I'm never microwaving brie again.

Had a jam packed week in comparison to the last few. Laura arrived on the 28th and I have been playing suburban tour guide for the past few days. Having someone else here to help cook has led to some pretty crazy meals too, which is a huge bonus. One armed cooking is just as hard as it sounds.

Tallied everything up and rode just over 18 hours this week on the trainer. It sounds crazy to me too, and let me tell you it's something I wouldn't prescribe to anyone if there was a way around it but in my case, there isn't really. To ease the pain I have decided not to shave until I can ride outside again.

Should be back on my bike soon and am looking forward to this "shootout" ride that everyone seems to be so keen on. Feb 20th? I'll be there if anyone is interested. I have heard legends of this ride even being done on a mountain bike, which I may be riding for my first few rides back as it is much more upright than my road bike and therefore easier on the shoulder. Whether I do the shootout on it is a different story, so we shall see what condition I am in.

February brings about a bit of a change in the training structure which is nice (less long days on the trainer). That being said, more intensity can be painful sometimes too. Any monotonous trainer riding I do now just makes the second half of my trip that much more satisfying and will make me want to kill it even more once I get outside again. Speaking of which, my shoulder, although still kind of pokey is feeling pretty awesome. I really hope that my surgeon shares my optimism when we have our appointment on the 10th.

Today was an off day so Laura and I decided to escape the east end and head downtown to explore some areas around the University and more of downtown. We ended up having such a great time and found some amazing places that are going to require return visits. The first being a little espresso bar called 'Cafe Passe' where we had a super tasty panini lunch. Then we went to a place called 'The Food Conspiracy Co-op.' When I was looking for places to go shopping when I first arrived, my mom sent me a message pointing me to this place but because I'm doing all my grocery shopping by bus I thought that it would be too much of a trek so until now, I have stuck with Whole Foods. This is totally fine but once you see the produce and prices at this place the walk down there and the extra 20 minutes on the bus are totally worth it. I am excited to use the bulk, fresh raw honey that I poured myself tomorrow for breakfast. It blew my mind, I've been doing that with nut butter for a long time but never with honey, it was hot when I poured it into my squeeze container! mmmm (that's what she said...i think). Laura and I also bought something called prickly pear cactus jelly. We haven't tried it yet but it smells...terrible. We will let you know.

As I mentioned earlier, we have been eating really well this week so here is a small sample recipe that we experimented with but ended up loving.

BBQ STUFFED RED PEPPERS

We had these with a vegan kielbasa sausage, roasted zucchini slices and roasted asparagus:

- Cut the top off of a red pepper and hollow it out. Put aside
- Make some boring brown rice, no salt, no oil, nothing. That will come later.
- While the rice is cooking, sauté some chopped onions and mushrooms until the onions start to turn clear and the mushrooms start to brown.
- Add desired amount of canned and rinsed, or fully cooked dried red kidney and black beans. (we used probably just over a cup of cooked beans in total for one cup of uncooked rice)
- Add cooked rice to pan with onions, mushrooms and beans.
- Add 2 tbsp olive oil
- Add 2 tsp paprika (we also used a tiny bit of stuff called 'jalapeño shake' but the real thing would have been even better)
- Add salt and pepper to taste
- Here is the great part and is a total necessity for this recipe to come out well. Add beer. We used about half a cup of a bitter ale but I can't imagine there being much restriction to this.
- Stir till all ingredients are mixed, then cover on low heat until most of the beer has been soaked up.
- Lightly wipe outside of hollowed out pepper with oil and then stuff away. Cook on the bbq for as long as you want and voila! It was delicious.

Had an impromptu barbecue with some Ontario folk tonight. Much 'Sweet Tea' was consumed and good times were had. Tomorrow I have a rousing game of pedal my brains out for 40 seconds then stop for 1:20 then do it all over again for a long time. Should be great fun.