who sat in seiza alone on the mat. I was uke first and he did a great job in each of the suwariwaza and tachiwaza techniques.

My turn came and I found I was already tired from the pre-grading course and being hurled around during my stint as uke.

Some of the techniques I was concerned about went quite smoothly, while other, more simple techniques I had done several times went pear shaped.

I was particularly pleased with my chudan tsuki Soto kaitenage. I managed to blend well with my partners attack and managed to maintain my center through the technique.

We also had to perform a set of ushiro waza which again went quite well.

I was quite warm by the end and glad for tge chance to rest up and watch the following 2nd and 1st kyu gradings.

Not everyone was awarded a grade this time, so I was glad when I was called to receive mine.

Looking forward to the next test which should be later this year…

Sub 22 Minute 5K !

I love parkrun, wooohooo!

Nos Galan 2013

Another visit to the Mountain Ash night races or Nos Galan. This was the first 5k race I ran 12 months ago. I really enjoyed it and was looking forward to the 2013 event.

The weather was grim as we drove to the village in the Cynon valley.  The event had sold out early with another record number of people entering.  I knew what to expect this time and had arranged to meet a friend who was also entered to race. 

My times had improved over the 12 months and I nearly enteres the elite race – but an illness,  injury and work commitments kept new from being confident of an elite time. 

As we watched the elite race and warned up,  a persistent drizzle settled in,  which coupled with the cold temperature made waiting around very uncomfortable. After what seemed like an age,  the course was clear and we made for the start. 

Being in close confinement made things a little warmer,  but the rain continued.  Soon,  we were off past the back of the workman’s institute and bus station.  The sharp incline leading up to the mount pleasant pub caused the runners to separate out.  I managed to pass several people who must have misjudged their starting pace and were slowing. Then other was back toward the town centre and looping around to the next lap. The rain got progressively worse, the rain going horizontal and chilling to the bone.

I lost count of the laps and took a look at the Garmin. I was nearly done.  just as well as tge rain was sleeting and dispite the warmth generated by running, it was pretty uncomfortable. Heading toward the finish a group of friends and family shouted to me and I managed a sprint finish passing a couple of runners who were flagging.

Moving past the finish line, I colected my goodie bag and medal.  I hung around for my friend to finish and we went off to find the others in the fun fair. 

Another great night which could only very improved by better weather.

Pancakes

Quick and dirty pancakes with no flour!

1x Banana
2x Egg
1x Tablespoon of peanut butter

Mash the whole lot up into a batter.
Pour out a small circle of batter. Not too much as it will not cook through before the outside is burnt.
Fry in a pan for a couple of minutes each side.

Turkey Bolognese

This has become a monday night favourite in our house. A simple and tasty bolognese made with Turkey Mince.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion – chopped
2 garlic cloves – crushed
2 carrots – peeled and diced (or grated works well.)
500g (ish) pack of turkey mince( breast is better, but leg mince works well too.)
1 tin of chopped tomatoes (Tesco value range is good, just literally chopped tomatoes and nothing else!)
2 tablespoon size squrts of tomato purée

1 beef stock cube dissolved in 150ml of boiling water
100g of dried pasta per person- i usually halve this for the kids.

This sauce goes with anything, not just pasta. It’s great with some mashed sweed, sweet potato or rice.

Method

1. Prepare the carrots, onion and garlic.
2. Heat the oil in a large frying pan or wok.
3. Fry the onion, garlic and carrots and for 5 minutes, until soft.
4. Remove the vegetables and brown the turkey mince, breaking it up to ensure it’s cooked.
5. Add the veg back in and stir in the chopped tomatoes.
6. Mix the tomato purée with the beef stock and add to the pan. I usually use the chopped tomato tin to mix it up.
7. Simmer uncovered, on a low heat for 20 minutes.
8. Cook the pasta while the sauce is cooking.
9. You can serve it with grated cheese on top.

Garmin 310XT – Handle with care

Had another issue with the Garmin 310XT the very week after I managed to sort out the horrendous sync issue. I was running along minding my own business when I noticed my left wrist became lighter. The 310 had come lose and landed on a grass area at the edge of the trail. I retrieved it and to my horror found the front of the unit had cracked!

I have owned the 310 for nearly a year. It has been used several times a week in a variety of activities from hill walking, fell, trail and road running, kayak, swimming and snorkelling. I zipped the unit into my shorts pocket and and carried on training. 

At home, I found that one of the watch pins had failed, causing the strap to stop holding the unit on my wrist. I spoke to a customer representative at Garmin who asked me to send the unit off for inspection. He gave me a Return Authorisation number and within another week I mailed the package to them. To be fair, the turned this around quickly – I had an email and a call the same day they received the device to explain that it was all my fault and not a mechanical or quality issue. The cost for fixing the unit was £75.

I was then left with a dilemma – Fix it, buy another type of Garmin, Buy another type of computer. The other option was to live with it. They send it back and I keep it in a plastic bag until the battery dies.

After doing a thorough trade study and finding that Garmin provide replacement units that have a new battery, casing, etc. I decided that paying 75 quid was the better deal. I did try to argue the case that the fault was theirs, but they were having none of it!

 

Not very impressed, but pleased to say that upon stumping up the cash via credit card on Wednesday, the replacement unit was delivered Friday and out running/swimming on Saturday Morning! 

