Dessert By Candy

I went blading at Sunnyside Pavillion after work today. You know, with less sunlight day after day, the inline skating season is soon coming to a close. Normally, I blade with a heavy backpack full of stuff (wallet, keys, phone, camera, a few essential cosmetic, 2L of water, sunscreen). I didn’t realize how heavy my load is until I bladed without my pack today. For reasons mainly due to laziness, I just shoved my phone and keys in my cargo pants pockets and carried my water bottle in my hand. Before I knew it, I was flying down the trail. I was blading much faster than normal and I wasn’t tired at all. The wind was strong today so there was some good resistance. I was even blading faster than the Trailblader group. Wow.

I love speed bumps. There is a group of four speed bumps over a short stretch of road on the trail. Only a week ago, I was carefully rolling over them. However, for the past few days, I learn to approach them with more speed and get some air. It’s the most amazing feeling. I’m just beginning to learn to blade backward and pivot on a single wheel to turn from forward to backward. It’s slow in coming but I know I will get it soon.

If you don’t know already, we do have a Friday night skate in Toronto. Every Friday evening at 21:30, a group of bladers would gather at the Royal Bank staircase at Yonge & Bloor. The group departs at 22:00 and the route varies every week. Hope to see you there some time.

It’s no use denying…I’m a little obsessed with whatever project I can get my hands on now. In terms of my grand scheme of weight loss, I’m watching very carefully everything that I put in my mouth and I force myself to exercise over an hour everyday (my mantra: burn more than I eat). However, being naturally drawn to good food, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to be discipline. So now I’ve taken up recipe testing–if I can’t eat them, at least I can make them.

Exactly what have I done today to show for these projects of mine? To compensate for the snacking that I did yesterday, I was able to control my craving for junk food today (only a 20g piece of chocolate pound cake and one peanut butter cookie). Our softball team played a late game today so I wasn’t able to inline skate. This worked out well because I’m developing huge patches of bruises around my ankles anyway. Our team won the game and I played well defensively. Playing 2nd base is my favourite position (managed to get two players out, woohoo!). It was only 20:30 when I got home so I dropped by the gym for 45 minutes on the elliptical machine. According to its calculation, I burnt 620 calories…whatever. Working out at the gym is so boring. After shower and a light dinner, I began to bake. I tried the recipe of Carrot Bread from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Bread Bible as well as the recipe of Cashew Puffies from Rose’s Christmas Cookies by the same author. Can’t really review the recipes now since I did not taste the finish products yet. I’ll come back to that tomorrow.

Like that Kylie Minogue song goes, "obsession is a dangerous state of mind" but what am I gonna do?

I think there’s such a thing as bad baking karma. I just had one of those days that nothing went according to plan baking-wise. My loaf of chocolate bread overflowed the pan and it is now looking deformed and a little miserable. My baked sweet potatoes leaked juices onto the bottom of the oven, almost setting off my smoke detector.  My batch of peanut butter cookies was so greasy to pipe I had to wash my hands every so often so that I would not lose my grip on the piping bag.

I think I invite bad baking karma by using baking as a mean to vent. After 90 minutes of softball practise and 60 minutes of inline skating, my body was yet not exhausted enough. I’m still feeling sad and blue. See, when I bake with a heart full of love (for lack of a better word), I think of treating well the people whom I care about. Right now, I just bake to keep my mind from wandering into more unpleasant water. No wonder I had bad baking karma.

I’ve been testing recipes recently for peanut butter cookies. Peanut butter cookies are one of the first cookies I learnt to make yet the elusive combination of perfect taste, texture, and appearance is hard to come by. Personally, I’m not a fan of this cookie so it’s been many years since my last attempt.

So far, I’ve tried three different recipes but there’s always something that I don’t like about them. The inside-out peanut butter chocolate cup from Reagan Daly’s In The Sweet Kitchen is tasty enough. However, it is cakey and too labour intensive for my annual massive holiday baking extravaganza. The chunky peanut butter cookie from Nick Malgieri’s Cookies Unlimited has great flavour because of the addition of honey roasted peanuts. However, I’m looking for a more sable (sandy) texture. This recipe yields cookies that are too chewy for my taste. The recipe that I tested today was the Peanut Butter Chocolate S from Cookies Unlimited. I generally avoid piped dough because it takes a lot of muscle. However, that recipe looked very promising. Besides, a piped cookie should have a very attractive appearance, perfect for my holiday assortment. Unfortunately, this dough is extremely greasy. The grease seeped right through my heavy duty piping bag (argh). The finished product does not hold its shape too well either. Too bad it is so delicious.

Advance apology to my teammates…expect to endure batch after batch of peanut butter cookies until I finally find one that I like.

Before I went to bed last night, I realized that I’ve been eating more than I burnt over the last couple of days. In order to get back on track, I decided to arrive early at the Hamilton Beaches so I can blade at my own pace before meeting up with the Toronto Trailbladers. Okay, so weight paranoia was not my only motivation. I was very unhappy this morning (damn breakup). All I wanted to do was to exhaust myself to numb this pain. The trail at Hamilton Beaches is one of the best so I was able to build up speed quite easily. If it wasn’t for my heavy backpack, I would have bladed faster. Even with breaks in between, I was able to blade at 18km/h on average.

After a week of cool weather, it was very sunny and hot today. Add that to my fatigue from yesterday’s blading, my body took forever to warm up. I felt so sluggish for the first 30 minutes it was difficult to get moving. Fortunately, this feeling evetually worn off and I was able to move like I intend to. Just out of curiosity, I tried to test the limit of my body. At the end of the day, I bladed a total of 44 km, a new record.

