We can do it! Wednesdays: exercise goal update 1

Last week I set a goal to meet the CDC weekly physical activity recommendations required for “even greater health benefits” for adults. The requirement is two days of full body strength workouts + 2.5 hours of vigorous aerobic exercise. Last week I came so close to meeting this goal, but I only managed to fit in 2 days of strength training + 2 hours of vigorous activity. This week I’m really going to try to fit in that extra half hour so I don’t have to report another failure in the next Wednesday post.

One reason this goal is pretty attainable for me is that I’ve already been in the habit of doing full body strength workouts twice a week by going to Les Mills BodyPump classes. Zach and I discovered BodyPump two years ago and have been going 2-3 times per week since. This class is amazing and I encourage you to search for a class near you right now and try it out. It’s a barbell class that works out your whole body in an hour with ten tracks set to music (1 warm-up, 2 squats, 3 chest, 4 back, 5 triceps, 6 biceps, 7 lunges, 8 shoulders, 9 core, 10 cool-down). The class is challenging but fun and the tracks are set to great music. I especially like being able to go to the gym for just an hour and leave with my whole body worked out without having to fight for dumbbells or machine time. If you have trouble fitting in full-body strength work outs or you're not even sure what exercises to do, you should out try a class like this – it’s the only way I’ve been able to motivate myself to keep up with strength training. Also, if they don’t teach BodyPump at your gym, look for other strength training group classes – there are probably a few classes like this that go by different names.

Good luck with your goals this week! I’ll be back next Wednesday with some thoughts on the cardio half of this goal.

Townhome Tuesday: DIY Paint Chip Calendar

If you’re a Pinterest user I’m sure you’ve seen calendars that crafty people have made from paint chips. For this installment of Townhome Tuesday I wanted to go ahead and share my version of the paint chip calendar and show you that even if everything isn’t perfectly cut and centered, the end result can still be cute and useful.

The rainbow colors turned out nicer than I thought.

1.       I started with a cheesy floating glass frame that said “Home is where the heart is” or something like that with a ribbon glued on it. I bought it from Kohl’s for less than $10 because no one else wanted such a lame-o sign, but I saw the hidden beauty behind it. I could tell the frame and glass were nice, and I assumed that I’d easily be able to take the thing apart and make a paint chip calendar out of it.

2.       Almost two years pass and the frame remains tucked away in a closet.

3.       A few weeks ago, I finally got the urge to complete the project. My first stop was Lowe’s where I went through every available paint sample color and chose seven main colors (for the days of the week) and within each color I chose five color shades (for the rows of weeks). My original plan was to stay with one color for the whole calendar, but I wasn't able to find 35 shades of one color to make that work, so I went with a rainbow theme instead.  I grabbed the big paint chips instead of the strips that have 5 colors on them so that I’d have plenty of “material” to work with once I got home. I also grabbed 3-4 samples of plain white for the month and weekday fields.

4.       Once I got home, I started un-assembling the cheap-o frame. This actually was more difficult that anticipated, so I got the husband involved. I also put him to work pulling off the tacky ribbon and wiping the glass with goo-gone.

5.       I measured the glass and then used a paper cutter to cut each square to the correct size – I practiced with one row of plain paper to verify my math before cutting all of the paint chips. Note: If you don’t have a paper cutter, don’t do this project. It will be so frustrating with scissors and would probably turn out looking too messy anyway. Just try to borrow one from a friend or co-worker (there’s at least one crazy scrapbook lady at every work place).

6.       Once the squares were cut, I placed them on one of the panes of glass and secured them with a little tape on the back. After a lot of positioning and re-positioning (Zach helped here too) I was ready to put the frame back together.

Here's the view of the back - not so pretty.

7.       Here’s the end result. Sometimes it bothers me that the squares aren’t perfectly straight, but mostly I love it and I admire it all of the time.

Hopefully this inspires you to sift through your pins and finally try one of those DIY projects you tagged a year ago; not all of them will end up on those Pinterest fail blogs...

Food Friday: Mango Salsa Salad

Zach and I have always loved the mango pineapple salsa our friend Jenn makes. Any time we went to a potluck event with her Zach would text her and request that she bring the awesome salsa and chips just for him (side note: Jenn always brought the Whole Foods homemade tortilla chips that you can find in the salad bar area. Not only are these the BEST CHIPS EVER, they go especially well with this dip). Well a few years ago Jenn moved away and the amazing salsa and chips left our lives (we miss Jenn too, but mostly her yummy snack). Right now Zach is in a mango kick, so I thought it would be nice to try to turn this salsa he used to love into a salad for dinner tonight.

I began by making the salsa the night before since letting it sit overnight helps the flavors mix for a more delicious end product. Also, it made dinner prep go by quickly.

