Porkin' Out on Vietnamese

At the end of April, Tom and I took a Vietnamese cooking class through Cookbook Co. Cooks. Tom and I love Vietnamese. We eat Vietnamese so often that I am only one step away from being on a first-name-basis with the staff at our local Vietnamese joint. In fact, if I had provided the staff with my name, I'm sure they would be using it.

The cooking class was run by a half Chinese, half Vietnamese woman, and her Vietnamese mother. They offered a variety of recipes, including Vietnamese crepes, sweet potato shrimp fritters, deep fried bananas, and our personal favorite, grilled pork meatballs on vermicelli noodles.

On Sunday night we had friends over for dinner, and impressed them with our Vietnamese prowess.

I firmly believe that the key to our dish is all in the dipping sauce. The dipping sauce is a concoction of water, sugar, fish sauce, lime juice, rice vinegar, garlic and red chilies. Tom and I like to add matchstick carrots. The take on a delicious spicy pickled flavour! The longer you leave the dipping sauce, the more infused the flavours become. It is tangy, spicy and savoury, all wrapped into one tantalizing liquid.

Dipping sauce.

Next, we roll up some meatballs, which are formed in golf ball sized spheres. The meatballs are made of pork, onion, green onion, a liberal amount of lemongrass and some dark soy sauce. In the cooking class, grilled the meatballs on the stove top, but we prefer to grill them on the BBQ.

Uncooked meatballs.

Tom covertly sneaking a meatball sample.

Then we boil up a large serving of vermicelli noodles. We followed the course instructor's advice and bought the "Gold Swallow" brand from the Lucky Supermarket. The noodles hold up very well when cooking, and have a chewy texture.

Bowl full-o'-noodles.

I made this ever-so-pleasing arrangement of fresh veggies, including matchstick carrots, chopped iceberg lettuce, bean sprouts, cilantro and cucumber. On the side is a helping of dipping sauce.

Dinner veggies.

And finally, once you take the meatballs of the BBQ, you immerse them all in the bowl of dipping sauce. The flavours are absolutely out of this world!

Finished meatballs.

To eat as a meal, you pile noodles, veggies and meatballs into your bowl, and dollop on a little dipping sauce. I guarantee, it will be one of the most delicious homemade meals you've ever had!

This weekend, Tom insisted on using four pounds of pork in the meatballs. So.. We have quite a few leftovers for many delicious meals to come.

Yum!

Waterton Getaway

 I like to think that my friends and I do an annual weekend getaway in Waterton, but this is not technically true. At some point I convinced myself that it had been two years since I'd visited Ashley's Mountain View cabin, about 10 minutes outside of Waterton National Park. However a quick investigation into my photo archives proved that it had actually been three years since my last cabin visit. I'm amazed by how quickly time has flown!

After a 2 hour and 15 minute drive from the city, we arrived at Ashley's doorstep under blue skies and warm sunshine. It was impossible not to appreciate the rolling landscape.

Then we were treated to our first source of entertainment-- Ashley's neighbours herding their cattle down the road in front of the property.

Over the next few hours, the rest of our friends trickled in, and we entertained ourselves with a rousing game of drinking Jenga. This lead to the coining of the term, "Billy'd." It seemed like no matter what, Billy would always choose the most difficult Jenga piece to extract. So if you pulled a piece that made the tower structurally unstable, you "Billy'd" it. The most epic ending to the game came when Ashley tried to remove a Jenga piece with her toes. She was so close!

The next day we piled into cars and drove to Waterton to check out the town and the lake. It was extremely windy (I cannot stress this enough), and we all got gravel blasted when we were on the ridge by the Prince of Wales Hotel. Here are a few of the highlights from our daytrip, enhanced by my excessive use of Instagram!!!

A mangy looking Bighorn sheep.

Mountain views.

Billy to the rescue!

Choppy looking lake.

Tom and Amanda vs. the WIND

Getting misted by the falls.

