Coaching, running and cooking - this afternoon/evening in pictures!

Stuffed eggplant recipe

Following the success of last weekend's stuffed fennel bulbs, I decided to experiment with stuffing another veggie: eggplant! (or aubergine, if you happen to live in Aus/NZ/UK...).

It turned out pretty tasty, Andrew gave it two thumbs up :-)

I might start experimenting with stuffing a different veggie every weekend... next up = squash? 

What you need

• 1 large eggplant
• ~350g ground turkey
• 1 white onion, chopped
• 3-4 cloves garlic, crushed and finely chopped
• 2 medium size tomatoes, diced
• 1 tsp ginger
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard 
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 2 tbsp almond flour
• 2 tsp coconut oil 
• Salt & Pepper to taste

The process 

• Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.
• Cut the eggplant in half, length-wise. Scoop the eggplant out, but be careful to leave enough of a 'wall' so you can stuff it later.
• Dice the scooped eggplant to small pieces and set aside.
• Heat a pan with 1 tsp coconut oil and brown the ground turkey. Drain and set aside.
• Saute onion in coconut oil until translucent.
• Add the garlic, ginger, allspice, mustard and salt & pepper. Stir and cook for a couple of minutes.
• Add tomatoes and the scooped, diced eggplant. Cook for 5 minutes over medium heat.
• Add the cooked turkey and cook for another 5-10 minutes.
• Stuff each eggplant halfes with the mixture and sprinkle with the almond flour.
• Bake at 400 degrees for approximately 10 minutes, or until soft and brown at the top. 

Serve with a huge salad like I did, or with some greens (chard or kale)!

Stuffed and roasted fennel bulbs

Andrew is putting the pressure on... he keeps bugging me post that recipe for the stuffed and roasted fennel bulbs... so here it is!

What you need (makes 4)

• 4 large fennel bulbs
• 2 chicken breasts (~350g), cubed
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped
• 1 medium sized while onion, chopped
• 6-8 mushrooms, sliced
• handful of almonds
• 1/4 cup dried cranberries
• 1 tomato, diced
• Juice of 1/2 a lemon
• 1 tsp honey
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tbsp butter
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4 cup water (or white wine, if you have it)

How its done

• Pre heat oven to 450 degrees
• Scoop the inside of the fennel bulb (we used the inside for a salad...). be careful not to carve it too much, or it will fall apart.
• Rub the fennel bulbs with a bit of salt and pepper and place in a roasting dish. Cover and roast for 25 minutes, or until slightly tender.
• Set aside and decrease the over heat to 425 degrees.
• While the bulbs are in the over roasting, add the butter to a pan and saute onions till translucent, then add garlic, mushrooms, chicken, tomato, water, honey, nutmeg and lemon juice. Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for 10 minutes over medium heat.
• Remove the lid, add the cranberried and almonds and simemr uncovered for another 10 minutes.
• Stuff the fennel bulbs with the mixture and back uncovered for 10-15 minutes, until the bulbs are lightly browned. 

We made a pretty great salad to go with these, with some greens, avocado, goat cheese, the fennel that was carved out of the bulbs and some pepper.

Picture credit to Andrew...

Silent auction and casino night for youth development

Triathlon BC is hosting a Silent Auction and Casino night in Victoria on April 24^th  in support of youth development.  The event is from 7 pm to 10 pm at the Strawberry Vale Community Hall at 11 High Street, Victoria. Tickets are $20 for adults and $5.00 for kids.  As you might know this is our 2^nd annual event and we are anticipating it will be bigger and better than last year.  There will be some great auction items, great fun at the casino tables, good food  and members of the National Development Team will be running the casino tables, which last year proved to be a big hit. In addition Giant has donated this great looking Tri bike for the event, to be auctioned, with minimum bids starting at $750.00. Retail for this bike is around $3,000 !!! 

100% of the proceeds go to youth development in the Province. 

 I have to say, Barb Sharpe is doing such an awesome job supporting the triathlon junior development in BC and our sport certainly need more people like her involved. I donated a couple of gift certificates too, one for a bike fit and the other for race day nutrition assessment and strategies. 

I hope to see LOTS of people there!

Noa

Some pictures are worth a thousand words...

AKA I am too lazy to write an actual post!

Although we got back just a few days ago (on Sunday), Tucson seems so far away already. Back to the normal grind, and to good coffee! We couldn't find any good coffee shops in Tucson... I drunk more Starbucks coffee than I have in years, and I wasn't very happy about that at all.

Derek, Kamal, Tyler and Matt & Amber all updated their blogs with summaries and pictures (still waiting for Adam to do that too), so I don't really feel the need to post a long summary of my own, other than to say that although the weather didn't really cooperate - it was such an awesome camp! Everyone put in some very solid days and worked pretty darn hard. It was awesome to have a small group of very dedicated athletes train harder than they thought they could... I was proud to see everyone get the work done with no complaining, no shortcuts - just a lot of hard work and a high performance attitude. Well done, boys! Keep it up :-)

Now on to some pictures!
The Oro Valley pool made a mistake. They put the lane ropes the wrong way... Short course yards made our head spin!

Sandario loop. We ended up getting a bit lost and got stuck in the dark. Ooops. It was still a great ride!

This is why trips to the grocery store took way too long...

Ah, Vitamin D!

Um, I don't really know what to say about these ones, other than to point out the obvious: Derek is funny. There is also a video coming, I just need to sort out the music and finish editing it.

I am kind of surprised Tyler and Kamal didn't get kicked out of the pool, in light of this last pool rule...

Epic run at the Catalina State Park, including lots of elevation gain and 4 river crossings. The boys didn't want to get their feet wet, but I couldn't care less and just run right through, getting a head start after every river!

 

  

 

There was SO much snow up Mt. Lemmon! It started at about 11 miles. The boys rode all the way up to the ski hill and Tyler was crowned king of the mountain, except he was too tired to care and talked about himself in the 3rd person for the rest of the day.