Knife Skills

It is one of my beliefs that good knife skills are the foundation of a good cook. You can only become a good cook with practice, and practicing is the only way to develop good knife skills. Which comes first? Well, I believe they come simultaneously. Because I so much wanted to be a good cook, I had to cook. To cook, I had to chop. To chop, I had to use a knife.

One of the first cooking "lessons" one learns is "Mise en place", it's French for "put in place". Before you try any recipe, especially for the first time, it is highly recommended that you put all of the ingredients you need together, in one place, before you start cooking. This way once you start to assemble the recipe you already have everything right in front of you. This also helps to not forget any ingredient or step. I haven't "mised" in years...yikes...but I used to and that set me up for some good habits.

Although I no longer "mise" (meese, rhymes with cheese!), I'm still in the habit of doing the bulk of my chopping and dicing before I turn on the stovetop. Because I use so many fresh vegetables, easily 2-4 times what most people use, it takes me 10-15 minutes on average, but sometimes as long as 25-30 minutes to prep just the vegetables for my soups and stews. Salads don't take nearly as long because most of that is shredding, and taking 20 minutes I can prep salad ingredients to last a week.

Last month I got this idea to try and make a truly vegetarian chili using no tomatoes (it's winter for God's sake, lol), and no beans, but loads and loads of veggies. I used beets and beet stems to make the chili red, along with the standard ,onions celery, carrots that go in everthing I cook. Fresh chilis, of course, jalapenos, pasilla, and red bell. Oh, and a butternut squash (I learned that from Fawn). The regular chili powders, spices and garlic. It came out OK, not great, but good...I'm not going to lie!

Hot and edible are the only requirements I have for a new recipe! Because of the beets and butternut it was a bit on the sweet side and I felt lacked depth. I helped it a little by adding a bag of frozen yellow corn (I know, I know, it's winter for God's sake).....a little ground meat wouldn't have hurt either, lol.

I'm very proud of my knife skills considering I've never been formally trained, Rachel Ray has nothing on me! I often see food prep, especially chopping and dicing as a form of meditation. I get just as much satisfaction from cooking and preparing my meals as I get from eating them. I will always choose to "eat in", saving my money for more good wine and a few pieces of Lululemon...how luck am I?

top picture is a 12 x 18 inch sheet pan with all of the veggies in the bottom picture diced and ready to make "vegetarian beet and butternut chili". middle picture is me stacking and dicing jalapenos.

Hope...everyday of every year...

Here is a blogpost I wrote almost 4 years ago....really? Four years?

Hope for the New Year

So much has happened to me in the last few weeks, in the last few days, I can only wonder what this next year holds for me. Two years ago today I was happy. My life was good. Yes, I was fat, but I never defined myself by my weight. I always felt that I was smart, talented, and had a good life. I enjoyed eating alot of food and took responsibility for the results of that. In fact, besides being phyisically uncomfortable at times, I felt the biggest drawback of being so overweight was the judgement other people had about me becausde of my size. I felt invisible, not respected, and I did feel shame about my weight.

Being Mark Reifkind's wife, many times I wanted to hide. Married to a personal trainer, and being so overweight, I remember asking Mark, when he would want to introduce me to a client or friend ," Did you tell them I'm fat? You need to tell them I'm fat, because I don't want them to be surprised." I felt bad for him because I didn't want my weight to be a reflection of him. After all, should the "Worlds Best Personal Trainer" have such a fat wife?

I knew I had it in me to lose the weight and start exercising, I just didn't want to. Why? I don't even know the answer now. I think everyone knows how to lose weight. The question is why don't you want to? I, personally, don't think it matters why. You and I have the rest of our lives to try and figure that out, if we want to. It doesn't change the fact that 2+2=4. In otherwords, the fact is if you count your calories, eat less than you do now, and start some sort of exercise, you will lose weight. You don't need me to tell you that.

Instead of scientific facts, what I want to offer is hope. Hope that you can recover from being overweight. Hope that you can recover from being out of shape. Hope that you can recover from being ashamed. Hope, so you can feel healthy, strong and proud. And that you can also come through it looking and feeling better than you ever have before.

