works of wanderlust

Category: cast iron guy

  • Social Distances

    Sunday Runday, and that familiar epic-tired-queezy feeling is settling in for the afternoon, and I don’t remember if it’s a good thing or the part of the long runs that I didn’t like.

    I hadn’t run more than a dozen kilometers in the better part of a year, certainly not over the winter, and during the heights of restrictions I was dutifully cranking out a ten klick run to keep up the milage, but last week we topped out at sixteen and this morning someone suggested adding a few more onto that.

    Nineteen kilometers of river valley trail later, I’ve showered, eaten lunch, and am sipping at a big glass of ice water, but still: Epic-tired. Queezy. So familiar.

    The restrictions opened up a little more this past week and we were able to be even a little more social running these longer distances, gathering in as big of a group of friends as I’ve been around in months, even if it was just ten of us in a parking lot lacing up for a long trot through the trails and trees, across bridges, and down winding, root-tangled dirt paths.

    Those kinds of distances evoke post-run feelings that I haven’t felt in almost a year. I have these people back again to urge me further and faster. So we do.

    But right now I think I might need a nap.

  • Local Flours Sours: Peace Country Rye (Part One)

    All this experimenting with food is getting expensive. I was at the grocery store again this morning buying some varieties of vegetables to grill over the fire this evening, and a big hunk of meat to slice up for a batch of beef jerky, so of course I stumbled by the baking aisle and found another locally milled flour to scratch my local flour sourdough dabblers itch.

    Until this morning I had not ever heard of Peace Country Milling & Grains but anyone who lives in this area knows that the “Peace Country” is a huge swath of land up in the North West of the province named for the Peace River that runs roughly transversely eastbound through that area. The largest city in the area is named Grand Prairie and is familiar to us because a my wife traces some of her paternal ancestry to a couple generations of relatives who immigrated to, settled in and farmed upon that area. Many a five-hour drives did we used to make for visits while there was still enough of her kin there to justify the multi-day trip.

    This particular mill seems to be hunkered just fifty kilometers outside of Grand Prairie in an area even those of us who live pretty much in the middle of nowhere would consider remote and pretty much the middle of nowhere.

    I bought a bag of their rye flour. Rye is a variety of wheat that tends to have a darker colour, nuttier taste, and a lower gluten content resulting in a bread that is darker, more substantially flavoured, and denser from a weaker rise.

    I’d been experimenting with a more commercial variety of rye flour over the winter months and pushing my sourdough percentages past more than about 25% rye flour turned the final product into a bit of a poundcake.

    So, with this local flour I started with a generous, but still cautious, twenty percent rye to eighty percent white blend and then otherwise followed my standard go-to sourdough process.

    The dough is hydrated and resting for an overnight rise in the fridge even as I write this.

    Rye bread has always had a bit a special space in my heart, though. I’d be the first in line for a good Reuben sandwhich if we lived near a good deli, and in fact the day after I ran the New York Marathon in 2016 we hiked over to Katz’s Deli in Manhattan, not an insignificant distance from our hotel the day after running forty-two kilometers (and much, much farther from Grand Prairie where my bag of rye flour originated) and ordered a thick pastrami sandwhich piled high on a couple slices of rye bread.

    What a connection!

    And maybe I’ll hunt down that photo and continue the story in part two, after my own rye is baked and tasted.

  • Ready for the Weekend

    How do you prepare for your weekend?

    Do you pick away at your to-do list over the week, so that when you catch up with Friday night you are free and clear, ready to enjoy everything? Sure, this means that you’ve saved up all your down-time for those two precious days, but when Saturday and Sunday arrive you have nothing but relaxing to accomplish, right?

    Or, do you wait for those first few hours of the weekend and get everything done all at once on Saturday morning? The weekend is still young, you’re full of energy, and you can just sink in and get the work done before lunch on your first weekend day. By the time you break you’ve still got a day and a half ahead of you to rest and enjoy.

    Maybe you’re a take-it-as-it-comes weekend warrior? A chore here, a task there, and strike another item of the list then kick your feet up for a while until you feel ready to take on the next one. There’s no sense in being efficient about it, right? Weekends aren’t a job, they’re your life and you can take it as you please.

    Ideally you are not a procrastinator, but I can see how tempting it might be to put everything off until Sunday evening. Are you one of those folks? Enjoy every moment you can until the last possible second when you figure you may as well get back into the week by doing some yard and housework before bed on Sunday.

    Or perhaps you’re a little like me, and it’s a bit of each and a different take on the to-do list every time a new Saturday rolls around.

  • The Mustard Files: Spicy Spring Dijon

    I’m a bit of sucker for interesting mustards.

    In fact, it used to be I’d make a special trip to the local farmers market each spring to stock my pantry with a few variety of jars of flavoured mustards that would almost always last the year …but not much longer.

    The sad part is that I’m the only one in my house who loves the yellow sauce, so I’m always buying and creating mustards for an audience of one.

    Creating? You ask.

    Why yes, if you can call starting with a store-bought mustard and experimenting with adding your own spices and seasonings to it to enhance the mustard experience, then of course creating.

    Often I’ll spin up a little bowl of spicy mustard or curry mustard or garlic mustard to accompany a plate of bratwurst or a pan-cooked chop of some kind.

    And tonight was no exception.

    Recipe

    30ml dijon-style mustard
    4 pinches of curry powder
    2 pinches of ground cumin
    2 pinches of cayenne pepper
    1 pinch ground ginger

    This particular blend turned into a medium-spicy mix that reminded me of a trip to Berlin and eating sausages on a busy street corner from a paper tray in the rain.

    Appropriate then that I served it with some local sausage and looked out the window at the evening’s downpour.

  • How to Plan a Local Adventure

    So you’re stuck at home during travel restrictions but still need something exciting to do close to home. I don’t know where you live, but adventure lurks nearby if you know how to plan for it.

    Choose Your Activity

    I needed a good excuse to keep running…

    …but, last year as the pandemic restrictions ramped up, the running store (where we’d been meeting and running from) shut it’s doors. It was geographically convenient and had ample parking. Plus everyone knew to meet there on certain days and times so that we could run together.

    The simple approach might have been to just keep running as we were, meeting from a parking lot, and for many runs over the past year we did. Yet, I wanted something more, and I suspected a lot of the crew might start to get bored and go off on their own plans if nothing more exciting happened.

    Invent a Concept

    Instead of panicking or just running solo, I decided it might be interesting to find somewhere new and interesting to run as we no longer had any good reason to keep running from a closed-up retail store. I also decided I’d like to see more of the city trails that I had never bothered to check out because they were not particularly reachable on a short run distance from that store.

    I called it adventure runs.

    Plan a Goal

    A running adventure sounds like a self-evident concept, but in fact it encompasses so much potential… and potential for disappointment.

    I was working full time (I still am) and didn’t have time nor motivation to sit down and plot out full miniature courses each week through locations I’d never spent much time traversing.

    Instead I set the goal as something simple: if we ran somewhere new, down a new path, in a new neighbourhood, and saw something or somewhere we’d never seen (or hadn’t seen in a long time) then the adventure run was a success.

    Pick a Starting Point

    The second part of that concept was picking a good starting point.

    It had to have access to trails. There needed to be enough parking (since we could not carpool during the restrictions and transit was still not running at full capacity.) Later in the summer a nearby ice cream shop or coffee stop was requested for afterwards. And of course, it had to be somewhere that felt remote-ish or like we were about to embark on some crazy adventure.

    Invite Willing Participants

    The gimmick then became about the mystery and the invite.

    We have a group chat that has been around for years with a tight knit group of runners who have often been up for exactly this kind of adventure.

    I would keep the suspense up. Eventually, as the summer progressed, folks would ask in the lead up week “where is the adventure run this week?” or “what are you planning for Wednesday night?”

    The rule quickly followed: “The plan would be announced the morning of the adventure run. Keep your calendar open and check your messages.”

    Show Up

    On our best days we had as many as a dozen or more people show up.

    I always did.

    Rain or shine.

    If I felt like leading a run or not, I was there.

    And this morning, the first good spring Wednesday post-restrictions, I just sent out that notice once again.

    Season two of the adventure runs, by enthusiastic request, start tonight.