My goals and thoughts before Tartu 2. Tudengimaraton 10K

Published on by MargitLisa kommentaar

Before my Narva Energy Run 7K I didn’t make a post about goals or thoughts before the race because it was my first ever sports competition and I really didn’t expect that much. I wanted to get the feeling of what a race feels like and have a good time with friends and family. Well… the experience was a little bit not what I wanted. Read about it here.

However, before my next race at Tartu 2. Tudengimaraton (Tartu 2. Student Marathon), I do have some thoughts and goals.

The distance is 10 kilometres. I have run that distance three times in my entire life: once in July and the second time in September of 2013, in the end of September I ran almost 10K with Heidi and that was by far the easiest of those three 10K (or almost 10K) runs. The first was the most difficult. So in a way, I am hoping that the fourth time will be the easiest and best of that distance.

It is a race and that naturally gives me a little bit more strength and power in my legs and body overall. It much depends on the feeling of the race: in Narva we didn’t have much cheering etc but from what I’ve heard, people in Tartu should be more welcoming. When random people are cheering for you on the track, it automatically gives you more power to keep going strong.

I’m confronted with a huge dilemma though. Should I wear headphones, listen to music and have my RunKeeper talking to me every kilometre? That’s what I’m used to. I’ve ran without music only one on my own and it was OK but I prefer music. However, if I have headphones on, I can’t really hear what’s going on on the track, what people are saying, screaming and shouting etc. So what should I do? Listen to music or not? Have RunKeeper talking to on headphones or out loud in speakers or not at all? I’m going to have to decide on that soon. I’m thinking I will do RunKeeper but no headphones.

The weather forecast for Saturday is pretty great: sun and 12 degrees Celsius. Pretty perfect. But should I take gloves? I think I’m going to put them in my pockets and if I need them, then put them on. Otherwise I’m going to wear long running leggings, regular running shoes, sleeveless top and a light-weight rainproof jacket (just in case, you never know when the rain might hit in autumn no matter what the forecast said). I think I won’t be too hot. I hope. I have yet to decide on a hat or cap though. I think nothing on my head will be the best.

I’m aiming to keep my average pace under 7:30 per kilometre, that is speed over 8 km/h and total time under 1 hour and 15 minutes. But if that doesn’t happen, it’s OK. The fastest I’ve ever been on 10K is 7,87 km/h. If I manage to beat that, it would be amazing. But I won’t be dissappointed if that doesn’t happen. My overall goal is to finish and not to injure myself. 

 

2 days until the race. Nerves are going up. Fingers crossed for the best!

How to make nut flour / nut meal

Published on by MargitLisa kommentaar

Today I’m going to be sharing a recipe on how to make nut flour or nut meal. Whether you want to call it one or the other, is all up to you. I find that using this recipe, I can get a pretty good almond flour but when using hazelnuts, it’s more of a meal not flour. So it really depends on the nuts you’re using.

NB! I haven’t used this flour recipe for actual breads or pastries. It might not work for those kind of things, I’m not 100% sure. But this recipe does work for waffles, pancakes, cheesecake bases, cookies etc.

Hazelnut flour / meal

What do you need?

  • nuts to your choice (I’m using hazelnuts on the photos)

  • food processor or blender of coffee grinder

  • fine sieve

 

How to make it?

First of all, you start by roasting your nuts. I unfortunately forgot to take pictures of that step. Heat your oven to about 180–200 degrees Celsius, put your nuts in a tray and in the oven. Mix every couple of minutes or even more often. It is very easy to burn your nuts, so be very careful and keep your eye on them at all times.

Once the nuts are golden brown in color, fragrant and start to shed skins (if they have skins like almonds and hazelnuts), take them out and let them cool of a bit.

Next put them in a clean kitchen towel and rub well. The skins will start to come off. In the summer it’s great to do that outside because the skins will want to go everywhere.

Rub until most of the skins are off. If some are stuck on the nuts, that’s fine. After roasting and taking the skins off, your nuts should look a little like this:

Now it’s time to take out your food processor or blender of coffee grinder. Place the nuts in there and start blitzing. don’t blitz for too long, otherwise you will release too much oils in the nuts and you get nut butter (which tastes yummy!) and that you won’ be abled to use as flour anymore.

Once you’ve grinded the nuts for some time, place them in a fine sieve. Start sifting the flour into a large bowl. If you have grinded a lot of nuts, do this step in smaller batches, it’s easier that way.

After some time you should have a little nut flour in your bowl. The rest of the grinded nuts in your sieve pour back into the food processor and grind again, sieve again etc. After doing this a couple of times, you should have something like this left:

This can still be grinded finer and you can get some flour by sifting the mixture. The flour should look something like this:

The end gets tricky. You can’t really get the nuts any finer without turning them too fatty and they start turning into butter. In the end, the leftover mixture in my case looked like this:

That I would call nut meal because it’s not as fine as the flour in a picture before (in the jar). You get relatively a lot of meal from hazelnuts and less flour. It’s vice versa with almonds. 

Now you have two options: you can mix the fine nut meal with your nut flour or put the meal and flour in separate jars. 

If you look closely, you can see the flour in the bottom of the jar and meal on the top. Since I used this for my LCHF cheesecake base, it worked well with the flour and meal mixed together.

If you want to bake breads, muffins etc, I would not use the meal. It might work but I’m not 100% sure it will. Give it a try but if it doesn’t work: I’ve warned you. 

If you are making a cheesecake base, cookies, waffles or pancakes, you can mix the flour with the nut meal and it will work just fine.

 

What about nutrition?

Nutrition information depends on the nuts you are using. To see nutrition facts of all kinds of nuts and seeds, check out this post.