Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Learn To Forgive

Do you know what, I've never been sure what the hell forgiveness is. And as long as we're talking about this, I also have trouble with the concept of unconditional love and actually said out loud in an argument BUT LOVE IS CONDITIONAL to a person who, um, isn't married to me anymore.

What's great about my life is that I have the time, that it's actually on my to do list to sit here and figure this out. Not unconditional love, who has time for that. I sort of think that forgiveness, though, might be so basic to me that I take it for granted, so perhaps I'm not an entirely bad person.


Harboring feelings of hatred is horrible for your well-being. You see, your mind doesn’t know the difference between past and present emotion. When you ‘hate’ someone, and you’re continuously thinking about it, those negative emotions are eating away at your immune system. You put yourself in a state of suckerism (technical term) and it stays with you throughout your day.

So forgiveness is, what, about how you feel? Like not staying mad at somebody. And also I think there's a part about not getting obsessed with getting even. Like the Mayo Clinic says, forgiveness is a decision to let go of resentment and thoughts of revenge.

Well, yeah! Here's what I think about that, I think that emotions function to spur us to do what we need to do. Did I ever tell you, for over a year, every morning when I woke up, I used to color in a little box with how I felt. I was only allowed to use four colors, black (sadness), white (fear), red (happiness), and yellow (anger), everything that I felt was supposed to be a combination of those four emotions, I filled up an entire sketchbook with this. Why do I tell you these things. So you don't take me too seriously, I think. What I'm certified to do is plan and lead you in a fitness program, I'm not a qualified therapist or life coach and also by the way not a registered dietitian. I'm just a girl trying to figure out how to get out of bed and feed myself day after day, so take this for what it's worth. I think sadness is to make you rest, fear is to give you pause, happiness is to keep you in a good situation, and anger is to get you out of a bad situation.

The proper way that anger works is, you're in a bad situation and you feel angry and that feels bad. So properly you would get rid of the bad feeling by getting out of the bad situation. Anger is such a powerful feeling though, people freak out. They bottle it up and lose the name of action, or it gets unbottled and gets all over the place and loses the name of action. "Lose the name of action" is Hamlet, by the way, pretty much the poster child for anger gone bonkers. Pretty much what I'm saying is that anger has to be paired with productive action and if there's a productive action to be taken, take it, and if there isn't a productive action to be taken, then let it go. Otherwise it's just making you feel bad for no reason, but I also bet that a lot of people can't forgive themselves for not taking action.

Anyway in my experience, taking appropriate action nicely mops up excess emotion. So there's nothing to forgive, the forgiveness is built in. Or silent, like the B in subtle.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Summer Food Plan Check-In

I slightly adjusted my summer food plan from before to the below:

I theeenk I am losing weight. In a good way, like I have a flat stomach sometimes for the first time ever. I think this is because 1) I've replaced most of my starches with fruits and vegetables, and the only starches left in my diet are quinoa and beans, and 2) between rowing and striking bootcamp at RowFit and kettlebells with Box, they're keeping me honest about keeping my core engaged. If I don't consciously tighten my abs before a box jump, I will not get up on that box. You know how a cat tries to jump to the top of a cabinet and bonks off the side? Yeah, that. Or Box had us doing the release part of a snatch, I didn't tighten and I almost did a somersault. Which is pretty scary when you have eighteen pounds of cast iron in each hand. Anyway the other day I was slouched on the couch and there was something weird about my stomach, I poked it and it was a plate. Of. Muscle. I have a fitness plan check-in coming up too, but on the other hand that's my point, food and fitness, they're all connected.

I want to point out, though, that I haven't cut out carbs. Fruits and vegetables are carbs! Not to assume that people don't know what they're talking about, they may know very well that they say "carbs" to mean starch like how I say "always" to mean too much and "never" to mean not enough. But anyway, I'm not about to refute exercise science about carbohydrate being your primary fuel. It just doesn't have to be sugary or starchy carbohydrate, though it can. It depends where you are on the carbohydrate ladder, I ain't judging you. If you were wondering though, fruits and vegs are fine as fuel for me, and I already said about nutrition for recovery, so you know, two birds, one stone, efficient.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Lechos!

lechos a.k.a tacos in lettuce wraps

Okay so, lechos is an actual word in Spanish, it means bed like riverbed. I call these lechos meaning short for lechuga, or lettuce.

