Category: Uncategorized

I was quite lazy today.  Swam a 900 and called it good.

I focused a lot on bilateral breathing during the workout.  It’s making me not look forward to the laps I swim using the crawl so much, but I’m gritting my teeth through it.  In a couple of months, I’ll be back to being smooth and fluid again.

Retraining my body from one thing to another is something I’ve encountered a lot in my life.  The first time was the transition from dancer to martial artist.   You ballet dancers out there, imagine that instead of extending the leg with a pointed toe, you have to pull your toes back so that the first body part presented is the ball of the foot?  Why yes, I’ve broken toes kicking before.  Why do you ask?

The next time I had to rebehave was when I switched from Isshin-ryu karate to Kyokushin.   See, in Isshin-ryu, a straight punch is delivered with the fist vertical and the thumb on top.  It’s fast, and yes, you can break a board with it.  In almost any other style of karate in the world, a straight punch  starts with the  fist  (made with the thumb folded across the fingers) knuckles to the floor at the hip, and the delivered with a twist bringing the knuckles up as you strike the target.  I still revert to the vertical punch when I practice, but can keep it together enough to do a proper kata in those style that do not habitually use the vertical punch.

I suppose that if you’re drawn to activities that are highly technical, that you just kind of have to get used to the fact you’ll have to retrain your body from time to time.

I just had a tomato sandwich.  Why yes, I was thinking of Harriet the Spy.

Then I got to thinking about all the books I really enjoyed as a kid and the Ramona books started fluttering through my mind.

About a year ago I went to Portland, Oregon to visit some friends.  I never mentioned it to anyone, but in the back of my mind, I was always kind of peeping at the crowds and looking for Ramona Quimby.  I don’t think the Portland I saw with the Voodoo Doughnuts and was the Portland Beverly Cleary was portraying. (Though Powell’s, on the other hand…)

I always had this idea that when Ramona grew up and became an architect (I always felt like she’d be an architect when she grew up) that she’d run across Henry Huggins and actually start dating him.   And he’d propose to her.  And he’d do so with an earthworm ring.

Personnel at my gym are required to be certified as with CPR and the automated defibrillator.

Man, things have changed since I took this course when I was 14 or so.  The AED was not a common piece of first aid equipment and the CPR procedure has changed quite a bit.   Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, ferinstance, you were supposed to do 4 compressions to 2 breaths.  The ratio is now 30 to 2 on adults.

The equipment is different, too.  Does anyone remember those Annie dolls?  Creepy as they are, you now practice  on a bald torso, which is creepier and use a mask.  I was an idiot and forgot to buy myself the glove and mask kit I’m suppose to carry now.  I wasn’t told going in, but if you take the course, you’re suppose to render aid if needed, even when you’re not on the job.   I mean, God, who wouldn’t!  But they make a big deal of that now.

Glad to have the info, of course, but golly I hope I’ll never need it.

I have to say I don’t much like the dolls they have now, as they don’t have a feedback mechanism to make sure you’ve got the respiration right.  The old Annie dolls did.  I can only suppose they’re ruinously expensive.

Because this is important information:

A 1973 Lite Brite has approximately 3.6 DPI.

This was actually researched for a professional reason for someone who lives in my house.

Yes, we’re nerds.

When you’re trying to make a habit of something, it’s often a good idea to have some simple way of targeting what’s a good minimum for you having fulfilled the requirements of the activity.

I was thinking about it this week because I’d been on vacation visiting my parents. My parents do have a pretty nice home gym, with a really nice stationary bike, a pretty complete weight set and a couple of other bits of equipment (including a television for relieving cardio boredom).

I only used it twice in the three full days I was there and was trying to decide how much “counted” for exercise. We did spend all day one day touring historic sites and did a whole bunch of walking — the day I didn’t wind up using the gym.

Because of 12 hours of sitting on a train, I came home to more joint pain than I’ve experienced in some years¹.  I actually blew off my Saturday weight session yesterday.  I chose to go ahead, take some painkillers and do my normal Sunday walk today and found that getting the blood flowing was helpful and made me feel better.

