exercise nutrition mindfulness
I have the great fortune and honour to work with some amazing people. What could be more awesome than having a client arrive for her personal training appointment with Hello Kitty in tow?
hello kitty
The workout was not a piece of cake. The sore muscles the next day? They were the icing on the cake!
Thank you M, for your commitment and the fine company you keep.
dumbbell curls
Since I first stepped a chubbier foot in a fitness facility, I have always kept a record of my workouts. I have never recorded them on the blog, except for my 10k training schedule, but thought I’d start putting them up. I’d love feedback and ideas.
So check the page tabs above and see where I’ve been taking up the slack.
If you have some great routines to share, please post a comment and let’s get a great sweat on!
chickpea & ricotta fritters
Chickpea Fritters with Ricotta, Sun-dried Tomato and Olive Filling
For the fritters, combine
in a dish. Stir well and leave to sit while you prepare the filling.
For the filling, combine
in a dish, adding a bit of/enough olive oil to form a smooth consistency.
ricotta, tomato & olive filling
Heat olive oil in a nonstick fry pan. Pour in batter in 50ml measures, flipping fritter over as it becomes crispy. Place finished fritters on papertowel to drain of excess oil.
Spoon ricotta filling on top of fritter and put another on top. I made my fritters long and narrow and simply folded them over the filling.
fritters with veggies
We enjoyed these chickpea fritters with a stir fry of broccoli, red cabbage, eggplant, carrot, turnip, tomato and preserved lemon.
brainwaves lapping the sandy beach
Success is living the questions and sitting in the tensions, being in the inquiry, naming my contradictions and making the effort. To be honest with myself, to face myself in the actions and choices of my daily life. To make it a practice, one to which I show up every day. And to be joyful in the discoveries, mindful of the process, clear about my intent. ~ Vanessa Reid
...the journey with the heaviest of backpacks...
ivory lentil pancake in the frypan
Saturday evening it was all put to soak. A double batch of dried chickpeas basked on the kitchen windowsill, rehydrating and enjoying the view of the backyard. On another sill sat a large bowl of urad dal (ivory lentils) and rice, softening as the first step toward the oothapams/uthapams.
Ivory Lentil Pancakes (aka oothapams/uthapams)
oothapams with a short life
Combine the urad dal and rice in a large glass or stainless steel bowl. Cover with 3 inches of water, soak overnight. Drain. Puree in blender or food processor with salt and 1 c water until smooth. Transfer to bowl, cover with towel, and let stand 6 – 12 hours at room temperature, or until batter is fermented and slightly bubbly on the surface.
Stir in yoghurt, baking soda and 1/2 c water.
Preheat oven to 100 degrees celsius. Place a baking sheet on the centre rack.
Combine peas, red onion, chiles and cilantro in a bowl.
Lightly grease a nonstick fry pan with ghee and bring to medium high heat. Pour 1/2 c batter into the pan. Drizzle ghee around the edge to prevent sticking.
Sprinkle 3 tbsp of the vegetable mixture over the pancake. Cook 3 minutes or until the bottom is golden brown. Flip and cook an additional minute.
Place veggie side up on baking sheet in warm oven.
Serve warm.
We enjoyed ours with lime pickle. Batter can be kept in the refrigerator for a day or two if the batch is too large. On the otherhand, reheated oothapams are a delicious take along for lunch at work.
Roasted Chickpeas and Garlic with Swiss Chard
Okay, if you’ve been checking this blog for any length of time you already know that chickpea recipes are a favourite with me. You also know I am rather particular about avoiding those soggy canned items referred to as chickpeas (makes me want to cry, much like canned potatoes!). Preparing dried chickpeas, until they suit my needs, is a wonderful option.
I was so happy when I came across this particular recipe because there, in my fridge, was a large bunch of swiss chard waiting to self actualize. While a couple of variations of this recipe are floating around the internet, and they all look great, I came across my first variation on the blog of someone who has visited this blog. So, with much gratitude to gwendolyn (I love that name!) and her great blog, I offer up another truly great chickpea experience.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees celsius.
In a baking dish, combine chickpeas, garlic, shallots, bay leaves and oil. Roast about 45 minutes until the chickpeas and shallots are golden.
swiss chard stems
Add 2 tbsp oil to fry pan. Add garlic to heated oil, saute until it gives up its best aroma (about 30 seconds), add chopped stems of chard and saute about 2 minutes, until tender. Add chard and cook until wilted; about 5 minutes. Pour in stock, cover and cook about 10 minutes, until liquid has all but disappeared.
Add chickpea mixture to fry pan, add salt and pepper, stir and cook until heated through.
This recipe is another easy, incredibly tasty and cost efficient main dish. It stores well once cooked and reheats to perfection. I will be making this one again, this time using a bit less oil and tossing some fennel seeds into the roasting stage.
roasted chickpea and garlic with swiss chard
24,000 PE Islanders live with arthritis. Based on 2009 population estimates, this is just about 20% of the entire province. That is one heck of a lot of discomfort, pain management and affected lives.