Anyway I occasionally stumble upon that Men's Health feature Eat This Not That, and usually neither the goofus or gallant options are things I would normally eat. Substitutions are really only relevant to what you actually eat; so if you're trying to upgrade your nutrition, you want to be looking at what you actually eat and thinking about what you can swap out or trade up.

Lettuce wraps for me are actually not a diet thing, they're a Korean thing. A little pile of rice, a little bit of beef, a dab of kochujang wrapped in lettuce leaves, nom.

So you know that Tuesday has been sacred taco night for, geez, four or five years now, every Tuesday I get the two tacos de lengua dinner with rice and beans. Now I'm eating the same taco dinner with the tortillas removed and lettuce instead. So I know exactly what the difference is, four tortillas. And if I get three tacos and take away the rice and beans, that will be even less starch.

your favorite tacos
lettuce leaves

Put together two or three lettuce leaves and scoop the filling from the tacos into the lettuce.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Coffee Jars

coffee jars

I do have a proper toddy maker, but this seems like less fuss? And it makes awesome coffee, I love it inordinately. Or I should say it makes "super flavor" coffee with lots of aromatics and not so much oils and acids, the sweetie man can actually taste this and thinks it tastes weird with too much for the former and not enough of the latter. So here's another thing to be balanced or unbalanced about.

1 scant cup coffee

Put coffee in a quart mason jar, fill jar with cold water and stir. Let stand uncovered for 3-4 hours.

Set a funnel lined with a coffee filter over another mason jar. You probably want to spoon the top chunk of grounds into the filter, so it doesn't go PLOP and make a mess when you try to pour it into the funnel. Pour the rest of the coffee into the funnel, pausing to let it drain as necessary.

Put the lid on the jar and keep the filtered coffee in the refrigerator. When you want iced coffee, pour one part coffee and one part water into a glass.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Green Salad with Chicken, Pinto Beans, and Nectarines

green salad with chicken, pinto beans, and nectarines

So it's not even a recipe, it's a little rhyme:

greens, beans, chicken and fruit

Greens means avocado and lettuce, beans is whatever extra beans I made with quinoa salad, chicken is rotisserie chicken, but if I want to switch it up I can sub in tuna or salmon, and I really recommend trying different fruits on salad: strawberries, oranges, here nectarines, so good, plums... but also tomato counts as fruit, and tomatoes are also very good.

But anyway if you always keep your fridge stocked with greens, beans, chicken, and fruit, you will always have amazing salads at hand.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Basic Boiled Eggs

basic boiled eggs

So you know I have embarked on this demented project of training myself to eat the same things for the same meals, varied by the season, and first of all, the obvious breakfast choices are all sweets and starches, and then for a while I was splitting breakfast between yogurt and eggs, but now I want eggs to be my go to breakfast. And summer breakfasts couldn't be easier, boiled eggs and fruit.

however many eggs you want to boil at a time

Put the eggs in a saucepan and cover them with cold water. Put the uncovered pan over high heat and bring just up to a boil, when small bubbles start rising to the surface and just before they turn into big bubbles. And you know what they say about a watched pot, I usually do the dishes to occupy myself but close enough to watch the pot out of the corner of my eye.

Turn off the heat, cover the pan, and let stand for seven minutes. I set a timer for this.

Drain off the hot water and run cold water over the eggs. I peel freshly boiled eggs under cold running water because my dad told me that it shrinks the egg and makes it easier to peel. Then again my dad also told me that consuming large quantities of algae would enable him to cheat death, so. No, seriously.

So anyway I boil four eggs at a time, peel two under cold running water and eat them with a side of fruit, and save two to bring to work the next day, with fruit.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Quinoa Salad with Chickpeas, Cauliflower, and Hearts of Palm

quinoa salad with chickpeas, cauliflower, and hearts of palm

The proportion of this is more vegetable than quinoa, because a head of cauliflower is generally bigger than the crown of broccoli that I get from my grocery man a.k.a. the sweetie man. I use the whole thing because, you know, whole foods. And it keeps things interesting. I mean, I'm easily interested. And you know if you're cutting out starch, you can omit the quinoa and still have a delicious bean and vegetable salad, or if you're really cutting out starch, you can omit the beans and have a really delicious vegetable salad as a side to your mammoth drumstick or whatever you hunted down.

