17 | September | 2012 | nutcaseinpoint

It’s me again.

I have been doing homework ALL.DAMN.DAY. Lots of reading and researching and discussion questions…ay yay yay.

I have been breaking it up with household chores, errands, walks, and intermittent exercises.

And recipe making. Since it’s time for me to take another mental break, I decided to write a post to share my recipes from today!

First up, Summer Salad. This was inspired by a recipe from Athena’s blog-she actually made it for me when I stayed at her place last month. I didn’t have the exact ingredients, so I made up my own.

Summer Salad

Here’s what you’ll need:

cucumber
tomatoes
onion
garbanzo beans
kidney beans
olive oil
lemon juice
S&P

Here’s what you do:

1. Dice up the cucumber, tomatoes, and onion (I am not listing amounts because that’s up to you. I made just enough for lunch/dinner, but you can obviously make as much as you want- and add more of the ingredients you like better)

2. Rinse the beans.

3. Mix all the ingredients. For my batch, I used 2 capfuls of lemon juice and 3 capfuls of olive oil.

4. S&P to taste.

Next, Deviled Eggs.

I have never made deviled eggs before, but I had a mean craving for them today. Weird.

Here’s what you’ll need:

dozen eggs
2 t. mustard
1/3 c mayo
1/4 t tabasco
paprika
S&P

Here’s what you do:

1. Hard boil the eggs. Don’t know how to? Google it.

2. Peel the eggs (duh). Cut them in half length-wise with a sharp knife.

3. Empty the yolks in a bowl and mash them up.

4. Add the mustard, mayo, tabasco, paprika to taste, and S&P. Mix it up.

5. Spoon the mixture into each half. Sprinkle with paprika for presentation.

Ok, back to work I go. I still have to get in a workout too! Oof.

Layla says hi.

Hey guys. Happy new week! I gotta make this post short and sweet AGAIN because school started today and I am SWAMPED already. Basically, the next 11 weeks are going to suck BALLS because these courses are crazy intense. I am starting out nice and organized with binders and tabs and notepads and what-not, so hopefully that will help out!

So, this fitness retreat I was telling you about. It was awesome. I am so incredibly sore today and have been hobbling around running errands all morning. Yet, I am really excited to get in a workout today with all the new methods, toys, and knowledge I gained from the weekend.

I got to the retreat center around 8pm after hitching a ride from some of the other instructors. Of course, there was an ice-breaker that determined our ‘color’ based on our responses to particular questions. I turned out to be a Green (detail oriented, independent, blah blah blah). If I was doing this same course at a retreat with my Boston gym friends I would have totally been an Orange (wild, outgoing, woo woo woo).

Our cabin were nice, minus the bunk with practically no mattress that I had to sleep on. So I got roughly 45 minutes of sleep the entire night. The next morning was super weird- BLTs were served for breakfast! I opted for rice crispies with soy milk (thank god for that).

I got into all 4 classes that I wanted, which meant I was going to be in interactive classes for 6 hours. Interactive= sweating.

The first class I took was Booty Camp with Mindy Mylrea. She gave us a handout with the information she would presenting us with over the course of 90 minutes. She started with about a 10 minute lecture, then got us up on our feet moving and grooving and sweating and eventually crying in agony. Good stuff.

This lady really means business. She was so energetic and happy and awesome and awesome and awesome. Of course, there were points where I was screaming bad words to myself, but I really did love it. In fact, I was that person who threw the bender ball across the room by accident.

The purpose of this session wasn’t for OUR workout. It was to educate us on how to target muscles in our lower half that we don’t normally target. Ladies have strong quads, men have great butts. She had us using the bender ball for exercises that would really get those hamstrings and glutes so that we could have awesome man-butts. (Yes there were men in the class, and she praised them for their behinds. She also made a joke right off the bat- as we were squeezing the ball between our thighs- that men have great butts because they’re always carrying their balls around, so we should do the same.)

Oh, and tabatas. We did a tabata of jumps. Just JUMPS. And I died. She had us put the balls on the ground in front of us (not really to use, but as a point of reference to GET LOW on every jump). The first two rounds were squat jumps, 3&4 were staggered on the right, 5&6 staggered on the left, 7&8 back to jump squats. I was ready for a nap, but I had about 4.5 hours of exercise to go for the day.

I ended up buying all the equipment she had because

It was an excellent price
I wanted more options to have for my at-home workouts

I am going to have to recap these classes in different posts because I really have to get back to my homework, but in other current events:

I went through one of those automatic car washed this AM. I have never been the driver of a vehicle through one of those things. I was screaming with delight just like I did when I was younger. How lame.

Then I had to bring my car to be assessed for hail damage from a storm that happened over a month ago. Turns out, the repair cost was only $200 less than the value of the car, so I don’t get to have it written off. Instead, I get to bring it back next week for repairs and have a rental for a few days. Another first for me.