30Apr10

Before Crossfit: ~5:30am

• 1 little strawberry yoghurt
• 1 oz mystery cheese
• 6 almonds
• 1/2 c skim milk

Crossfit

• 400m sprint to warm up
• Six-Shooter: 6 pistols (one-legged squats. fucking hard.), 6 pushups, 6 American KB swings (30-lb KB), 6 dumbbell thrusters (2 15-lb dumbbells), 6 box jumps (24-in box?), 6 burpees; all repeated 6 times

Notes: Holy damn. This was a bitch. I don't think my posture was quite right on the pistols and my lower back hurt like crazy the rest of the day. But it was still pretty good.

Ashley (is that her name?) was chatting with me and a couple other girls after the workout and mentioned casually that the weight-loss boot camp may perhaps be a little bit "babied." She spoke a little hastily (as she told me later, with a worried look on her face) and let me speak my piece about how no, we're really not, all the guest trainers have been quite surprised when we complain about them not giving us enough, etc etc. And I know she meant no offense at all, and didn't even know I was in that group when she spoke. It's just interesting to think about - how after a year and a half (for some of us, myself included) of working out here, longer than almost everyone else, including the elites...we're still kind of viewed as the "lesser" class. It's the same deal with everyone pushing me to join the "regular" class, or talking about "graduating..." merh. It just gets a little annoying, how even though we push ourselves just as hard and stick with it just as long, in everyone's eyes, we're still not worth as much.

Breakfast

• overnight oats: 3/4 c skim milk and 3/4 c plain yoghurt, whisked together and then mixed with 1/2 c rolled oats to soak overnight
• 4 big (3 fingers) strawberries, chunked up and put in with the oats in the morning
• 1 c coffee with a little 2% milk
• the Indie. perfect accompaniment

Notes: OMGOMGOMG. Overnight oats, where have you been all my life??? Guys, seriously. This stuff is aMAAAAzing. Seriously. Tangy and sweet and creamy and OMG. I can't even describe it. Go. Make some right now. Go go go.

Lunch

• 1 c spiced cabbage (recipe to follow)
• 1 salmonburger
• 1 Wasabread
• 1 oz mystery cheese
• 1 small cafe au lait with Caribou's weird blend of skim and half-and-half that they call "whole milk"

Notes: Ok, so this spiced cabbage stuff. I had a hankering for some kind of cooked cabbage side-dishy sort of thing. Had a bunch of spices from chai-making back in the cold months lying around in disuse, so I got an idea. What follows is approximately what I put in.

• 1/2 large head Napa cabbage, julienned
• 1 medium apple, cored and sliced to taste
• 1 medium onion, sliced very thin
• 3-4 T ACV
• 1-2 t salt
• 2 star anise pods, broken up
• the seeds from about 10 or so cardamom pods
• 1/8-1/4 nutmeg, grated (that's that fraction of an actual nutmeg)
• 1/2 t freshly ground black pepper
• good lord, about 1 T cloves (probably too much)
• enough water to come almost to the surface of the veggies
• as an afterthought, 1 single-serving container of unsweetened apple sauce (probably could have done w/o)

Then I simmered it all for a while until everything looked cooked and smelled fantastic. Try this out. The spices combine perfectly with the sweetness of the apples and the savoriness of the dish as a whole. It's really kind of awesome. This is one I'm gonna work on perfecting.

Dinner: ~8pm

• 

• 1/2-ish c steamed broccoli
• 1 c-ish (just the rest of) spiced cabbage
• 1 tipalia filet
• 1/2 c whole milk

Notes: Was totally famished by the time I got back. Thank gods for leftovers.

29Apr10

Breakfast: 10:30am

• 1 2-egg omelette with 1 oz mystery cheese, 1/2 oz provolone and about 1/4 c of stir-fried yellow pepper
• the rest of the pepper (a whole large one, total)
• 1 c half water, half cran-grape juice with a splash of ACV and 30 drops of nettle tincture
• 1 little container of strawberry yoghurt
• 1000 mg Vitamin C and 1 capsule Omega 3-6-9

Notes: The mystery cheese is this random unlabeled block (really delicious, like a slightly softer parmesan with the taste of cheddar!) that probably came from one of Papa's bored-and-hungry cheese runs. If for some reason amam's not around to cook dinner and/or he's bored, he goes out to the artsy yuppie food stores and picks up whatever looks interesting and smelly enough. He picked up a $10 magazine on cheese one time. It's called "Culture."