And we ended the trip with a little good ol' fashion man-hunting.

As I'm sure you can understand, after all the excitement, Tom and I were a little tuckered out. We took a nap on the couch while Billy nursed his wounds, and everyone else played some low key card games.

The last sights from our trip included some large bird nests on telephone pole platforms along the highway. We saw several of these nests along the way, but this one was by far the largest, and both birds were home. If you look closely, you can see that there is garbage and toilet paper hanging out of the nest. We are pretty sure these are Osprey nests.

Mom and dad are home.

We also spotted a secondary nest about 100m away from the very large nest above. The nest was smaller and had a lot of stuff hanging off of it, but there were two birds at home in it as well.

A slightly crappier nest.

I'll try to make sure it's not another three years between visits!

More on Vegas

The Venetian by night.

New York, New York + Rollercoaster.

We road the rollercoaster, and Jill almost got into a fight with a guy from Edmonton! True story!

Jill and Mallary dancing it out at Senor Frog's.

Dinner at Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill.

I'm pretty sure Paige is wearing my glasses. I don't look pleased about it.

Venetian Gondola.

Waterfall in front of Wynn.

We all look like giants.

One of the many inappropriate pairs of shoes we saw on the strip.

 Riding the tram back to Treasure Island.

Jill vs. the mechanical bull. Mechanical bull wins.

2:13:14

My giant finishing medal

I was aiming to run this half marathon in 2:15, and... Drum roll please...

I finished in 2:13:14!

This year I wasn't as nervous as last year. I actually had a pretty good sleep, even though it was shorter than I would have liked. I got up at 4:00am this morning. That probably seems insane, but I don't normally run in the morning, so I needed to convince my body that I was running later in the day. I got up and started hydrating immediately. I did some yoga to loosen up a bit, had breakfast, and had a quick shower. Tom and I were out of the house by 6:15am, and by then the nerves were kicking in.

We arrived on the Stampede grounds at 6:40am. I lined up for the washroom, and made some last minute decisions about my running gear (layering, water bottles, etc.) The start gun started in no time at all.

This was the first time that I ran a full 21km. The furthest I went in training was 18km.

Many people advised me to run slowly after the start gun-- actually go slower than my intended race pace. I can understand how people can take off. There are thousands of people around you trying to get into position, and it seemed like everyone and their dog were passing me in the first three kilometers. But I settled into my pace without any problems.

At about 8km, somewhere on 11th Avenue, Tom was waiting on a street corner to cheer me on. He then cut through the course so he could meet me again on Memorial Drive.

Somewhere around the 12km marker, I decided to break out my sports beans-- jelly beans made for an energy boost. I had trained with these jelly beans, so imagine my surprise when a kilometer later, I experienced some debilitating cramps. I tried to run through them, but I just couldn't handle the pain, so I eventually walked them out. Luckily they went away, and when I started running again they didn't come back. I didn't try eating any more of the jelly beans after that!

Around 15km I saw Tom again on the side of the course. By then I had developed what felt like a blister on the sole of my foot. So when Tom asked, "How are you doing?" I replied, "I HAVE A BLISTER!" And indeed, I have a very large blister. It's strange, because during my 301km of training running, I never had a single blister form. So why now? What was I doing differently? I suspect it was because I ran the majority of the race on the right hand side of the road which was slightly sloped from traffic. But I guess I'll never know.

Around kilometer 17 I saw a man bail on the road. I'm not sure if he tripped, but he fell to the ground and hit the curb. Two ladies pulled him up and asked him if he was okay, but by the time I got anywhere near, he had already started running again. I guess he got away unscathed.

At 18km, I started a chant inside my head, "3.1km, that's nothing, you can do that." And slowly, I ticked off the kilometers to the end of the race.

By kilometer 20, I was considering slowing down to walk again, but I just couldn't let myself. I was so close!