3 Tbsp white wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
one can chickpeas
1 cup quinoa
2 cups water
one head cauliflower
one can hearts of palm

Measure vinegar into a large bowl and add a generous amount of salt and pepper, and a little bit of minced aromatics like onion or shallot or garlic if desired. Drizzle the olive oil over the vinegar and whisk it in. Rinse and drain the chickpeas and marinate them in the vinaigrette.

Trim and cut up the cauliflower into tiny florets and slivers, and drain and dice the hearts of palm. If you made a double recipe of chickpeas, put away about two cups for green salads. Toss the cauliflower and hearts of palm with the rest of the chickpeas and vinaigrette.

Put the quinoa and water in a pan over high heat. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for fifteen minutes. Remove from heat, fluff it up a bit, and add it to the marinated chickpeas and vegetables.

Very good slightly warm, also good cold from the refrigerator with a little bit of sriracha or salsa to wake the flavors up.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The Buyer's Guide To Knee Gaskets: 187 Killer

187 killer knee gaskets

So I pretty much go through a pair of knee gaskets every year, I went to Rebel Rebel to get a new pair and they didn't have Gladiators. But they had these 187 Killer knee gaskets and I thought, welp, new blog post.

They're fine! The most shocking thing was I had to get them in XL, I'm not upset just surprised. I always hulk out of my knee gaskets, though. I will tell you how these hold up...

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Green Salad with Salmon, Black Beans, and Mandarin Oranges

green salad with salmon, black beans, and mandarin oranges

Canned salmon is another handy pantry staple!

Not gonna lie, canned mandarin oranges are delicious in this. I get the kind in white grape juice, I think, not in syrup, but still, I'm going to try this with actual oranges, maybe cuties...

a can of black beans
3 tablespoons orange juice
1/4 cup olive oil
half a can of salmon
mandarin oranges
an avocado
spinach

Rinse and drain the black beans. Whisk the orange juice with the olive oil, and marinate the black beans in the vinaigrette. If you made extra marinated beans when you made quinoa salad, you can use whatever you have and just take them out of the fridge.

Halve, pit, peel, and dice the avocado. Make a bed of avocado and baby spinach, then top with salmon, marinated black beans, and mandarin oranges.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Express Gratitude 4
 then, get this

Ha ha, I have been dragging my feet about writing this last installment of Express Gratitude and beating myself up for having the brilliant idea to break down this one pretty easy point into four, well, still pretty easy points, but four times as much to write when I could have just told you to write a little gratitude list every night before bed, feeneeshed. As if twelve windy opinion pieces about how to be happy, as if I'm some kind of expert about that, isn't enough for a year, plus sixteen windy pieces about how to be a happy derby girl, as if I'm some kind of expert about that. And now I'm supposed to tell you how to actually get what you want, as if, yeah.

make you happydon't make you happy
have1. be grateful for this3. get rid of that
don't have4. then, get this2. be grateful for this

And if I had been paying attention to the self-help articles that I'm always stumbling upon, I would have noticed that they mostly dance around this point because nobody knows how to actually get what you want, only you can start forest fires.

And yet, I'm enjoying writing these windy little pieces. I think they're sort of a riposte to Y U NO SOLVE PROBLEM. I mean, do you do this? Do you stumble upon self-help articles during the slow parts of your life and dully read them, and they don't seem to help? Newsflash: they're not supposed to help you. You're supposed to help yourself. People getting mad that self-help doesn't help them has got to be a high water mark of entitlement, hello, you can't spell self-help without self. Though I did find an awesome graphic for where the I is in TEAM.

Ha ha!

But anyway, I'm enjoying writing these little pieces because putting a pen to paper, for me, is like gentlemen starting their engines, their problem-solving engines. If I refuse to write my little gratitude list every night—no wait, actually I did. Refuse, I mean. I hate gratitude lists. I might have put my pen to paper to start a gratitude list and these four pieces shoved their way to the front, gratitude lists are moist.

I'm getting to my point soon.