That's what training kettelbells has done for me. I tell everyone that my diet (food) changed the size of my body, but kettlebell training changed the composition of my body. And I wouldn't of believed it until I experienced it. Kettlebell training has given me hope. Hope that I can keep the weight off and feel and look great. Sometimes I think if I only would of known about KBs 10 years ago I might never have gained so much weight. I hope that you find the motivation this year, and if I can give you any, I will. If you have already found your motivation, like me, I hope you keep it going strong.

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So much has changed, and then again nothing has changed. Back then I knew I had the answers...and now, sometimes, I find myself looking for the answers....forgetting I already have
them.

The day I shot the video for "4HB", I remember Tim Ferris telling me about the possibilities of being invited to appear on some of the morning talk shows like the "Today Show", or "Regis and Kelly" to promote the book. Someone commented on "Oprah", and Tim commented back, "Oprah calls you, you don't call Oprah!"

That's when it hit me. What am I looking for? I needed to stop looking, instead let "it" find me.


Mark found me.

The weightloss found me.

Kettlebells found me.

If Oprah is supposed to find me then, lucky for her, she will! lol

All of these things found me because I had hope and belief. I knew I would have all of these things. I didn't know when, and I felt impatient at times, but I always trusted that I was not wrong about what a special, smart, talented, and deserving person I was. I had to stop concerning myself with the details.

Last year I weighed around 150lbs, the year before around 132-135lbs. I had gained almost 20 lbs. 20lbs is alot of bodyweight, and it can turn into more quickly. I felt depressed for the first time in a long, long, long time....about my bodyweight! Heck, I wasn't this depressed when I weighed 250lbs+! I felt like I failed because I was no longer "tiny". I was no longer "a size 6 all day long". What did I do?

Well, I went back to what I already knew. My standard answer to the question, "How did you lose all of that weight?" was, "I stopped doing what was making me fat." So, I stopped doing what was making me 150lbs! I started eating a little bit less, and changed the composition and calorie density of my meals. I lost 10lbs before my Febuary re-Cert and have kept it off for a year now. I was eating too much of the wrong things, and I finally let what I already knew find me again.

I have never, for 1 second, been afraid of being obese again. I am not that person anymore. When I found myself weighing 20 lbs heavier I was pissed off, but not afraid. I was pissed off because I really thought that I really liked being thin and fit, or should I say feeling thinner, and feeling more fit? But it turns out I liked eating and drinking more! Lucky me. Here I am, approaching 2011, 5 years post 120lb weightloss. I currently weigh around 140lbs. Originally my "dream bodyweight" was 142lbs! I eat what I want to eat, I drink what I want to drink, I train as much as I want to train...and that's probably too much, lol!

I'm the first person to admit that I don't like defining new beginnings to the calender year, but as we approach January 1st 2011, let us all embrace the hope that it's never too late to realize our potential. Our own unique, incredible, unbelievable, achieveable physical potentials. "Training is the source." (Mark Reifkind).

PS for potential motivation and inspiration please take a look my blogpost archives at http://www.tracyrif.blogspot.com and also in the archives of this, my 2nd blog http://www.tracysfoodandthought.blogpost.com/. Pictures above: this year playing "This little piggy" with my precious Sophi, and one year before, Xmas Eve with Sophi!

The Story of 10x10, and The 5x6 Christmas Workout

When I first started to train kettlebells, sets and reps, traditionally, is how one keeps track of the work completed, or of the work yet to be done, so that's what I did. Ten swings. Only ten swings....ten was hardly anything! Then it hit me...10 sets of 10 swings was 100 swings....100 swings! No one was doing hundreds of swings at the time (that I knew of), but I knew how deceiving a big number like 100 was. How you ask?

In my 30's I learned how to cook by taking classes at a cooking store/cooking school called Home Chef. I volunteered to assist and help prep all of the food and ingredients for as many classes as I could at least 2-3 days per week. One of my duties before class started was to set up the chairs for students. I had to set up 50 chairs....wow, fifty! That seemed like alot people for such a small room, until I saw the pattern.... Five rows of 10 chairs! Five rows of ten? That was nothing....five, so close to one, and ten, so far away from 50. At that moment I realized that 50, or even 100, was no where near the grand number I thought it was.

