Happy Independence Day to the current, former and future US citizens in the crowd. This strawberry margarita pie is a great summer dessert if you live somewhere warm and sunny, unlike San Francisco at the moment. Here's the recipe. Now go grill something!

Now I know how to generate lots of comments. Pestilence!

To respond to your helpful suggestions for getting rid of fruit flies: We don't have (or need) A/C, just heat (with an unfiltered intake and ducts that are already fillllthy -- topic for another post). I have checked all the trash cans and around the trash cans, as well as under the kitchen sink. All swimsuits and dirty workout clothes are accounted for. And yes, we had a heat wave (or two), but we've been back to regular cool SF summer weather for a while now.

The strangest thing is that they are concentrated on the sink backsplash, the wall above it, and now the doorway between kitchen and dining room. I have cleaned these areas many times. I'm starting to wonder if they are attracted to the scent of Windex itself. I have read that fruity-smelling dish soap can attract fruit flies. I don't really consider Windex to have a foodlike smell, but I'm not finely tuned into the tastes of Drosophila melanogaster either.

Thanks for the ideas, and keep them coming.

UGH.

I had never seen a fruit fly in our house until three weeks ago. They appeared out of nowhere, swarming mostly around the sink area. I put all the fresh fruit into the fridge. I threw away a bunch of elderly onions that seemed to be the hub of activity. I emptied and scrubbed the compost container. I cleaned and cleaned. I wiped everything down with bleach. I steam-mopped the floor. But the damn flies won't go away.

I suspected they were coming out of the sink -- specifically the garbage disposal -- so I taped a plastic bag over the drain overnight. The next morning there was not a single fly in the plastic bag. There were plenty still weaving their way around the kitchen.

I put out a bowl of cider vinegar covered with hole-punched plastic wrap. The stuff is supposed to attract them, and then trap them under the plastic wrap (I guess they're pretty stupid). Not a single fly got stuck.

They do loooove an open wine bottle. Bottles must be kept corked at all times to keep the flies out. We have left a few mostly-empty bottles out to trap flies, and this always results in dozens of drowned bugs, but it doesn't appear to diminish the numbers still buzzing around the kitchen.

I keep a bottle of Windex on the counter and am using it for one-off assassinations. Spray, then wipe. But killing fruit flies one at a time isn't very satisfying. Or productive.

There is a little brown fly flitting around my laptop screen as I type this, and it's driving me NUTS.

So I'm basically at my wit's end. I want to be able to have a glass of wine without covering it with plastic wrap or picking dead bugs out of it between sips. Suggestions?

Chocolate cake is one of my all-time favorite foods.

Dave knows this because I have told him a minimum of 14 times, at least once each year that I've known him. Sometimes I am lucky enough to get chocolate cake for my birthday. But it's not just any chocolate cake I want. I like supermarket cake. Moist, spongy, not-too-chocolatey cake with fluffy, trans-fat-loaded buttercream frosting is what I love.

My grandma passed away exactly a week before my birthday, and I headed down to Southern California to be with family soon thereafter. Dave and I knew we'd probably spend my birthday apart. So the night before I left he sneaked off to Safeway and bought two slabs of perfect chocolate cake. He also bought candles and a tube of white gel icing and personalized the twin towers of cake. We're not sure if the red blobs were supposed to be flowers or chili peppers.

It was excellent cake. We split one of the pieces and -- this is the best part -- there was still plenty left over for breakfast the next morning. With melted-candle-wax sprinkles.

Let's see if I can blog about food every day in July. I reserve the right to dig through my photo archives for material. If I succeed, I'll increase my blogging frequency tenfold over June. Even if I don't, I think July will be a much better month than June was.

Last night I did a new little race with a handful of friends. It's called the Splash-N-Dash and consisted of a 1500m lake swim and 5k trail run. (The distances were approximate. Very approximate.)

I've had a cold all week so I wasn't really feeling all that racey, but it seemed like a fun thing to do and I knew it would feel good just to get outside of SF to the hot summer weather. The race turned out to be very fun and low-key.