Gratitude is all well and good, but why don't I baldly state that gratitude isn't just about writing in your bedtime journal that you're thankful, honestly you are you are you are, for small favors. Gratitude is awareness, yes, of the things in your life that are good and acting like you're aware that they're good, say, by making time for them. Gratitude is awareness of things that aren't in your life that aren't good and acting like you're aware that you're lucky by helping out if you can. Gratitude is being aware of things in your life that aren't good and getting rid of that shit, no really, don't just look at it for the millionth time and think yehhh. Put in in a box, put the box on the curb. Unless it's a person, then just the curb. Finally, gratitude is being aware of good things that aren't in your life that you can get. Not by pushing that stumble button like a pigeon collecting pellets, but by putting a pen to paper and writing down your answers to whatever questions are being asked:

  • What are you trying to achieve?
  • What makes you happy?
  • What's important to you?
No seriously, write it down. I'll wait.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Quinoa Salad with Cannellini Beans, Broccoli, and Roasted Red Bell Pepper

quinoa salad with cannellini beans, broccoli, and roasted red bell pepper

Seriously, my big tip for the summer is to make the marinated beans with 6 Tbsp vinegar and 1/2 cup olive oil and two cans of beans, scoop out about two cups of beans to eat on green salads later in the week, and use whatever beans and vinagrette is left for your quinoa salad.

3 Tbsp white wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
one can cannellini beans
1 cup quinoa
2 cups water
one bunch broccoli
one can roasted red bell peppers

Measure vinegar into a large bowl and add a generous amount of salt and pepper, and a little bit of minced aromatics like onion or shallot or garlic if desired. Drizzle the olive oil over the vinegar and whisk it in. Rinse and drain the beans and marinate them in the vinaigrette.

Trim and cut up the broccoli into tiny florets and slivers, and drain and dice the roasted red bell pepper. If you made a double recipe of beans, put away about two cups for green salads. Toss the broccoli and pepper with the rest of the beans and vinaigrette.

Put the quinoa and water in a pan over high heat. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for fifteen minutes. Remove from heat, fluff it up a bit, and add it to the marinated beans and vegetables.

Very good slightly warm, also good cold from the refrigerator with a little bit of sriracha or salsa to wake the flavors up.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

It's Like It Brings Your Innermost Desires To Life

odie sleeping

Hahaha! Shhhhh...

Tea Jars

tea jars

Despite their appearance on this sunny windowsill, these are not jars of sun tea.

Let me back this up, I wanted mason jars to put cut fruit in and really just wanted to get, like, four mason jars. I could only get a box of twelve mason jars, though. So now I have all these mason jars.

And also I stopped drinking iced tea, because I cut sugar and so Sweetie Tea is out. And the whole point of sweetie tea was to make a pitcher of sweet tea concentrate to splash over a glass of water, so it lasted all week. Unsweetened iced tea gets cut 50/50, I was going through a pitcher every two days and dragging out that saucepan all the time. It was just so much easier to drink water.

This is the longest story about iced tea ever. Never sit next to me on a bus.

So then I thought, hey, sun tea in mason jars. But then I read in Snopes that sun tea can breed bacteria, along with a bunch of peevish comments that no it doesn't, it does too, nyah, your mom. Seriously, people? I trust Snopes more or less; but really it's more like Pascal's wager, just don't make sun tea and you won't get food poisoning from sun tea. If you're going to use Pascal's wager in conversation after this, I suggest you look it up because it has nothing to do with iced tea.

So I boiled water in my kettle and poured it over one tea bag per jar, up to the pint mark. [ETA: You know what, two tea bags per jar is better. YMMV.] Close the lid to let it steep and set the timer for 15 minutes, then fish out the tea bags and let the jars cool. Then top them off with water and put them in the fridge, and you can pour yourself a glass of iced tea from a jar whenever. Or you can drink from the jar; but it is a quart jar, that's a lot of fluids.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Green Salad with Tuna, Chickpeas, and Yellow Bell Pepper

green salad with tuna, chickpeas, avocado, and yellow bell pepper

I also like tuna on salad, it's handy to have a can of tuna around in case you run out of chicken. Though I only like one kind of tuna, which Jewel only intermittently has and at the moment does not.

