2 recipes + 2 workouts

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Jen @nutcaseinpoint

I have TWO recipes and TWO workouts to share with you. All FOUR are fantastic. (I can do maths!)

First up, the recipes. Both used my favorite protein powder, Click. Seriously, I can’t get enough of the stuff. I’ve already shared an awesome cookie recipe using Click. Now if only they sold their product in Canada, I would be so much happier.

Friday, I made an awesomely yummy smoothie.

Ingredients:

1 scoop of Click
1/4 c. plain greek yogurt
1 c unsweetened almond milk
handful of blueberries
handful of strawberries

It had a wonderful combination of fruit with a kick of espresso.

My second Click recipe to share with you is a concoction of chocolatey, blueberry goodness. In the form of pancakes. Oh my god, my stomach was so happy with these.

Ingredients:

1 c flour
2 1/4 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1 t sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 c unsweetened almond milk
1 t vanilla
1 tbsp cocoa powder
3/4 scoop Click
blueberries

For the protein frosting:

Plain greek yogurt
Unsweetened almond milk
Click protein powder

Pretty easy directions. Mix all the ingredients then portion it out into about 6 pancakes on the griddle. Place desired amount of blueberries on pancakes as first side is cooking. Stack when finished, top with protein frosting (you can play with the ratio of frosting ingredients for desired consistency), top with more blueberries and chia seeds.

SO GOOD, you guys!!

Now onto the workouts. On Friday, I wasn’t entirely in the mood to do the designated BBB workout, so I decided to whip up my own batch of goodies. I divvied it up between lower and upper body.

Lower Body (10 reps of each move, done 2x through)

Stability Ball side lunge (L)
Stability Ball side lunge (R)
Gliding reverse lunge (L)
Gliding reverse lunge (R)
Single leg squat (L)
Single leg squat (R)
Single Leg deadlift (L)
Single Leg deadlift (R)
Glute squeezes
Weighted plie squats

Upper Body (10 reps of each move, done 2x through)

Tricep Dips
Pushups
Front raise
Weighted Arm Circles
Standing overhead press/Oblique crunch (L)
Standing overhead press/Oblique crunch (R)
Kettlebell swings

I managed to get in 20 minutes of spinning just before the workout to get my heart rate up. All in all, the circuit is quick, but effective- I was sore the next morning!

Even though I was sore, I wanted to get my blood pumping on Saturday. I opted to do yet another Deck of Cards workout. (Previous Deck of Workouts can be found here and here)

♠ V-sits
♣ Burpees
♥ Kettlebell swings
♦ Pushups

I kid you not, I shuffled them almost into respective suits. I must have done about 60 pushups right off the bat, and OF COURSE, most of the burpees were at the bottom of the deck. Yikes. But totally worth it. I was sweaty and ready to have a yummy pizza for dinner. (More on that meal later!)

Anyone have a favorite protein powder? Favorite recipe to use with it??

Harlem Shake

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Jen @nutcaseinpoint

I have a clusterfudge of stuff to share with you (it took me 4 days to gather enough stuff worthy of a post)

Let’s start with food. I have been doing a lot of experimenting in the kitchen lately. Mostly they are just new recipes on basic meals. Still, it was fun to follow other recipes and see how they turned out.

First up: PIZZA. Tyler and I love pizza. We used to order it all the time, but I have chosen to make our pizzas as a means of controlling what goes into the mix. I like knowing there are no preservatives in my food, thankyouverymuch. However, most all the recipes I tried resulted in uber doughy pizza. Yuck. I don’t want bread for dinner, I want PIZZA.

After going home in January, I learned some special tips and tricks from my parents as to how to yield a decent homemade pizza (keep in mind the altitude in NY and the altitude here are drastically different).

Here’s a pic of my pizza- it had pineapple, olives, peppers, prosciutto, and a bit of leftover bacon crumbles from Tyler’s pizza.

It was really good- especially topped with tons of sriracha!

