September Recap

I'm pretty sure I skipped an August recap, but I thought I'd check in now that it is October. 

Refrain from using the snooze button- Since I finished the Tough Mudder my motivation to work out everyday/twice a day has waned, which has taken my popping out of bed each morning with it. So I must admit I have snoozed a few times in the past few weeks. I also blame the sun for not raising early enough.

Run at least 6 races- I went crazy with races in September

Chilhowee 5K

Tough Mudder

Run! Geek! Run! 8K 

Smoothie 5K

My races in September bring my year total to 10, goal met!

Travel somewhere new- I was in Frederick, Maryland for the Tough Mudder and saw some new areas of NE DC with touch football. 

New GOAL- My new goal is to be able to do three pull ups in a row. I've been working on this all summer, with little progress. When ever I talked to a boy about pull ups they told me to get an at home pull up bar, so I finally did. Tonight I hung from the bar for awhile and tried hanging in the up position for as long as possible.

gettin' real

Beerfest and Shopping

Saturday I met up with some ladies to celebrate a friend's birthday at Beerfest at Half Street. The even was hosted by Livingsocial, so there was a little worry it would attract a certain crowd, but turned out to be a lot of fun. There were tons of different types of beers (I focused on pumpkin and fall flavors), food trucks, some games, and a band.

tiny tasting mug

some of the tents before it got crowded

On Sunday I met up with two of my coworkers to check out the Leesburg Outlets. I had to weed through some fake deals, but I think I got some great items. Brown riding boots, green pencil skirt, pearls, and some workout gear. 

National Book Festival

There was a lot going on in DC this last weekend. Fall in DC is almost as enjoyable as Spring in DC, but without all the flowers. I tried to fit in as many festivals as possible, on Saturday I went to the Barracks Row Festival, DC State Fair, and 17th Street Festival. Sunday I decided to check out the National Book Festival, even though all the authors I wanted to see were there on Saturday.

I listened to two authors, Susan Richards Shreve and Justin Torres,  in the Fiction tent and will definitely check their books out.

on the mall

people in line for book signings

Susan Richards Shreve

PBS stars!

After leaving the mall I ran into some sort of Latin festival. Lots of food and music.

Inca Kola!

DC "State" Fair

The big news from the fair was my cupcake win, but here are a few other scenes from the day.

announcing the bicycle accessory winners

2nd prize- reflective bicycling sweater

aprons

the knit/crochet DC flag category

honey judging

delicious fair food

Chocolate and Kale match made in cupcake heaven

At some point on Wednesday while reviewing the weekend happenings in DC, I came across the DC State Fair. If you've been around this blog for more than a day, you know that I love fairs and I love competitions. Well after a little more reading it was clear that this fair wasn't the traditional "state fair", but a way to celebrate DC gardeners, cooks, bakers, photographers, and artists in a state fair way. And by celebrate... they meant compete. Sadly since I came across this group so late, most of the competition's deadlines had passed. If I wanted to compete I had to either make a bike accessory or cupcake.

With the short time frame, I settled on cupcake. Upon reading the details I discovered along with overall prizes for first, second, and third, there were two category prizes. One for most creative cupcake and the other for best vegetable cupcake. I'm not the baking sister in my family so I decided to hedge my bets and go for the veggie gold.

After sending 100  a few texts to my sister and analyzed the cupcake world with one of my coworkers, I decided I would make chocolate-kale cupcakes. 

For a brief second I contemplated fondant, but after reading a recipe online I realized I wasn't ready to buy a candy thermometer. My second idea was a chocolate decoration. At first I thought, a chocolate White House! hahahhahahhahaa yeah, that didn't work out the bets. My second idea, the DC flag, though was golden  chocolate.

can you at least tell which ones I attempted the White House on?

I melted two baking chocolate squares and used a zip lock bag with a corner cut out to pipe my designs on waxed paper. I popped them in the freezer, but later realized that was a bad idea. Simply let them sit out and harden.

