Dana Burland

I dedicate this post to my friend Karen. Or I blame her for it, rather. She was the one who told me about her bread machine. She loves it! Bakes delicious bread at home regularly! I had to have it.  I bought the bread machine. I followed the directions. And I got the dense-est lump of whole wheat bread ever created. Was it edible? Warm and with butter and with your eyes closed--MAYBE. I tried again. The basic white loaf Karen said works for her every time was raw and hollow in the middle. Can raw and hollow even go together in the same sentence? Yes, when it comes to a loaf of bread they can. This one was on me. I didn't have dried milk powder and the Internet said I could sub plain milk. The internet was wrong. Fair. I got the dried milk. I tried again. Fail. Still oddly short, concave, but sponge patterned on the outside some how? I don't know what I did there... Fine. Trial #4. A French bread loaf. Still sunk in! WHY!? But more edible.  Ok. Go #5. Challah. Now... I was told...

It's time for a new year of questionable success with my at-home garden. Last year I was on a hiatus due to home construction near my garden area, which meant this year I needed to start with construction--specifically replacing the end of my garden fence removed by the home reno crew. Now that THAT'S done, it's time to roll. I dropped snap pea seeds into the ground last weekend, and new-to-me scallion seeds, too. The snap peas typically do well, and I already have their chicken wire trellis set for them to climb. We'll see about the scallions. I was maybe a touch late getting both into the ground. In two weeks I'll pick up starter plants: cherry tomatoes, small sweet peppers, lettuce, cucumbers, basil and parsley. The peppers and lettuce are new to me, so I'll be eager to see how those do.  I can hear my mom and brother laughing at "basil" on my list. When I get these starter plants, the basil comes in a 6 pack, and I'm notorious for planting the ...

Training update... we've hit a little glitch. All was going swimmingly (pun intended) until I pinched a nerve in my back two weeks ago while picking up A. Yep, I'm pinch-a-nerve-when-picking-up-your-kid old.  And man, I hadn't experienced that before, and it sucked. So there's the bad news, and thankfully that's all the bad news.  The good news is I had such a strong base of fitness already, and this happened 7 weeks from race day. I can recover from this and get to the starting line just fine.  If my goal wasn't already to run a healthy, happy race (not PR), it is now!  I scaled back training. I've been rehabbing. I already feel a lot better, but not perfect. I'm taking it workout by workout--paying a bit more attention to what feels right and stopping when it feels wrong.  I'm aiming to get back to the training plan...ish, this upcoming week. Maybe not the full workout each day, but closer to it.