Sunday morning/afternoon, I made us brunch. We had hit up Costco on Saturday, so we were freshly stocked up on produce and meat and lots of other goodies.

Nothing like a TON of food on a Sunday afternoon to make you lazy. But that fruit was faaaaantastic. And so was the coffee..obviously.

Later that night, I decided to whip up yet another recipe that I finally snagged from my mom. In my parents town, there is this hot dog place that is out of this world fantastic. Not only are they tasty, but they are super cheap, and they have this really awesome meat sauce on them. My mom got the recipe from my uncle, and now it is finally in my hands. Bwahaha.

We used some of the yummy Costco hot dogs as our base (I think I managed to eat about half of this. Phew, was it a lot of food). The sauce took about 2 hours to simmer, and I’m pretty sure the next time I make it, I’ll have to put a lock on the lid- I went to the gym while it was simmering and I’m pretty sure Tyler would’ve eaten it straight out of the pot because the smell was so good.

If only there was smell-o-vision (or…smell-o-internet??)

Next up..cookies! I had recently gone to the health food store and picked up a bunch of ‘different’ baking ingredients so I decided on some paleo chocolate chip cookies.

I used this recipe, but substituted agave nectar for honey/maple syrup, used an egg, and used carob chips rather than chocolate chips (almost the same thing. google it)

They came out pretty great! At least, my tastebuds thought so because I inhaled way more than I’m willing to admit.

Ok. NEXT! Chili. I’m now on the Meatless Monday bandwagon- simply as a means to find more meals I can throw together without meat, both for money saving and health reasons.

I chose to use this recipe. Only changes I made were omitting one onion and adding a zucchini.

Meh. Quite flavorless. I added tons of sriracha in mine and Tyler mixed shredded cheddar in his, and there was hardly an ‘oo’ or an ‘ah’ at the table. I also had some leftover dough from pizza-making on friday, so I balled it off, topped with melted butter and garlic salt, and viola!

Sad to say that was probably the best part of the meal. No bueno, folks.

And last, but certainly not least, in honor of pancake day today, I made a hearty stack of coconut flour pancakes.

They took forever to cook on the griddle (different consistency since I was using coconut flour) but they still had tons of flavor.

I topped the stack with plain greek yogurt mixed with cinnamon, and strawberries/blueberries.

The fruit was yet again my favorite part of the meal. Yummmm.

Now that I have shown you all this food I’ve been eating, I guess I should jot down what I’ve been doing in attempts to burn it off.

Friday: Strength Workout C from BBB and 20 minutes of spin, followed by only 42 burpees.

Saturday: Day off. I originally planned on doing cardio, but my body felt so dead and heavy, that I opted to switch my cardio to Sunday. Thanks to a pep-talk facebook message from Athena. Thanks!

Sunday: 30 minute run and 90 burpees.

Monday: Strength Workout A from BBB, 125 burpees (done during Biggest Loser commercials) and a 30 minute run.

Now onto random things:

1. Took the dog to the dog park on Friday. Then we hopped in the car and went to another spot along the river for more walk/play.

This girl was plowing her face into the snow and ice so much that she made the bald spot on the inner part of her eyes bleed! Silly.

Lots of passersby were laughing or smiling at her romping and rolling.

2. Got my visa extension in the mail yesterday. Now I can plan a visit to see my best friend in Seattle!

3. I can’t wait to meet her beautiful baby. I’m also really glad to see she’s already pumping the iron I’ve sent her 😉

4. I brought back tons of bottles and cans and cartons to the bottle return the other day. Like, 2 carts worth. And I made $32.35. Too bad I probably won’t be making that much anymore since we are reusing our special bottles for homebrew.

5. Skyfall and The Man With the Iron Fists: bad movies.

6. I am obsessed with the Harlem Shake videos. Honestly, I would post them all here if I could, (and I could), but I won’t. Here are a couple to give you the idea:

I’m off to workout and find another pair of sunglasses since I managed to break my $5 ones that have lasted me about 4 years. What are you up to on this fine, Fat Tuesday??

