Hello, #Whole30

Posted on February 10, 2014 by chatty

Friend at work is doing the Whole30, but for 90 days, so I guess I should call it the Whole90. Since she’s suffering through it like a champ, I thought I’d join her for a bit (but not, like 90 days). I had enough celebratory doughnuts and cake throughout the NFL playoffs to make myself feel pretty blech. You see, with each Seahawks win, we decided we shouldd have cake. And, well you know how that ended! Go Hawks! Let’s not forget (several) birthday cake(s), candies, chocolates and the like. It’s time to get back into business.

This is lunch from Day One: Lamb burger (no bun) from the work cafeteria.

Lamb Burger, hold the bun

When I asked for no bun, the short-order cook just shrugged his shoulders and sent me on my way, with my patty. When I got up to the cashier and told her “Lamb Burger” she looked at my plate and charged me for “Protein Only” (per the cash register reader). So, ordering the patty without the bun is not a big deal at the work cafeteria, I guess. I called this meal the “Smita-Special” as she is the one who recommended it (of course she was enjoying homemade Indian food from her mom instead of the special. Lucky). The best part, is that I saved $1.20 simply for not having a bun. Suh-weet.

A surprisingly delicious choice. I usually just grab a boring salad from the bar. This, plus an apple cost me about as much as a good-sized salad with tasteless grilled chicken. And watered down balsamic vinaigrette. So, let’s call this a win.

One more thing about this Whole30 thing … I’m not new to Paleo-eating as my readers know (all five of you). But W30 is a whole new ball game. No banana/egg/nut butter pancakes? No crazy muffin concoctions? No Larabars, or homemade larabars, or any sweet delicacy that mimics chocolate using dates and cocoa? No fake ice cream? REALLY?

This is why I will feel lucky if I can make it through the Whole7. Whole14, maybe. Gotta start somewhere.

12

Posted on February 8, 2014 by chatty

Here are the two Seahawks themed WODs we did, the first was the Friday before the NFC Championship game and the second the Friday before the Super Bowl.

Big blue Friday!

Here is the reward for doing said workouts … A Seahawks doughnut from the one and only Top Pot. It’s also the reason I’m going to attempt the Whole 30 this week … Too many doughnuts.

And the real reward is right here:

Go Hawks!

New Year! Same Me (aka WODs of January)

Posted on January 31, 2014 by chatty

Well, good thing my new year’s resoltuion wasn’t to be better at remembering things. I had a pesky habit of leaving the gym without a photo. I also left a couple of WODs out (including today’s) for a special Super Bowl post coming soon. Here are a handful, in no particular order.

AKA Day after the NFC Championship Game. Woot! See the Hangover WOD to the side. If Top Pot opened before 6:30AM in Wedgwood I have have done it!

One of those ones where counting gets really difficult. The workout does, too.

Deadlift.

Pike Pushups as an alternative.

Doubleunders were the killer here. As always. The K-to-Es were pretty bad, too. But not as bad as the DUs

I did this one? I mean, I must have. I took the picture. Um. Okay.

I’d file this one under “they always look easy on the whiteboard but they never are”

The Bear Complex is a favorite ’round these parts. I see it at least monthly, it seems

I love the descending workouts. They are much more digestible, don’t you think.

My favorite 2013 reads

Posted on January 14, 2014 by chatty

I’ve been a member of Goodreads for a while. Readers (all 3 of you) will recognize the module on my site that logs the books that I read. Every year I tell myself I’ll write a post about my favorite reads for the year. I never get around to it, until now! Here are the top five books, in no particular order. These are the ones that stuck with me or that I’ve recommended to friends. I’m noticing some patterns here … Seattle connections … sports … memoirs … and some guilty pleasures that I deserve. I’m worth it!

Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown (2013) Read in June. For those who have read Laura Hildebrandt’s Unbroken, this has a similar feel (though, I feel Hildebrandt’s writing is better and Zamperini’s story just incredible). As a (former) Seattle rower, this is a great tale about Seattle rowing, Stan and George Pocock, and the memorable crew that travelled to Germany in 1936 to compete and win at the Olympics (it’s history, people, I’m not spoiling anything here).

Magic Rises by Ilona Andrews (2013) Read in August. Of all of the supernatural creatures out there, the werewolf/were-animal is my favorite. Of all the alpha leaders in all of the fantasy books I’ve read, Curran is the leader of the, um, pack. This is the 6th book in of one of the best urban fantasy / paranormal romance series out there. It’s the “European vacation” installment. Vicious fights, surprising deaths, jealousy, it’s all in there. My only issue with this series (seriously, the ONLY issue), is the writers (a husband/wife writing team) have titled all the books so similarly, I have a hard time talking about them by title, so I end up saying, “the one with…” For example. My prior favorite was the one with The Midnight Games but my new favorite is the one with the European Packs. Whatever, start with the first one (Magic Bites, I looked it up for you). And even if it seems slow or odd, just keep with it. It is worth it.

