Vegan Banana Pancakes

Mmmk, so we had no more organic/pasture raised eggs in the house, but the pancake craving was strong. So, here is the recipe we made:

2 cups organic unbleached all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

2 ripe bananas (one mashed into the batter, one sliced)

organic vanilla soy milk (add enough to form consistency you prefer)

1 cup organic apple sauce (opt for organic apples whenever possible)

1/2 Tbs olive oil

cooking spray

So, take the dry ingredients and mix them. In a separate bowl mash the ripe banana, apple sauce and oil. Add the wet mixture to the dry and slowly add soy milk and mix, again to the consistency you prefer, but keep it on the thicker side for good results (approx. 2 cups). Preheat the pan and spray with cooking spray. As you pour the batter throw in a few sliced banana pieces for extra banana goodness. Yields about 7 large pancakes.

Going Pescetarian

So, Sam and I started off the new year by going Pescetarian. After months and months of contemplating different reasons for and against leaving meat and poultry behind we have come to a compromise. It's called Seafood Sundays and Meatless Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, and Sat. Now, everyone has their reasons and most Vegetarian/Vegan blogs will tell you that your reason alone is the best reason to do it. There is no right or wrong motive, there is just the result. In our minds meat concentrates many more industrial impurities, all ranging from hormones, antibiotics and pesticides to mistreatment of animals and the very fact that Red is not Green. To produce a pound of soy requires just a fifth of water and bio fuels compared to that of meat. So it's really a win win situation.

The "diet" also involves not eating any conventional desserts, no Splenda or other artificial sweeteners, no soda (esp. diet), no going out to eat as often as possible, and as few processed meals as is feasible with a baby on board. Today is day # 21 and I'm feeling pretty good. Yesterday I did have some chocolate as I've posted on Twitter, but I got some strength back from the hash tag #dietingsucks posts in which people confined in similar cravings.

The meals that we have been preparing at home have been pretty easy to make, delicious and nutritious! Some examples are the cranberry and almond organic quinoa pilaf. Quinoa and organic banana pancakes for lunch with a side of sautéed veggies. Lots of raw veggies and fruit, organic oatmeal with soy milk, flax, raisins, sunflower seeds, walnuts, chestnuts and chia seeds. Morning fresh organic brewed coffee with soy milk and organic challah bread that's raising in the oven as we speak!

In the process of all this as some of you may know, we are currently staying with the inlaws and it has been particularly hard to stay on track with this new diet. My mother in law on daily basis rotates chicken, meat, fish or pigs feet for every dinner. On the side is usually white rice and some kind of cooked vegetable. Never raw. She strictly prescribes to the belief of hot and cold which means that raw vegetables are bad for digestion, while an egg dipped fried tomato is good for digestion. Not to mention that amongst the "good for you" foods are also Costco pizza, madeline cookies, and donuts, but chocolate is bad for you. Hmm, try to discern THAT line of reasoning. The only reason I still respect her cooking though is because she cooks everything mostly at home from breakfast to snacks to lunch and dinner. That takes love and dedication and I would only hope to be as half as dedicated to her family as she is.

In other Santa Cruz living news is that Sam and I found a really fantastic chicken farmer who sells her eggs at the Cabrillo College Saturday Farmers market. The chickens are all pasture raised on vegetarian feed mostly of food scraps and limited grain. The best part is that it's only $5 per dozen. If you ask me that's well worth my money. That is why we made the challah bread, to taste the fruits of the Santa Cruz pastures and mountains. mmmm

I fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans.

Well, I am happy to announce that Kai and I grew in reverse in the past few months. He is a heaping 21 lbs 3 oz and I'm sans all of my pregnancy weight gain, and some more. The magic potion? Breastfeeding. Try to keep a baby of the average weight for a one year old full on breastfeeding alone, the result: feedings every 1.5-2.5 hrs and lots of weight loss.

Otherwise, exercise has been hard since I've stopped running due to some back/hamstring issues and biking is on and off I would say. It's hard to leave the house with a baby, period. But hey, there isn't a pageant coming up anytime soon, so there will be plenty of opportunities to get back into shape.

Until then, keep eating healthy and don't forget to get good sleep~

Down the Good Life

Milkshakes, Paxi's Pizza, Blue Bottle lattes and waffles. That was when I was pregnant, but last night, nearly two months after birth, cruel reality set in. My pre pregnancy jeans barely closed and a soft, generous fat blob set right over the edges like the bread dough that has risen over the rim of a too small pan. Not a pretty sight. It was my low point, the rock bottom. No more looking at post pregnancy pictures noticing only the "skinny" parts as I hoard the chocolate in my night stand so my husband wouldn't see me mechanically place it in my mouth after dinner hours, like a bad tick.

It's depressing, it's embarrassing, it has to change. Yet knowing my own over abundant enthusiasm, I jacked myself up on caffeine with skim milk and splenda, now pacing the house frantically back and forth in a panic attack, wondering how in the world will I pull this off. But as with anything, if you want it badly enough, if it's that important, then it has to be done.

Right now it's 1pm and so far I had a banana and a cup of low fat kefir. I'm feeling good. In another hour and a half I have a 7 mile long run. I ask the spirits of nature to give me the strength

to do this. Running long and dieting is a sure recipe for disaster, but I signed up for a half in early November, so who wants to throw $80 down the drain? Not I sir, I will sweat the trek and cry for hunger, but will emerge as a true champion of the Park house (inside joke).