Which is where “minimum compliance” comes in.  Many people really do, no kidding, have mobility issues, pain issues and what have you.  Now for me, I don’t like to do without my workouts because if I do, I just plain don’t feel very good.  But, do I ever hurt too much to do a planned activity?  Hell yes!

I’ve decided that for me, my own minimum compliance will be quite small — 14 minutes of activity that’s strenuous enough to get me sweaty.  I picked that because if all I have in me is 14 minutes, I’ll likely be doing a Shovelglove workout.   I’m not really strong enough to go much longer, and that’s the “official” workout anyway).  But if that’s all I have in me, that’s okay.  It’s enough.

Now my usual workout is more like 30-50 minutes, depending on what I’m doing.  But I think that for me, having some small minimum that’ll “count” as having worked out will be helpful in the workout habit building.

I’m not beating myself up for blowing off yesterday, mind.  But habit is powerful, and I think it’s important.  I notice I’m very bad at maintaining habits when traveling and I’m looking for good, workable intelligent solutions for that.

However, I’ve improved.  Instead of allowing the change in schedule to throw me much, I was able to jump back into my proper routine fairly quickly.  There have been times when being thrown off schedule for a week meant another week to get back into my groove.  Reducing that to one day is a definite improvement.

¹Memo to me: If you ever take that long of a train ride again, remember that walking the length of the train every hour will help prevent that!

Calf raises	85	3	11
Stiff-legged deadlifts	85	3	11
Squats	85	3	11
Bench Press	65	3	11
Lat Pulldown	80	3	11
Seated Row	70	3	12
Inverted Situps	body	3	10

Today was challenging without feeling scary or icky. That’s good. But it was challenging!

I saw a pic of a woman I used to work with who got into weights in a big way. She was unfit, then got real fit. In the pic she looks like she’s squatting about 215 lbs. That’s about twice her body weight. At a guess. Might not be quite that, as obviously she is really strong, and muscle is dense. She’s just not bulked out, ya know?

Does the fact she can squat so much more than I do make me feel like a wimp? Eh… Sorta, but not exactly. I have a pretty clear idea of what she went through to get where she is. It’s more like, “That’ll be me in a couple of years!”

There was a woman using the lifting platform to work out with the Bosu ball and a medicine ball today at the gym.  They’re good for balance work.   In sober truth, I really oughta add some of that sort of work to my fitness routine, but I’m concentrating on lifting at the moment.  You can stand on the blue portion while doing all sorts of exercises or turn it over and use it as a balance board.  My PT was encouraging me to get one after my surgery.  I remember thinking (before I started the workout) that I’ve studied ballet and martial arts and such for decades.   I didn’t need that.

Heh. Yeah, I kinda did.  My balance ain’t all that.

I’ll be more likely to use the one at the gym if I start doing it.  These things cost close to a hundred bucks and if I’m gonna spend a c-note on exercise equipment, it’s gonna be a bench.

I’ve seen people do squats on these things.   I do not yet have the guts.

I want a Kronk of my very own. Where does one find one? Of course, there are often days I feel like Yzma-kitty, so maybe that ain’t so hot after all.

Okay, you’ve probably run across the concept — bulk cooking, Once a Month Cooking (OAMC), Frozen Assets, Freezer Cooking.

Whatever you call it, the concept remains the same.  You cook meals ahead and freeze them.  Now, when you do this, the resultant meals are not going to send your little gourmet taste buds into quivering delight.  You’re not going to be getting perfect meals at their peak of flavor.  If that’s what you’re worried about more than anything, chances are good that cooking is a hobby or profession with you and you’re unlikely ever to let your hand rest on the phone while you argue with yourself that just because you’re tired from a long day at work, the kids are whining and you don’t feel creative, that it’s not an excuse to call for a pizza. If this is not your world, freezer cooking will likely mean little to you.

Now, while I genuinely do like my gourmet meals (I live with a chef, after all), I’m not up to that kind of cooking every night.  There are times when I just want my damned dinner and to be able to sit down with the family and not sweat too much how dinner got there.

