Tag: crossfit

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

Flounder sucks and my shoulders hurt

heather

I made this delicious tilapia putanesca recipe for the second time last night.  The first time I made this, it was the bomb.  Super delicious.  We all loved it.  Last night I thought I would widen my realm of meat experience and give flounder a shot.  Flounder sucks. It tastes super fishy and a little mealy.  At least the flounder WE got stinks.  Maybe it was bad flounder?  Tim pointed out that the name of the fish, FLOUNDER, is pretty unappetizing in and of itself.  A floundering fish just does not sound tasty.  And it wasn’t.  Never again.

I have made 2 awesome recipes this past week though.

African-Inspired Chicken Stew – This soup was delicious.  I even remembered to sub 2 cups of my homemade bone broth for two cups of the chicken broth.  However, I did forget to add in the $9 almond butter (ridiculous), until after Tim and I had already dished up our bowls.  When I cook, I get all of the ingredients out, and then put them away as I use them. So, I look over at the counter, and the almond butter is just chilling out there, mocking me.  We dumped our bowls back into the pot and added the almond butter.  I am glad we did!  It gave the soup a delicious, nutty flavor.  Eating paleo, a lot of our food starts to taste very similar.  I use a lot of the same range of seasonings – basil, chili pepper, oregano, thyme, etc.  The flavor of this soup was very unique.  Cooking the chicken IN the soup (instead of separately) was a novel idea for me too.  I’ll definitely make this again.  When I can afford the $9 almond butter.

Crispy Carnitas – This recipe came highly recommended by a coworker, and he was spot on.  This turned out amazingly delicious.  Sure, it takes awhile to cook it, but most of that time is unattended (we even looked at a house and went to the gym while it was cooking), so the recipe is actually really easy.  I cooked it in a cast iron skillet, which worked out great and seasoned the pan with delicious pork fat.  I took an insane amount of pictures and posted them to Instagram – check out the link on the right if you are interested.  We ate it Sunday with sweet potato salad (I made the mayo with olive oil because we are out of avocado oil.  Avocado oil makes much tastier mayo, in my opinion).  Tim made guacamole Monday night, and we doused the leftover carnitas with that, and it very well could have been the best meal I have ever eaten.  A note on the guacamole – a couple of times when we’ve made this, it’s turned out, well, off.  We think it’s the onions.  Whatever you do, DO NOT mash the onions with the avocados.  Onion juice is no one’s friend.  Tim is not a huge fan of raw onions anyway, so he cut the measurement down to about 1/8 of a cup, and it turned out fantastic.

Now, on the shoulders hurting thing.  I found out about this website, Bodeefit, that will email you a body-weight workout every day for free!  You can also upgrade and get additional information from them, but for now, I’ve just been using the workouts.  Each workout will list of the movements and times, and it contains a hyperlink to a short video showing you how to do the movement.  It is really cool.  I enjoyed Crossfit for the few weeks I did it, but I don’t really like working out with people in a hot gym.  I prefer the convenience of my own home where only Tim and Lucent are staring at me, wondering what in the heck I am doing.

Well, I’ve done two workouts on back-to-back days, and I am feeling it.  The first day called for handstand pushups.  Yeah right.  I modified it using a technique I learned at Crossfit – you place your knees on the edge of a box (or in my case my bed) and do “pike pushups.”  It’s easy at first, but by later rounds, it SUCKS.  Both workouts had a lot of arm exercises and squatting exercises.  So my shoulders hurt, my ass hurts, and I jammed my thumb while doing Inch Worms.  So I’m taking a day off.  I’m reading the Primal Connection, and it reiterates the needs to GET OUTSIDE.  The weather has not been optimal, but that’s not a good excuse.  I need to get outside and get in some good, slow movement where I am actually moving through space.  I plan to make it out tonight.

Well, that’s my update for today.  Hope you have a fantastic day!!  It’s going to be light until 5:25PM tonight!  Yeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhhhhuuuuaaaa!!

