Crossfit 11.5

Posted on November 5, 2012 by chatty

I’ve not recorded many of my workouts. Need to work more on that. Today is a good day as we retested the timed mile and I managed to shave a whole five seconds from my time. Never mind that the two other women I ran with/against cut their times by like thirty seconds. It’s a race against me, right?

Also this was the first workout where I finished first. I have a feeling my weights should have been stronger but I did what I was told.
Diane (several WODs are named)
21 – 15 – 9
Deadlift (65#)
Dumbbell push press (15#)

Oh, and my mile time: 8:03
Nearly identical weather and time conditions. At least I improved, right?

Slow Cooker Diaries: Beef Stroganoff

Posted on October 28, 2012 by chatty

Woot! We have a winner! Lots of good words for this one. I’ve been trying to avoid SC recipes that contain cream of mushroom soup and stuff like Italian dressing, ranch dressing, etc etc. This one is sort of skirting that policy but now I’m beginning to see why everyone uses these easy ingredients. This one used “golden mushroom” soup, plus sour cream and cream cheese. At the husband’s recommendation I used fresh noodles (Parpadelle) from the refrigerated section.

This one is a keeper.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lbs beef stew meat
1 can Campbell’s Golden Mushroom Soup
1 C of red wine (I used Cab Sauv … and filled the empty coup can with wine, used some of that to deglaze the pan)
8 oz fresh sliced mushrooms
1 medium onion, sliced
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 c or so sour cream (reduced-fat ok)
4 oz cream cheese (reduced-fat ok)

Instructions:

Brown beef in olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper. (Next time I might dredge in flour first)
Deglaze the pan with some of the red wine, and add the good stuff into the SC with the beef.
Cover with onions and mushrooms. Add golden mushroom soup, Worcestershire sauce, season with additional salt and pepper
Cook on high, 4ish hours. At 4 hours take some of the sauce from the SC and combine with sour cream and cream cheese in a sauce pan over low-medium heat. When smooth add in a little flour to thicken sauce. Try to remove the lumps and think about that gravy commercial from my childhood (“just like ma used to make, but no lumps!”)
Add sauce back in and mix it up. Turn the SC to low for another 30 minutes.

Robot Cupcake Series

Posted on October 28, 2012 by chatty

I bought these robot cupcake molds at a kitchen sale at the market this summer. Figured they would get stuck in a drawer forever. But then I started researching the “single cupcake” recipe and suddenly these little silicone cupcake molds were a terrific buy! There is a strange art to making a small batch of cupcakes. Two small cupcakes seem to be the perfect amount for this family. The husband isn’t a cupcake fan, and I’m not terribly interested in baking (and, then, eating) a dozen or more. Also provides you a perfect opportunity to fool around and test some things without wasting a ton of ingredients. So without further ado, the results of this month’s experiemnts.

Test 1 (of 3):

Err … not so much. I used this recipe as a starter. I tried to make chocolate by adding cocoa powder, but it was a total experiment. Since I had coconut milk (or drink, as the carton called it. What was it really? Don’t know, just tossed it in).This one didn’t rise and tasted meh. Kid seemed to think it tasted just fine.

Test 2:

Better, but still a bit odd. This time I tried cocoa powder again, and also included some greek yogurt. The yogurt made for a creamier texture and at least the batter rose as expected. But still not the greatest tasting. I might need to do more cocoa and more sugar to get the taste that I’m looking for. Again, kid ate it up. If it looks like a cupcake and smells like a cupckae it must be a cupcake, according to her.

Test 3:

Jackpot! I ditched the cocoa powder and went with this recipe. No chocolate, but super vanilla. I went for broken and also made a little cream cheese frosting for the top (what’s a cupcake without frosting?)

These are the recipes I riffed off of. Just because my results weren’t great doen’st mean the recipes as written aren’t successful. One pattern I’ve noticed, and maybe it’s due to the cupcake mods, is that I need to bake them for far longer than the instructions suggest. But constant checking means at least they’re not burnt:

Test 1: A Sweet Road – How to make a single cupcake
Test 2: Chocolate-Covered Katie: Vegan Single-Serving Cupcake
Test 3: One Bowl Vanilla Cupcake

Crossfit 10.17

Posted on October 17, 2012 by chatty

The hardest one yet, if you can believe it. Push ups are hard. I was offered the chance to do 25 pushups instead and said, no, i want to try 50. I actually did 40 that first time, 30 the second time. Here is the official:

50 pushups
Run to blue wall (300M or so)
50 sit ups
Run to blue wall
50 squats
Run to blue wall
Repeat

I also learned how to do a “clean”. The Olympic Weight Lifting is new and different. Interesting.

Slow cooker diaries: Beef with noodles

Posted on October 16, 2012 by chatty

Me: how does beef with noodles sound?
Husband: as long as I don’t have to cook it, founds great to me!
That’s not quit how the conversation went, but it could have.

I varied slightly from the recipe I found. The original recipe called for adding egg noodles into the SC at the end but too many reviewers complained of the noodles turning to mush, so I jut cooked separate and spooned on top.
I also made too much pasta. I’ve really reduced the amount of pasta I’ve cooked/eaten in the past couple years, so a bit rusty on how much to cook. Oh we’ll. good thing the kid likes fusilli.

