cooking

Happy Fall

1 Comment

Humm, it’s fall and predicted to be 94 degrees today.  Lucky for me I love the heat.

Yesterday morning, right as I was deciding whether it was a running or a Jillian day, Tate asked me to go for a run with him before work.

I must have been inspired by Tuesdays run with Kath and Suzanne because I didn’t let up on the gas once!  Even the hills (and there were plenty) were taken with a good amount of speed.

Map My Run informed me that we had done 3.69 miles in 33 minutes.  O.K, so I ain’t winning any races with those numbers but I could set a PR for next months

Fall Classic 10K. I am really looking forward to this run because C’ville is such a running town!  I am continually impressed that there are runners on the streets no matter the time or temperature!  It’s very motivating.

After our speedy run and a speedy shower it was seriously time for breakfast.

A cup of yogurt topped with Tuesday nights baked apples and chopped walnuts and sprinkled with cinnamon and ginger.  That’s not just any yogurt though, that’s my yogurt!

My second batch of homemade yogurt turned out pretty well.

Next time I am going to use 1 or 2 percent milk instead of fat-free and see if it turns out a little thicker.

The afternoon was spent printing and framing pictures for our house.  It was so much fun to go through all of our travel pictures and relive that AMAZING experience.  Our house looks brighter and more personal!  Here are a few of the highlights I put up

*sigh* that was an UNBELIEVABLE trip…memories for life.

Last night was interesting.

Tate and I attended a free class at Sunrise Herb Shoppe on “natural healing with diet, nutrition, and herbs”.  The class was presented by Herbalist, Nutritional Consultant, Certified Natural Health Professional, and shoppe owner, Terri Saunders.

It was a very nice group of people (Tate and I were the youngest by at least 10 years :)) and a lot of information was given but it went on for too long.  We were there from 7-10:30pm!  Terri was organized but strayed from topic every few minutes so we didn’t get into the food aspect until 10pm, which is what I am most interested in.

She did touch on fermented foods, something that I have been aware of, thanks to my awesome whole foodie parents, for some time but haven’t given a lot of thought too.  That is, until recently.  I have been hearing/reading so many praises of fermented foods lately that I think it’s time to move beyond kombucha, yogurt, and the occasional miso or tempeh, and start experimenting with making sauerkraut and kimchee.

The basic concept behind the health benefits of fermented food is that the process of fermentation breaks down food so that the nutrition is more readily available when eaten.  I am no expert on fermented food so if you are interested in learning more, here is a good start

Top 8 Reasons to Eat Fermented Foods

And of course, I will keep you up to date on my adventures with creating some fermented foods of my own!

I have an exciting afternoon planned but first I must Shred, yoga, garden, and shower!

Rise and Run

3 Comments

6:30am, rise and shine!  ‘Twas early, early and yes, still dark, but I had an excellent reason to set the alarm.

To go running, of course!

After biking the 10 minutes over to Kath’s house, she, Suzanne, and I hit the road.  These girls start out fast (admittedly, it takes very little speed to be fast for me :)) and I felt a bit nervous about our planned 6 miles.  I usually start out slow (10-10:30 minute mile) for the first third of a run because it’s much better on my knees and hamstrings.  The second and third third (nope, not a typo just a bit odd) I hit my fast(er) pace of a 9 minute mile or so.  The last race I did was an 8k in Lima last December and my girl-friend, Patty, and I were pumped that we averaged 8:30 minute miles!  Yeah, I am not built for speed.

Anyways, I did just fine keeping up and it felt great to run at their pace.  And it felt AWESOME to be out running from 7-8am.  I love early morning running but with my, em, very open schedule right now and wonky sleep I see no reason to set an alarm.  Unless it’s to run with friends!

When I arrived home shortly after 8am I realized I had made a dorky move and locked myself out of the house!

I knew Tate would be awake soon but he’s been sleeping so poorly that I wasn’t going to wake him a second earlier then his alarm.  So I decided it was the perfect time for some yard work.  After about 15 minutes of moving logs to outline our future garden and collecting leaves for the compost pile, out came Tate with his coffee in hand.  He’d actually been up for a while but was upstairs, oh well, no harm in a little extra time outside.  We should probably hide a key to prevent a real lockout though.

Remember how I was excited to take Pilates and Zumba at Gold’s last night?  Welllll, things didn’t go according to plan…

I was SO TIRED yesterday that I almost blew off going to the gym altogether because the Pilates class I was planning to attend didn’t start until 6:40pm with Zumba after that.  I was skeptical about my energy level holding up until 9pm.  And, it didn’t.

I got thrown off because when I arrived for Pilates there was also a BodyPump class starting.  I have heard great things about this format and thus was super curious, plus it seemed like a dark, slow Pilates class might not be best for me in that moment, so I chose BodyPump.

As a dancer and a fitness instructor I am pretty hard to please when it comes to movement classes, just wanted to put that out there.  Tate thinks I am maybe too harsh a critic but when you have spent hundreds of hours in a studio setting you have lots of time to form a strong opinion :).

BodyPump wasn’t bad it just wasn’t revolutionary.  In fact, it was very similar to a 24 Hour Fitness class I used to teach call 24LIFT.  Both classes are solid, full-body, strength routines with loads of squats, bicep curls, lunges, you know, the usual suspects.  The teacher was really good but I think I am over the hour-long strength routine.  I have had much better workouts doing cardio intervals interspersed with strength sets for less time.  3 minutes of bicep curls are a bit boring to me these days.

On to Zumba.  The teacher was awesome in many ways.  He (first time I’ve had a male teacher for Zumba) was very dynamic, high energy, handsome, and, obviously a fantastic dancer.  Maybe too good of a dancer.  And this is coming from a dancer!  He was hard to follow because his moves were so unique to his body and detailed.  After 10 minutes or so I felt distracted and hadn’t even broken a sweat so I decided it was time to call it a day.  My bathtub called!  This will mess up my weekly goals a bit but I will still get plenty of exercise.

Lunch today was a serious winner.

Sauteed onions, shitake mushrooms, butternut squash, celery, and artichoke hearts with a bit of olive oil, black pepper, rosemary (from the neighbors garden), red pepper flakes, and “rosemary sea salt flakes”.

Laundry calls!