Penne with Vodka Sauce

Penne with vodka sauce is one of those dishes I've always been intrigued by. Everyone raves about it, plus cooking with booze always seems like fun. When someone from my lab gifted me with 3 lbs of tomatoes from her garden, and instructed me that they would be best when cooked, I knew I wanted to make this dish. I didn't really think about the fact that I don't normally like tomato sauces. I somehow knew that this would transcend normal tomato sauce.

Almost every recipe I've seen for vodka sauce has started with canned tomatoes, and I would be using fresh. Because of this, I ended up combining a few recipes, and just making everything work with what I had. I'm really pleased with how it all turned out, and would definitely make this again. I'd be curious to see if the flavor profile changes when using canned tomatoes instead of fresh. I would think that using fresh tomatoes would make it taste more, well, fresh. Although they're cooked for so long, that it's possible you end up losing any extra freshness.

Recipe: Penne with Vodka Sauce
Adapted from Serious Eats
Yield: 3-4 servings

Ingredients:
2 tbsp butter
1/2 small onion, finely diced/minced
1/2 tsp salt
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
1/4 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
1/2 tsp dried basil
1 tbsp tomato paste
28 oz can crushed tomatoes, or 2 lbs plum tomatoes, peeled, cored and crushed (see below for instructions)
1/3 cup vodka
1 lb penne pasta
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup milk or cream
4 oz goat cheese
parmesan cheese for serving (optional)

Directions:
1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. This will take a while, so let's get started on the sauce.

2. In a large sauce pan, heat butter over medium heat. Add onion and 1/2 tsp salt, and cook until softened and lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add garlic, red pepper, black pepper, basil, and tomato paste, and stir well. Cook for another minute, being careful to avoid scorching. Add crushed tomatoes and vodka, and bring back to a hearty simmer. Cook for 8-10 minutes, stirring frequently. This will cook off (most of) the alcohol, and reduce the sauce.

3. Once your pasta water is boiling, add the pasta, and give it a few stirs to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom. Cook until the pasta is not quite al dente. Drain the pasta, but don't forget to save some pasta water. I like using a scoop to pull out the pasta, so I don't forget, and pour all of the pasta down the drain. Let the pasta hang out in a separate bowl until the sauce is done.

4. Once the sauce has reduced and the alcohol has cooked off, you have a few options. If you like a chunky sauce, then leave it as is. If you want a completely smooth sauce, then (CAREFULLY) put it in the blender. I like it somewhere in the middle, so it isn't really chunky, but still has some texture. To achieve this, I use my immersion blender (also called a stick blender). I can focus on any large chunks, and try to smooth out the sauce, while still retaining some texture. Regardless of what you do, just make sure to be careful! The sauce is hot, and splatters will definitely hurt. Once you have your desired texture, give it a taste, and add any salt and pepper as necessary.

5. Put the sauce pan back over medium heat, and add the milk and goat cheese. Cook 1-2 minutes, until heated through, and goat cheese has melted. Stir in the pasta, and bring back to a hearty simmer. Cook for 3-5 minutes, until your pasta has finished cooking, and the sauce has thickened. Add pasta water to thin out the sauce as necessary. Serve immediately, with a generous sprinkle of grated parmesan cheese (optional, but not really).

Note:
This sauce can be scaled up or down, as necessary. If you want to make just a single portion, I would recommend making the full amount of sauce through step 4, and making just enough pasta for one serving, about 3 oz. Then, put the drained pasta in a smaller pan with some of the sauce, and add 1 tbsp milk and 1 oz goat cheese, and proceed as instructed. You can store the rest of the sauce (without any milk/cheese) in the fridge for up to a week, or in the freezer for several months.

