Aerial Arts Adventure

I've become a bit of a Groupon addict. It's how I found my yoga studio & some new interesting restaurants. At some point I also found one of it's "competitors," Living Social . I just love waking up in the morning to deals!

A few weeks ago there was a Living Social deal for Aerial Arts of Rochester. This place is less than 10 minutes from my home, but I'd never even heard of it. Since I'm always up for adventure & a new way to work out I bought the deal for the aerial sampler workshop. At this class I was going to learn static trapeze, hammock, aerial hoop, & aerial silks... huh? Oh well, might as well just go for it anyway.

Well, my friends, this was one of the hardest things I've done in a while. Apparently I have zero upper body strength, 'cause getting into these contraptions was definitely an effort! I did it though.

I learned how to get myself in a hoop that was 5 feet off of the floor, as well as how to maneuver through silks that were hanging from the ceiling. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera, and I left my phone in the car. They encourage taking pictures (probably 'cause it gets your friends all jealous). Luckily one of the girls there took a couple shots of me & texted me the pictures... don't mind the poor quality.

Me in the hoop

Me hanging on the silks... much more impressive in person!

It's nothing I ever thought I wanted to do, or planned on doing, but in the end I was very glad I did it. Of course, I will never be a Cirque du Soleil, or circus performer... not because I'm not super talented at this stuff, but because of my fear of clowns, of course.

The night of my aerial class, I had trouble sleeping. The sleepless night was not due to the clown thoughts popping up in my head, but because of the pain in my arms. I seriously hurt myself in that aerial class. The next 48 hours only got worse. I couldn't even go to yoga for fear of my arms giving out on me, and it hurt to hold my arms up while I was running... seriously.

So, I guess my review of my little outing would be the following:

It was fun & different & unlike anything I've ever tried before! Give it a shot, even if only for the sweet pics you can get of you hanging from the ceiling! Remember your camera!! Prepare to feel like your arms are going to fall off.

Happy 5th Birthday Hallie!

Dyngus Day!

Today is Dyngus Day! I never really celebrated it in my earlier years of life, but being from Buffalo, and having a mother who is 100% Polish, I definitely know about it! I'll take any reason to have a theme dinner! I mean, who else celebrates National Empanada Day?! I love an Irish dinner for St Patty's, Mexican for Cinco de Mayo, and anything else that pops up! Thus, I've decided to make Dyngus Day dinner a tradition in our home. This is year #2, so I decided to step things up a bit!

My favorite Polish food by far is pierogi. Well, not just any pierogi, but lazy pierogi! I seriously doubt that there is a better food in the world! Lazy pierogi would be my go to Dyngus Day dish... if not for one thing... my husband. My husband HATES sauerkraut. This makes me sad. Alas *sigh* I needed to look for alternatives.

My default meal was polish sausage & pierogis (potato & onion), but I needed something more to add to my spectacular Polish meal! After much research I finally decided on golumpkis (ie stuffed cabbage rolls). Have I ever made these? NO. Have I ever even eaten these? NO. This seemed like quite the challenge... but I was ready to rise to the occasion in honor of my ancestors! I headed to Wegmans, gathered my ingredients, and then spent the remainder of my day in the kitchen.

My beautiful head of savoy cabbage

Time to boil this baby!

All of the recipes I read called for 1 lb of ground beef & 1/2 lb of ground pork or veal. Where the hell do you find ground pork or veal? I was tempted to use my Kitchen Aid meat grinder attachment to grind up some boneless pork chops that I have in my freezer, but thanks to Wegmans I did not have to! Look what I found!

Who knew this even existed?!

So, basically, you boil the cabbage leaves. Then, you combine meat, an egg, rice, onions & garlic into a meatloaf concoction. Then, you take chunks of the meat mixture, spoon it into cabbage leaves, roll then up & stick them in a pot of tomato sauce. Simmer for 2-3 hours. Here's what it looks like while cooking:

Golumpki

While my golumpki was simmering away I got to work on my cookies. No, they were not Polish cookies. I wanted to make cookies for a co-worker's birthday tomorrow. (FYI: I looked into Polish desserts & didn't find anything good to make... let me know if anyone knows of anything for next year's Dyngus Day!)

