Fit Fare

While the idea of carbo-loading often conjures up mental images of towering plates of spaghetti and every Italian restaurant in town being booked the night before a big race, you really shouldn’t limit yourself to pasta. In fact, pasta - and even whole-wheat pasta - isn’t necessarily your best option for your pre-race meals. Brown rice has almost double the fiber as white, it also has a ton more nutrients. But why limit yourself to just brown rice?

There are many other whole grains that are even more packed with nutrients. The Japanese vegan restaurant, Medicine, in downtown San Francisco makes an 8-grain mix that is incredibly flavorful, with a lovely lightly nutty flavor and a great texture. I’ve come up with my own mixture, using the grains I’ve had around the house. It’s a great way to use up little leftover bags of odds and ends of grains bought in the bulk section of the grocery store.

In this case, I mixed equal parts millet, quinoa, brown rice, forbidden rice and basmati and then used one cup grain mixture to one cup brown or basmati rice. You can premix these grains and store them so they’re ready to go on any given night for a relatively quick dinner (I say relatively, because whole grains usually take longer to cook. If you have a rice cooker, it’s faster, but if you’re boiling it, it takes about 35 minutes).

The rest of the sides were equally simple for this meal. Probably the most complicated was the seared tofu with miso glaze. I used one package of firm tofu, sliced into half inch slices and pressed with a paper towel to dry it off. I seared them in a hot skillet with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil then placed them in a baking pan. On each slice, I spread a tablespoon or so of miso glaze (recipe below), then stuck the pan in a preheated broiler for a minute or so, till the glaze blistered.

For the carrot dish, I sliced five carrots and four garlic greens. I heated a skillet with two tablespoons of peanut oil and stir-fried the carrots and the white pieces of the garlic for a couple of minutes, then added a couple of tablespoons of soy sauce and a half cup of water and covered the skillet and cooked until the carrots were tender (about five minutes). I then removed the lid, added the garlic greens and cooked until the liquid had reduced to a glaze.

I sautéed some mixed greens (swiss chard, kale and spinach) in some olive oil with a splash of sherry for a few minutes then served everything with the remaining miso glaze for extra sauce. The meal was delicious, nutritious and felt very filling.