Using fresh tomatoes:
Instructions from The Yummy Life
Start with 2 lbs of fresh tomatoes - plum tomatoes work really well. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Using a sharp knife, score an "x" on the end opposite the core. Add tomatoes to boiling water, putting only a few in at a time. Boil for 30-60 seconds, then remove and put in a bowl of ice water. Continue working in batches until all tomatoes have been boiled. Don't leave the tomatoes in the ice water for too long, or they might start to freeze! Once they are cool enough to handle, remove them from the water, and the skin should pull off pretty easily. Put the peeled tomatoes in a big bowl, and (this part is fun), crush with your hands. For best results, crush one tomato at a time - this way you can make sure you pull out any bad parts, and the core. You should get about 3 - 3 1/2 cups of crushed tomatoes, and use all of that for the recipe.

My tomatoes, crushed by hand (it felt pretty nice)

The diced onion on the right, and some rough chopped garlic on the left. It will be minced more finely before I add it in

The onion cooking in butter, not quite ready

The onion has browned more now, and the garlic, tomato paste, and seasoning has been added in

The tomatoes have been added in, as well as the vodka

This is what I call a "hearty simmer" - with lots of bubbling

My individual serving of pasta - 3 oz of veggie penne

The finished sauce, pulled off to the side so I can use my immersion blender

Pasta and a generous helping of sauce, in a small sauce pan

Back up to a hearty simmer, with the milk and goat cheese added

The sauce is exactly where I want it - thick and creamy, and the pasta has cooked perfectly

Bowl of deliciousness

I wouldn't be me if I didn't add a bunch of cheese on top!

Race Recap: Michie Tavern Downtown Mile

This post is way overdue! Two months after the fact, I'm going to tell you about a race I ran in July.

My friend Ann is very well-known member of both the running community and the yoga community here in Charlottesville. She is the founder of the "Runners Love Yoga" movement/philosophy, which promotes yoga as a way to make you a stronger, faster, and less-injured runner.

Ann contacted me about the Downtown 1 Mile, a few weeks before the race. She told me that Runners Love Yoga was holding a Healthy Living Expo, and there was going to be a one mile race that went along with the Expo. Notus Sports, the company hosting the race, was looking for some bloggers in the area that would write about the race and Expo.

I was very excited to be involved, but also a little nervous, considering the fact that I had barely run at all since the 10 Miler in March. I was of course honored that I was asked to participate in a race, for free!

Fast forward a few weeks, and it was the day of the race. It has been threatening to rain all day, and I was really hoping it would hold off. I'm not sure I would have ended up running if it really did rain! I had all of my clothing options lined up, as usual, in preparation.

I got downtown early, so I could walk around, and check out the other race groups. You signed up for a specific type of 1 mile race. The first race was a team relay, that was timed and scored. This was followed by both the family race, and the non-competitive run/walk. Both of these options were supposed to be timed, but not scored, so you wouldn't see your results. The next race was the middle school mile, which was timed and scored for all middle school runners. Finally, the elite races were run for men and women separately, and these of course were timed and scored.

When I signed up, I wasn't sure which group to put myself in. The previous year was the first year this race was held, and it looked like it had been consolidated into one group, since there was a wide range of recorded times. I'm clearly not an elite runner, and never would have put myself in that group normally. However, I did want an official recording of my time, and it appeared that this was the only way I could get it.

They had a bunch of volunteers from Notus Sports to help out with registration

Some runners from the family/non-competitive race. Check out the runner wearing a Runners Love Yoga singlet (bright blue tank)!

After I finished walking around, and did some warmup jogging, I waited for my race to start. I felt so out of place! Everyone was clearly a serious runner. I kept telling myself that my time DID NOT MATTER. I knew I would probably be at the very end of the pack (but was still hoping that wouldn't be the case). I was there to have fun, and to support everyone involved.

As predicted, I finished dead last! Thankfully I wasn't too far behind the person in front of me - otherwise that would have been pretty embarrassing. The first women finished in just about 5 minutes - Ann came in 3rd place, even though she was helping organize the Expo! My official time was 8:07 - which is the fastest race pace I've ever had! This was by far my shortest race, but whatever, I'll take a PR when I can! (You can see from the Garmin results below, that I didn't stop the watch right away.)

After I recovered from my race, I hung around the finish to see the men finish. The first one finished in just over 4 minutes! Super fast!