Open by Andre Agassi (2009) Read in June. This is the only one on the list not written in 2013, and I acutally had borrowed this from the library when it came out but never got a chance to read it. Boy did I miss out. It floated up again when my tennis-playing friend recommended it. I don’t play tennis, but I followed his career a little bit when I was much younger, and you couldn’t avoid the Barbra Streisand and Brooke Shields headlines. I am always looking for a good sports memoir, and this one doesn’t disappoint. What really helps this along is Agassi’s ghostwriter, who created a frenetic voice and told Agassi’s story like a popcorn/top 40 novel.

Waiting to be Heard by Amanda Knox (2013) Read in July. Another Seattle connection. I only lightly followed this news story as it was happening. Going through the honest retelling of a young and naive co-ed’s story, the shocking injustice thrown to her, and her perseverance to survive through it. Wow. And omg I am NOT going to let my kiddo go abroad for school. Just will not let my baby go.

The Best Man by Kristan Higgins (2013) Read in April. Here’s the dark horse. And by that, I mean a lighthearted rom-com. Did I read better, more entertaining, more meaty, worthy books than this one? Probably. But I also gave this 4 Goodreads stars, which is what I gave Amanda Knox and Andre Agassi (Boys and Magic received 5 stars, the only two that did last year). This is some classic rom-com, and late in the year I decided, should I ever take up writing or self-publishing, which I might, rom-com should be my genre. This storyline is not surprising … the typical gorgeous, caring Sheriff, the pretty but flawed woman who almost married Sheriff’s best friend who returns to the small town. The HEA ending (happily ever after, for those non-romance readers out there). My only complaint is, what I’m guessing is pressure from editors or someone to include sexy scenes. Unnecessary to me.

Do I have some runner-ups? The only other theme I can think of is I had the opportunity to support and read books written and self-published by a few friends and acquaintances. Support your friends.

Brinner

Posted on January 4, 2014 by chatty

Over Christmas break I was nominated for Mom of the Year when I put a plate of salad in front of the kiddo and told her to pretend she was a bunny. Eat up! Surprisingly she ate the deli turkey and carrots. Not one of my better dinners. In my defense I didn’t expect her to eat much since we had gone to Five Guys earlier that day.
Not going to repeat that anytime soon. Today we stopped at Whole Foods nod picked up a yam, sausages (chicken, mild Italian & ginger/soy/pineapple) and a kid-picked yogurt. Husband had some pancake batter already in the fridge. You know where this is going … BRINNER!!

The ginger soy was interesting, not kid-approved. A curiosity experiment, wasn’t interested in the breakfast sausage option.
Even dessert was breakfast themed. I used the rest of the pumpkin purée to make pumpkin oatmeal muffin. As you might recall I had considered more pumpkin pancakes, but since we already had regular pancake batter ready, that seemed silly. So glad I changed my mind. This recipe, which I halved to account for the amount of purée I had, contains no oil, no butter. Out of the oven they were moist.

Hopefully they are still good tomorrow. If the husband has left us any.

Bakin’ with Pum’kin

Posted on January 1, 2014 by chatty

I, like the rest of the nation, went a little crazy with the pumpkin during baking season. It started with Thanksgiving and didn’t end until today (well, we’ll see. I may be making one final batch of pumpkin pancakes this weekend). On Thanksgiving I made a pumpkin pie. A week later, it was the always popular pumpkin roll for a pre-school parent meeting. After that it was pumpkin cookies for a holiday potluck. Then came mini-pumpkin pies for the office potluck. Then pumpkin-chocolate chip-walnut bread loaves as gift giveaways. Pumpkin pancakes.

And, today, trying to rid myself of the leftover pumpkin, some pumpkin mini-muffins.I made half the batch with the chips & walnuts, and the other half plain. I also kept them in the oven a tad too long. Usually I’m a “get-those-out-of-the-oven-early” kind of gal. You know, they’re still baking in the pan even when you take them out. But I adjusted the time incorrectly when I switched to mini muffins from regular muffins.

Throughout the season I went through two 15-oz cans and 28 oz cans (threw some of one of the 28-oouncers away because it was going on weeks in the fridge), and nearly an entire container of pumpkin pie spice. BTW, the inventor of pumpkin pie spice (as in, one jar combining the right amounts of cinnamon; cloves; nutmeg) is a freakin genius.

