Racing in California + Chocolate Mint Energy Bars

This weekend we travelled to California to race Stanford and Wisconsin's lightweight women and the St. Mary's openweight women in a series of dual races at the PAC-10 Invitational at Redwood Shores. We flew out Thursday afternoon and arrived in California late that evening.

Our hotel was right on the race course. You could almost see the finish line from our hotel room.

The finish line buoys were just out of view.

The next morning, we headed to the grocery store first thing. We still had to weigh-in for the day, but we all stocked up on a lot of fruit and other snacks for later in the day, and for the next few days.

In the afternoon, we practiced twice to get used to the course and our new boat (we borrowed it from Stanford so we didn't have to drive ours all the way out!) and weighed-in.


That evening, we went to the Burlingame Country Club with one of our teammate's families. We had dinner and celebrated our coach's birthday.

We all got dressed up for the occasion.

The next morning, we had our first race against St. Mary's. It was pouring rain and miserable for the race, but it felt strong. Both of our boats won their races. Afterwards, my parents put together a nice lunch spread for the team.

They brought the table, and everything on it (plus backup food)

Fellow food blogger, Princetonian, and native San Franciscan Heather also came out and shared her delicious brownies and cookies with us!

Heather's desserts!

Drying out clothing between races.

That afternoon we had our second race of the day, against Wisconsin, the defending league champions. Our first 8 won its race, but Wisconsin won in the second eight category. A strong headwind kicked up for the second varsity eight races, and Wisconsin handled the conditions well.

Saturday evening, I went to dinner with my parents and my sister. [Check out my sister's food blog!] My parents really seemed to like their meal, but the non-meat options at the restaurant were pretty underwhelming. I had a spinach pasta dish in a weird yogurt-based sauce that I didn't really enjoy very much.

My sister Kat from Kat and Mousse.

My parents outside the restaurant.

That night I fell asleep at 8:30PM, and slept soundly for 10 hours. I woke up the next morning ready to take on the defending national champions, Stanford. In the first varsity boat, we won by 11.3 seconds and set a course record for the category with a time of 6:43.6. Our second varsity boat sprinted to another victory over Stanford by half a second, with a time of 7:23.8. It was a really fun race to watch!

After the races, we went to In'n'Out! As part of my meatless lent, I've decided to eat meat only on Sundays. Fortunately, this excursion fell on a Sunday!!! I ordered a burger with two meat patties, medium-rare, extra toasted bun, extra lettuce, extra tomatoes, no onions and an order of extra crispy fries on the side. The burger wasn't really medium rare, but it was delicious nonetheless.

It was a happy flight back to New Jersey, and back home to see D! Looking forward to some more weeks of good training and more racing this weekend.

Good coffee to help productivity on the flight.

Of course, I also brought some food with me to California, and I couldn't leave you without the recipe. I recently stumbled across a post about muesli bars on Daily Garnish and, despite having not liked her three grain energy bar at all, I decided to give it a go. The original recipe had a good texture, and good nutrition facts, but I think I like things sweeter and fattier than she does.

As I was pondering what to do, I happened to be eating my chocolate mint Clif bar, and had a brilliant idea. Yup, just as brilliant as expected. Make them. ASAP.

So. Good.

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Chocolate Mint Energy Bars
makes 16 bars
adapted from Daily Garnish

Equipment
8x8 pan or 2 loaf pans
mixing bowl
measuring cups or scale

Ingredients
120g (1c) flour (I used white whole wheat)
60g (0.5c) quick oats
60g (0.5c) rolled oats OR Bob's Red Mill 5-grain rolled cereal
0.75t baking soda
0.5t sea salt OR kosher salt
1T chia seeds
1T gound flaxseed
45g (0.25c) cocoa powder
50g (0.25c) white sugar

30g (0.25c) slivered almonds (optional)
70g (0.25c) chocolate chips
70g (0.25c) mint chips (or use all chocolate chips)
15g (1.5c) puffed rice

140g (0.66c) milk or cream
80g (0.25c) honey
1 large egg
1t peppermint extract (or 2 if it's not super strong)
1T oil

Directions
1. Mix the first group of ingredients together in a large bowl.
2. Add the second group of ingredients and mix well.
3. Mix all of the liquid ingredients together in a separate small bowl, mixing until it's homogenous.
4. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix very little dry flour remains. If the mixture looks too dry, add milk 1T at a time until it's all moist.
5. Grease your loaf pans or baking pan and press the mixture very firmly into the bottom of the pan(s).
6. Bake for 10 minutes at 350F, rotating halfway through.
7. Let the bars cool completely before cutting them into 16 squares.
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Nutrition Info (approximate):
1 bar
Calories: 175
Fat: 7g
Carbs: 26.5g
  - Fiber: 3.5g
Protein: 4.5g