Again with showing baby spinach for variety, and baby spinach does keep better than salad mix. So in order of hardiness: romaine, baby spinach, salad mix.

a can of chickpeas
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
half a can of tuna
half a yellow pepper
an avocado
baby spinach

Rinse and drain the chickpeas. Whisk the lemon juice with the olive oil, and marinate the chickpeas in the vinaigrette. If you made extra marinated beans when you made quinoa salad, you can use whatever you have and just take them out of the fridge.

Trim and dice the yellow pepper.

Halve, pit, peel, and dice the avocado. Make a bed of avocado and baby spinach, then top with tuna, marinated chickpeas, and peppers.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Banana Power Smoothie

banana power smoothie

I use the Bella Cucina Rocket Blender to make my smoothies.

As it happens, this is a chocolate banana peanut butter smoothie because the sweetie man got me chocolate almond milk by accident. Which to me is just a little bit chocolate, and a lot sweet. I'm okay with something this sweet before or after a workout, so it's okay and you might like it a lot. I'd probably like a banana peanut butter smoothie made with plain almond milk just as well.

Bananas are sweet on their own, not just with chocolate almond milk. So no added sweetener necessary in my opinion, and especially not with the chocolate almond milk.

I thought this would go without saying, but when you freeze bananas for smoothies? Peel them. And also break them up into pieces, so they blend better. Ha ha, love you Nin! Nin has a great story actually, I might have her on to talk about herself.

a frozen banana
1 tsp creatine, optional
about a half cup of greek yogurt
2 Tbsp peanut butter
1 Tbsp flaxseed oil, optional
chocolate almond milk

Put the banana in the blender cup. Spoon in the creatine and then four heaping spoonfuls of yogurt, which is about a half cup. Rinse the spoon and put in two spoonfuls of peanut butter. Then three spoonfuls of flaxseed oil, which is about a tablespoon. Then pour in almond milk to fill the cup, screw on the cap, stick the cup on the motor base, and blend for 30 seconds. Then take it off the base and give it a little shake to get anything that's stuck on the top of the cup. Blend for another 20 seconds or until the smoothie is churning freely from top to bottom.

Friday, July 6, 2012

That's Where The Fun Is

p: we totally live on a rock!

p: that spins around a giant ball of fire!

p: how hot do you think it is on the sun?

m: it's very hot on the sun.

p: how close do you think you have to get to the sun before it gets hot?

p: oh wait.

p: we're this close to the sun.

p: and it's this hot.

Quinoa Salad with Black Beans, Asparagus, and Artichoke Hearts

quinoa and black beans with asparagus, artichoke hearts

I'm redoing my pasta salad recipes with quinoa. Quinoa and beans are standing in for starch in my summer diet, I still don't feel like eating pasta or bread. More and more of my carbs are coming from vegetables, I actually feel the way about vegetables that I used to about starch. Which let me tell you, did not happen overnight.

I halved the amount of dressing from my previous recipe, and it seems fine. But you can also make the marinated beans with 6 Tbsp vinegar and 1/2 cup olive oil and two cans of beans, scoop out about two cups of beans to eat on green salads later in the week, and use whatever beans and vinagrette is left for your quinoa salad. So you only have to make marinated beans once a week, or however fast you're eating them.

3 Tbsp white wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
one can black beans
1 cup quinoa
2 cups water
one bunch asparagus
one can artichoke hearts

Measure vinegar into a large bowl and add a generous amount of salt and pepper. (You can kick up the flavor with a little bit of minced aromatics like onion or shallot or garlic; but I'm usually scarfing this down before practice, so I leave it a little bland.) Drizzle the olive oil over the vinegar and whisk it in. Rinse and drain the beans and marinate them in the vinaigrette.

Trim and sliver the asparagus very thinly, and drain and slice the artichoke hearts. If you made a double recipe of beans, put away about two cups for green salads. Toss the asparagus and artichoke hearts with the rest of the black beans and vinaigrette.

Put the quinoa and water in a pan over high heat. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for fifteen minutes. Remove from heat, fluff it up a bit, and add it to the marinated beans and vegetables. It's very good slightly warm.

It's also good cold from the refrigerator, but you might want to wake up the flavor with sriracha or salsa then.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

16 Ways to Master Your Derby-Life Balance
 figure your fuel

Yes, please! Circumspice!