Lunch-ish: 3:30pm

• 1 egg, chopped up and mixed with 1.5ish t mayo and 2/3ish t dijon mustard and spread on:
  
• 2 pieces of Wasabread
  
• 1.5 oz provolone
• 1 mango. OMGZ. a little overripe and stringy but SO delicious
• 500 mg Vitamin C and 1 capsule Omega 3-6-9

Notes: This was a little small, but I made up for it later.

Dinner: ~8:30pm

• 2 breaded tilapia filets
• a good 2 or 3 c of fancy baby lettuce of various kinds
• 1 adorably tiny apple, partly chopped up and mixed into the salad with 1 T feta and partly used as the garnish
• on top of the salad: homemade impromptu salad dressing! a good shot or two of EVOO, mixed with a couple glugs of ACV, a little mustard, a little mayo, a dash of salt, a pinch of sugar and a couple pinches of dried sage. I used about a third; the rest is sitting in the fridge getting better as we speak!
• 1 c skim milk
• about 1/3 c ginger candies
• 1000mg Vitamin C and 1 capsule Omega 3-6-9

Notes: A pretty good day, after all. T called while I was mixing up dinner, after a satisfying day of getting things done and working outside, and finally sitting down to watch the sun set. It's so wonderful to hear his voice when he's happy. So much of the time he's stressed and tense and wound up and he sounds just about to break...but this time there was just calm, peace, serenity...happiness.

Happy full moon, everyone!

28Apr10

Breakfast-ish: ~11am

• 2 slices of rosemary sourdough bread, toasted in the pan, with the following ingredients added to make a sandwich
• 1 fried egg
• 1 oz provolone, melted onto the toast
• 1/2 small tomato, sliced
• 1 c whole milk

Supper: ~4:15pm

• steamed together and then stir-fried in a little butter: 1 small onion, sliced; 1 small apple, sliced; 1/4 Napa cabbage, julienned. salt and pepper added
• 1 salmonburger
• 1 c 2% milk
• 1 oz provolone

Crossfit!

• Warm-up: Cindy, done for 10 minutes: AMRAP of 5 jumping pull-ups, 10 pushups and 15 squats. After about 3 rounds Bea changed me to band pull-ups; I have no idea how many rounds I got in.
• 400-m walk (yes, just a walk) with a 25-lb KB in each hand. HOLY FUCK. This is SO much harder than it seems.
• 10 minutes (we were going to do 15 but Bea cut off the last 5 because people looked tired. Boo.) of 10 sit-ups and 10 back extensions done every minute on the minute. That is, do the 10 of each and then rest till the next minute started, or nearer the end, if you weren't quite done with BEs just can the rest and start the next round. There was only one round where I didn't finish everything but that's because I somehow have a massive invisible hurty-as-hell bruise on my ass that makes sit-ups no fun whatsoever. I swear, it feels like my bone is bruised! Grr.
• 4 minutes of Tabata American KB swings, with a 30-lb KB. 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off. "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots," which is just over 4 minutes long, came on the mix as soon as we started. WIN.
• Bea made me try out band pull-ups with a MUCH weaker band (green?) than I'd used for Cindy (tan? very thick). Yes, at the end of a workout that worked arms like yeah whoa. And I kicked ASS :D She says she never wants to see me doing jumping pull-ups again, and I have to try it out with one of the thinnest bands next time I come in (before the workout, thankfully).

Dinner

• 1 c amam's bean-corn-chowdah stuff, with about 1/2 c whole milk, 1 pouch tuna and a little salt added
• 1 c 2% milk
• 1 little blueberry yoghurt

Notes: A pretty good day. I cleaned up my room some more - moved furniture around a couple days ago and there are still boxes and piles of books everywhere. It's so hard to strike the perfect balance between bedroom, closet, office and chill space in one weird-shaped room with no built-in storage except for the space under a window seat. Also I have a ton of books. It's a little crazy. I think I'm addicted.