Running with the Kenyans

Ugali & Sukuma Wiki (Photo credit: ‘Bacardi’)

I don’t usually read this type of book,  but picked it up in a varying book store for £2.99. It’s a sort of autobiography of the, athletics journalist, Adharanand Finn. He decides to move his family to Kenya to learn the secrets of Kenyan running.  The narrative focuses mainly on his various running exploits in training for the Lewa Marathon. It’s quite a good read and has some insights into the portrayal of Kenyan athletics in the world press and the craze for barefoot running.

The author compiles a list of “Kenyan running secrets”. This includes the local staple of ugali. This it basically corn meal boiled until it becomes a solid block of starchy white goo. I had bought some corn meal by mistake last year and it was still in the cupboard so thought I would have a go.

Ugali on it’s own didn’t sound too appetizing so a quick search on the web resulted in a Kenyan curry recipe that sounded just the thing. Sukuma wiki means “Week pusher” in Swahili. It’s a simple stew with lots of vegetables and meat that would go really well with the ugali. It was a wet and miserable day today so just the thing!

The original recipe is posted at the linguistlist.org website.

I made a few substitutions but it turned out great! I used turkey instead or beef or chicken. I used a tin of chopped tomatoes and 2 table spoons of curry powder. I didn’t bother with the stock cube and instead of Collard (or spring) Greens I used a mix of spinach and kale.

The recepie is a bit unclear on the water required for the ugali. I went with 2 mugs of water and a minutes of corn meal and there was enough for about 4 people.

There was plenty of Ugali left over for pudding too! Just add jam…

Related articles

• Ugali and CAKE (jonnyhadley.wordpress.com)
• Running with the Kenyans – Review (thedublinreader.wordpress.com)

Garmin 310xt Sync Problem

For the last few months the Garmin has been playing up. It began by not automatically synchronising with the PC and then started failing to download workouts. I have no idea what the cause was, but after some web research, i found it was a fairly common problem. The explanation was that somehow the data on the 310xt had corrupted. I found this hard to believe as the device was quite happily storing run, bike and swim data. Following some frustrating screwing around, I found I could upload activities by re-pairing the device with the computer each time. There appeared not fix for downloading new workouts.

The suggested fix was to factory reset the device. This is accomplished by:

1. Turn the device off
2. Hold down the “MODE” and “ENTER” buttons
3. Momentarily press the “POWER” button

I didn’t really want to do this – psychologically there is part of me that says “Well, its half working, perhaps i should just put up with it.”. But another voice says “Are you nuts? This watch cost and arm and a leg! It should work reliably and flawlessly.” Today, I had a some spare time to take a shot at it.

Be warned there is no “Are you sure?” prompt and the procedure above restores the device to an “out of the box” state. On powering on you have to fill in all your stats again and the workouts and activities are cleared. It effectively cold-starts the GPS too, so it may take a while to re-acquire the satellite lock.

After filling in my stats, I tried to pair the device to the PC. I set the ANT Agent to pair with new  devices and power-cycled the 310xt. When it came back up, the pairing process kicked off and I followed the prompts as normal. This resulted in the ANT Agent throwing an exception and crashing. “Great Start!”, I thought. The I remembered the corrupt data problem and renamed the Garmin folder in the “AppData/Roaming” profile area to something else.

Pairing the devices again worked and the crash did not occur. I started Garmin Training Centre and got a warning that it couldn’t find my old profile. I ignored this and entered a new one. It automatically found the device and created a set of default workouts. I then selected the send data to device option and waited for ANT to sync. Again, this happened with no issues.

It’s early days, but hopefully the problem is solved. I just need to reset all my preferences for displays, alerts, etc.… But hey, the probably needed a clean out anyway!

Related articles

• Garmin Goes Down. (theplayfullife.net)
• Garmin Replaces Heart Rate Monitor Out Of Warranty (consumerist.com)

Cardiff 10k, City Hall, Cardiff

I signed up for the Cardiff 10k with a few colleagues from work. We were given a special shirt to wear to train in that publicised the race and the charity benefitting – the Kidney Wales Foundation. The shirt was a good quality technical wicking shirt that I used for most of my training runs, including those in Spain and Somerset.

The week before the race, I was given another shirt to race in. Made of the same material, it was a bit brighter than the practise shirt. It will definitely come in useful during dark winter runs!

I arrived at the “race village” in better time than I did for the St. David’s Day Run back in March. I found the bag drop area and met up with my co-workers near the start. I aborted an attempt to visit the toilet due to a ridiculously long queue.

After an attempt to warm us up by a woman who’s PA was in competition with the race compare’s we were soon off. As we were a corporate team we started just behind the elite runners. This meant that although I was overtaken during the race, there were less issues with choke points like the St. Davids Day Run.

My race goal was just to beat my last 10k time. The strategy was to run at a steady 5 minute per KM pace and increase my speed on the last two. I set up the Garmin’s virtual partner to the 5min/km pace. The strategy lasted as long as it took to cross the start line!

Being in front added to the pressure to run faster and the first KM split was around 4:15. To my surprise, I maintained a sub 5min/KM pace for the duration of the race not only beating my last 10k time, but also my previous 5k time!

After the race, I collected a bottle of water and race medal. I visited the toilet, collected my bag and had a recovery shake before attending the corporate reception for brunch.

The official results were published later that afternoon, really pleased with them and I hope to keep on improving!