I decided to tweak my Kid's Candy Cookie recipe from 2 weeks ago. Peter really liked the base of the cookie, so I stuck with that & just changed the candy I added to them. I made half with Reeses's Pieces and half with chocolate chips & toffee pieces. I was pleasantly surprised with how they turned out!

Reese's Pieces cookies before they hit the oven

Chocolate chip & toffee cookies before they hit the oven

With the cookies baking, it was time to finish my Dyngus Day set up. Pussywillows- check!

Pussywillows!

As Peter entered the house I had a polka pandora station playing, along with a shot of vodka to welcome him home! (He didn't like either of these aspects, but I made him suck it up!)

After that, dinner was served!

Golumpki-definitely tastes better than it looks!

Polish sausage & pierogis

Muffin didn't care much for the pussywillows!

Not so Polish cookies for dessert!

Since I'm all about these theme dinners, I'm thinking that my next ethnic undertaking should be for Bastille Day! A few years back my aunt found out that we have some French in our genealogy! I'm thinking I'm going to take that as my opportunity to finally attempt coq au vin! Bon chance! (Stay tuned to July's posts to see if I actually do this!)

Happy Easter!

Today is Easter! Unfortunately, I have to work today... 2-10 pm. Yuck! No family holiday for me. Boo.

I stopped at Walgreens on my way to work to pick myself up a little somethin' somethin' to cheer me up...

The best Pepsi I've ever drank!

Yeah! Giving up pop for lent was even harder than expected. I was going to try to go a few extra days without, but I just couldn't! This was by far the most fabulous Diet Pepsi I've ever drank! I can't even begin to explain how good it was... yes, I'm pathetic.... Happy Easter anyway!

Pigeons & Groins

So, I've been doing this yoga thing for a few months now, and I finally feel like I'm starting to get the hang of it. I think it may be what my body really needed. Running was pretty much my sole focus & my body really needed some variety to make it stretch, flex & as my yoga insturctor put it yesterday, "shuffle the deck." I think it was time to move my body in a way it wasn't used to & really challenge myself. There's nothing like walking out of a hot yoga room after 75 minutes of power vinyasa. I feel (to quote Ramona on RHONY) "renewed."

I've been going to Breathe for a few months. I found out about it when there was a Groupon for a 5 class pass available for it earlier this year. I bought the Groupon, but then discovered something even better. I looked into it, and they offer a beginner series of 3 introductory classes for $25. I bought it, went, and haven't looked back since. I really recommend it, especially for people who might find the idea of hot yoga intimidating! They teach you the basics & make you feel comfortable enough to walk into any class! Do it!

I've wanted to try hot yoga for a while & I'm so glad I've finally found a great place to do it. I'm still very new to all of this, but I'm seeing changes & advances in myself that make me really excited! Hopefully it only gets better.

On a related note, I have a love/hate relationship with half pigeon pose. Being a runner, I've definitely done stretches like this before, but holding the pose and getting really deep into the stretch leaves me cringing in pain. For those of you who do not know the pose check it out below.

Half pigeon is a hip opener. Hip openers are really good for runners & really stretches my tight hips. I definitely don't bend down as far as the girl in the picture. I have to prop myself up, but maybe someday I'll be able to "rest" on the ground. I'm still getting a ridiculous stretch. As I'm in this pose I'm often thinking about how much I hate and love this pose. I can't figure out which is the dominant feeling. It hurts in a good way. I was thinking this in Monday's class when I remembered hearing an interview with Marshawn Lynch from a few years back when he was a rookie. He was talking about stretching out his "groins." Lucky for you I found the video! Go to 07:00 for the moment I'm speaking about:

"When practice over and I gotta go stretch my tight groins and I mean they're in pain, but it feel so good. I don't understand how it can feel so good but hurt so bad..."

Now everytime I do half pigeon I think of Marshawn... and laugh a little inside.