Arthritis research is an important cause and requires ongoing funding. Today I ran the PEI Jingle Bell 5k, the first year for the event, as part of the fundraising.
The temperature was moderate – around 5 degrees celsius – but there was a strong, biting wind, which made at least half the course a challenge. Held at the new University of Prince Edward Island track, which had been constructed for the 2009 Canada Summer Games, a small handful of participants turned up. There was a 1k and a 5k option; you could walk and/or run. The 5k was 12.5 laps of the track.
It was a fun event. I was thrilled to see a recyclable kit bag and enjoyed the jingle of my footfalls. Thanks to those who sponsored me.
ecokit & jinglebell
last lap
walking meditation on Koh Samui, Thailand
The slow movement. A slower and more aware pace to life. Playing, living, and working better by finding the right speed.
The right speed is that pace which allows me to experience connection in all that I do. Connection to myself, my family, my community and friends; connection to the food I consume, the products I use, the place I live.
no strings attached; qigong on the beach
When I think about the upcoming holiday season, I especially value the notion of slow and seek ways to stay slow when consumerism and commercialism are building to a loud, noisy, frenetic crescendo. I think about how many newspaper articles, magazine stories, and on-line infobites I come across telling me how to have a stress-free holiday, providing all the good information about what stress does to my body and my wellbeing; the articles which painfully detail the debt load incurred in the name of gift giving and ideas on how to make it cost/hurt less.
I often wonder who puts these suggestions into practice? I still observe stores cram-packed with ’stuff’ , though truth be told, it is truly ‘junk’. I overhear conversations about how hard it is to find the latest, hottest Wii game, or whatever other I-cannot-live-without-my-child/self/partner-having item. I watch the traffic flow begin to stick even further, as if tires were made of blackstrap molasses, and folks thusly stuck pass time on their cellphones, drumming their fingers and experience mounting frustration. I hear people lamenting the amount of food they ate at the church ‘tea’ last year and how much baking they need to get done.
serenity along the Caribou, NS shoreline
The wheels of consumerism appear to still be well-greased and moving smoothly and swiftly. Not so much in my home. We long ago stepped away from the big bang theory of love. In fact, as I think about it, we never subscribed to that approach ever. Instead, we focus on our togetherness and revel in the subtle and not so subtle ways we are special to each other. Our gift giving is minimal on all occasions, including birthdays, graduations, and other times when a special touch, a shared meal, a lovely walk and any other such time together is more meaningful and lasting and ecologically responsible.
I can remember every time my partner wrote me a poem or brought home wild flowers from ditches. I can recall the instances my children made me noodle necklaces and sang me lovingly crafted songs. I am richer for these gifts.
I know gifting can be pleasurable — I find great pleasure in giving the just-right gift. And, receiving baubles can be joyful, particularly when they are local handcrafted treasures. This is especially so when it is done with great thought and consideration, in moderation, and at times of least expectation.
The spirit of sharing, of giving of yourself, can be very uplifting. Receiving can be humbling, touching, moving. None of this requires weeks of preparation, increasing debt load, purchasing products which contribute to the ever-growing waste stream, or having what neighbours/classmates/coworkers have. In short, gifting is not about gluttony.
In the spirit of giving of yourself, participating less in the grab from box-store shelves, here are some great ideas and sites which just might spark your interest:
In the end, it is my responsibility to enjoy every day, not just the one big day. Every day leads to the one big day, every day follows. It is my responsibility to instill this value in my children. They will not find this in a video game, a well-crafted piece of plastic marketed as a toy, or in any of the consumptive trappings we have come to label love and caring.
Practice simplicity and find the wealth that is your life. Pass this gift on to others. Then the world will change.
tranquility and beauty in the sahara desert
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. ~ Hans Hofman
Every moment presents the opportunity for making a different choice.
Changing eating patterns or maintaining a clean eathing lifestyle does not have to be an overwhelming, time consuming part of your life. Small changes can create new habits which become the platform for a next stage of small changes. Before you know it, your relationship to food may develop into a great friendship.
Bring simplicity into your gastronomical life. The health benefits are a big deal.
There is food in the bowl, and more often than not, because of what honesty I have, there is nourishment in the heart, to feed the wilder, more insistent hungers. We must eat. If, in the face of that dread fact, we can find other nourishment, and tolerance and compassion for it, we’ll be no less full of human dignity. ~ MFK Fisher
beginning the work
The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. ~ Anna Quindlen
of becoming
a perfect self
The Hungry Years jacket design
I recently began reading William Leith’s The Hungry Years, a book I picked up on sale a couple of month’s ago. Leith is a journalist in the UK and, in setting out in 2003 to interview Robert Atkins — yes, the very same Atkins of the Atkins Diet — found in himself a story of food, hunger and addiction.
The book is funny and poignant; moving me to tears of mirth and compassion, sometimes at one and the same time. It is partly a memoir, and it is a confessional, perhaps in the sense meant by Michel Foucault and the kind which exists in weight loss groups, on bulletin boards in fitness facilities, and across the professional and nonprofessional blogosphere. We need to offer up our sins and gluttonies and seek forgiveness and affirmation, in a public forum, from others who are offering up their sins and gluttonies.
