Sweet Potato Stew

On a whim, with a smattering of ingredients, I made a sweet potato stew in the crock pot. I just got my last farm share and had too many to put in my fridge. The celeriac (celery root) I had no idea what to do with and didn't want to throw it out...so I chopped the rooty third off and just sat the cut side down into the stew so the top stuck out a little. I did this on a complete whim so I have no clue how much of the spices are in it. So, go by the ingredients then spice to taste!

Ingredients:
2 Sweet potatoes (at least medium), into 1cm cubes
24oz can Crushed Tomatoes or sauce (all I had was Hunt's Pasta Sauce Vegetable Medley)
2 small (1 Large) Red Onion
3 cloves Garlic, minced
1/2 Leek stalk, somewhat chopped
1 large bunch Kale, chopped
1 can of Beets (with juice!!)
1 Celeriac (Celery Root), with rooty part chopped off
~2tsp Cumin
1tsp dried basil
1/2tsp Ginger
1/2tsp Chili Powder
1tsp sea salt (more or less depending on how you like your flavor)
Water, to cover almost all

I'd suggest adding something for spice, whether it is ground chipotle chili pepper or Frank's Red Hot
I threw in 2 jalapenos, chopped thinly. I'd highly recommend starting with 1 or omitting all seeds.

Directions:
It's a dang crock pot. Put everything in, add water to almost everything is submerged. Then turn it on. Low 6-7 hours should do well...but High for 3 worked great (as I was going to be nearby and didn't want to wait 6 hours). Serve and I suppose you could garnish with Leek greens, but I wasn't that patient when it was done...

Enjoy!

That Question: "What Should I Do?"

This exact thing bugs me most of the time I hear it.

Everyone asks this question. Everyone acts like they need an answer. Maybe some people actually do. Most really don't. Some people ask it and could really care less; I still don't know why someone asks for your opinion then doesn't consider it and keeps on...keepin' on. Ya know?

What this is about isn't actually "What I..or you...or he she they it...should do?" This is about a simple question, that is seemingly harmless and sociable, but tells a lot more than most people realize. Asking this shows a host of things. Uncertainty in one's self is the most common and strongest tell in this question. Why not hold off, and take a damn 'leap of faith'. Even though the leap of faith you'd be taking isn't anything big in the grand scheme of things. How badly could it REALLY go if you don't rely on someone else to make a decision for you, how horrible could that be? Hey, maybe you will even learn something about yourself. Jeez, now that'd be a really sad thing, wouldn't it? In a world where we rely on almost everything and have such close contact with almost everyone...we have become less of ourselves. And that sucks.

People are becoming less of themselves and more like the first person who responds to a text message. Think about that for a second.

[Pause. Seriously, think.]

Now, I understand well that every once in a while it is a genuine concern for direction in unknown territory, or asking someone who is, comparatively speaking, and expert in a field. To that, I repeat myself:

"How badly could it REALLY go if you don't rely on someone else to make a decision for you, how horrible could that be? Hey, maybe you will even learn something about yourself."

So, you know what? Next time you're thinking "What Should I Do?" just make your own damn decision. Don't ask someone just to show your uncertainty or need for input. You'll realize that it is a freedom with which you very well may have lost touch. Or maybe you'll think to yourself it was idiotic and why did you ever consider what I wrote here in the first place.

Well...at least someone made you think, for yourself, today. And if that is the case, then you're better for it.