There are a lot of ways to do it.  You may have heard of Once a Month Cooking. I’ll provide some links at the end of this article, but I do not do this.  If it sounds like a good idea to you, try it and let me know how it turned out.  You might sell me on it.

What I do is a little different.  I’ve seen it called “Mini sessions”.  I’ll have a certain kind of meat, then make a bunch of meals to freeze centered around that.   So, when I do my hamburger session, I’ll make meatballs, chili, shepherd’s pie, Impossible cheeseburger pie, and burritos.   My hamburger session is the big session and it takes about four hours.  The last chicken session, I made chicken pot pie, chicken curry, and froze some diced, cooked chicken that I can throw in a stir fry, or make into a spaghetti sauce — whatever I get a wild hare across my butt to do.    I think it took me about two hours of actual work.  I don’t count the time stuff is in a crock pot and I’m blissfully in the bath.  On my Italian session, I made a big ole pot of marinara sauce, pizzas, and two lasagnas.   That’s the quickest, and takes an hour or so, again not counting the time I spend screwing around doing other things while the marinara sauce cooks away in the crock pot.

To supplement this, I’ll make planned-overs. I’ll make a big pot of soup, cook it all day in the crock pot, have half to eat and freeze the other half before I serve the meal.  That’s a little trick I got from the Organizedhome.com.  If you don’t do this, people going back for seconds, or picking all the meat out, or whatever, will prevent that extra you cooked from being a full meal.

I’m not going to provide a million recipes, or anything like that.  The links at the bottom of the article have all this stuff quite well covered and I see no need to get into it again.  What I do what to talk about is how to make it work, and explain why it might be a desirable thing to do.

First on desirability?  It’s cheaper — a lot cheaper.  I actually questioned this when reading about bulk cooking in its various forms.  All of them were extolling the virtues of a home-cooked meal, and how it was cheaper than being all worn out and wanting to go through the drive through.  Well… I’ve got the home-cooked meal most nights covered.  I cannot recall the last time when even a working majority of my household went through a drive through.  It’s been a few months, I can tellya that!  We’ve ordered a pizza to be delivered twice in the last six months.  Resorting to fast food is just not something my family has really ever done much.  So, the savings there would be minimal.  You get the savings because bulk cooking forces you to plan.  (If you have a menu plan and shopping list you stick to over a period of months, then this method is not going to significantly increase grocery savings.   You’re already doing well.  Pat yourself on the back).  Bulk cooking also reduces waste.  Have you ever bought something with an eye to making a meal down the road only to put it off until the ingredients are spoiled?  This happens when the menu plan strays from the reality of how much time you’ll actually spend in the kitchen!  If you’re preparing meals to freeze, you’re not going to have a problem with that.  It’s cooked, it’s wrapped well (more on that later), and it’s going to keep awhile in that freezer.  Less chance of green hairy stuff in the back of the freezer demanding voting rights.

Second?  It saves a lot of time.  It takes about 10% more time to assemble two lasagnas at one time than it does one.   It doesn’t take twice the time to double or triple most recipes, so once you’re cooking, you might as well freeze ahead.  I can tell you I love coming home, popping those burritos in the oven and feeling free to kick back and noodle on the ‘net, play with the kids or take a hot bath while dinner is cooking.  I don’t know about you, but I come home tired and being able to relax knowing that I’m going to be able to have a good dinner with my family feels good to me.

So, how do you make this work?

The first thing you need to make sure of is that you have the proper equipment.  While you can do a bulk cooking session just with the standard pot, pans and knives, there are a few extras that make things nice.    The two biggest, in my opinion, are the six quart crock pot and the food processor.  The food processor cuts the the dicing time to almost nothing, and the crock pot is great not only for prepping soups, stews or stocks, but the really big one is perfect for planned-overs.  I also get disposable aluminum pans for casseroles and such.  If you don’t want to go that route, it’s a good idea to get a few extra baking pans of the size you’ll use for the casseroles.  You can spray the pan with cooking spray, line it very well, assemble your casserole in it, freeze it, then pop it out of the pan to wrap and then reuse the pan later.  You also must have some way to mark the wrapped meals.  I promise you that you will not be able to just look at a properly wrapped meal and be able to tell what it is.  Freezer labels are cheap, as are permanent markers.  Protect your investment of time and money with this stuff.