Dieting no doubt is hard, if it were easy, Rochester Big and Tall and Lane Bryant wouldn't grace the mall outlets. Instead Coney Island's Gyro Corner would be named "Only 2 Points!" for your Weight Watchers diary collection.

But, Sam thinks it's easy. He says it's the easiest thing a person can control. Really, so a person with bulimic tendencies and nightly dreams of all you can eat bouffe's is just needlessly "complicating" things for herself? Perhaps if it were true, no such notion would exist as 'it's in your head." I wish it weren't, but biking up a steep hill and feeling like you're about to pass out from the effort all in the hopes of kicking serious ass at the next triathlon sure sounds a lot better and "easier" than dieting. Have you ever sat on a couch trying NOT to think about the sushi on the table? Only if you have the iron will of my husband. Sometimes I think he was abducted by aliens and they implanted tiny emergency shut off doors between his certain synapses, so when the dough rises too high they automatically sound an alarm, and boom, out of mind and a month later he loses 30 lbs. Freaky...

Day trip to SF

High winds, cold misty fog and un-new yorkish streets were some of the reasons why we left San Francisco. But SF is a nice place to visit, especially when it's one of those rare warm sunny days were the wind isn't howling. We spent the day walking on Chestnut St browsing amongst the well heeled in the Apple Store and the upscale baby store Giggle.

Sydney Walton Square is opened to the public but is privately owned. It's named after a San Francisco banker who lived between 1901-1960. The landscape architect created grassy knolls that is supposed to mimic a meadow and the buildings of downtown San Francisco are the mountains. Interesting idea. We walked to the Ferry Building and had lunch at Gott's - cheese burger and onion rings for me and a free-range organic hot dog for Anna - we split a chocolate milkshake... up the good life! The hot dog wasn't too good - it was a bit bland and my burger was ok but I've had better - most recently at the Garden Grill in Guernyville. We stopped by a couple of chocolate shops - TCHO and Recchiuti Confections.

Finally we wrapped up our SF adventure in Los Gatos. Nice cute downtown with plenty of upscale restaurants and boutique clothing stores. 7pm and it was 81 degrees!

Rolleiflex SL35 - returning to a classic

There are four venerable names in the world of optics - Zeiss (Est. 1846), Rollei (Est. 1920), Leica (Est. 1913) made in Germany and Hasselblad (Est. 1841) made in Sweden. Although there are many fine cameras and lenses now a days from Asian based companies and optics manufacturing has ubiquitously moved to China, Thailand and Taiwan for almost all mass-produced consume products, optics made during the heyday of lens making has a special place in collectors hearts.

Rollei, along with Hasselblad, is primarily known for their medium and large format cameras. Rollei's first foray into the 35mm film format came in 1970 with the introduction of the Rolleiflex SL35. They were late into this film format as Japanese manufacturers Canon and Nikon were creating exceptional 35mm cameras, the Canon A series cameras being a prime example. Rollei didn't have the engineering manpower to devote to the SL35 project team thus it's simplicity in design. The light meter employs a Wheatstone Bridge, which in grossly oversimplified terms is a circuit design that measures an unknown electrical resistance (which is the intensity of the light being metered) to a known resistance reference - thus the bridge. Compared to modern metering systems the Wheatstone Bridge is arcane, slow and suffers from a memory effect when metering a bright scene. However, when used in systems that don't have EV compensation it works perfectly well. There's a stop-down button adjacent to the shutter release that activates the meter.

Production of the SL35 moved to Singapore from West Germany after 1972 thus the 1970 to 1972 models are the most sought after models by collectors. The two lenses that were used most commonly with the SL35 were the Zeiss 50/1.8 Planar T and the Zeiss 50/1.4 Planar T. The later being made in Germany in small numbers. The German made Zeiss 50/1.4 Planar T is one of the sharpest 50 prime lenses ever to be produced.

My Rolleiflex SL35 was bought new in 1977 by my father in Iran. It's a 1970 model and is in amazing condition because he only used it for a couple of years while stationed in Tehran as an engineer for Korean Airlines. Although it's perfectly capable of being used for everyday shots, autofocus and complex metering are really new inventions, where this camera really shines is for pictures that have high dynamic range such as landscapes captured on transparent film - the best of which is Fuji Velvia 50 slide film. Digital cameras are still unable to match the resolution and color fidelity of film when captured with a good lens. I'm excited to try out this camera and I'll post scanned shots soon.

Time Warp

Ok, so it's been too long since I last posted. But my wife's been better about posting so you know that our LO is here now. For all of you not in the know about baby acronyms, LO stands for "little one" - ya, I know it's kind of silly but hey we've been up fully submersed in baby world for the past year.

Too many things to recap so I'll just start on the new stuff. So after a long absence from working out we're both completely out of shape - well at least compared to what we normally are at. We did go on our first run together post-pregnancy a few days ago. A planned 20 minute jaunt turned into a 45 minute run to Capitola - not a surprise, what is surprising is it wasn't even longer. I'm reminded that we need to take it easy and gradually get back into it to avoid injury though. My weights been fluctuating like I'm on the Biggest Loser though. But instead of going down I've been all over the place. Went down to a bit under 135 lbs when we first moved to SF but bounced back to 168 lbs now. Not ideal. But I do tend to be range bound between 145 lbs and 160 lbs, depending on which cycle in my training I'm in. My near term goal is to get back into cycling and running and drop down to a more reasonable 150 lbs again.

Me @ 135 lbs

Me @ 168 lbs