There were a few 11-to-13-year-old kids racing. I was on the second lap of the two-lap swim when I saw one of the kids clinging to a lifeguard's surfboard. A boat zipped over to rescue him. Later on I saw him walking the run course with his dad, who apparently had quit his own race to console his son. I felt bad for the boy but was also impressed as hell that he was out there at all.

My first attempt at an open-water swim event was when I was 12. My summer camp had an annual Lake Swim, which I recall being a half-mile swim through the murky and weed-choked water. I loved to swim, so I signed up, thinking it would be no biggie. I trained for it all summer (or so I thought), breaststroking laps in the roped-off swim area every day(ish).

The night before the swim, those of us who had chosen to participate dragged our sleeping bags out to the beach and slept on the gravelly sand so our cabinmates wouldn't be disturbed when we got up. I remember having a sleepless night listening to the clank, clank, clank as the wind blew the boat riggings around.

The swim staff got us up early and took us across the lake in rowboats through the pre-dawn mist. We slipped off the boats and started swimming back to the beach. But my breaststroke wasn't very fast, and I quickly dropped behind the other swimmers. Also, I had underestimated how far half a mile really was, and I got tired quickly. Less than halfway across I cried uncle and climbed back into the rowboat.

At the end of the summer, when they gave out all the various end-of-camp awards, they called up all the lake swimmers to pick up certificates. I remember being embarrassed by my failure, but even more mortified that they called me up to pick up a certificate. I hadn't finished the swim! Whoever decided to give me the certificate probably either didn't even notice that I hadn't finished, or thought it would be better to include me in the list so I wouldn't feel left out. In my state of pre-pubescent hyper-self-awareness, I felt like my failure was being rubbed into my face. Drama queen, I know.

That was 21 years ago. Obviously it made a big impression.

About 14 years after that first open-water attempt, I decided to take up triathlon, started swim training for real, worked out a decent freestyle stroke, and became a pretty good swimmer. Since then I've done swims in the Bay from Alcatraz and from Treasure Island, I've finished four Ironman swims, I've been in the water with whales and sea lions and unidentified objects, and I'm a pretty confident swimmer. I have really grown to love open-water swim racing. But I still think about that first attempt every now and then. And I felt really bad for that kid hanging for dear life onto the lifeguard's surfboard. I've been there.

So anyway, in last night's race I placed 13th out of 27 women, right in the middle, so now of course I have to go back for the second race in the three-part series to see how much faster I can go when I'm not sick.

(The photo has nothing to do with the story, except that it took us an hour and forty-five minutes to get to the race 50 miles away because a car accident set this hillside on fire. And also because California is pretty much burning up right now, literally and weatherally. Right now at 10pm it is 80 degrees both inside and outside my apartment IN SAN FRANCISCO. But I'm sure we'll be back to the usual 57 degrees in a day or two.)

Claremont is in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountain range. I've driven up Mt. Baldy Road many times, but had never biked up there. So I set out from my parents' house and headed up the hill. I mean that literally, you head north from their house and it's all uphill.

From the start of Mt. Baldy Road, which is about 4 miles from home, it's about 12 miles to the end of the road. I didn't know if I'd make it all the way to the ski area at the top, but I decided I'd try to make it at least to the village 8 miles up. It was a pretty tough climb. At one point I was in my 30x27 (yes, I have a triple AND a 12-27 cassette), my cadence was 43rpm, HR was 177 and speed was about 4mph. For non-bikey folks, that is a very slow and hard uphill grind. And it was oven-hot (because I didn't start until 10am) and dry (because it's the desert). Fun!

I made it to the village after about 90 minutes of steady climbing, sweat streaming down my head. I bought some gatorade and chatted with a ranger at the visitor station. He said the ski area was another 3 or 4 miles, but he cautioned me that it was up some steep switchbacks as he eyed my bike. (The village is at 4200' and the ski area base elevation is 6500'. 2300' in 3-4 miles is pretty darn steep, yeah.)

So I set out from the village thinking I'd climb another 15 minutes or so and then turn around. It really was beautiful riding. I had gotten above the layer of brown smog blanketing the valley. The air was clean and the traffic noises had given way to rushing creeks, chirping birds and wind whistling through pine trees. There were hardly any cars.