8. Figure Your Fuel

“Too often, the work-life balance discussion revolves around sleeping and exercising schedules; but for nonstop entrepreneurs, the conversation needs to begin with what we’re using for fuel. It’s important to stock up on healthy snacks that will reduce your cravings (for less healthy foods) and keep you going 24/7. Stash them in your desk, computer bag, and car for emergency use.” -Benjamin Leis, Sweat EquiTees

Circumspice, incidentally, is from Si monumentum requiris, circumspice on Christopher Wren's tomb in St. Paul's Cathedral and it means if you're looking for a monument, look around you. Because Wren designed St. Paul's, do you see. I just compared my blog to St. Paul's Cathedral. I love to say circumspice. It's pronounced sir-come-SPEAK-eh, not like it's the sixth spice girl. I love the idea that we're building our own monuments all around ourselves all the time, the way we live is our monument.

It's so true that what we talk about in derby revolves around ...exercising. And exercising. With eating a distant second, and sleeping a distant third or possibly fourth or fifth. This makes me crazy, it makes me want to stand outside the practice space holding up a sign like Norma Rae:

"This might be news to you, but muscle is NOT built in the gym. Muscle is built in the kitchen and in bed (while sleeping, perv!). You go to the gym to break down your muscles, then you eat enough and sleep to rebuild those muscles bigger and stronger than they were before." -Steve, Nerd Fitness

Though that's probably too many words for a sign. Maybe just MUSCLE IS BUILT IN THE KITCHEN AND THE BEDROOM or, here's a winner, DERBY GIRLS BELONG IN THE KITCHEN AND THE BEDROOM.

But yeah, look around, this blog is all about figuring my fuel, and here's where I'm at with that:

Eat mostly whole, unprocessed foods

But you know, no need to churn your own butter. If you ask me, there's no shame in:

  • frozen fruit for smoothies
  • bagged greens for salads
  • steamfresh vegetables, though I wish Jewel would get more than just broccoli and green beans
  • canned beans
  • rotisserie chicken

That's the point of this series, right? Entrepreneurs and derby girls are busy and have high energy demands, so ideally you want the easiest, highest quality nutrition you can get. Easy, low quality nutrition isn't going to cut it on the one hand, and you only have so many hours in a day and have to prioritize on the other hand.

Figure out simple preparations that you can repeat with variations

The rub with whole, unprocessed foods is that you have to cook them, but define cook. In any given season, I have five simple preparations in my head and make them over and over for the whole season. Which means I can figure out my grocery list and fix my food pretty much without thinking and also totally efficiently. Like I'm a total champion at dirtying only a minimum of dishes when I cook. You do something enough, eventually you learn how it's done.

Decide not to bake

You can save a lot of time by just deciding not to bake, seriously. Your mileage may vary, but you know that baked goods are mostly sugar or simple carbs. And I have the absolute shortest fuse for turning on the stove and washing dishes, especially pots and pans. I don't want to go through all that, and then go through it again to make myself actual nutritious food. If you just don't bake, you save baking and washing baking dishes and also looking at recipes for baked goods and also deciding every single time if you're going to bake or eat that cookie or cupcake or whatever. I bet that amount of energy is enough to power a little red schoolhouse somewhere where kids need a schoolhouse.

Ha ha, look at you, all unconvinced.

Same for fancy drinks

I mean, right? I could puree myself a strawberry lemonade with rims dipped in pop rocks, or I could just pour myself a glass of water. The dark side of this for me was that I could just open a bottle of Coke.

Set rules for treats and cheats

I think of this in levels, sort of like horizons of focus. Anything that I'm eating more than weekly has to be pretty clean: fruit and hardboiled eggs for breakfast six days a week, green salad with chicken six days a week, quinoa salad four days a week.

Anything that I eat once a week has to be, you know, actual food. Maybe not as clean as a salad, something decent but a treat. So like Tuesday is sacred taco night for me and the sweetie man, I figure tacos with rice and beans are decent. Friday, though, used to be $5 pizza night, and I never ate less than half of that pizza. Half of a pepperoni pizza every week is going to leave a footprint that I don't want. So we switched to sushi, nothing fancy, just the maki rolls that you can get at Jewel, and yes, that means white rice, not the best but decent, and also a treat, I love white rice. Or Sunday, we have brunch at Hollywood Grill, which is nobody's idea of a health food restaurant. Pancakes every week, footprint, don't want. Now I have either a Denver or a Mediterranean three egg omelet and instead of hash browns and pancakes on the side, they let me have two sides of fruit.