Finally, here is one quick tip that I’ll share. Chinese dumpling soup spoons are ideal for doling out quick-bread batter into muffin tins. They’re also good for pancakes. I have a pancake batter doler-outer, which I got as a gift a few years ago and is also cool, but the soup spoon requires less clean-up. Also, they’re good for, you know, soup and dumplings and stuff. I have a cheap melamine set, you can get them cheap at Asian grocery stores. Do it.

A long list of recipes:

Granny Kat’s Pumpkin Roll (you can find a similar recipe on any Libby-brand pumpkin puree can)
Perfect Pumpkin Pie (yes, I’m traditional and go with the label recipe) and based my mini pies on this recipe
Pumpkin Cookies (my preference is to go lighter on the sugar and thus I didn’t add the icing to mine. But I forget that is my preference. If I did these again I’d use the icing, and they’d go from meh to wowsas!)
Pumpkin Pancakes. Already discussed. The kid has asked for them again. Thus, the already scheduled date for Saturday.
Pumpkin Bread: My go-to recipe for pumpkin bread is from the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook. You know which one I’m talking about? The red and white checked book? With instructions on everything? I think the husband must have gotten ours as a gift from his mother. But, i still refer to it even for simple stuff like, ‘how long do I boil corn on the cob?’ ‘how long do i boil rice?’ and so on and so forth. I looked for a link to the recipe online, this one is pretty much it, though the book has a lot more tips and options.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins Again, a little overcooked (my fault), but the kid tried and liked. It’s hard to go wrong when the ingredients include chocolate chips and pumpkin. Amiright?

Finally, I know earlier i said, no more grains. But that obviously didn’t happen today. Tomorrow, I’m sure. I’ve already pulled out the coconut flour from the pantry. It begins. Soon.

WODS of December

Posted on January 1, 2014 by chatty

Some final 2013 WOD memories …
The first week I was in LA. Didn’t feel like doing a travelling WOD, so instead I ran.

The Tabata (20″ on, 10″ off) here was to go through the entire routine, not one exercise at a time. I kept wanting to skip the 10″ off in between the single-arm db presses.

This was a quick one. My strategy for 1000m Crossfit rows is to do a start, sprint, shift then 10 on/10 off (the off not really off), then crank it back up with 200 or so to go. This leaves enough to do other parts of the WOD. I also try to row last (if we take turns).

This was a quick one. My strategy for 1000m Crossfit rows is to do a start, sprint, shift then 10 on/10 off (the off not really off but more like 80%), then crank it back up with 250m (20-25 strokes) or so to go. This leaves enough to do other parts of the WOD. I also try to row last (if we take turns).

At first Danielle wrote “Crossfit open 12.1” but then Rina looked it up on her iPhone so D updated it to TBA. The point was to reduce the complaints prior to he timer going off. CF Open 12.1 is … 7 minutes AMRAP of Burpees. Blarg.

I hate wall balls

Oh, I missed class on Friday. I’ll just go Saturday. Oh, Saturday is Murph. Team Murph, but still.

That doesn’t say kettlebell soup. It’s short for sumo deadlift high pull. File this under “looks harmless but it’s not”

After class Jess informed me I did “5” twice. Whoops. Accidental extra credit.

there were red were a few where I forgot to take pics. like, the last one of the year (yesterday) that was 6 min, 1/2 mile run, then max push-ups; e min rest. Then 6 min, 1000m row, max lunge with OH plate. Oh yeah, and pull-up work. I did one unassisted pull-upbarely, to end the year.

Last year my fitness New Years resolution was to run a race I hadn’t done before. I did three of those. Yay. What to do for 2014? I’ll let you know.

Slow cooker diaries, the last entry of 2013

Posted on December 31, 2013 by chatty

I’ve been itching for some good ol’ fashioned pasta with meat sauce. What was once a weekly staple has become something reserved for a special occasion. Now, when I do pasta for dinner, it’s got to be an event, something like New Year’s Eve!

To start, olives, marinated mushrooms, duck pate and crackers. Classy.

I made a small batch of an Italian red sauce, using ground lamb, onion, carrot & mushrooms. Fresh parpadelle is the only way I roll these days. On the side, oven-roasted broccoli with panko breadcrumbs and parm-reg shavings.

A nice glass of Cabernet-Sauvignon, an enjoyable, quiet meal with the husband and child.

For dessert the family shared a slice of chocolate pie and pumpkin pie. Stylin!