Normally I wait until I finish a book and then review it. Here, I am only about a third of the way into the book and repeatedly I am rocked by Leith’s personal and social observations, by his astute observations of himself and others, by his brilliant conveyance of personal and social fatness, by his wry cutting humour, self deprecation, and wise humility.
I will, eventually, review the book. For now I want to just share some of his words.
I like the idea of the Atkins diet because I think it might be a quick fix. When I see something that looks like a quick fix, I am capable of trusting it with a faith bordering on the religious.
This notion of the ‘quick fix’ abounds in our culture. I have an as-yet-unposted blog entry on ‘quick fixes’ which I started about six weeks ago. I revisit it regularly, rework it, reconsider it. One of these days, it will make it to publish-button status.
Reflected in the glass…my face looks puffy, ill-defined. Should I buy a stomach magazine? [sadly, don't we all know precisely what Leith means by this phrase?] Are stomach magazines the solution? Or are they part of the problem? In her book The Male Body, weight guru Susan Bordo hints that pictures of muscled, bulky men are history; a new, more feminine aesthetic is beginning to rule. In the old style, the engorged muscleman — the surrogate penis, according to gay theorist Ron Long — stares straight ahead, blank-eyed, ready to fight, unwilling to show weakness. Bordo calls this image ‘the rock’. She calls the new, Calvin Klein-inspired male pin-up ‘the leaner’ — ‘because these bodies are almost always reclining, leaning against, or propped up against something in the fashion of women’s bodies.’
Leaners are also like female fashion models in another way — they are leaner. Like women, they are depicted as objects rather than subjects. They challenge the advertising credo, defined by art historian John Berger in the 1970s, that ‘men act and women appear’.
These days, men appear.
Another thing John Berger wrote was, ‘Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only the relations of men to women, but the relation of women to themselves.’
We all know what happens when women are encouraged to be self-consious about their bodies. According to the feminist Susie Orbach, author of Fat Is A Feminist Issue, they start to hate the way they look, and then they diet, which leads to a disordered relationship with food. According to the feminist Kim Chernin, author of The Obsession, they start to hate the way they look, and then they diet, which leads to a disordered relationship with food. According to the feminist Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, they start to hate the way they look, and then they diet, which leads to a disordered relationship with food. According to the feminist Caroline Knapp, author of Appetites, they start to hate the way they look, and then they diet, which leads to a disordered relationship with food.
So I’m inclined to think that stomach magazines are not the solution. I think they are part of the problem.
They are part of the problem! Look at those magazines! Look at the models posed and promises made on the covers! You can’t miss the ads. Is any of this about health, fitness, wellbeing? Really? Do we gaze fondly upon these magazines? Do we purchase them and justify our purchase by the great workout we found inside or that fabulous smoothy recipe? What are we really purchasing, when we quietly and quickly slide the newest edition into our green-and-socially-responsible marketing bag?
In a time of material abundance and consumer choice, the successful manufacturer must create more than just a product — he must also create a need. Successful products are the ones that make you hungry. In other words, the products that do well are the ones that do not satisfy…the ideal product is addictive.
The ideal product is the one that does not work. Like, say, pornography. Pornography doesn’t really do the trick. Pornography is an advertisement for itself. The more pornography people have, the more they want.
Carbohydrate snacks make you hungry. They are culinary pornography, they are like Penthouse magazine. Looking at pictures of naked girls in Penthouse is not exactly having a meaningful relationship with women. Eating carbohydrate snacks is not exactly having a relationship with food. Fill yourself with snacks, and you’ll feel empty a couple of hours later.
Here Leith is referring to the crappy (a professional term whispered in registered dietician circles) carbohydrate snacks and processed foods lining our supermarket shelves and filling the vending machines of our hallways — chips, pastries, crackers, breakfast ‘cereals’, including full-fat, reduced-fat or low-fat options.
Until recently, expanding waistbands have been associated mainly with children’s clothes (because children grow), sporting clothes (they need to be flexible), bedwear (must be comfortable) and underwear (too flimsy to rely on fasteners, must not fall off). But now, expanding waistbands are entering the mainstream. Like children, adults are expected to grow.
And expanding waistbands are a dangerous thing. As Greg Critser points out, research conducted by John Garrow, a British scientist, suggests that tight waistbands inhibit overeating. Garrow investigated a group of formerly obese patients who had lost weight on a calorie-controlled diet. This was a radical calorie-controlled diet: the patients had had their jaws wired. When the wires were removed, Garrow fitted half the patients with cords around their waists. The cords were tight enough to make a white line in the flesh when the patient was seated. The difference in weight gain between the waistband group and the non-waistband group, Garrow found, was ’striking.’ Those without cords gained weight at a much faster rate. And this leads Critser to an interesting point. Elasticated waistbands are the thin end of the wedge. What about the larger-sized chairs being fitted into many restaurant chains?
Will we grow into them?
my largest jeans recylced
This book is a great read and I’ll post more of it later. In the meantime:
