Taking Stock: February

Time to sum up my second month of being vegan. It's been a short month with its share of long posts, so I'll make this one brief.

Over the course of the month, I ran for 12 hours, snowshoed for 4 hours, rode for 5.5 hours and swam for 2 hours (riding and swimming really suffered due to the extended Rome trip). I caught a slight cold in a psychosomatic protest at returning to Switzerland, and I have a bruised right hip from an icy bike slip, which has subsequently turned all the colours of the rainbow (a bit like watching a display of the northern lights in slow-mo). I've been tinged with some winter melancholy that I go through every February, but in spite of that, my energy levels have been excellent. I'm noticing the total absence of muscular tiredness or stiffness between workouts. It's early days, and my longest run was only 2 hours, but I don't believe I've ever experienced such excellent recovery. Time, and harder workouts, will tell. My weight has remained consistent, and I'm blaming the pizza, wine and the discovery that drinking black coffee and eating dark chocolate makes me feel so chic for the lack of weight loss with increased training volume. Besides, I'm quite sure that the extra cushioning protected my hip from worse damage on the ice.

Now to recipe of the month. I've done a little less experimentation in the kitchen this month, mostly becasue I was eating vegan pizza in sunny piazzas for a good portion of it. But I was particularity inspired by a non-Italian dish in one Roman restaurant: babaganoush. Besides being delicious and easy to make, the name of the dish is so much fun to say out loud: babaganoush. Babaganoush can be made with yogurt, but it can certainly be made without, as this restaurant did. They kindly told me their recipe, which I promptly forgot the details of after my second glass of wine. Fortunately, there are plenty of online recipes. I like this one (adapted from The Victory Garden Cookbook):

1/2 lb eggplant (or aubergine, for the Brits)
3 tb lemon juice
1 ts salt
2 ts minced fresh garlic
3 tb sesame tahini
1/4 c chopped parsley
1/2 c toasted pine nuts
2 tb olive oil

Preheat oven to 400F. Prick eggplant all over with a fork. Bake whole until tender (about 30 minutes). Remove from oven, halve and scoop out the flesh. Blend in a food processor with the lemon juice until smooth. Mash the salt and garlic together and combine with the eggplant, along with the tahini. Cool and stir in the parsley and pine nuts. Before serving, drizzle with the olive oil. Serve as a dip with tortilla chips or triangles of pita bread.

And there rests February. I made it through another.