All those colors mixed together look so yummy…

I cooked up some taco “meat”  with crumbled tempeh, taco seasoning, and some splashes of soy sauce.

I was hoping it would get crispy, but that didn’t work out – probably because I wasn’t using oil.

I blended half of the mango salsa to make a dressing. You can add pineapple juice reserved from the canned pineapple or water to make it runnier if you want.

The beautiful colors turned into a brown goo, but it was still delicious.

Assembling the salad was easy. I mixed together spinach, black beans, chopped tomato, chopped avocado, the taco “meat,” and the remaining mango salsa. Then I topped it all with the dressing.

I wish I had taken a picture before adding the brown goo – I promise it looked much tastier.

I thought this salad was really easy to put together and yummy. Zach loved the salad too and immediately recognized it as a throwback to the snack he once obsessed over.

Here’s the recipe (I know it has a lot of ingredients, but it’s not that hard to put together, especially if you make the salsa ahead of time):

Manga Salsa Salad

4 servings, vegan, sugar-free, oil-free

Mango Salsa

·         2 mangoes, diced

·         1 20 oz. can pineapple tidbits (drain and reserve juice)

·         Juice from 2 small limes

·         2 jalapenos, diced

·         ½ red onion, diced

·         1 red bell pepper, diced

·         ½ cilantro leaves, chopped

·         1 bunch green onions, chopped

Vegan Taco Meat

·         2 8oz pkgs tempeh

·         Splashes of soy sauce to taste

·         4-6 T Taco seasoning (you can buy this or make your own)

Taco Seasoning (makes about 4 Tbsp)

·         4 tsp chili powder

·         2 tsp cumin

·         1 tsp smoked paprika

·         1 tsp cayenne powder

·         1 tsp oregano

·         1 tsp onion powder

·         1 tsp garlic powder

·         1 tsp salt

·         ½ tsp black pepper

Salad

·         1 can black beans

·         2 handfuls chopped spinach

·         2 tomatoes, diced

·         1-2 avocados, diced

1.       To make salsa - mix all ingredients together in a bowl.

2.       To make taco “meat” - heat crumbled tempeh in a pan on medium heat along with a few splashes of soy sauce, 2-3 tablespoons taco seasoning, and ¼ cup water.

3.       To make dressing - blend half of the salsa together. Add pineapple juice (reserved from can of pineapple tidbits) or water to thin dressing if desired.

4.       To assemble salad - mix spinach, beans, tomatoes, avocado, remaining salsa, taco meat, and dressing together in a large bowl.

Thursday Travel Tales: Austin Part I

The theme of this travel tale will be our trip to Austin, TX last Christmas. Before I start the story, I need to provide two pieces of background information: 

1) Zach and I go to extreme measures to save money while traveling. I’m not sure exactly why Zach and I get crazy thrifty while traveling, but it probably stems from the fact that we met while traveling at a time when we were both poor students, so acting poor on trips reminds us of the good ‘ol days. Regardless, the weird thing about this habit is that we’re extremely inconsistent about when we decide it’s time to sacrifice to save money and when it’s okay to treat ourselves. Here are two examples:

·         In college Zach and I went on a trip to Disney World. We bought crazy expensive park tickets, had no problem paying $20/day for parking, and ate at the nicest restaurants in the park. But we didn’t want to spend money on a hotel, so we slept in our car in a Wal-Mart parking lot for 2 nights. We definitely had enough money to afford a hotel, but for some reason we thought it would be better to be super sketchy and sleep in our car like homeless people.

Can you tell we’d been “showering” in a Wal-Mart bathroom?

·         During our hooray-college-is-over-let’s-go-to-Australia trip we stayed on this private island on the Great Barrier Reef which cost $400/night (I know, whoa). Once we got there though we decided that the food on the island was a bit expensive, so we resolved not to eat any of it. This means we survived for four days off of snacks we had in our bag (which consisted of a 4 apples, 4 bananas, a jar of nutella, 2 granola bars, and a few slices of bread) rather than spend money on food.

Don’t we look hungry?

      2) Zach and I have had some mini-fights about what traditions from our childhoods to keep alive when the two of us (and eventually our kids) celebrate Christmas. The Christmas we spent in Austin was the first Christmas we’d be spending alone since we got married, so we were excited to execute the previously agreed-upon plan of following only one tradition from each person’s childhood, and then making up new ones for our kids. The tradition I picked is going to the movie theater on Christmas day (which is a pretty big deal since I usually only go to the movie theater 2-3 per year).  The tradition Zach picked is going to eat Chinese food on Christmas day, since that’s usually the only type of restaurant open.

Here's Zach, his sister, and me participating in one of his traditions that didn't make the cut - 

opening one present (always pajamas) on Christmas Eve.