Well, now that I have been teaching the kettlebell swing for more than 3 years, in my experience most people start the same way I started, with the goal of a set of 10 swings. Seems so little...unless you're the one learning for the first time! The next goal is another set of 10 swings....and then another set of ten, and then another.... This comes way before interval training. A beginner always takes the rest they need until their level of fitness catches up with their ego!

Good news? A few sets of ten add up quickly, and before you know it the possibility of doing hundreds of swings within 20-30 minutes becomes a regular occurence.

The Story of 5 x 6

What can be easier than 10 x 10? 5 x 6, lol In this case I'm not talking about 5 sets of 6 reps. For this workout I'm talking about 5 repeated sets done in 6 rotations for a total of 30 sets, giving me the 30 minute workout I was looking for this past Thursday morning. Lucky for me each set took 1 minute (30 sec work/rest), so 30 minutes flew by. All I had to concern myself with was completing a group of 5 sets, six times.

Getting the work done uses the same concept of breaking it down into more seemingly managable segments. It was so managable I had to repeat it again with my Sat. class for the second half of our workout. I thnk I'll keep this "5 x 6" training theme for while, so look for more to come!

Christmas Workout

15 minutes of equal work to rest swing intervals including double swings (300 swings)
15 minutes of Max Vo2 30 sets of 8 (240 snatches)

"5 x 6"

dbl sw, dbl clean x 8 30 sec work/rest x 5 (rotation #1)

dbl cl, dbl strict press x 6, 30 sec wor/rest x 5 (rotaion #2, video below)

dbl sw, dbl clean x 8, 30 sec work/rest x 5 (rotation #3, same as #1)

dbl cl, dbl push press x 6, 30 sec work/rest x 5 (rotation #4, video below)



dbl sw, dbl clean x 8, 30 sec work/rest x 5 (rotation #5, same as #1)

dbl cl, dbl jerk x 6, 30 sec work/rest (rotation #6, video below)





30 minutes of dbl swings and presses

Total workout 60 minutes

Video posted on my last blog is of the dbl sw/cl set in rotations #1, #3, #5

I Love Doing What I Hate Doing

This morning, Xmas Day, 7:30am....I taught a modified Holiday Class schedule. Why? Because Saturday is one of my hardest training days, one of my most anticipated and important training days of the week. The fact that it also coincides on the same day as Christmas is of no concern to me. If it wasn't a kettlbell day, then I would be in a yoga class....as I have been in previous years.

I will happily post todays workout tomorrow, but for now I wanted only to post a fraction of my workout, along with a couple of pictures to show a comparison of how far I've come in a few short years.


This mornings workout, with two out of three of my consistent training partners, Sabina and Mina.... We did a little bit of everything. Swings, Max, and doubles. I will post the complete workout in the next blogpost. The theme of the workout today was "I love doing what I hate doing"....doubles! Doubles are freakin' hard! Double snatches, double swings, double presses, and all variations of the double press.

This time a few years ago I could never imagine what I would be doing, or looking like, or feeling like....Xmas is what dreams are made of. Looking at how far I've come, how much I've changed in such a short time, and how I've made the impossible seem, NO, be possible, I feel like my childhood idol, Shirley Temple, in "Poor Little Rich Girl"!

Freakin' lucky me!

Pictures above; Teaching my advanced class on Xmas morning 2010. 5 years previous , 12/21/05 in the hills of Santa Cruz at a Xmas Brunch. (take into consideration the width of my waistline...seriously! Size 22/24 to a size 8. I remember having to find something decent to wear that day....argh! I hated my only option...I looked horrible and I felt horrible!

Video was taken this Xmas morning, 12/25/10

At a Crossroads

Tim Ferris sent me a few still pitures taken when we shot the video trailer to his book, "The 4 Hour Body", and to be honest I was....well, I was not all that enthused.... But I'm not going to pick apart all of the little details of what I looked like....instead? I love the look of the beads of sweat that accumulated on my upper lip (they did have me swinging for minutes at a time on top of a roof, with the sun beaming down on me, while wearing a long sleeved jacket.) And, for God's sake...I am 47 years old! Any woman transitioning from her early 40' to her late 40's knows what I'm talking about! I managed to turn back the hands of time physically, and mentally, but the camera doesn't lie! And to be honest, packing on over 100lbs+ in my 20' snd 30's didn't do me any favors. But you know what? I starting not to care.....that much, lol! It's not 2006 anymore, and I'm not 42 years old. I will never be 100lb+ overweight again, and thanks to training kettlebells, I will always be more fit than 99% of women my age, or even 1/2 my age.