**For another Marshawn clip that relates to me go to 01:58 on the video...

Week in Review

This week was pretty good. I followed my schedule as planned. Well, not exactly. I was supposed to do a speedy 5K this weekend, but my sacred Garmin held me back. For some reason it couldn't find satellites. Not quite sure what the issue was, but after warming up for 1.5 miles trying to get my Garmin to find my location, I just gave up & did a relatively easy 5 mile run.

Now, you may be asking, "Why couldn't you just do the speed workout without the Garmin?" Well, my friends, cause that's just not how I roll. Having no time on my watch to reassure me would drive me crazy. I would either have to just do what feels right, or do some quick math in my head... not my forte. So, I decided to scrap the speed & just do a reasonable distance at a pretty good pace (just under 10 min miles). However, during my run I came up with my workout schedule for this week, including a great running idea. The duathlon was 2 weeks from yesterday. I decided that I'm going to try to replicate the race for myself on Thursday. Thursday's my day off, so I'll have time to dedicate to this. I'm going to run a 5K, rest/stretch/hydrate for 1 to 1.5 hours, and then run my second 5K. I'm pretty excited about this! I'm interested to see how I'm going to feel during the second 5K!

This week's stats:
Total miles run: 13
Total miles biked: 5
Yoga: 1 class, 1 video

New songs added to my running playlist:
Give me everything (Pitbull Ft. Ne-Yo)

3 things i bought

This week I made 3 purchases in order to improve my workouts.**

#1. Bic Bands

I bought 2 Bic Bands for my hair. They're supposed to be awesome & not slip... we'll see about that. I can not stand when my hairbands slip (Peter can vouch for this. I had a minor breakdown on our flight from Fiji to LAX when my hair band kept sliding out of my hair... true story.).

#2. Jillian Michaels Yoga Meltdown DVD

I've heard great things about this video. Since I have a new found love of all things yoga I'm excited to try it. I might have to turn the heat up in my house while I do it in order to get the feeling that I'm in one of my power vinyasa classes.




#3. Chia Seeds

I've been reading about the benefits of these babies. Despite my husband talking smack about them I went out & bought them. I started reading "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall & here's an excerpt from his book:

In terms of nutritional content, a tablespoon of chia is like a smoothie made from salmon, spinach, and human growth hormone. As tiny as those seeds are, they’re superpacked with omega-3s, omega-6s, protein, calcium, iron, zinc, fiber, and antioxidants. If you had to pick just one desert-island food, you wouldn’t do much better than chia, at least if you were interested in building muscle, lowering cholesterol, and reducing your risk of heart disease; after a few months on the chia diet, you could probably swim home.

Peter wasn't a fan of them acting like there's HGH in the seeds, but that didn't bother me one bit.




**Disclaimer: none of these things have been proven to improve workouts, but it has been proven that buying myself new things does increase my motivation to workout and try to attain greater fitness... even if only momentarily.

Thursday Night Yumminess

Today is my day off from work. I love my days off. I know most people would agree that days off are awesome to do things that you normally don't have time for. I just love being productive. Today I...


#1. finished my vacation blogging (finally),
#2. got 1 hour of live CE credit (my registration expires at the end of May),
#3. ran 5 miles at a 9:44 pace with NO knee pain,
#4. got my haircut at a new salon (my normal stylist cancelled at the last second 'cause she's sick),
#4.5. found a new stylist to go to when my regular stylist starts maternity leave in July,
#5. went to Wegmans for some groceries,
#6. made 4 dozen cookies, and
#7. made myself a BLAT for dinner.


Allow me to elaborate on some of that. I really love baking. I'm not great at it (ie guava empanadas), but I love doing it. Normally I don't have enough time during the week to do it though. Also, I'm not a fan of having baked goods in the house. So, today seemed like a perfect day to bake. Why? Well, I'll tell you...


#1. It's my day off (see above if you need more elaboration).
#2. I have a cookie recipe I wanted to try (from Food Network Magazine, of course).
#3. Peter & I are going to poker night tonight, so I can bring cookies to share!