Okay, back to the Austin story. Zach and I made a long term goal a few years ago to visit all 50 states together, so we decided to visit Texas over Christmas break, even though we have no friends or family to visit there, so that we could cross it off of the list. (In case you’re interested, we’ve been to 15 states together so far, so we still have a long way to go – I keep track of this along with a number of other long-term goals in a spreadsheet titled “Bucket List,” which gives you a little insight into how obsessive I am about tracking my progress against random self-imposed standards). Anyway, last Christmas after we opened our presents we packed, headed to the airport, and then got on a plane to Austin.

Here I am being weird at the Austin airport.

Because of our strange thriftiness thing, we decided not to rent a car for the first two days of our trip in order to save a measly $40. My plan was to get a cab to the house we were renting, then use the free bikes included in the rental to get around for the first few days, and then on our last day in Austin we’d walk about 2 miles to get to a rental car place and pick up our car.

So we got our cab to the rental house fine, but once we got there the door was locked and the key wasn’t under the mat like we were told it would be – uh oh. It turns out the lady we were renting this house from forgot to put the key in place because it was Christmas and she was busy, so we waited about 10 minutes for her to drive over and bring the key – no big deal. We got inside and immediately looked up directions to the nearest Chinese restaurant and movie theater. Luckily, there was a restaurant right next to a movie theater, and our movie (Catching Fire) wasn’t scheduled to start for another 2 hours. So we bundled up and started our bike ride.

So I’m not a bike snob like Zach – who’s the kind of guy that loves bikes so much that he prefers to be fastened to them every time he rides – but I do like it when my bike chain stays attached for the entire ride and my gears only change when I press them (crazy, I know). Well unfortunately these free bikes didn’t offer these minor comforts, so getting to our destination was a little more difficult than we had foreseen (driving there in a rental car would have been infinitely faster - and warmer).

We did manage to get to the movie theater safely, at which point I told Zach to go get the tickets while I called my mom, then we would head across the street to eat dinner. Well Zach went to get the movie tickets, but saw that the actual show time was 7pm, not 8pm like we saw online (when is the online time ever wrong?!) and he came back and asked me what to do. Well I was on the phone and kind of shooed him away and told him to figure out something else – which I thought meant he would find another movie for us to watch. At this point Zach was torn – because it seemed to him that we had only two options, see the movie I wanted to watch and fulfill my Christmas tradition (7pm was the last show time of the night), or go to the Chinese restaurant for dinner and fulfill his tradition (we didn’t have time to eat there before 7pm and we couldn’t go after the movie because it closed at 9pm). So being the gallant man he is, he chose to sacrifice his tradition for mine and bought the 7pm movie tickets.

So when he got back I was off of the phone and he told me about the new plan – go see the movie I wanted to see, then figure something out afterwards for dinner. At this point I’m ashamed to say that I flipped out – mainly because I realized very quickly that this meant I was going to have to skip dinner, because there would absolutely be no place open after 9pm on Christmas day where we would be able to get food. Also, if I had to pick between the two traditions, I would have picked Zach’s – because his includes food, and food always wins. But Zach had already bought the tickets, so we had no choice but to go inside and get seats for our movie. I headed to the concession stand to find something to eat which was extremely daunting considering our uber-constrained diet (I ended up settling on two sad-looking pretzels wrapped in plastic with yellow mustard for $15 – very festive!). We watched the movie and it was actually really good, and then we ended the evening with a cold, rainy, uphill bike ride back to the rental house. Needless to say, not the best start to our trip. I try not to think about it, but if we had a car we would have gotten to the theater much quicker and had time to pick up take-out before the movie started. Then we could have kept the food in the car and eaten it at home afterwards. Oh well.

Yay Catching Fire! I heart Katniss ... but not as much as I heart food.

This post is getting super long, so I’ll continue the Austin recap in next week’s installment of Thursday Travel Tales. The next post will have more pictures and fewer words (maybe), so get excited.

We can do it! Wednesdays: new exercise goal

The goal I’m going to focus on for the month of April is to exercise more often. I used to achieve this goal without a sweat (pun intended) in college when I could go to the gym early in the morning and get my daily workout over with before my day got crazy. But now I need to be to work by 7 each morning, which means waking up at 5:30. So if I wanted to work out before work, I’d have to wake up at 4:30. I actually did try this for a few weeks, but 4:30am pushed the limits of what this self-proclaimed morning person could handle (I think it’s because it’s too close to being in the “really late at night” zone for my body to consider it morning). Anyway, since that experiment didn’t work, I have to deal with going to the gym after work, and by 5pm my mind has had a lot of time to come up with excuses and rationalizations for not working out. So long story short, while I do go to the gym fairly often (about 3 times per week), it’s still not as often as I would like and as is probably ideal for my body.