Anyway, the point of this blogpost is that in 2006 I was completely anonymous and it now seems light years before. As we approach 2011, I'm not a young chick anymore, and I'm not exactly anonymus. Here I am on the inside cover of a best selling book, and the only female in the national video trailer for that same book. I have my first article published in Pavel's newsletter that goes out to, how many thousands of readers? A photo shoot with a national womens magazine, along with the release of my first DVD just a couple of months earlier....can it get any better? And all at the age of 47!

So at the end of 2010 I've been feeling like I'm at a crossroads....

I've been a bit fuzzy this past week (or 2, or 3!) with all the great and fabulous things that are coming my way, I've also had some crazy weird things happen, but today the fog started to lift. Surprisingly, or not surprisingly, as I started to read Tim's book, The 4 Hour Body, I'm beginning to remember how this all started and what this has all been about for me.

Originally because I had not yet read it, I couldn't really understand the connection I had with the stories in this book, except that I lost a bunch of weight and I used kettlebells as my main form of fitness. I now understand why The 4 Hour Body and I have such a close connection and I can't wait to share some of my thoughts and insights here on my blog in the next few weeks. But in the mean time, if you don't have a copy of this book, get one!

Picture above; Larger than life close up of me, taken the day I did the taping for the video trailer "The 4 Hour Body" Middle picture; The inside front cover of The 4 Hour body....notice how my pictures are above of Casey Viator, a legendary bodybuilder (if you don't why he a legend, read the book!) Below; Oh, and I had to post the video one more time!

Roasted Butternut Squash and Cottage Cheese Smoothie

OMG...my favorite smoothie these days is roasted butternut squash and cottage cheese!

I came up with idea last week when I found that I was "treating" myself to a eggnog latte practically everyday (*see note). I was at the grocery store and saw egg nog in the dairy section and thought...hmnn, instead of buying a coffee drink everyday, I can turn it into a meal by making my own protein eggnog smoothie!

I've also been kind of hooked on cottage cheese lately....it must be a "salt" thing. I thought, instead of using yogurt, I could use cottage cheese making it more like cheesecake, lol! Always trying to turn meals into dessert, aren't we?

When I assembled the ingredients for my brand new concoction I started to read the ingredients listed on the eggnog carton....first thing I see? 195 calories per 1/2 cup! 195 calories per 1/2 c.? Good Lord...there is no way I can make this taste eggnoggy, with only 1/2 c., unless I used some vanilla yogurt. But there was already so much sugar in the egg nog....whoops, wrong! High fructose corn syrup...no sugar.

Make no mistake....I am not so much of a "NO high fructose corn syrup" snob that I was not going to try and make a smoothie anyway....this one time. But I am enough of a snob to know that I would have to throw the rest out. There are too many better choices....but not for me, at that moment, when I had my heart set on an eggnog smoothie!

Needless to say, I was right. After adding the cottage cheese and 1/2 c. egg nog, it wasn't near sweet enough, or egg noggy enough. I ended up putting a couple more tbls of egg nog, a pinch of cinnamon and, oh yes....some frozen mammy fruit to try and save it. "Ma-may" fruit has a pumkin like color and consistency, and that's when I got the idea to use butternut squash. Unfortunately my innocent little experiment probably ended up over 500 calories (I may have even added a bit of maple syrup too...yikes).

The next day, lessons learned from the previous day, I started with

1 c. cottage cheese (203 cal)

1 c. roasted butternut squash (82 cal)
2 tbl maple syrup (100 cal)

pinch of cinnamon

1 c. of ice

1/2 c. water to loosen it to my desired consistency....voila!

under 400 calories

To be honest, it wasn't quite sweet enough, even with 2 tbl maple syrup (100 cal), so today I used 1 tbl maple syrup and 1 tbl brown sugar. Slightly better, but I wouldn't call it sweet. But that's OK. It is still yummy enough to look forward to making and drinking, in fact it's whats for lunch regularly...for a while at least. No more egg nog lattes! And the trade off is so much better.