Although I was exhausted, I felt sadder than I started. Please don’t tell me that I’m building tolerence to my favourite painkiller.

Although I call Canada my home for many years, I haven’t really taken advantage of traveling outside of GTA too often. Take Niagara-on-the-Lake for example. With all its wineries, fine dining restaurants, B&Bs, Shaw Festival, and orchards, it’s exactly the kind of place that I love. I still can’t believe I’ve never been there until today.

I know that there’s a very scenic trail that runs along the Niagara River starting from Fort George. According to the tourist information office, I can take this trail all the way to Niagara Falls! Parts of this trail are not very well-marked so it took me a while to figure my way around. Here’s a picture taken at the trail overlooking the Niagara River:

The trail itself isn’t so great for inline skating. It’s very bumpy which makes for difficult stroking. I think I’ll only take this trail again on a bike. I was very tempted to shop at the numerous farm stands lining the side of the trail. It is now peach season in Ontario and I simply adore tree-ripen peaches. Unfortunatley, I can’t really skate with a basket of peach on my back. Oh well.

Once I returned to the main stretch of Queen Street in Niagara-on-the-Lake, I couldn’t pass up the chance to play tourist. The street is lined with charming little stores, gorgeous hotels (especially the Prince Of Wales Hotel), and lots of restaurants and wine bars. I was absolutely smitten by the solarium in the Prince Of Wales Hotel. From the outside, I could see tiny tables set with pretty porcelain tea sets. If I wasn’t in my sweaty workout clothes, I would stay for dinner for sure. Oh, I did something I used to think unimaginable…I was strolling around with my inline skates on at all times. I was actually able to weave in and out of the crowds on the street with ease and the curbs were merely minor annoyances. What a tremendous confidence boost!

I dropped by the St Lawrence Market Historic District on Friday evening to visit the Toronto Buskerfest. This is a really fun street festival with lots of street performances. The organizers have closed off a huge stretch of Front Street and it was a lot of fun checking out the different acts. I watched the entire set for Co-Existence who performed a lot of daring acrobalance. I really enjoyed their performance because it reminded me of the lifts that pair skaters do. Whether you’re out on a date, thinking of activities for a family outing, or just want to drop by for a brief visit, I highly recommend this street festival.

You can still catch it this Saturday August 27 from 10am to 11pm and Sunday August 28 from 10am to 6pm.

I’m torn between feeling relief and regret. On one hand, I’m glad that I don’t have to deal with everything I found wrong about that relationship anymore. On the other hand, I’m still sad that the whole thing is so unquestionably over.

Over the last couple of weeks, I focused my attention on the positive aspects of that relationship because I don’t like to dwell on unhappy memories. Unfortunately, this strategy did not work too well. I just ended up missing him more than I really ought to. If I want to get well, I should start reminding myself of all the things that bothered me but kept my mouth shut for the sake of "proceeding carefully". Remember, I had very good reasons for feeling so hesitant about this relationship in the first place.

I have to be better at letting go. Although his last letter raised a lot of points that I want to rebut, not only do I need to shut up, I need to accept that life cannot be tidy all the time. There will always be loose ends that cannot be addressed and I will not necessarily have an audience to listen to my side of the argument. Case in point, I wrote him a thank you letter highlighting the good memories. To me, that letter is a form of closure. However, he felt the need to respond and, in the process, stirred up a lot of unneeded negativity in me. If I can turn back time, I would not change the fact that we broke up. I would rather leave that letter unread. I am now left without a tidy closure but I have to cope with it the best way I can. Life is messy sometimes and I just have to accept that. 

What’s that saying again? If I don’t bid goodbye to the wrong one, I’ll not meet the right one? Yeah, that’s it.

It’s close to 3am, I just finished testing the Crunchy Peanut Butter Cookie recipe and I’m feeling inexplicably good for some reason. While I was baking, my mind did not stop for even one second. It suddenly dawn on me that I suck at fighting with people!

I was so worked up in the last few days over that stupid letter. Now that I’ve been deleted (so to speak) instead of being forced to face with the prospect of remaining friends, I feel so relieve. At the same time, I’m also getting bored of being so upset anyway. I’m tired of being sad, sick of feeling hurt, and had enough of reacting to his actions. Who cares if he treated me fairly in that relationship? That’s the concern of someone else now. Truth be told, it is a huge burden lifted off my shoulders.

I’m hoping that this positive outlook stays with me when I wake up in the morning. If it does, I will try my best to be friendly. It’s boring to frown all day.

I’ve got to start looking for another exercise to keep up with my training. I love inline skating but as we get less daylight, it will be increasingly hard for me to squeeze in enough exercising time after work. Besides, I doubt that I will be able to continue inline skating during my upcoming 6-week work trip. Working out in a gym would be my last resort. However, if all else fails, I can always pick up jogging (argh).

I skated 30km today in 90 minutes. Since there were fewer people on the trail, I was free to glide and stride at my most efficient pace. I even come to love the uphill climb right outside the Argonaut Rowing Club. Perhaps I should give longer distance a try this weekend.

As far as results are concern, I’m getting closer and closer to a flat stomach every day. I picked up my new trousers from Club Monaco yesterday and worn them today to work. Even at one size smaller than my old size, the waist still feels a little loose. I worn my shirt tucked in and I didn’t look like a sausage about to burst. In fact, looking at my profile in the mirror, I was surprise to see how my entire profile has trimmed down. What a fun project!