It’s been almost 4 weeks since I finished (sort of) reading Born to Run and I’m still on a Tarahumara high. In the book, the author mentioned two diet staples for the Tarahumara runner– pinole and iskiate. I immediately researched where I could get the ingredients for both here in the Philippines. I made my first iskiate last week (will post details and pic soon) since it was easier. Tonight I made my first attempt at pinole.

Pinole recipe

1 cup fine grind corn meal
1 Tbsp cinnamon
2 Tbsps brown sugar or honey
2 Tbsps chia seeds (optional)
Water

Toast the corn meal in a non-stick pan over low to medium heat for 5 minutes or until it turns light brown. Stir often. Turn burner off. Mix in the cinnamon, brown sugar, and chia seeds. Add water as desired.

Fine grind cornmeal

Chia seeds

You can get the cornmeal from the local Healthy Options stores for less than P200. The chia was a lot harder to find. I found some online but they were waaaay too expensive (P1500 for 500g) so I asked my sister in the US to order it for me. This 454g bottle costs $10.29.

Step 1: toast the corn meal

Step 2: Mix in the cinnamon, sugar, chia, and water

You can use more cinnamon or sugar if you prefer it to be sweeter. You can also add more water to make it more oatmeal-like.

Step 3: Bake the mixture (optional)

If you don’t like the pasty texture, you can bake the mixture at 250-300F for 15-20mins to make it into a cookie. This is more ‘portable’ for long, or in my case short, runs. All in all, this is a cheaper alternative to power bars or power gels.

Based on the finished product, I think I need to add more water to my mixture. But hey, it’s my first attempt right? I’ll do better next time. Let me know how your experiment turns out if you decide to try this for yourself.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2010 at 11:56 pm and is filed under Personal, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.