I am so glad I brought my bike on this trip. I realized that even when I'm just barely making forward progress and feeling like my lungs might explode, I am doing something I really love. That is incredibly fulfulling and it automatically took me to a happy place despite the heaviness in my heart.

I rounded a bend and realized that I had made it as far as the Ice House Canyon trailhead, which is where the road turns steeply up toward the ski area. I had done 13 miles of climbing and I decided this was a great turnaround point. I've hiked from here many times; there is a wonderful trail that leads up to the Pacific Crest Trail with spectacular views of both sides of the mountains. I have lots of great memories from this trail.

There are a couple of houses by the parking lot and one was advertising local honey for sale, so I bought myself a birthday present. I tucked the pint jar into my jersey pocket for the ride down.

After thirty minutes of descending I was back home.

Next time I'll go all the way to the end of the road. And then maybe I'll take the long way home.

I think I was a good granddaughter. I know you didn’t approve of the long-distance running (I’m pretty sure you were afraid my lady parts might fall out). But I’d like to think I made you proud anyway. I know you enjoyed reading this site because you’d comment in your own Grandma way, by sending hand-written notes, usually accompanied by newspaper clippings. It was a steady trickle of love, those letters, and I regret not writing back more often. (And yes, maybe I will look for a marshmallow recipe that uses egg whites.)

You didn’t mind telling people what you thought they ought to do with their lives, and your letters often included unsolicited advice. I certainly did not always agree. But that’s OK.

You made your mark on the world in lots of different ways, but I will always remember you in the pool in your big floppy hat. You taught hundreds, maybe thousands of little kids how to swim. I can picture you waist-deep in the neighbors’ pool, encouraging a toddler to let go of the wall to swim into your arms, cheering. Teaching kids to love the water, to let go of the fear. I’m happy that I learned that lesson early.

I told my sister on Thursday, as we sat weeping into our cell phones, that I would not be surprised if I got a packet full of LA Times articles in the mail from you on Friday. So I should not have been so stunned to see a letter addressed in your unmistakable handwriting that morning, the day after you died. You mailed me a birthday card before you went into surgery. You didn’t want to miss it. I don’t think you ever did.

Dave is wearing the fleece pullover you gave him two Christmases ago. He wears it all the time; it’s really warm. I kept meaning to tell you that, but I forgot. Sorry.

I hope you’re floating in a big sparkling swimming pool somewhere, keeping your hair dry and kicking your legs with no pain.

I love you. I’ll miss you.

Love,

Ariel

I've always wanted to make homemade marshmallows. I made my first-ever batch over the weekend. It turned out perfectly and it was pretty easy. But I learned a couple of things along the way.

It's the gelatin. Yes, I know, I have always known that gelatin is made from cow parts. Maybe even horse parts, I dunno. It's made from the rendered hide, bones, and/or connective tissue of mammals. I have always been able to gloss over this in my mind (even though I don't eat red meat -- I'm not that picky about it, obviously). Gelatin is everywhere in marshmallows, candy, ice cream, and many other commercially produced foods. Before this project I had never cooked with it.

When I poured the boiling-hot sugar syrup into the dissolved gelatin, I was not prepared for the odor. It smelled like a barn. It did not smell like meat or anything edible, it smelled like animal. It was a pretty disgusting smell. If I had actually just walked into a barn, it would have been no big deal, I expect barnyard smells in a barn. I do not expect barnyard smells to waft out of my stand mixer, which is filled with rapidly expanding sweet white fluff.

I thought that maybe I got a bad box of gelatin but really, I'm pretty sure that's just the way it is. I could try to use another brand of gelatin. There are some made only from fish (although I'm not sure if that smell would be any better). Interestingly, kosher gelatin may be made with cow parts even though it is considered pareve (neither meat nor dairy). I think most kosher gelatins are made with fish, although there are exceptions. (One kosher brand that claimed to be vegan was exposed by lab testing to be made from animals. What a shonda!)

Pretty much all marshmallow recipes call for corn syrup as well. I don't buy food made with with corn syrup in general, but I feel like making an occasional treat with Karo is just fine. It only becomes a problem when the stuff makes up 20% of our daily calories.