My Favorite Date

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Jen @nutcaseinpoint

Happy Friday, y’all!

Yesterday I took the day off from social media. 1.) Because I was frustrated, and 2.) Because it was not a good day. Especially when a day starts with these two things

Ok, maybe for some of you having those things makes for a good day? But not in this household- they were for Layla. She was acting really strange with her butt again, so I went to the store to get the ‘necessities’ for what needed to be done. As I was getting into my car, Layla tried to escape, and in my attempts to grab her before she got out of the garage, I completely WHACKED my head on the read view mirror of Tyler’s truck. Luckily, I grabbed the dog in time, but I now have a neat red line/bump/bruise across my forehead.

Anyhoo, my attempts to resolve her issue didn’t seem to take effect, so I made an appointment to have her see a vet tech. Sitting on pins and needles for 4 hours waiting for the appointment time is NOT fun. The good news is, the tech examined Layla and said that I had apparently fixed the problem because her butt was A-ok.

And now we are done with the butt talk.

And now would be the most appropriate time to transition to food. Right? Riiiight?

Some eats we’ve has as of late:

Homemade Vegetarian Wontons- so good! I gobbled them up.

Blueberry Purses- using the same wonton wrappers, except with a concoction I threw together with fresh blueberries, a bit of butter and some honey. These were like chips to me. I could not. Stop. Eating them.

Paleo Turkey Meatballs and Sauce. I followed this recipe, except I used No Yolk noodles. The best part of the ball recipe was that it used almond meal as a binding agent (instead of panko or bread crumbs). It made all the difference! I have had so much trouble with ground turkey because I have not been able to keep patties or balls together; they all tend to crumble. But this recipe with the almond meal, made them stick together and offered an awesome flavor that both Tyler and I enjoyed. And the sauce was SUPER easy to make, too!

I just made these suckers this morning. The recipe needs to be tweaked a bit, but the flavor was definitely there. Among the ingredients: coconut flour, almond milk, chia seeds, and Click protein powder.

Now on to the workouts (I’m thinking of condensing my workouts to just a weekly post so they are all in one place/I don’t bore you everyday. Thoughts?)

Wednesday: Workout B from BBB and 85 burpees.

Thursday: Treadmill intervals for 30 minutes + 100 burpees (The burpees for this day were actually the challenge for Healthy sELF! I was pumped since I have already been on the burpee-train as of late 🙂

(Insert my first PicMonkey collage. Sorry, it’s terrible. But I was trying to pay homage to Boston and their upcoming storm. Which you would think they had never experienced inclement weather before. That’s a whole other story..)

In the spirit of the upcoming holiday (Valentine’s Day) and for the sake of bulking up my post, I decided I wanted to write about my FAVORITE date. And yes, it was with Tyler. In fact, it was our FIRST date!

Tyler had flown out to see me in Boston, and brilliant me decided we could drink the city. Good thing it was up his alley as well. We took the 57 bus from Oak Square (after getting LARGE Dunks coffees) and got dropped off at Fenway. From there, we walked to Newbury Street and really began our adventure. From roughly noon that day, until about 1am when we got back to my apartment, we walked, talked, ate, and drank through the following places:

There might have been more, but my memory is foggy (for obvious reasons). We both calculate that we drank 2039572039572095 drinks and walked 09357209375210 miles- so they countered each other. I do remember at one point, we got pizza and I walked barefoot the last 2 miles home. Gross.

But so much fun.

What’s your favorite date?

Workouts and a ‘Me’ Day

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Jen @nutcaseinpoint

You’d think I could publish a post everyday since I don’t work, but I NEED those couple of days to get enough material to write about. Ha.

So I did manage to post on Monday, but I didn’t tell you that I got my hair done. Big whoop!