So, after my hair appointment at Scott Miller I headed across the street to Wegmans to buy a few things on my grocery list & stuff for my cookies.

Do you think the lady checking me out thought I had a problem?

The big bags of M&Ms, toffee, chocolate chips & peanut butter chips are all for my Kids Candy Cookies recipe. The Jelly Bellys are for me & the Cadbury Creme Eggs are for Peter.... we have a problem with Easter candy.

Cookie Ingredients

This cookie dough was phenomenal! Baking them didn't seem necessary.

Cookie drops made with my handy scooper from my mom!

It said it would make 25 cookies... it made 4 dozen normal sized cookies!

Excellent!

Since my husband didn't know if he'd be home for dinner, I decided to make something easy I've been wanting for a while... a BLAT. I learned about these in New Zealand, but never got a chance to order one. The BLAT is Bacon, Lettuce, Avocado, and Tomato. I love BLTs (hold the mayo, of course) and I love avocado. This just seemed like a match made in heaven. I bought a fresh loaf of sourdough bread at Wegmans & made a pretty awesome sandwich.

Yummy BLAT!

So pretty!

I took this as my opportunity to attempt avocado growing again. We'll see how it goes this time! Fingers crossed!

My avocado plant (take 2)

ADDENDUM: My super sweet cookies were a big hit at poker night. The boys (& Pooja) must've been distracted by their supreme yumminess 'cause I kicked their butts at poker! Girl power!

Week in Review

I've been home from vacation for just over a week, so I think it's time to address my running status. While I didn't run a ton on vacation I was still fairly active. We did a 5K run early on in the vacation, and then we did a bunch of walking & hiking, and even a 10 mile bike ride in the middle of the trip. So, when I got home and was supposed to be running 10 miles the day after my plane landed I wasn't too worried. Now, I wasn't gonna go out & run 10 miles, but I felt a 5 mile run at a 6 mph pace was well within my capabilities. So, I headed on out & felt pretty good for the first 2.5 miles. Unfortunately, as I continued I developed a stabbing pain underneath my right knee cap. I stopped to walk for 0.5 miles. The pain went away, but as soon as I returned to running the pain didn't hesitate to come back immediately. Not a fan. When I got home I stretched, iced my knee & took some IBUs. The next day I decided to just go for it & do a short jog. I didn't even get 1 mile into it before I had to stop. Not a fan. I continued to walk the rest of the way & my knee continued to hurt which was not promising...

Long story short, the half marathon, which is only 3 weeks away has officially been postponed. I don't think my knee is ready to endure long runs. It was a tough decision to make (especially since I've been labeled a quitter for most of my life), but there are still at least 2 more half marathons locally before winter. Since I was concerned about being called a quitter, I came up with a back up race to train for. Instead of doing the Flower City Half Marathon as planned, I decided that Peter & I would do the Flower City Duathlon!

The duathlon is set up as 5K run/20 mile bike ride/5K run. You can do it by yourself or as a relay. I told Peter I would run the 5Ks if he would do the bike ride. He has tentatively agreed. This, of course, is all dependent on my capability to run 6.2 miles. I'm confident that I'll be able to pull it off. There will be a break in the middle, so I'm thinking that my knee will hold up. I'm trying to look at this like a blessing in disguise. I'm hoping that by focusing on cross training & shorter runs that I'll be able to increase my speed while recovering. Too ambitious? We'll see how this goes. I've been resting my knee, stretching & doing yoga. I have since gone running in 2 mile increments pain free. I find this promising. I'm feeling good about my running season this spring/summer/fall.

Here's my planned workouts for this week:
Monday: Easy 5K Run
Tuesday: Bike 5 miles
Wednesday: Yoga
Thursday: Easy Long Run (not quite sure what "long" will be yet)
Friday: REST
Saturday: Speed 5K Run
Sunday: Yoga

This is all contingent on my knee, of course. I've decided that if my knee even slightly hurts I'm stopping dead in my tracks & I'm going home & icing it. Only time will tell....

Happy National Empanada Day!