And then, at about 20.5km, I saw a familiar face in the crowd. Billy!

I hate to brag... But seriously, my friends are awesome. I could never hope for a better group of friends. Five of them showed up bright and early on Sunday (apparently they arrived at 8am) bearing personalized signs.

Jeff: Don't Die Amanda

Steve: Making Signs is Hard Too

Ashley: Amanda, Run Like There's a Shoe Sale Ahead!

Billy: Amanda, You Da Bomb!!

Andy also accompanied them, but is not featured in the pictures because he had left to find his sister in the crowd.

Seeing these guys gave me the boost I needed to sprint (okay, semi-sprint) to the finish line.

My friends are awesome. That is all.

Tom and I find each other post-race.

I think this will be my only half marathon this year, but next year I suspect I will run a few more. I think I'd like to do some more training and try to whittle away at my personal best. This was a really great experience for me.

Thanks to everyone who came out and cheered, or supported my fundraising for LINKages Society of Alberta!!!

I'm one happy runner-- except for the blister...

301km

Last year I ran my first 10km road race, as well as a couple shorter 5km road races. I had been running for a few years, but found that it really helped my motivation to have a specific target to run for.

This year I decided to up the ante with a bigger challenge, my first half marathon!

Since the end of March I have been following the half marathon training plan as outlined by John Stanton (the founder of the Running Room), in his book, Running. The program was 18 weeks which I modified into 10 weeks. The program  required five runs a week, which I managed to stick to pretty well, considering all the juggling I had to do with an already busy life!

April 2012 Running Schedule

May 2012 Running Schedule

This training program has culminated in a total of 301km of running in the last 10 weeks. I will knock off an additional 4km today, and end with the final 21.1km in the half marathon at the Calgary Marathon tomorrow morning. Weather looks like it's going to hold. My iPod is charged and loaded with my favorite songs, my GPS watch is updated and ready to go.  I have raised $675 (90% of my fundraising goal) for LINKages Society of Alberta, and hope that I will hit 100% by the end of the weekend.

I am nervous, but not nearly as much as I was last year. I am hoping to run this half marathon in 2:15, which I think is a reasonable goal.

So please, think good thoughts for me!

Walking for Mother's Day

Sunday was Mother's Day, and my family participated in the Sport Chek Mother's Day Run & Walk. This was our first time in the event, and there were thousands of other people and families who came out to enjoy the beautiful weather. Some 14000 individuals were registered for the various walks and races (5km & 10km), not including children and dogs. After the start gun sounded, it took us nearly 19 minutes to slowly make our way across the START line.

Dylan insisted on walking portions of the route, and probably ended up walking about 2.5km.

The family waiting to start the race.

Dylan and Madelynn with a pre-race snack.

Mom and Dad.

Edging our way towards the start gate.

There was entertainment along the course including dancers and singers. We also saw a man with a giant iguana on his shoulder walking the 5km route. Dylan ran a race with other 2 and 3 year olds and got his first finishing medal! My mom didn't participate this year, but she thinks she'll try it out next year.

Happy Belated Mother's Day to all you moms out there!

What Happens in Vegas... Gets Posted on the Web

On May 4th, Jill, Jasmine, Paige, Mallary and I boarded a plane and headed to Vegas. The weather was fantastic, nearly 30 degrees every day, and we made the best of it. We explored the strip, enjoyed the pool, hit the outlet malls and saw a Cirque du Soleil show. We rode the rollercoaster in New York New York, and rowed through the Venetian on a gondola. And we consumed some delicious food at Bobby Flay's restaurant, Mesa Grill.

Here are some photos from our trip! 

Lanterns in the lobby of the Wynn.

Pastries at Jean Phillipe Patisserie.

Poolside views at Treasure Island.

One of many hilarious signs in Senor Frog's.

The ceiling in the Bellagio.

The Chandelier in the new Cosmopolitan Hotel.

Riding a tram.

Good time had by all!