Just a little touch up. Keeping my hair on the less-than-platinum side because I think it needs to be a bit darker for optimum wedding hair.

I then proceeded to ‘ruin’ my salon hair by going straight to the gym for some cardio. (I did the strength portion before my hair appt). Yup, no more straight hair. But 50 minutes and 20 miles on the bike were worth it!

Check out those chub fingers.

That was my gracious pre-workout picture from Tuesday. I think too much blood got to my brain. I completed 35 minutes of a circuit interval that LITERALLY kicked the shit out of me. 2 minutes of FULL OUT sprint followed by 3 minutes of recovery. Repeated 6 times. I came home and just about died.

Check out that bum!

Ow OW!

I managed to clean myself up in time an head downtown to meet my friend Mackenzie for drinks. (More water than actual beer, but I had to drive home!)

Yesterday, I took a ‘me’ day and headed to Banff. A pretty easy, short (and beautifully scenic) drive.

When I left, it was nice and sunny. Most of the snow had melted. But as I got further into the mountains, snow snow SNOW.

I got to downtown Banff and walked around through most all the shops for a few hours. Maybe some purchases were made. I also managed to have lunch at Wild Flour Bakery. A veggie wrap that could have been better, but the ambiance was perfect.

I ended up looping the main street a few times because there were a few gifts I wanted to purchase. I am not an impulse buyer- I literally went into every store without making a purchase, THEN went back to stores where I knew I got the best deal/gift.

I was looking forward to getting back to Calgary because I wanted to get out of the snow. I don’t like driving in it, especially when it’s not plowed and people drive like maniacs. Oh, and wildlife. As I left, I spotted a huge buck near the train tracks. I immediately thought to myself “I come all the way out to the Rocky Mountains and all I see is a friggin deer? C’mon mountains, you can do better than that!” No sooner did I think that to myself, I got on the highway and saw about a dozen of the largest Elk I’ve ever seen. Still no moose, though. Le sigh.

The initial portion of the drive back was not fun (think bleeding hands from hardcore white knuckling and music off because I couldn’t concentrate enough)

I just kept telling myself I’d be out of the woods soon- back to sunny Calgary.

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh……no. I brought the snow home with me around 6pm yesterday and it hasn’t stopped since. Even Layla’s like “WTF man!”

After the tense drive home, I switched into my ‘home workout’ clothes (usually really ghetto outfits that I feel comfortable sweating in, but not in public) and got my workout on. I modified the Workout B with Intervals B to Workout B with Cardio Intervals from Best Body Bootcamp. Rather than getting through the strength portion and having a separate cardio session, I incorporated the circuits with a 5 minute cardio blast after each set (similar to the format of Workout A- for those of you who are in BBB). The strength moves got me really sweaty on their own, so the addition of the cardio blasts were a one, two punch to my energy levels.

Please ignore the mess in the background- I am packing/unpacking/making a mess. But I did have my workout buddy with me. I do all my home workouts in ‘my’ room- the door is always propped open with a door stop, but I close it whenever I workout because I try to muffle my music/singing for Tyler as much as possible. Layla freaks if I close the door without her in with me, so she is now a regular in the room. The dog who is afraid of everything now doesn’t so much as flinch when I swing my ropeless jump rope just above her head. She just stands or sits or lays around with maybe an eyebrow twitch here and there.

Now you’re caught up.

Getting Wordy. ON A FRIDAY!

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Jen @nutcaseinpoint

I seem to think of the greatest things to blog about when I’m at the gym. Of course, I don’t have anything with me to jot them down, so I forget them. Le sigh. But I vaguely remember what I thought of last night: workout stuff.