It’s been an indulgent December for me. More bread, grains, sweets and sugar than anyone deserves. Mmmmmm. Come January, back to reality. But it’s been a swell ride.

HNY!

Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day

Posted on December 26, 2013 by chatty

A post in 3 parts …

Hope everyone had a great holiday! This year we spent it home in Seattle. On Christmas Eve day the kid and I found ourselves still shopping. Sheesh. Once that was over there was still so much to do. I made baked eggs for lunch, leftover ham & swiss cheese to flavor. It was good and bad. No worries, just an experiment.

Next it was the dough for our cookies for Santa. In our tour of local store shopping, we purchased a couple of CHristmas books at Ravenna Third Place Books, including Gingerbread Pirates.The child was pretty insistent that we leave Santa some of our own gingerbread pirates overnight. “Make it so!” I said (not really), but indeed we did. I used Eileen’s Spice Gingerbread Men recipe from AllRecipes.com, to a tee (well, replacing the margarine with butter) and they came out really nice.

As the dough chilled, onto the next project, Christmas Eve wontons. Is this a tradition? Not really, but it could be. I wanted to do something for dinner, didn’t want to do the SC. Wanted Chinese food, but didn’t want to order takeout. Wontons is the one recipe I know from scratch, so that was that. Once the wontons were made, we rolled out the gingerbread dough and cutout some cookies. Our skull-and-crossbones cutter acted as the hat to our Gingerbread boy cutout, and voila! A gingerbread pirate. We also had a few candy canes (aka the Christmas J), snowmen, stars and elves.

Cookies cooling, back to wontons! Wow, busy day in the kitchen. I still haven’t figured out the skin – filling ratio, so we had quite a bit of filling left. (Filling: gound pork, turkey and some chopped spinach with a little ginger root and soy sauce). Solution? Some pork/turkey meatballs to add to the protein of this dish.

Kid was the “skin hander-over” (didn’t want to her touching raw meat). An excellent helper, and she tends to eat the stuff she helps with. Sometimes. Maybe I was just lucky as she devoured these. Yay! Maybe just some pre-Christmas excitement.

Dinner complete, we were ready to frost our gingerbread cookies. Rather than making frosting from scratch, this year I let Duncan Hines help me out. Thanks, Duncan!

Arrr! This was the plate we left out for Santa. Lily added a carrot for the reindeer, a small glass of milk and a letter so that it was clear to Santa that he was welcome to these delicious cookies.

Phew! Santa enjoyed the cookies quite a bit. He might have thrown a few away because they were a bit heavy on the frosting, and he’s really not into artificial frosting flavor. Maybe that happened.

Christmas morning! Was a blast. Husband got me a sweet new DSLR. I’ll have to show off its talent in another post, as yesterday’s photos were just for fun, like this one, kiddo singing with her new Singalong Microphone:

Kiddo couldn’t wait to head to her grandparent’s house (translation: more presents!). On the dinner menu: Prime Rib (yum!), Yorkshire Pudding (YUM!), green beans (still delicious) and marionberry pie with french vanilla ice cream (tasty!). Not a great pic, but the lighting conditions were not ideal. This photographer is still learning how to use her camera, too.

A long last few days with a lot of food in the house. For some reason, this morning, I couldn’t help myself, and decided to test out a pumpkin pancake recipe (see this post for my previous history with the pumpkin pancake). This time I used Chef John’s recipe on AR (I used his banana bread recipe earlier. I found it ok, though I probably shouldn’t have tweaked it). One word: Success. Woot! Kiddo ate many of them. Maybe too many of them. I was pleased with the results, too.

Next up, some more baking! It never ends. Well, it will end at the end of the year. Then I’ll be off bread & grains again. For a while. After a month of totally unnecessary treats and sweets, all good things much come to an end.

Hope you enjoyed a fun and delicious holiday.

Sunday Dinner: Quiche

Posted on December 18, 2013 by chatty

Sunday Dinner. Taking a breather from the SC. This was a fun diversion. Feeling good after my decisive win over the pie crust, thought I’d make another go at it. Quiche, with mushroom, spinach and a variety of cheeses. In the fancy cheese section of Met Market sits a little basket of petit fromage. Small pieces, just an ounce or two, of the pricey stuff. Allows you two try a few different cheeses just for the heck of it. Problem is I can’t remember what we tried. Parrano, and something else that begins with P… Or B… Hm…

Quiche was successful, though not as eggy as a store-bought one. What, do they use cream or something? Whole milk?

mushroom spinach quiche

Chatty Cha

dessert first