Cold weather motivation and another Mac-n-Cheese

Since the Wineglass I've been full of excuses not to run and today i signed up for the Buffalo Turkey Trot to give me a little motivation. With this colder weather it is also easy for me to not get out and run because of the weather, so I'm going to go and renew my winter time gym membership also. In the 4 races I've done so far this year I have run a personal best in each and would really like to close out 2010 with all 5 races being personal bests. The Turkey Trot is an 8k (or 4.97 miles) and my best time in the 8k came during the Shamrock race earlier in the year with a time of 33 minutes 14 seconds. Last years Trot was run in a time of 34 minutes 47 seconds. I really like the Trot course as the last 2 miles are downhill on Delaware Ave. into downtown, so I'm hoping to push myself at the end to come in at around 32 minutes. The Trot is a huge race in Buffalo and this will be the 115th running with 12,500 people expected.

Its a crowded race, so if i don't set myself up right at the start i could get caught behind some slow runners. Can you spot me? Hint, I'm somewhere behind the gingerbread man.
Last night I wanted to use some of the Miso I had bought at the store the other day so I searched for a recipe using it. I came across yet another variation of mac-n-cheese so I thought I'd give it a try and see how it stacked up with the others.
Ingredients:
2 cups raw cashews
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
2 tsp onion powder
2 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp pepper
2 cups almond milk
1/2 cup canola oil
1 Tbs corn starch
1/4 cup white miso
2 Tbs lemon juice
2 Tbs horseradish (optional)

Finely grind the cashews in the food processor, then add nutritional yeast, onion powder, salt, garlic powder, pepper and blend in with the ground cashews.

In a saucepan combine milk, oil and corn starch, bring to a simmer and stir for about 5 minutes until the corn starch is dissolved.

With the food processor on, slowly add the milk mixture to the chashew misture and blend for around 2 minutes until smooth. Then add the miso and lemon juice and blend it in.

Then just mix with some pasta and you are done.

This was amazing, but i found it even better mixed in with some hot sauce.