The marshmallows are delicious. No funny taste at all. They make excellent s'mores. And I really want to try to make some chocolate ones. But maybe I'll look for some fish-based gelatin. And wear a nose plug.

I made these lemon mini-bundt cakes for a picnic. I hadn't used my mini-bundt pan in years and it was quite a fun project.

Yesterday I made peach ice cream after visiting a farmers market. In the past few weeks I've made about two dozen jars of strawberry jam (many of which are already spoken for, funny how that happens). And right now a pan of homemade marshmallows is cooling in the kitchen. Dave commented recently on the large volume of sugar that goes through our kitchen. I buy the ten-pound bags when they're on sale. (Most of it goes into the jam, I swear.)

If I keep cooking like this, I'm going to have to start training for another ironman soon. Seriously.

D: So how much were the tickets?

A: Minus the $100 gift certificate, the total was $12.

D: Yeah, twelve bucks is about what I paid to see them in 1991.

All my ironman training may not have paid off the way I wanted it to in Arizona last month. But it seems to be kicking in now.

I spent the past week basking in how good I felt after last weekend's Grizzly Peak Century. A few friends and I rode the shorter version of the century, a 73-mile ride with 5,800 feet of climbing, last Sunday. I rode this course a year ago and suffered immensely. Back then I wasn't in great riding shape, I had been told we were riding only 50 miles, and I was carrying 35+ more pounds on my body than I am now. I was the lanterne rouge all day and was miserable about it. Last weekend, exactly a year later, I felt like I was floating up the hills as I passed people. I am not a climber. I do not pass people on hills. I don't pass typical mountain-goat Bay Area cyclists, anyway. Certainly not on McEwen Road or the Three Bears. I had a delightlful day riding with good friends and I enjoyed every minute of it. And not just because there were well-stocked rest stops with homemade cookies.

So during the week I decided to race a little sprint triathlon this weekend. The Angels Camp triathlon is a small, low-key race in the Sierra foothills. Angels Camp is a gold-rush-era mining town, and the race info instructed us to look for the Glory Hole entrance to the park where the race would be held.

I have done this race once before, back in 2001, my first year racing triathlons. Back then I finished the 1000-yard swim/14-mile bike/4-mile run in 2:18. I was really curious to see how much faster I could go. I figured I'd finish in about 1:50.

Here's the short report: I finished in 1:41. And I won my age group. And I had FUN.

I have never won my age group in a triathlon before. Yeah, it was a small race, it's not like I won my AG at the Escape From Alcatraz, but still, I was the fastest out of the 17 women aged 30-39. And I was the 6th woman out of 50 total.

I came out of the water in about 13 minutes (that was not 1000 yards -- more like 700-800). The water level in the reservoir was pretty low and we had to run about a quarter mile up the very steep boat ramp. It got the blood flowing to my legs, that's for sure. I got on my bike and realized I had completely forgotten in seven years how hilly the bike course was. But what goes up must come down, right? I think I averaged about 18.5mph on a pretty tough course with lots of rollers and one giant hill.

About eight miles into the ride a spectator told me "you're the fifth woman." Wha? I have never heard the words "You're the ___ woman" in a race before. Those are words fast people hear. It gave me a kick in the pants for sure; suddenly I didn't want to lose valuable places. (Although I think I was actually sixth at that point, but whatever.) Two women did pass me on the ride, both in their 40s, both total badasses, and they both beat me by several minutes in the end.

The run also was much hillier than I remembered. It started with about half a mile of climbing to get out of the parking lot onto the pretty singletrack trails. I pushed it, although I never felt like I was moving very fast. I was working really hard but also enjoying the lovely trails. I knew the suffering would be over soon, and that allowed me to take in the surroundings (and watch for the rattlesnakes we had been warned about) despite huffing and puffing like a locomotive.

With a mile to go, I spotted a woman ahead of me and knew I could catch her. When I came within striking distance I knew I had to crush her to keep her from passing me back, so I sprinted past while trying to make it look effortless. As I passed her she saw that we were in the same age group and cursed under her breath. Heh. I ended up finishing about 35 seconds ahead of her. (I thanked her later for making me work so hard.)