T and I were talking about all the possibilities we both need to choose from right now, and he brought up the idea that I could work on getting back to Hiram sooner than I'd been planning and we'd get an apartment together. Now, part of me is jumping up and down and saying "He brought it up without provocation? Hell yes! Give me an hour to pack!" and the other part is thinking about all those dozens and dozens of times I heard the advice to never ever move in with each other if the primary reason is money. I don't know if it's the very primary in this case, but it's second at best. Still, it's something to consider.

Midnight snack

• 1 c skim milk, nuked for a couple minutes, and then...
• 2 t slippery elm powder whisked into the hot milk, along with
• 4 very heaping Ts of yoghurt
• about 1/2 t of vanilla
• about 1.5 t of honey

Notes: T is stressed. And that sometimes affects his diet a lot more than I wish it did. This is partly a calming late-night hot drink for myself and partly an experiment to make simple, tasty, nutritious things that can help with stress, etc.

The slippery elm is used a lot as a nutritious gruel (yes, that term is used way more often than necessary) for people who need some nutritional bulking up. I've put it in my oatmeal a lot before and liked that...and I'm thinking I'll stick to that application. In liquid it seems to make the slippery "jelly" it's known for just around the little granules of powder, making for a rather gloppy texture with distinctly more solid bits suspended throughout the whole. It's not horrible - I finished the whole thing! - but then again, I'm used to it. Perhaps it would work better if I let it sit for a while and finish gelling, maybe blending it up after several minutes.

I've done drinks with just milk blended with yoghurt, with or without flavor, and they've turned out fantastically. I've always done them cold before, though. Should have tried the slippery elm and yoghurt separately in conjunction with the hot milk, as now I can't tell if the texture was entirely due to the former or maybe the yoghurt was curdling a little. Next time I'll try just milk and yoghurt and vanilla, no sweetener. And no skim milk. Ew.

4Apr10

Yay for free chocolate! And also headscarves and energy bars and tahini. Yes, you read that right. My sisters got Nutella and olive oil in theirs.

I have been supremely unmotivated these last few weeks. That covers not only the blogging about food and exercise, but also the actual exercising (I kept up with Crossfit, although I missed a couple, but didn't do any of the running I really want to get back with) and eating. I got a new job (w00t!) which is in a city about an hour away (merh...), so even though I don't start work til 9 I still have to get up earlyish. And when I get up kind of early but not super early, I just lose the desire to eat anything for breakfast but coffee, which I'm getting much less of but still far too much. So I'll just hold out til lunch, when I'll grab a bagel and maybe soup at the Bruegger's down the road. Dinner consists of random scrounged items, none of which have seemed appetizing enough to get seconds of, let alone photograph, around the dinner hour. Since I'm not taking care to make my food pretty or interesting, I don't remember it at all - I know I had some Wasa with hummus last night, but that's as far back as I can go.

So this is the first real day off I've had since I started up at this new place, and I'm going to take full advantage of it. Tea is brewing, eggs are frying, and I have a boatload - excuse me, basketload - of chocolate to try and ration sensibly.

Breakfast: ~10:30am

• 1 fried egg, sunny-side up
• 2 pieces Wasabread, spread with 1 pack tuna mixed with 1 very scant T each of real mayo and my new tahini, and then sprinkled with cayenne
• 2 c 2% milk
• 1 little strawberry yoghurt
• 500mg Vitamin C and 1 capsule Omega 3-6-9
• not shown: 1 tomato, sliced, and about 5 little chocolate eggs that were totally delish and one rather disappointingly hollow chocolate rabbit

A little later on

• the obligatory Cadbury cream egg. What would we do without them?
• about 1.5 c 2% milk

Notes: So much for rationing. But who the hell cares? Haven't had so much concentrated sugar since Christmas, apart from 3 gas station donuts in OH. And feeeeeling good! :D