I'd never made a chocolate-kale cupcake, I'm not sure if I have ever made cupcakes from scratch before,  but I was up for the challenge. I consulted many websites, mainly the following:

Double Chocolate Kale Muffins

Deep Dark Chocolate Cake

ChoKalet Cake

And then got to work.

First I prepped the kale. I went a little crazy at Safeway and bought a two pound bag of kale. Luckily I didn't go crazy while kale prepping and I only measured out two heaping cups of raw kale. First important step- remove all big stems and spines. Then I steamed/boiled the kale (bring 1 inch of water to boil, insert kale, cover, wait like two minutes), drained off excess water, cooled a bit, combined with a tablespoon of milk, and pulverized it in my mini food processor.

bright green goodness

Then I watched some TV and like any competitive baker I waited till the grocery stores closed before checking to see if I had all the necessary ingredients. The night before I purchased the more exotic ingredients, but hadn't checked to see if I had any sugar. I only had a half cup of sugar on hand, so I added a trip to the supermarket to my morning baking activities and went to bed.

Cupcakes had to be delivered between 11:30 and 12:30 for judging, so I set to work at 8:30am.

Mixing went well and baking was smooth.

cooling down

While the cupcakes were cooling I started mixing up cream cheese/buttercream icing. I made a bit of a mess.

big mess

I used the zip lock baggy method once again, but this time with a bigger hole cut out of the corner. I only had snack sized bags, which at first I thought were too small, but they worked well because my hands are a bit small.

pipping icing on

I picked the best six and started to add the decorations, only they seemed to melt when I took them out of the freezer... I reevaluated and all though they got soft, they kept their shape so I decided to put them on three of my cakes and see how they looked upon arrival.

packed for travel

Then I did something I never do before 2 am, I took a cab. It was worth it as my cupcakes arrived unscathed.

row after row of cupcakes

a judge with his helpers

While the judging was taking place I walked around the fair a bit and around the larger Barrack's Row festival. I also watched the honey judging, which was quite intense. There were at least twenty entries and the three judges were quite thorough, checking taste, clarity, and even moisture content.

After an hour I was running short on time (I had a football game at 2pm) so I went back over to the judging table. They were eating my cupcake! One girl took a bite and did this lovely positive head nod. Then I heard her tell a fellow judge that mine deserved a five because it had kale in it (in a good way!). I couldn't leave early now! So I went to change into my athletic gear in a nearby bar's restroom. When I got back they had lined up the top six cupcakes for the final judging by the "celebrity" judges. Well mine wasn't in the top six, but I was gunning for a different prize. A few agonizing minutes later they announced that...

I won! Best Vegetable Cupcake!

I received a blue ribbon and a $50 gift certificate to Whole Foods. And my photo with the Whole Foods guy.

Because of the delay I snuck back in the crowd and literally had to run. I ran a mile and a quarter to my football game and arrived just in time.

my winnings, my new t-shirt, and one of my cupcakes

Recipes

I have issues with following recipes, I don't buy enough powdered sugar, I substitute vegetable oil, I forget the salt, and I roll with it. So with that in mind I decided to share the recipe I actually made and not the one that might be most ideal (because that one didn't win!).

DC Chocolate Kale Cupcake

Ingredients-

2 cups sugar

1 3/4 cups flour

3/4 cup Hershey's Special DARK Cocoa

1 1/2 t baking powder

1 1/2 t baking soda

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1/4 cup OlivExtra Canola/Olive Oil blend

1/4 cup kale steamed and processed into very small pieces (I used 2 cups raw kale)

1 cup boiling water

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees and fill cupcake pan with paper liners.

2. Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, and baking soda in a large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil, and kale; beat on medium speed of electric mixer for two minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin, at this point I thought I ruined everything, but don't worry). Pour batter into prepared pan. Fill cups 3/4 full.

