New shoes, good training

Anyone who has hung out with me lately, knows that I've recently taken the plunge into trying out "Vibram Five-Fingers" shoes. These shoes are very thin, and have individual toe cut outs. The idea behind these shoes is that they strengthen all the little muscles in your foot, and improve your posture. After purchasing them about 2 weeks ago, I put all my other shoes away, and have since been wearing them full-time.

I was worried that I wouldn't be able to unicycle with them on, since they are so thin. Yesterday, I went out on a 20 mile group ride with a bunch of people in Santa Cruz (Rob's Ride) I took all the pins out of a pair of pedals, and I was able to ride the whole ride with these shoes. Success! The only problem was falling at speed kinda hurt my feet, and when the pedals got wet, they were really slippery. Overall, it was good, and I will try some different pedal / grip tape combinations to see what works best. Trials, and intense MUni could be a different story though!

On another note, some fellow canadians just left me, from a wicked visit down here in California. We did lots of great riding, even though the temperatures were well below seasonal.

Freshly made "ride muffins". Probably one of the most delicious creations i've ever concocted. Wow they were good. More like a cookie-muffin hybrid.

Great pilon photo-op. How cool can you look with a pilon on your head?

Come back soon, I'm going to post recipes for making home-made bars, that are "oh, so good"

Pasta-less Vegetarian gluten-free lasagna

Yes, Big name, but also big taste!

This was my "nth" time making this type of lasagna, but today I

used butternut squash, instead of Eggplant. Let me tell you, it was great. Try making it

yourself sometime!

The finished product turned out really well. I mixed up some exercises while waiting for things to cook, just to keep things interesting.

Ingredients:

-2-3 onions

-Meat substitute (or meat, if you want it, I used Tempeh)

-1 large butternut squash

-1 Jar (16 Oz) tomato sauce

-1.5 Cups Ricotta cheese

-Fresh Basil, or pesto sauce (about 200 grams, not much)

-Spinach, about 0.5 cup, I used frozen

-8-10 mushrooms

-Approx 1 lb. of cheese (lozza mozza, cheddar... whatever!)

-Approx 100-200grams parmesan cheese

Directions:

1.Get that oven on! turn it up to 350 F.

2.Peel the butternut, then cut it into lengthwise strips, approx 5-6mm (1/4") put into the lasagna pan, with some salt and paprika, then put it in the oven, for about 20 mins.

3.Cut up onions, and saute, with a bit of oil, and whatever other veggies. Put your meat substitute in with the onion,and saute until soft and delicious.

4. While waiting for the saute/squash to finish, I'll have you do 40 pushups, and 2 minutes of side planks, each side.

5.Now the fun part: layering! here's how I did it:

-Thin layer of sauce

-Layer of Squash

-Layer of Onion Saute

-Layer of tomato sauce

-sprinkle all the spinach (difficult to get a layer)

-All the ricotta. This should be about 1 cm thick. I added pepper to the top

-Pesto (or fresh basil). One thin layer

-Finish off the squash, with another layer

-Finish off the onions, then the tomato sauce

-All the mushrooms

-All the shredded cheese

-All the parmesan

6. Now stick the lasagna(s) into the oven, still at 350. I cooked them for 40 minutes, and then cranked it up to 425 for the last 5 minutes, to get that golden brown top.

While waiting for the lasagna to cook, I did boat pose, with toe-taps (x200) then 2 minutes of front plank. Following this, I just did some basic yoga, (crow, pigeon, warrior 1 & 2, and some sun salutations, then I broke out the foam roller, and worked out some knots in my legs. This took good care of the 40 minutes. Once the lasagnas are out, let them cool for at least 5 minutes (this takes lots of restraint!) then enjoy! These should feed 6-8 hungry people, or 5 cyclists, after a 140km day, with 9000 ft. of climbing. Enjoy!