After the men's race ended, there was unfortunately a lot of waiting around time. I wandered over to the area where the Expo was being held, and checked out the booths.

Finally, they started the award ceremony! The volunteers from Notus were in charge, and they had some representatives from Michie Tavern say some words as well. They even had someone there in full colonial dress, to hand out awards!

The top three male elite runners

The top three female elite runners - with Ann, the second from the right

Once the awards ceremony ended, Ann talked a bit about the Expo, the vendors there, and gave an introduction into yoga. She then set everything up so we could have a post-race yoga session! I was most looking forward to this, since it had been way too long since I had attended one of Ann's yoga classes, and now I could do one for free! While I may have been one of the slowest runners there, at least I was somewhat familiar with yoga, so I felt a lot more comfortable in the poses than some of the runners did!

A slightly sweaty post-yoga photo op! Btw, I LOVE Ann's shorts! I'm rocking the race t-shirt (on top of the shirt I came wearing - nowhere else to put it!)

Now that I've given a general recap of the events, I'm going to mention some of my opinions of the event and how it was organized. When Ann reached out to me, she put me in touch with an intern at Notus, who was supposed to take care of my registration and all of those details. I didn't hear anything from the intern until 4 days before the race - at which point, I had figured that they weren't going to give me free entry. I had hoped to get registered in advance, but was told that I would sign up at the registration table (as pictured above), and everything would already be taken care of. I figured that meant either the intern I had talked to would be there, or she would have left my information with them. The people there had no idea who I was, and when I mentioned the intern's name, it sounded like she had promised free entry to quite a few people. Thankfully, they didn't question it, and still gave me entry to the race.

This brings me to my next issue. There was no parking for the event, and there also was nowhere to drop off your belongings. I had Joey drop me off, to avoid the parking issue, but that meant I had to only bring with me what I could carry. Once I registered and got my race tech tee, that meant I had nowhere to put it. I asked if they could hold it for me, and I would come get it after the race, but that wasn't an option. I know it was a small race, but that would have been a nice additional touch.

There was a lot of confusion about the timing of the race (when it would start). I think that a lot of this came from the fact that there were several different websites where information was being reported/provided. The main website was http://www.cvilledowntownmile.com/ but not much new information was being posted there. There was a separate website, on the Notus Sports home page, that gave some additional information. There was also the Notus Sports facebook page, which I'm not sure how I even stumbled across, and that apparently had the most information. I happened to find it the day of the race, and found that the race times for the elite races had been changed. I would have had no idea otherwise, and this wasn't mentioned to me when I registered. Perhaps runners who had pre-registered online were being emailed updates, but since I hadn't done this, I wasn't hearing anything.

My next "complaint" is about the reporting of race times. When I signed up at the race table, they didn't ask for anything besides my name. At first, when the race times went up, they didn't even have my name linked to the bib number and time. They finally added my name, but didn't have my age or hometown included. And again, I had to go through their facebook page to even find the results. The results are not listed on any of the other race websites, including the main one. My biggest surprise was that they did in fact record the family and non-competitive times, meaning that I probably should have run in that group.

The race itself was run very well, which wasn't surprising, since Mark Lorenzoni from Ragged Mountain Running was at the start line. I think my general issues stem from the management that Notus Sports did - it really seemed like they left everything to 18 year old high school/college girls, and these girls weren't equipped to handle that much responsibility.

The last thing I'm going to say is about the Expo. I was so sad to see that only 3-4 groups/organizations had a booth set up. I thought that this could have been a great opportunity for many organizations to reach a lot of the running community in Charlottesville. I'm hoping that this event will be held again next summer (with better management by Notus, or a different group), and that the word will get out to many more vendors and organizations. 

August Workouts

Hi there. Remember when I used to keep active, and write lots of posts about my workouts? Me too. While a complete lack of workout posts (seriously - one in June, one in July, one in August) might make it seem like I haven't been doing anything lately, I do have some things to share.

If you have no interest in hearing about the workouts/running I did in August, feel free to ignore the rest of this post. This is mostly for my benefit, to keep track of what I've done.

Friday, August 8th: Run in Cville
This weekend was when Joey and I went to Philly to participate in the bachelorette festivities for the upcoming wedding of a good friend. I wanted to try to get in a run before leaving, since I knew I wouldn't have time for anything that weekend. This was a slow run, but I was proud of myself for running farther than I had gone in months. I did it first thing in the morning, and it was a beautiful day for it.

I was very proud of myself, and put this picture on Instagram

Wednesday August 13th: Run in New Jersey
Joey and I were in New Jersey for a few days, and managed to fit in a run (he did two actually). He was wearing the garmin watch when we went on a run together, but he continued on longer than I did. I think I pulled off around 2.8 miles, and then did another 1/3-1/2 mile on my own (and somehow got lost on the way back. I think I went at about a 10.5 min pace the whole time. Oddly, I started to have some strange back pains at the beginning of the run, that lasted the next few days.

Friday August 15th: Strength workout at Madhouse (Arms/Legs/Abs)
I re-used a workout for this one - it can be found here.

Monday August 18th: Yoga on Nameless Field
I did another pop-up yoga class! Unlike the last one, this was not arranged by the AFC, so yoga mats weren't provided. I had misplaced the carrying strap for my mat (I actually JUST found it, so it was missing for a good month or two), so I just brought a big fluffy beach towel. I figured that would be just fine. Not too surprising, but yoga mats are a lot better for yoga than towels! I was slipping all over the place. It was still a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed doing yoga outside.

Tuesday August 19th: Run at Madhouse
I didn't feel like running outside, so I did a run on the treadmill. I started out by running 2.6 miles, then took a 0.25 mile walk break, ran another 0.5 miles, and then walked the last 0.4 miles. I ended up running a total of 3.1 miles in 32:32, at about a 10:30 pace.

Wednesday August 20th: Sparty with Adri at AFC
I don't know where I put the paper with the list of exercises we did! I remember that we did the following:
Plank
Inbred Cousin
Ab Extenders
One-Legged Scarecrow
And then after that, I have no clue.

Friday August 22rd: Run in Cville
At this point, I had gotten into a good routine with working out. I planned another run prior to going away for the weekend. This time I knew that I could workout while I was away, and planned on being pretty active. I had only a little over a week before the Cville 4 Miler, and needed to get my butt in gear!

Saturday August 23rd: Run at Bethany Beach
While visiting my parents at their beach house in Bethany, Delaware, I planned a 3 mile run. As soon as I got back from that, my mom asked if I wanted to go on a walk/run with her. I knew that it would be more walking than running, so figured why not? I ran 3 miles first (stopped at exactly 3.00), and then walked/jogged 2.32 miles with my mom. Even though the weather shows that it was sunny, I ended up getting rained on about halfway through my run. I was a little afraid that I would have to stop on the boardwalk and take cover, but it stopped as suddenly as it started.

The pace for my run was 10:05 (3 miles in 30:14), and the average pace for our walk/job was 15:56.

Sunday, August 24th: Yoga at Bethany Beach
I planned on doing some yoga with my mom at the beach. I brought my yoga mat (at this point, still without the carrying strap), and told her to bring the matching yoga mat I got her for her birthday. The problem was that I didn't have anything planned, so I had to spend some time looking on youtube for yoga videos. We finally found one, and it went at an EXTREMELY fast pace! I liked the sequence, but I would have liked spending more time in each of the poses. We got pretty sweaty for just 20 minutes of yoga!

Tuesday August 25th: Run at Madhouse
Right after we got back from the beach, I came down with a cold. I REALLY didn't want to do any running, but Joey convinced me to get another run in before the race. I went to the gym, and did a total of 3.5 miles. I ran 2 miles, then took a quick bathroom break. I ran another mile, then needed a walk break. After that, I finished up with another 1/2 mile. I had an average pace of 10:40.

August Running Total:
20 miles

That's right, I ran only 20 miles in the entire month of August. May through July were even more pitiful. Obviously I didn't really train for the Women's 4 Miler (recap post coming soon), so I didn't set my expectations high at all.