Today is National Empanada Day! When I woke up this morning I was not aware of this fact, but after I learned about it late morning I knew that empanadas had to be on tonight's menu. I had already decided that I would be trying out a new tostado recipe from my Food Network Magazine for dinner, so how could I not stay with the mexican theme and make empanandas? On top of all of that I had an empanada recipe in my new issue of Food Network Magazine! What luck!

(On a side note, I'm absolutely obsessed with Food Network Magazine. If I was Oprah it would definitely be on my favorite things list!)

So, I set out on an empanada adventure. I had never actually made them before, but they seemed relatively easy. The recipe did call for a few things I didn't already have, such as frozen empanada wrappers & guave paste. Thank God for Wegmans' international section!

I headed off to Pittsford Wegmans for the key ingredients. I was a bit surprised to find out how guava paste is supplied & what a large quantity you must buy, but I had already committed to this recipe, so there was no going back now!

Guava paste... who knew?

To give you a better idea of how massive this thing is I took a picture of it next to my hand:

Who needs this much guava paste?!

I continued to be surprised by guava paste upon opening the can:

Congealed guava

Regardless of all of my guava paste confusion I continued on my empanada making mission.

1 tablespoon guava paste

1 tablespoon cream cheese & lime mixture

Voila!

There were 10 empanada wrappers in the package & I had a whole lotta guava & cream cheese, so I decided to make all 10 and freeze 8 of them. I refrigerated 2 of them for dessert & planned to fry them up right before eating.

The tostados were not perfect, but like most mexican food they were yummy. They were also pretty.

Tostado with my Skinny Girl Margarita in the back!

After dinner it was time to fry up the empanadas! I browned them a little too much, but that's how I roll.

Empanada & vanilla ice cream

At this point I still hadn't told Peter what was inside of the empanadas. I started to worry that the paste wasn't going to melt at all inside, so I decided to test it out before he dug into it. Just as I suspected- the guava cube was intact!

Guava cube!

As soon as I saw the guava cube I knew I should've put the paste in the food processor with the cream cheese mixture. I double checked the recipe & it really does just have you put the straight paste on the dough! Ridiculous! (FYI: I googled some other guava paste recipes & some do have you putting the paste in a food processor!!! Grrr!)

Dessert still must be eaten!

In the end, the guava empanadas were still tasty and not a 100% failure (and I have 8 more in my freezer if anyone would like to come over & give 'em a try)! Although, there was one other minor incident with regards to my mexican dessert...

After dinner Peter said, "I wasn't gonna mention it, but did you taste the powdered sugar you put on the empanadas?" I said, "NO! Was something wrong with it?!" He responded, "It was flour." Damn! Apparently I'm still quite a ways form being the next Betty Crocker! I'm not giving up yet though!

Farmers Market

Today we went to our first farmers' market of the season! Yeah! I've been anxiously waiting for this day! I just love fresh fruit & vegetables! It's still early on in the season, but we were able to pick up a bunch of mixed greens, some fresh bread for dinner & some cheese from a local farm that we have pretty high hopes for!

Yummy Goodness

This was a farmers market that we had never been to & was pretty small, but we were pleasantly surprised. We don't have a CSA share this year, so if Peter's farm doesn't produce then I'll be hitting up every farmers market in town!

For dinner I made potato leek soup with bacon & home made smoked paprika croutons! We were pretty happy about it!

When in doubt, just add bacon

I'm back!

We returned from our wonderful trip to New Zealand & Fiji yesterday morning. We slept a bunch, picked up the cats from my parents, picked up our plants from Peter's parents, caught up on some facebook, and now we're ready to get our lives back in order!

A two and half week vacation is kinda hard to quickly sum up, so I decided to do a post for each day of our trip. I kept a vacation journal while we were away so that I could remember as much as possible. Obviously people will not care about every single detail, but I'll try to post some good stuff... we'll see how it goes.

I decided the easiest way to organize this would be to back date my posts so that they appear on the day we were traveling. This is going to be a lengthy process, so bear with me. I've just started with the first few days. Yes, you will have to go backwards in my blog, but suck it up & just deal with it!

CLICK HERE BEGIN