Chris Horner

I'll say it here, as I've said it before: Chris Horner is clean. So many people I know were speaking in complete doubt by the time he won stage 10 at La Vuelta. But this is not about doping, I just had to get that out of the way for all the doubters out there. I might expand on my 'why' later on, but I'll just go with this:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>If you don&#39;t think Horner&#39;s performance is believable, you haven&#39;t been paying attention to the little details of his career.</p>&mdash; Adam Myerson (@AdamMyerson) <a href="https://twitter.com/AdamMyerson/statuses/378908857495347202">September 14, 2013</a></blockquote>

<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Adam Myerson is a class act. Especially when it comes to doping/anti-doping topics. I had the good fortune of spending some time riding with him last winter. I saw him (at 40 years old) come back from his offseason. I went from riding ahead of him, to getting dropped on a 1% grade in the matter of 3 weeks. He said himself, that his FTP has improved and the only part of his riding that has fallen off is his peak power. Which makes sense: It has been long known that muscle composition is reduced in Type II as we age (especially following 30+ years).

The real reason for this post is about how much I like Horner and the fact that he has not yet signed on for a team for 2014. I'm 'new' to cycling, and don't know a whole lot of its history. The first year I really even watched the Tour (de France) was 2011. My favorite rider going into it was Chris Horner. He was by far a longshot, but I watched some of the Tour of California and was enthralled by his ride there. I had no clue how small or big his chances were, but I was excited to see him head to the big race. Sadly, he crashed early on and was out of the race. My interest dropped quite a bit. Nevertheless it was formed that he was one of my favorite riders in the peloton.

Now, following an injury-ridden midseason, he was able to come back and get 2nd at Tour of Utah and then get on the squad for the Vuelta. He made his underestimated presence known, when he was "let go" on Stage 3 by the "Big Names" and took a stage victory. It was a summit finish, so a decent selection was already made. With 1K to go, Horner attacked and people just looked at each other. If it was 2K left, the result would have been VERY different. But the short lack of response/concern with such a short distance left gave Horner the gap he needed to win. He lost the lead the next day (intentionally?), and thus the team was not under pressure. Horner went on to take stage 10 as well. And the overall victory. An unprecedented feat in a Grand Tour for a 41 year old to do (even the stage victories hadn't been done).

So, Horner did something that has never even close to been done before. That's pretty awesome. He is 'old' in terms of pro cycling, and is fragile - reinforced by his broken ribs at Worlds (although, if I fell on a coke can in a hard crash I'd be busted up pretty good as well). How much more time does the guy have left? Well, for one he's clearly in the best form of his career. He's a class act and is responsible AND respectful of his sport and his peers. That alone is reason to hire him. I don't know what sort of money he wants and what he's being offered - so that is likely the full reason why he has not yet signed.

Teams are hesitant to do an unprecedented thing - give a lot of money to an guy his age. But didn't Horner just prove his capabilities and riding at his current age are exactly that? Should he be getting a two-year high paying deal? That is debatable. He definitely deserves at least a good, solid 1-year contract. Then that team gets a nice boost in WorldTour Points...who knows what extra he could have gotten if he hadn't crashed out of Worlds!

I really don't think having Horner on your team causes any real doping concerned threats. His history of even mention in any doping scandals is less than most of the 30 year olds in the peloton (that would be zero, to my knowledge). He doesn't carry baggage like Contador, Basso, or even Frank Schleck and Danielson. He has 2 flaws: age and injury.

So, ProTeams, hire Horner. Just listen to him. Expect him to dictate the terms of his own training. And don't over-race him or throw him into crits or Paris-Roubaix. Maybe have him try to double up on the Vuelta by racing early, skipping part of mid-season, and no other Grand Tours.

I think Horner's a badass and deserves a reasonable, good contract. He's a talent whose capabilities are unprecedented, don't let that go to waste.

Quenton Cassidy has what is probably the Best Book Quote. Ever.

Again to Carthage, John L. Parker, Jr. Quenton Cassidy, in a note to his college girlfriend and good friend about returning to racing.

"When you're a competitive runner in training you are constantly in a process of ascending.  It's a simple idea, but the more I thought about it, the more profound it became to me.

It's not something most human beings would give a moment of consideration to, that it is actually possible to be living for years in a state of constant betterment.  To consider that you are better today than you were yesterday or a year ago, and that you will be better still tomorrow or next week or at tournament time your senior year.  That if you're doing it right you are an organism constantly evolving toward some agreed-upon approximation of excellence.  Wouldn't that be at least one definition of a spiritual state?

When I was a runner it was something we lived every second of our lives.  It was such a part of us that if we had ever given it any thought, it would have been a mental lapse, a sign of weakness.  Of course I am getting better every day, I would have said, what the hell am I training for otherwise?  As if there were only one alternative, as if the arrow of improvement necessarily parallels the arrow of time, and in only one direction.

You might say that we're just talking about an artifact of youth.  That when you're young it is only natural to grow larger and stronger, to learn things, to master more and more of the skills and techniques of life, to get better, to improve. 

If that's true then how do we end up with so many monsters, trolls, dickheads, and pyschopaths?  So many Pol Pots, Joe McCarthys, Ted Bundys, and Lee Harvey Oswalds?  Or Nixons for that matter?  They were all young once and relatively harmless, and in a better universe they would have stayed that way.

Or consider the religious aesthete whose piety and serenity and good works increase and multiply as the years go by, into middle age, into old ago, onto the deathbed.  She's working on it too, and what keeps her going is the absolute conviction that every day she's getting better, saving more souls, that she's getting closer to God.

My point is that this way of living that we once took for granted isn't necessarily a "natural" process at all.  It's not like water flowing down to the sea, not like aging.  It takes effort, determination, conviction.  But mostly it takes will.  It takes a conscious decision to follow one difficult uphill path, and then the will to stay with it and not waver, to not give up.

Our fellow students at Southeastern back then, all twenty-five thousand of them, were getting better some days and worse some days, and they were doing so at different things and at different times.  There were athletes in other sports who had better sophomore years than they had junior years.  There were athletes who were better in high school than they would ever be in college.  There were some who were good or at least average students when they arrived and then discovered beer or the opposite sex or both and were never good at anything else in their lives.  Generally speaking, most of them probably knew more when they left than when they arrived, but then again what they ended up knowing might have been wrong.  

I'm not saying that we ourselves did not have setbacks, doldrums, bad luck, and reversals of all kinds.  We got sick and we got hurt, certainly, often because of our quest.  We got waylaid and distracted by fads, false idols, wars, and rumors of wars.  I'm not saying we weren't human in every way you can be human.  I'm just saying that all things being equal, by and large each and every day we were getting better at that one singularly difficult task and goal we had set for ourselves.

And I'm also saying that win, lose, or draw, just being involved in such an undertaking was itself ennobling.  It was an uplifting enterprise that we all intuitively understood to be such, and I now know that almost incidentally the spiritual force of our effort created a slipstream that drew all else in our lives along with it and made us better in other ways as well.  Better, happier, more complete human beings than we would have been otherwise.

And Andrea, I missed all that.  The arrow of my life was going one direction one day, another direction another day.  I had people who thought I was wonderful when I won their appeal, or secured custody of their child, and I had legatees who hated me because they didn't end up quite as rich as they thought they would.  Some of it is satisfying, some interesting, but precious little is in the least bit ennobling.

This is not ennui, not nostalgia.  I am not numb or jaded.  I've had revelations in deep waters and gone all light and airy inside listening to good music made by friends.  I appreciate things, I really do.  I can be made happy on a cloudy day by as little a thing as a stray sunbeam on a branch of elkhorn coral.  All of that.  I've been blessed and blessed and blessed and only a scoundrel and ingrate would complain about any of it and I'm certainly not doing that.

But still, I miss the spiritual certainty in the direction of that arrow.  And when recently I looked around and saw people in my life dying of natural and unnatural causes it occurred to me that I myself would not live forever and that I had long ago given up the certainty of that arrow before I had to.  It also occurred to me that I had a little bit of time left to reclaim it.  To be a runner again, to know precisely what it is I'm trying to accomplish every day.  It won't be the same, I know.  It can't be.  But it can be something.  

That's what it's all about."