Next, you need your plan.  I really recommend some good cooking software to streamline the planning process.  I use Mastercook and like it a lot.  You can create a meal/cooking plan directly from the recipes you have, scale them to the quantities you want, and create a shopping list directly from that.  (One that you can put on your PDA.  That, I really, really like!) However, there are some links at the bottom of this article that list some very good websites that have recipes and can generate shopping lists from them as well.  In your plan, I think it is a good idea to take a look at the sales.  If there’s a big sale on some sort of meat, it’s a good time to plan a cooking session around it.

So then, you need to shop.  My mini-sessions usually yield between 8 and 10 meals, so it’s a respectable-sized grocery run.  I have shopped on the same day I cooked, but that’s a long day.  I don’t recommend it if you can avoid it.  Of course, you know all the standard shopping rules about not shopping hungry and sticking to your list.

Once you’ve made your plan and shopped, you’re all ready to cook, right?

Nope.  Not yet.

Take a look at your counters.  Do you have ample counter space?  (In my 37 years, I’ve lived 8 months with ample counter space).  Cluttered?  Clear them of everything you do not intend to use for that cooking session.  Yes, that means the coffee pot.  Stow it in the bedroom, or wherever for the next few hours.  You’re going to need all the space you can get.  Move the crock pot to another surface once you’ve got the stuff you’re going to cook in it set up.  You can put it anywhere near a plug where a child won’t pull it down on top of her head, so be creative.  If you’re not going to use the mixer, move it.  The more space to spread out for the assembly-line stuff, the better.  Make sure that all your cooking utensils are clean and ready to go.  If have a dishwasher, make sure it’s empty.  Fill your kitchen sink with hot, soapy water so you can clean as you go.  You do not want to end this session with a huge mess, and if you clean as you go, you won’t.

The cooking itself?  You know how to cook or you wouldn’t be considering this.  Do keep in mind that because you’re putting together several of the same sort of meals at a time, you can make the assembly line process work for you.  When the meal is assembled, however, comes storage.

You have gone to a lot of work.  Oh sure, in the long run, it’ll be a lot less work than making a meal every day, but still, you’ve put a lot of time and money into this, and you don’t want it wasted.  Make very very sure that you cool down your meals before you wrap them and put them in the freezer.  Many chefs, if they intend to freeze food immediately, use waterproof containers and ice water baths to chill the food in preparation for freezing.  Once the meal is cooled enough to put in the freezer wrap it well and keep the air out!  Air is what makes freezer burn possible, after all.  I buy professional grade wrap from a local warehouse store (it’s actually cheaper than what you get in the grocery store in addition to being of superior quality).  If you are using freezer bags (and choose freezer rather than storage bags.  A spoiled meal is more expensive than the increase in price on the heavier bag), make sure you get all the air out before you close it.  If your freezer space is limited, remember that you can freeze foods flat in freezer bags, then restack them in better ways once they’re blocks of ice.  Freeze things in a square rather than round to make better use of limited cubic as well.   If space is not a big consideration, one trick that can work well for soups and sauces you will reheat is to freeze them in the pot you will use to reheat them, then take the frozen disc out of the pot, wrap the disc well, label and date it, then pop it back in to reheat whenever you like.

Do remember to label and date.  This is a biggie.  No, you’re not an exception.  Label the food, date it and keep an inventory.  I personally have a list of meals with boxes next to them, and I cross off meals as they’re used.  I know of people who use a whiteboard to make a list and just erase as used.  However, you really, really do want an inventory.

After all this is done, whenever you want to cook one of the meals, take it out of the freezer to thaw it in the morning, reheat it that night, and you’re all good.

