Races, Training, and Cooking

Hi All :)
Sorry I have been a bad blogger this week...oops!
Sooo I am pretty excited because this weekend I get to run not one, but two races! On Saturday I will be running a 15K and on Sunday a 5K through the Lincoln Tunnel to benefit the Special Olympics. I ran both of these races last year (on the same weekend) and hope to beat those times! I'll let ya know how that goes ;)

On Wednesday, my dad and I ran a short tempo run(Details).

The run needed to be short because Dan and I were going to cooking class! We went to this place in "the city" (NYC) called The Social Table and had a blast! Last month, as a gift to Dan for our anniversary, I told him we were going to cooking class. After dating for 4 years, I felt like I had already exhausted every ordinary gift idea and needed to start thinking outside the box. A friend of mine recommended this place and I am so glad she did. I did some research and the reviews on this place were amazing. We chose a class and attempted to register but everything in April was booked. When the May schedule came out we tried to register again, but all the classes for the entire month were booked again! As frustrated as I was, I figured this place must as amazing as everyone said it was...and we were not disappointed. We had a blast at cooking class. There were 7 of us in the class and we made some amazing food. The class we got into was Italian Dinner so we made:

Menu:

* Chicken Cacciatore
* Roasted Peppers Stuffed with Tomatoes, Breadcrumbs & Mozzarella
* Fried Zucchini Pancakes with Basil-Chive Cream
* Fresh Berry Crostata

Delicious. The place was byob and they made wine recommendations. We brought 2 bottles:
* Rosso di Montalcino (red)
* Pinot Grigio from Veneto (white)

The chef/owner, Rebecca, was wonderful. She was so approachable and sincere. I was actually really nervous because I am not the world's greatest cook, but she was super encouraging and taught us a bunch of great kitchen tips. The most interesting part of the evening was when we got to talking with Rebecca about how she opened her business. It has only been open for about a year and is already hugely popular. It is run by her alone and she is pretty young. She mentioned that after she went to culinary school, she realized she did not want to work in a restaurant. She said there was no connection between the food and the people she was cooking it for. It was also frustrating to her that in some restaurants you don't even get to complete the entire plate. She had the idea to open Social Kitchen because she took a different approach to cooking that no other place in the city did. Her thoughts: It is just cooking, its not rocket science...anyone can do it. Her prices are affordable, and therefore, she gets the demographic she wants. (Young people like us who don't know how to cook!) She is the kind of person you feel like you want to go grab a drink with...and we finally got her to sit down and have one with us! She actually encouraged the drinking of the wine while cooking! After dinner, we all hugged her goodbye. I definitely would recommend this place if you are in the NYC area. We plan to go back for surf and turf night if we can get into the class :)

See you tomorrow with a race recap!