The veggies were what we had (well, I bought the mushrooms, but everything else we already had. In fact the onion & potatoes were from the previous SC meal)

2lbs beef stew meat
Beef broth
Baby carrots
Onion
Mushrooms
Potatoes
Italian seasoning
Salt and pepper
Oil for browning meat
Flour for thickening the sauce

Season then Brown meat. Place over chopped vegetables in the SC. Deglaze pan (i used the broth)and a add that in, too. Season, season. Pour in a good amount of beef broth. More vegetables. Cook on low for 8 hours.

The books mostly say to not open he lid. I always do. If only o check and stir. I want to make sure it’s all cooking ok. Never hurt nobody.

Forgot to snap a pic until I was packing up the leftovers

Result were good. Next day leftover beef was hard as a rock. Taking a break, as l’ll be in Cali this weekend. Last time I visited with my cousins we ate some amazing homemade chinese food. yay! Pics to come.

Crossfit 10.15

Posted on October 15, 2012 by chatty

Today was my first official class as a crossfit gym member. After the warmup I was given the choice of either… Wait for it … A timed mile or a timed 2K on the erg. I knew it was coming, and I obsessed over it, sweaty palms and all. I am not ashamed to say the 2K scares me, it is a beast I can’t fathom fighting right now, so I chose the timed mile.
My time: 8:08. More than a minute SLOWER than I estimated. Slight incline in the first half mile of the course today, but I feel like the DT Bellevue Park loop is misleading. I never thought it was a mile for 2 laps, and maybe this confirms it. Or maybe I had a bad day this morning. Or a little bit of both. I definitely have room for improvement, and no crazy erg fear, no heart palpitations. For now.

The rest of the workout: 3 rounds of 15 snatch, 15 burpees. A lot of sweating.

I am taking a 5:30 am class. I have to get used to this schedule.

lift 10.10

Posted on October 10, 2012 by chatty

Working on some stuff I learned at crossfit. Here was my workout.

Erg Warm Up, which included, for the hell of it, a start/high-20/shift/race pace for 500M.

10 each, in a row x 4:

Back Squat (45 lb bar)
Push Ups (full range)
Box Jumps
Sit Ups

With 10 minutes to spare I sat on the erg some more, worked on form and also did 20-on/10-off. Until this old lady smelling of strong perfume sat next to me. Perfume? At a gym? At 8:15 in the morning? Really?

run 10.8

Posted on October 9, 2012 by chatty

Oops, almost forgot. The Crossfit peeps are doing some benchmarking this week, which I’m missing out on since I’m not officially a member yet. But got me thinking about it. They are doing timed miles and a timed 2K. Now. A 2K? Just thinking about it gives me heart palpitations. All of the mental (not to mention physical) anguish I used to go through to do a 2K in hopes of making a boat just stressed me out so much. It was too much, all I could think about.

A timed mile, on the other hand. Why not? I don’t have any idea how to plan for it, I just go out an run. And so on Monday morning before work, I warmed up by running from Lincoln Square over to Downtown Bellevue Park and jogged one lap around. The signs claim that 2 laps = 1 mile. I’m not so sure about it, in fact I checked on MapMyRun and I think it’s more like .9 miles. Anyway, I timed myself doing 2 laps and recorded a time of around 6:36. Since I’m pretty sure I cannot run a 6:36 mile, I suspect it is .9. At the 5K last week I ran the last .1 mile of the 3.1 race in 43 seconds. So if I add 43 seconds to my 2 lap time I get 7:19. I think that is probably closer to my actual timed one-mile time.

So. If I had to choose one over the other (timed mile vs timed 2K) I’d have to say I would pick the one where I am finished faster, and not suffering from burning lungs. I would choose the one that does not raise my blood pressure just thinking about it. I would choose the one that doesn’t make me exhausted for the rest of the day and requiring a nap soon after. I would choose time timed mile, for sure.

Ask me again in a few months, after I’ve spent some crossfit time on the erg.

Slow cooker diaries 10.7: Irish lamb stew

Posted on October 8, 2012 by chatty

Tried an Irish Stew this week, using lamb (Icelandic lamb, if you must know). For the first time I browned the meat before adding to the slow cooker. Verdict … S’okay. I accidentally bought cilantro not flat leaf parsley. Rookie mistake, but then lost the final garnish. I also forgot to take a pic until after I put the leftovers away.

Forgot to take a pic! Whoops. There is a single piece of lamb there. See it?

I did an Irish soda bread experiment, halving the allrecipes recipe and making individual muffins instead of a loaf.

I asked the husband, who has a little Irish blood in him, if these tasted like Irish soda bread and he shrugged his shoulders. Who knows? Well, I thought they tasted really good. Lightly sweetened with a subtle tang to them.

Overall, not bad. But I hoped for more from the stew, what with the fancy meat and all…

Irresistible Irish Soda Bread from AllRecipes.com

Slow cooker diaries 10.1: Chicken Pot Pie with biscuits

Posted on October 8, 2012 by chatty

Good recipe courtesy of the Betty Crocker app. I am choosy about slow cooker recipes. Seems the recipes I find on Pinterest or Allrecipes consist of packets of “seasonings” and other processed ingredients (I.e. ranch dressing! French onion soup mix! a cup of brown sugar!) trying to avoid that but then gave in and used half a jar of “chicken gravy” and damned if it didn’t taste good. Bisquick biscuits completed this fun meal.