Links

Cooking software, recipe sites, and shopping list generators

• AllRecipes.com — If you join, you can create a recipe box of your own and other’s recipes, and generate a shopping list from that.  I’ve used it for years as my recipe lookup and have always been satisfied.
• Cook of the Month — This site is directly designed for Once a Month Cooking with meal planning and shopping options. It has an option to put your shopping list on a PDA.
• Mastercook — This is the software I use.

Vegetarian OAMC recipes

• http://www.ellenskitchen.com/bigpots/oamc/vegweek.html
• http://www.christysclipart.com/vegetarian.html
• http://www.motherspirit.net/articles/simpleliving/OMAC.htm

Freezing Guidelines
Frozen Assets:  Cook for a Day, Eat for a Month
OAMC Recipes

The Beast and I had been talking to the kids about “penny candy” (the kids have never seen that), and what things cost now compared with what they used to cost. We started laughing about how we sounded like our parents.

I had been curled up in my favorite chair in the living room, playing on a laptop with a wireless connection, updating my iPod. At one point I finally said, “Yeah, you pay seventy-five cents for a candy bar, but on the other hand, you couldn’t have an orchestra in your hand for any price.”

Not entirely true. Transistor radios came out on the market in 1954. Interestingly enough, when you do the inflation conversion, they were more expensive than the 30GB iPod is right now. (I’ve no idea what an iPod cost when it first came out. If it was under $300, it was still cheaper).

Still, it is funny to me what’s available to us. It’s even funnier when I compare it to the science fiction I’ve always loved. Asimov mentions “pocket computers” in his short stories of the 1940s. I have two (palm pilot and an iPod).

In Friday, written by Robert A. Heinlein in 1982, Heinlein discusses a society that has… well, the Internet as we actually use it, really. While our telephones are not yet integrated into our computers as a matter of course, nor do we use video phones, they can be, and many people do that even now with webcams. Certainly we write letters, pay bills, shop, arrange for travel, watch performances and do research via our computer terminals. Yes, the internet existed in 1982, but it was not something routinely used by the average working stiff who did not work in a technology field. Hell, even my systems engineer father did not use email in 1982. It’s funny. Many of the things that were meant to be futuristic in that novel seem very routine. When she talks about “sticking your card in the slot to pay for something” or to draw cash? How many of you were using ATMs or point of sale terminals in 1981? Visa came out with the POS terminal in 1979. They did exist, but were not in widespread use until a few years later, and people were not using cardholder-activated terminals until the mid-1990s in California. (For the credit card market, California is the usual test market. If it goes well, then it goes to New York City, then other large cities – the deep South being the last place for the change).

I’ve spent most of my life having the wonders of computer technology pointed out to me. My father got into the computer industry a few months before I was born in the late 1960s. I can remember as a very little girl being taken into a room with a bunch of tapes on wheels and my father very proudly showing me a quaint little punch card machine. He’d written a small program that would print my name in punch code on the card. When I was nine or ten, Mom gave Dad a pocket calculator for his birthday and Dad commented that it had more computing power than ENIAC^*. I thought that was really cool.

But it’s not just computers, and it’s not just really new technology that fascinates me. I have comforts and services available to me that no king from even 200 years ago could have at any price. While I bemoan being fat, I do like the fact that food is cheap and easy to obtain in my society. I find it offensive that given the abundance and the technology we have that the distribution problem has not been solved well enough that this boon is available to the rest of the world. The technological infrastructure that supports our entire distribution system is truly amazing. I find the automobile and the spinning wheel (and how they changed the way we live) as fascinating as the microchip.

Do I think all new technology is automatically wonderful? Sure do. Oh, I think we often suffer from cranio-recto inversion when it comes to its implementation, and we’ve been doing it since long before we hunted wooly mammoths into extinction. But our nifty monkey brains and the shiny things we can come up with are just awfully cool.

So, where’s my flying car that folds into a suitcase?

^*I don’t know if all my readers are nerds or not, but if you’re not, ENIAC was built in the early 1940s and is usually considered the first digital computer. It was two stories tall, used 18,000 vacuum tubes, and weighed about 30 tons. You are now reading this on a machine with a processing speed millions of times more powerful.