My friend Liz, whom I convinced to come race with me before she leaves for the Arctic Circle next week, was 2nd in the women's 40-49 AG. We unintentionally wore matching race outfits, which was pretty hilarious to discover as we pulled off our warm pre-race clothes.

So ironman training is good for more than just racing ironman races. After racing my first IM I realized that putting in the long hours makes the shorter races seem way more fun. Not really easier, because shorter races involve a completely different type of pain, but it puts the suffering in perspective.

It makes me wonder, though. If I trained for short distance races, did more training at a higher intensity, maybe I could get to be pretty good at them. Just maybe. Huh.

(I took the photo of the goats while spinning up one of the Three Bears during the Grizzly Peak ride. Baaaaaaa.)

It's the beginning of strawberry season here in California and we've been on the lookout for open farm stands. Our very last jar of strawberry jam from last year is sitting in the fridge with about a teaspoon and a half of carefully rationed jam at the bottom. It's precious stuff.

Last weekend after Dave's race we saw a sign for a strawberry stand out by the race site. We were on a mission to get lunch, though, as neither of us had eaten a meal in about eight hours, so we decided we'd go back after finding food. Of course, after loading up on burritos and eighteen pounds of tortilla chips, we completely forgot about the strawberry hunt until we were 45 miles down the road and halfway across the Bay Bridge.

The next day Dave took BART across the bay and rode his bike back to the race site to watch his teammates race the crit. Knowing how important those strawberries were to me, crazy though it sounds, he rode his bike to that strawberry stand and bought half a flat of berries.

You may be wondering how the heck Dave got six pints of strawberries home on his bike. His race bike. This is not a touring rig with panniers or a giant handlebar basket. Six pints of strawberries weigh about the same as Dave's bike.

He lovingly put the strawberries into plastic bags and then layered those bags into bigger bags filled with some ice he begged off a Starbucks or a street vendor or something like that. (It was hot out there.) Apparently he slung those bags over his shoulders like an ox in a yoke. The puddling water from the melting ice attracted some attention from BART police, but the strawberries were allowed to continue their journey. By the time Dave got home (some bike riding, some BART, some more bike riding), the berries were just slightly weary-looking. When I arrived home Sunday afternoon and saw the huge colander of berries in the sink, I knew I had to get to work. They had been picked that morning. They wouldn't be nearly as good the next day.

So we tag-teamed it and whipped up nine jars of jam in just over an hour.

We make a great team.

My husband Dave is a very strong cyclist, as many of you know, particularly those of you who have tried to keep up with him on a climb. This season his years of hard work have really started to pay off, as he has finished top-ten in several races. On Saturday he finished fourth (out of 91 men who started his category 4 race) in the Wente Vineyards Classic, a very hot, hilly road race. Even cooler than his top-5 finish, though, was that he earned enough points to upgrade to category 3. That is AWESOME. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, take my word for it.

I credit his success to three things:

The Fast Brownies I baked Friday night. I used the standard Baker's One-Bowl Brownie recipe, except I replaced half the sugar with brown sugar, added a generous handful of semisweet chocolate chips, a handful of walnuts, a teaspoon of instant coffee and a few grinds of black pepper. Best brownies I've ever made.

The fact that he started shaving his legs a few weeks ago. You know, like a "real" cyclist. I didn't even notice until I saw him picking at a scab on his shin. "Cut yourself shaving?" I joked, totally kidding. It took a few minutes for me to realize that, yeah, he did cut himself shaving.

All that hard work doing early-morning hill repeats, Tuesday night park rides, power-meter spin classes, and riding with the Roasters. I guess those deserve a mention.

Bonus: He won a bottle of wine (pictured above). Sweet!

I thought I timed my finish pretty well; there was no one right in front of me in the chute and no one right behind me to pass me.

So of course, the one time I really really want a good photo, I get the worst finish-line photo ever. I guess race photographers (and finish-line volunteers) are only human.

I'm having fun in the desert with a bunch of cool triathlete women. I've gone for a couple of runs and a short ride, and we're heading to the pool in a few minutes. It's so much fun when it's all optional!