Uncategorized

Um…5 Day Sugar Detox?

heather

So, I’m off the no sugar wagon.  The 77 degree sunny day on Saturday was just too much for me.  I was forced by the utter delightfulness of the day to have a couple of hard ciders with my hubby and friend Michael.  That was the beginning of the end.  I also ate corn chips with our Macho Nachos.  And I ate 2 bites of Tim’s Half Baked Ben & Jerrys.  Whoever thought of putting brownie chunks and cookie dough together in ice cream was a genius.

Why did I fall of the wagon, you ask?  Well, honestly it’s due to lack of self control.  But the excuses I tell myself are that 1) I don’t want to lose any more weight.  My teeth already look too big for my head.  I read you can lose 1-10 lbs in the 21 days.  2) It’s TOO HARD!  When we went out to eat, I had to hyper analyze everything.  It was just not fun.  3) I was planning on starting Crossfit this week, and I was concerned about my energy levels on no sugar.  But I reneged on that as well. I only slept about 4 hours last night, and I just didn’t have the energy to not only work out tonight, but to go to a new place by myself with no inkling of what to expect.  That takes a lot of emotional strength on my part, and I just didn’t have it tonight.  But now that I’ve missed this week, I can’t start up again until mid-November, due to trips and junk.  Oh well.  I think the weather will stay good enough over the next 2 months for me to exercise outside, and I can keep doing my body-weight exercises here at home.

So those are my excuses.  I did actually reap some benefits, however.  I’ve kicked my dark chocolate chip evening snack habit!  You have to celebrate the small wins, you know.

I also am lagging in posting my weekly recipes!  Here are the ones I’ve made over the past week or so.

Easy Crockpot Breakfast Pie: I baked this in our Nesco Roaster, and it turned out really tasty!!  I had the heat too high at first, so the edges got scorched, but I was able to salvage most of the insides, and it turned out quite good.  It tasted like a creamy quiche, which was odd since there was no cream or cheese in it.  We ate this for supper and then for breakfast for a couple of days.

Shakshuka (Eggs Poached in Spicy Tomato Sauce):  This recipe was also super tasty.  I made it with a mix of fresh tomatoes and canned tomatoes.   I used serrano peppers from the Farmers Market instead of jalapeno peppers.  They weren’t too too spicy, but when I chopped them up, they aerated the whole kitchen with their spiciness!  Tim and I almost couldn’t breathe!  We ate the leftovers with leftover pork chops.  Muy delicioso.

Garlic Pulled Pork:  I made this on Sunday, and it was super easy and super tasty.  The only thing I would change is I would not put fresh garlic into the meat.  The garlic rub is enough.  Stuffing garlic cloves into the meat just gives certain bites ultra intense garlic flavor.

Moroccan Burgers and Moraccan Beet Salad:  I was going to make this for supper Saturday night for my parents, but Tim dissuaded me.  He eyed the 2 teaspoons of cumin called for in the recipe and was wary.  He thinks cumin smells like feet.  We also noted the inclusion of 2 T of cilantro.   My dad dislikes cilantro, of all things.  He’ll eat almost anything else.  Just no cilantro.  So we made Macho Nachos instead, and they were delicious.  I made these burgers and the beet salad on Sunday night instead.  I used 1 lb of ground pork and 1 lb of ground beef.  At first, the burgers seemed a little bland, but when I ate the leftovers, I thought they were really flavorful.  Tim prefers just a regular hamburger, and I have to say, I think I do too.  Plus, these burgers are VERY, um, aromatic?  When I ate one for lunch at work, my coworker was like, “OMG.  What are you eating??”  And it wasn’t said in a good way.

We ate the beet salad tonight.  Tim liked it, but I thought it was just ok.  I have a running rivalry with beets.  They never turn out well for me.  I had to simmer these beets to cook them, and I didn’t watch the pot closely enough.  When I did chance to look at it, it had squirted blood red beet juice all over our white stove and light grey walls.  Stupid beets.  I guess I just really don’t like the flavor of beets.  I’m probably going to toss this recipe.

So there.  I’ve caught you up.  It’s now Tuesday night at 7:52PM, and I’m ready to go to bed.  Between the sleepless night last night and the shorter days, Hlo is tired and grumpy and depressed.  But tomorrow will be a better day!!  Sunny and 77.  Really can’t beat that.  Timmy Tee and I are running together after work, so that will give me something to look forward to.

Good night!