1. While I was on the treadmill last night (only did 20 minutes of intervals) I thought of how I used to ONLY do cardio in college. In fact, right after volleyball ended my freshman year, I was doing 2 hours of cardio a DAY. I was exhausted all the time, had no muscle definition, and was starting to lose hair. (Fast forward through xmas break and I gained it all back). My point is, quantity isn’t quality. Hell, I am now in the best shape of my life and I only do about 30 minutes of exercise a day. I LISTEN TO MY BODY. NOT MY MIND. What do I mean by that? Well, I don’t go in to my workout thinking “ok, I’m gonna get an hour under my belt” Then, 40 minutes in, when my knee is hurting or whatever, I push through it to reach that 60 minute mark, and before you know it, I have an injury. Nope. Not anymore! I give my ALL in a workout, and when my body tells me it’s done- it’s done! No more “3 more minutes”. I also used to have the mindset where if I didn’t have a solid hour (with cushion time on either end) there was no way I can get in a good workout, and I would forego the gym (insert 200 lb Jen senior year).

2. That said, my workouts aren’t mindless. Before, I would get on a piece of gym equipment and turn off my brain until I saw the time reach a certain number. Well, um, if my brain is asleep during the workout, then surely my body will be as well. Now, I really think about the work I’m doing. Pushups are no longer a threat- I concentrate on form and give it my all, whether it be 6 in a row one day or 14 in a row another day.

3. REST IS IMPORTANT. Can’t stress it enough (even though I still feel guilty on occasion when I have rest days) I generally workout 6 days a week, but sometimes that 6th day is so hard to get through. youknowwhatimean. A few months ago, I started taking back to back days off- with maybe a set of abs or arms if I was bored in front of the TV. Guess what? I saw results! My metabolism started getting more regular, I was being more mindful of keeping a balance diet (still eating treats and hamburgers, obviously. Oh, and drinking) But I was just more AWARE. And that first day back to the gym after 2 rest days is MAGICAL. I can fly on the treadmill and plow through a strength workout. It’s glorious. My body and my mind are in a better place to get cracking on the next week!

4. CHANGE IT UP. Another thing you’ve probably already heard, but I am applying it to my situation. Prior to the big move, I had my weekly workouts pretty much set. I was a regular at a billion classes, taught another billion, and had a go-to workout when I wasn’t in a class. Lots of stress on my bones and my muscles, and on top of working full time and being in school- I should have taken more me-time then gym-time. Hindsight is always 20/20. Now (graced will a blank schedule 24/7) I have the freedom to change my workouts. I take ZERO group classes, I do lots of at-home workouts, I joined Best Body Bootcamp, started researching new exercises, intervals, etc. online, and implemented them in my workouts. My off days have switched from mid-week to weekend and back about 409257329 times. I spin, run, row, do body weight cardio and strength, tabatas, circuits, pyramids, steady state, endurance, you.name.it. I don’t plan my workouts in advance. I don’t want to go to bed on a Tuesday night stressing that I have an arm-heavy workout the next day or that I have to run or whatever. I usually decide my workout about 5 minutes before I actually do it. AND IT’S AWESOME.

5. Don’t pay attention to the number on the scale. Ok, well that’s a tricky one. And there are many arguments for either side. But I am explaining mine! Ok, maybe it’s not the number on the scale thing, but it’s the size on the tag of your clothes thing. A year ago (July 2011) this is me at about 165lbs (5’11).

And here I am now, same height, different weight (145), and I still fit into all the same clothes in my closet. See: same shorts.

The clothes in my closet vary in all sorts of sizes- from 6 to 14, and I still wear all of them. It depends on the manufacturer (and letsbehonest the size whatever jeans that are your go-to’s have stretched out, so……) my Lulu’s range from 6-10 because they vary in fits. Does it piss me off? Not anymore. Those red cords I recently bought are 12s and I don’t care cuz I LOVE EM. And they’re comfy. AND RED! I bought a pair of tribal leggings that went according to my height and weight, and when I got them, I couldn’t even pull them over my hips. Mad because I really wanted to wear them. NOT MAD because they were stupidly sized and it is what it is.

Well that was a mouthful.

THAT SAID. I made fudge.