3. Bake 20-25 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Makes 24 cupcakes.

Cream cheese buttercream icing*

1 8oz. package of cream cheese at room temperature

3 sticks of butter at room temperature

1/2 cup light brown sugar

3 cups powdered sugar (the recipe I was following called for 6 cups, I only bought one bag of powdered sugar, 3 worked fine, but 6 would of created a stiffer icing and no I didn't think to halve the recipe until my mom suggested it late that afternoon)

2 T vanilla extract (recipe called for 2 teaspoons, I misread, but was happy with the result)

1. Beat cream cheese till creamy

2. Add butter, beat till incorporated

3. Add brown sugar and beat till fluffy

4. Add powdered sugar one cup at a time, till mixed

5. Add Vanilla till combined

*I don't remember where I pulled this recipe from, but since I basically butchered it, I don't feel too bad sharing.

Mid-day 5K

As part of some health and wellness and team building initiative one of the divisions in my organizations put on a mid day 5K run/walk followed by smoothies in the lobby. And since a few months ago (after a particularly exciting happy hour) a few coworkers and I decided that we should form a run club, we jumped at the chance to sign up. We've been pretty consistently running once a week and were ready to put our hard work to the test. So half of our run club went down to the mall to challenge around 80 other runners and walkers.

It was a pretty casual affair and the distance ended up being .3 miles short of a 5K. I started off way to fast and ran my fastest 1K ever with my Nike+ watch.

is it wrong that I like winning fake banners?

I settled down after about a half mile and was the second female. I ended up passing that girl at about a mile, but so did two other girls who also passed me.

The course was three laps of the gravel area on the National Mall. While we were running there were 30 or so workers setting up for the National Book Festival this weekend, which meant there were plenty of trucks and people to run around. Add in some tourists and although the course was three loops, each loop brought a new challenge.

only 2.8 miles

I felt myself slow down in the third lap and with a quarter of a mile left another girl passed me and I couldn't find the will to pass her back. I finished right after her as the 4th female, the 9th overall finisher. 

super fast

 My time was 21:30, but I'm not counting it as a PR as the course was way short. Even though I'm pretty happy with my splits.

One of my friends ended up winning the race, he started slow and passed me around a half mile and I could tell he had a lot of gas in his engine. I told him to go win the thing and he did. He won a fun trophy, a old running shoe painted gold and mounted on a wooden plaque. The smoothies were also delicious, but I don't think they were very healthy.

Soon we were back at our desks, all in a day's work.

RUN! GEEK! RUN! 8K

I'd been wanting to do RUN! GEEK! RUN! ever since reading about it on another blog last fall. But then I had Tough Mudder on the calendar for last week so I didn't preregister and then I was feeling a little under the weather this week (ragweed allergies or cold... not sure). My geekness won out and yesterday I went to the Post Office Pavilion and registered. Got my number, T-shirt, and geek glasses. Then after I went back to work for the afternoon my health declined. I couldn't breath. Well I couldn't breath through my nose. Hmm maybe I signing up wasn't the best idea.

I spent last night on the couch and went to bed early, hoping I'd feel better this morning. When I woke up I could breathe through my nose, so things were looking up. I still wasn't feeling that excited about racing, but I got ready and took my bike out the door to head down to West Potomac Park.

There's not much bike traffic (or any traffic) Saturday morning at 7:30 am so I was down there in no time. Locked up my bike, pinned on my number, and checked my bag with plenty of extra time. I figured the bike ride was enough to wake my legs up and spent a few times watching the rowers on the Potomac instead of warming up.

As soon as the race started I could feel that my legs aren't completely recovered from last weekend's punishment. Although tight and stiff I pushed on. My goal going in was to keep under 9 min mile pace. We were running on a four lane road from the beginning so the field was able to thin out right away. I had never been past the bridge on Ohio drive, it was very pretty and I'll definitely be back. We passed lots of people out for their weekend long run, but they never really got in the way. The course was an out and back with a little loop a the end. After we turned around we were all hit with a pretty good headwind, but I kept pushing. I was able to stick around 8 min pace and despite all of my complaining managed a new 8K PR. 

Gun time- 40:20

Net time- 40:07

Pace- 8:02

Overall- 168/560

Female 20-29- 21/113

post run

course

geek trophies... one day I'll get one of these