Anything that has pretty much no food value is a cheat and is only allowed less than once a week. So like, ice cream. In summer I love to get a scoop of ice cream on a sugar cone from Baskin Robbins, but only every other week or so. Or if I'm depressed and cake would make me feel better, did I make myself feel better with cake last week? Because I can't be making myself feel better with cake every week, better think of something else. But if I haven't had cake in a month, I send the sweetie man out for cake. He's so smart, too, he brought back a single slice of cake; so when I inevitably sugar crashed and went trolling for more, I had already eaten all the cake in the house and had to feel my feelings unmedicated.

All of these little rules maybe sound demented, but this is what this tip is about to me: you're trying to accomplish something big that burns a lot of time and energy, and that also burns fuel, you need not to burn a lot of time and energy on getting your fuel, you need good fuel... so figure it out, problem solved. I know this sounds obvious, but solving problems gets rid of problems. Y U NO SOLVE PROBLEM? Ask yourself if you're not solving the problem because you don't think you'll like the solution. Solve the problem anyway! Solving problems feels great, don't deprive yourself of that just because of some stupid solution. Problem first, then solution...

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Green Salad with Chicken, Pinto Beans, and Strawberries

green salad with chicken, red beans, avocado, and strawberries

I have decided that summer is the best time for rotisserie chicken, because summer is when you don't want to roast your own chicken and I can eat chicken breast on salad; otherwise it's too dry and I prefer dark meat. So in summer I get rotisserie chicken, snack on the legs and thighs, use the breast in green salads, and freeze the rest to make chicken soup in the fall.

This is best with fresh strawberries, strawberries that have been sitting in the refrigerator for a week start to taste funky. Fresh strawberries, though, are amazing in salad.

I am showing salad mix for variety, and it does taste good. But romaine keeps better, so IRL I usually make my salads with romaine.

a can of pinto beans
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
half a rotisserie chicken breast
strawberries
an avocado
salad mix

Rinse and drain the beans. Whisk the vinegar with the olive oil, and marinate the beans in the vinaigrette. If you made extra marinated beans when you made quinoa salad, you can use whatever you have and just take them out of the fridge.

Slice or shred the chicken breast, I use half a breast per salad i.e., if you count two breasts per chicken.

Hull and quarter the strawberries.

Halve, pit, peel, and dice the avocado. Make a bed of avocado and salad mix, then top with chicken, marinated beans, and strawberries.

Monday, July 2, 2012

Strawberry Power Smoothie

strawberry power smoothie

I use the Bella Cucina Rocket Blender to make my smoothies.

So for a minute this was my summer breakfast smoothie, greek yogurt for protein and nut butter for a little bit more protein. And also the nut butter smooths out the taste, I think. I also put creatine just to see if anything will happen and flaxseed oil to cover my omega-3s. But then I switched up my food plan so that I eat eggs for breakfast, and now this is my post-workout smoothie. Six of one!

I listed the ingredients in order, so you can measure it all out with the same spoon and not dirty unnecessary spoons. I just use a regular spoon, not a measuring spoon.

about six or nine frozen strawberries
1 tsp creatine, optional
about a half cup of greek yogurt
2 Tbsp peanut or almond butter
1 Tbsp flaxseed oil, optional
almond milk
a squirt of honey

Put the strawberries in the blender cup. Spoon in the creatine and then four heaping spoonfuls of yogurt, which is about a half cup. Rinse the spoon and put in two spoonfuls of nut butter. Then three spoonfuls of flaxseed oil, which is about a tablespoon. Then pour in almond milk to fill the cup, and a squirt of honey to sweeten it a bit. Screw on the cap, stick the cup on the motor base, and blend for 30 seconds. Then take it off the base and give it a little shake to get anything that's stuck on the top of the cup. Blend for another 20 seconds or until the smoothie is churning freely from top to bottom.