No races, just cooking.

I took this past weekend off from road racing because I have two long runs coming up this Saturday and Sunday in order to give my legs a rest. I recovered nicely after my back to back 1/2 marathons last month, but that was on consecutive weekends, 6 days apart. These races are on back to back days and I want to be as fresh as possible for both.

This gave me more time to spend on my other passion, which is cooking. I have always been a fan of cooking shows going back to the days of the Galloping Gourmet aka Graham Kerr (I run, he galloped) and Julia Child. I was also a fan of Yan Can Cook and Lidia on PBS as well. I watch the Food Network often which usually gets me inspired to cook and eat whatever they are making that day. I especially like Giada, but will watch any Chef if they are making something I like or something I think my family will enjoy.

On today's menu was onion soup with an Italian twist, fusilli with sausage, artichoke hearts and sun dried tomatoes and a chocolate orange creme filled cookie.

I got back from my training run and was hydrating while watching Giada make these cookies and onion soup so decided to give both of them a try. They both looked rather easy which was important since I was also doing a spring clean up in my yard. I needed to get that done in between courses.

I was making the cookies for my daughter Leigh who is at the University of Delaware and the onion soup for my wife who was out coaching my son's soccer game about an hour away. I figured Ro would like the onion soup after spending almost two hours in the cool air on Sunday.

The fusilli dish was for dinner and I got that recipe on Giada's website as well. I was trying to get away from the traditional red sauce Sunday that my son Mike requested a few weeks back. We did that the last few weeks so I was itching for something different and needed to use ingredients I had in the house. One thing that is certain when I eat or cook, it is to try different dishes. I rarely go back to the same dish twice even if I loved it. I will do occasionally if I thought it tasted spectacular and one of my kids didn't get a chance to try it.

I won't go into the details of each recipe, but I enjoyed making the cookies the most and I think they came out the way Giada's did on TV. The dough was made with butter, sugar, cocoa powder, flour and cornmeal and a little orange zest. It was the first time I added cornmeal to a cookie recipe as you could taste the slight grit in each bite. The creme filling was powdered sugar, butter and more orange zest.

The onion soup went over well with Ro although Mike wanted no part of it, and the Italian twist was fontina cheese on top. Mike was fine with the no red sauce Sunday but shied away from the sun-dried tomatoes.. Mike is the most finicky of my three kids when it comes to food, although his tastes are still evolving.

The races next weekend are the Jersey Shore Relay Marathon on Saturday which the "Sons of Beaches" are the defending master's champs looking for their 3rd in a row. Sunday's race is the Rutgers Unite 1/2 marathon run through the streets of New Brunswick and the RU campus.

More on those races in a later post this week.