Here are the nutritional differences between yogurt and cottage cheese.

1 c. 2% plain yogurt

154 cal.

3.8 gm fat

17.2 gm carb

12.9 gm protein

172 mg sodium

1 cup 2% cottage cheese

203 cal.

4.4 gm fat

8.2 gm carb

31.1 gm protein (!)

918 mg sodium

Ok, ok, so I admitted it had more sodium, but I sweat enough to allow for a bit more! The biggest differnce is in the amount of carbs and protein. Just FYI!

(note) When I order a small size eggnog latte, and I have the barista fill the cup 1/2 way with plain coffee first, so when they fill the rest up with the lowfat eggnog mixture it really only gives my coffee an eggnog flavor....full on eggnog is seriously sweet! (in a good way of course)

Another "100"

Here is the high volume swing workout Sabina and I did this morning.

You may notice, starting with the 2nd rotation, that every rotation from that point begins with the same 4 sets of 2 hand swings. I trained my first rotation with the 12kg, and then I progressively increased the weight of the first four sets, to next the 14kg, and finally ending up with the 16kg for the remainder of the workout. It was my plan to go up to the 20kg, but I couldn't find my car keys and the 20kg was locked inside! Believe me though...it was fine!

The second part of each rotation is done with a lighter bell, as the sets start at 100 reps in the first rotation, increasing by 20 reps per rotation until 200 reps are reached. All of these sets are done using my progressive swing ladders.




1st rotation includes the warm up w/12kg

10 sets of 10, 15 sec work/rest (100 swings, your choice)

20 tr
10 swing transfers (20 reps)
5/5 x 2 (20 reps)
10 swing transfers
20 tr

100 rep set 2 1/2 min. work, 1 min rest

2nd rotation

14kg
10 2 hd sw, 15 sec rest
20 2 hd sw, 30 sec rest
30 2 hd sw, 45 sec rest
40 2 hd sw, 1 min rest

12 kg
20 tr
10 swing transfers
5/5 x 4
10 swing transfers
20 tr

120 reps, 3 min. work, 1 min rest

3rd rotation

16kg
10 2 hd sw, 15 sec rest
20 2 hd sw, 30 sec rest
30 2 hd sw, 45 sec rest
40 2 hd sw, 1 min rest

12kg
20 tr
10 swing transfers
5/5 x 2
10/10
5/5 x 2
10 swing transfers
20 tr

140 reps, 3 1/2 min work, 1 min rest

4th rotation

16kg
10 2 hd sw, 15 sec rest
20 2 hd sw, 30 sec rest
30 2 hd sw, 45 sec rest
40 2 hd sw, 1 min rest

12kg
20 tr,
10 swing transfers
5/5 x 2
10/10 x 2
5/5 x 2
10 swing transfers
20 tr

160 reps, 4 min work, 1 min rest

5th rotation

16kg
10 2 hd sw, 15 sec
2 hd sw, 30 sec rest
30 2 hd sw, 45 sec rest
40 2 hd sw, 1 min rest

12kg
20 tr
10 swing transfers
5/5 x 2
10/10
20 2 hd sw
10/10
5/5 x 2
10 swing transfers
20 tr

180 reps, 4 1/2 min work, 1 min rest

6th rotation (video shows this rotation)

16kg
10 2 hd sw, 15 sec rest
20 2 hd sw, 30 sec rest
30 2 hd sw, 45 sec rest
40 2 hd sw, 1 min rest

12kg
20 tr
10 swing transfers
5/5 x 2
10/10
40 2 hd sw
10/10
5/5 x 2
10 swing transfers
20 tr

200 reps, 5 min work....done, now rest up!

Total 52.5 minutes
1500 swing reps

I had no idea of where I was going until I got past the first 10 sets of 10...that's my usual warmup. After the first set of 100 I saw the vision...so the pattern was set. I knew the workout would not end until we got to 200 reps.

This is another "100" workout because every rotation starts with 100 2 hand swings...even though the other sets have more than 100. Roughly 660 of these reps were 2 hand swings.