Since the internet people don’t really agree on what the ideal amount of exercise should be, I decided to go with the CDC recommendations for two somewhat arbitrary reasons 1) the CDC is funded by the government, which is funded in part by me, which kind of makes me a sponsor of their advice and 2) their recommendations are more than what I’m doing now, but not outside of the bounds of what I think I could reasonably do each week. I got the following info straight from this CDC webpage.

The CDC is kind of funny because they have two levels they provide guidelines for: amount needed “for important health benefits” and amount needed “for even greater health benefits.” Since I’m super competitive I scrolled right past that lame “for important health benefits” garbage right to the activity levels for the few people willing to work towards the elusive “even greater health benefits.”

The CDC site gives three options to get these even greater benefits:

1	5 hours each week of moderate intensity activity AND muscle strengthening activities that  work out the whole body at least 2 days per week
2	2.5 hours each week of vigorous intensity activity AND muscle strengthening activities that  work out the whole body at least 2 days per week
3	An equivalent mix of moderate and vigorous intensity activity AND muscle strengthening activities that  work out the whole body at least 2 days per week

Okay, so at this point I had more questions than answers and was a little ashamed to be a distant sponsor of this guideline. But the site isn’t so bad and most of my questions were answered after scrolling down a little bit on the webpage. My main question was about the difference between moderate and vigorous intensity activity and the answer is: A LOT. So according to the CDC, moderate activity is lame stuff that I wouldn’t even consider to be working out like walking, biking on level ground, and pushing a lawn mower. (Now to be fair, this might not be considered “lame stuff” for those who are new to exercise, but I’ve been at it for years, so I need a little more). Vigorous activity is stuff that actually gets your heart rate going like running, biking up hills, and pretty much any type of cardio workout you would do at the gym. Since I don’t want to worry about tracking my moderate intensity activities all of the time, I’ve decided to go with goal #2 from the table above. Now that I have my goal, I’ll be working towards it for the month of April and will provide my first round of updates next week.

I'll end this with a picture of me doing some physical activity in Zion:

See you tomorrow!

trip report: denver

Zach and I went to Denver together for the first time this past Labor Day weekend. The trip was extra special because it was the first time I planned an entire trip without telling Zach. I surprised him with the trip and he didn't know the destination until we got to the gate at the airport. Here were some of the trip highlights:

Our first night there we went to a great wine bar where I had a Cab flight and Zach had a sparkling wine flight. Yum!

We went to the taste of Colorado twice while we were visiting and I think Zach's favorite part of the whole trip was getting free packets of Snyder's pretzels.

We hiked a little around the Garden of the Gods.

Zach's standing on one of the capitol steps, exactly 1 mile above sea level.

We drove up Pike's Peak in our rental. Zach was driving in manual like a crazy person, but he had a lot of fun. Here's a picture at one of the stops.

We made it to the top of Pike's Peak! Zach was worried we would get altitude sickness but we were just fine. We celebrated our accomplishment with fudge and donuts.

recipe: oil-free, mostly sugar-free, and vegan zucchini bread

My co-worker brought me a huge zucchini from his garden yesterday and the first thing I thought when I saw it was “zucchini bread.” Lately I’ve been trying to avoid processed sugars and oil though, so I assumed zucchini bread that met these requirements would be impossible to make. Well with the exception of 1 tbsp of honey, I was able to make a recipe that was pretty good. The key to my success was making date paste to substitute sugar. I’ve listed the recipe below (adapted from this recipe from Oh She Glows) plus a few pictures of the finished product. The bread is pretty moist (which makes sense since I used wet sugars instead of dry ones) but it’s very tasty and not overly sweet.

Ingredients

½ cup pitted dates + ¼ cup hot water for date paste

1 fake egg (either a flax egg with 1 Tbsp ground flax + 3 Tbsp water or other egg substitute)

1 ¼ cup packed shredded zucchini (include peel)

1 Tbsp lemon zest

2 tsp lemon juice

1 Tbsp honey

1 cup non-dairy milk

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

½ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

1/3 cup raisins

1/3 cup chopped walnuts

Instructions

1. Soak dates in hot water for at least an hour. Process dates with water in a food process or blender to make date paste.

2. Preheat oven to 375˚F. Make fake egg and set aside to thicken.

3. In a large bowl, mix together date paste, fake egg, zucchini, lemon zest, lemon juice, honey, and milk.

4. Carefully stir in remaining ingredients just until combined.

5. Pour mixture into a lightly greased loaf pan.

6. Bake at 375˚F for 40 minutes. At end of baking increase temperature to 400˚F and bake an additional 10 minutes. Allow bread to cool before serving.

 The corner piece is always the best.

Yum!