Dannon Has Nothing on Me!

Over the weekend I made my second batch of yogurt and I'm completely hooked! It's too easy. I say "too" easy because I don't eat that much yogurt...until now! I am still mixing corn and lime, with a pinch of salt, for a savory snack but it is summer and the fruit abounds.

Last week I made some yogurt cheese with 1/2 of the first batch with the intention of making frozen yogurt....I did. I picked up some nectarines from the FM, a variety named "Spice Zee", and like the name describes they have a spicey flavor that reminds me of Fall. I cooked these with a handful of black Mission figs with 1/2 sugar for about 5 minutes in the PC and then took the lid off and reduced it further until it was the thickness I wanted.

I used my immersion blender to make more of a puree and then I removed 3/4 of the fruit from the pan and portioned it so I could freeze some. Since the theme was "Fall fruit" I added about 1-2 tbl balsamic vinegar to the remainder. Cooked off the vinegar and voila....kind of an grown up blend. My plan was to use it in the frozen yogurt and not sweeten the yogurt but to add the cooked sweetened fruit for a tangy/sweet taste. I did. It was great! But I had so much fruit leftover!

I mixed some of the fruit puree in a serving of yogurt for dinner last night and zowie! It was so good I started thinking about all the differnt kind of flavors I could come up with. Anyone who has bought flavored yogurt at the market knows the usual. vanilla, blueberry, lemon, stawberry, peach, etc. but I doubt you'll find "Spicy nectarine and fig" flavored yogurt. The possibilities are endless. Fruit combinations as well as adding things like ginger or cinnamon, lemongrass, etc. Dannon has nothing on me!

I haven't made any fruit compotes or desserts with cooked fruit all year. It used to be one of my favorites, to cook fruit in wine, and I hope to be making tons of chutneys before the end of the year. I'm all motivated to make and freeze more fruit purees before the season is over. What kinds of combinations sound good to you?

What You Resist Persists

In my opinion the number one problem with diets are that most approach eating/food with some sort of retriction. Certain food restrictions like fats, carbs, sugars, or even more specifically all flour products, all fruit, all dairy, etc. Or they involve calorie restriction (although most if not all diets are calorie restrictive, but that's another blogpost). If you try and "force" a change that feels bad, punishing or just plain impossible, then you start to focus on the negative. This is not fun and may even lead you to become resentful and angry. Changing your diet should feel like a good thing, the perfect diet for you is one that is motivating and rewarding, and the fun part is the enjoyment of food and the enjoyment of a healthy bodyweight.

My diet stragety has always been to design a diet based on caloric parameters but does not restrict any kinds of food. It is a diet based in the science of calories in and calories out. Sure there are numerous ways to use certain types of foods in certain combinations, or eating only at certain times of the day to play with creating different effects on bodyweight and composition but at the end of the day unless you are into becoming your own science experiment and willing to track the data then basic calories in/calories out will rarely (if ever) let you down in acheiveng a healthy bodyweight.

Let me say for the record that becoming your own science experiment can be fun! I'm all for that approach, but let's save the minute details for when they can make a big difference.

It's not a secret that I am a believer in counting calories, personally I use this approach to maintain my own healthy bodyweight, but I do not restrict any foods from my diet. There are as many lower calorie foods I love as there are higher calorie foods I love. The magic that happens as you replace the foods in your diet with less processed lower calorie foods you love is how they make your body naturally feel lighter and healthier, and then you actually prefer to chose them. The focus is on foods you can have, not foods you can't have.

Let me lighten things up a bit because this leads me to the point of this blogpost.....

A couple of weeks ago my mother was visiting from Denver and we spent the day together visiting my granddaughter Sophi (my mother's great graddaughter!), which meant we were driving for almost 3 hrs there and back. In one of our conversations we were talking about, what else? Diets. My mom was telling me that she had a toasted bagel for breakfast....I cringed! A bagel has got to be the #1 breakfast choice for more than 1/2 of America, I swear! Anyway, she then told me that if she were at home she typically has a bowl of Grape-nuts cereal (with a banana of course....we all know how I feel about bananas, don't we? lol). But the real subject of this blogpost is Grape-nuts cereal!

I love Grape-nuts cereal! But breakfast cereal ceased to exist for me during the past 5+ years....not because I "couldn't" have it, but because I never liked it more that alot of the other foods I choose to eat everyday. If I wanted it more then I simply would put it into the rotation, no problem. I eat so many other foods I love I can't possibly eat them all.

When I went to Hungary I actually took pre-portioned baggies of Grape-nuts cereal and mixed it with my yogurt for one of my meals. I made room for it in my diet, and therfore cut something else out. Since I couldn't cook oats while I was away I was pretty happy with my Grape-nuts and I felt it made a nice exchange.

Now that I'm back home Grape-nuts have started to gnaw it's way into my psyche.....they taste so good I could eat them everday, twice a day, heck maybe all day! What's so bad about that? The more I focus on "I shouldn't be eating these", or "I shouldn't want these so much", or "I'm going to get fat if all I do is eat Grape-nuts" etc, then the more I think those thoughts.

I knew I was just about finished with the first box of Grape-nuts and it would be time to buy another..... My first thought was to just not buy them, right? Well, I would agree, but then I could imagine myself thinking about them more, building more anxiety and judgement. I felt I would focus more on the restriction I put on myself to not buy them.

So I came up with an opposite strategy. I would eat nothing but Grape-nuts for an entire day. I would eat my fill and maybe get sick of them! Could that work?

You know, I'm making too much of this! If I want Grape-nuts I'll eat them, and if I want something else different, I'll eat that. I'm not a bad person for wanting breakfast cereal. I'm not a bad person at all.

I've got so many things to do and think about besides Grape-nuts....

I just wrote a couple of killer workouts I hope to post in the coming weeks based from my progressive rest ladder! Yesterday I took my classes through one version and I wrote another that I will train this next week. The next one I'll call "Progessive Rest Ladder "400"", and the next "Progressive Ladder "300""....can you guess why, lol!

And last night I made a killer corn chowder with shredded pork shoulder....I'll make a chicken version and post the recipe! (no tomatillos this time!)

Training, pressure cooking....who has time to think about Grape-nuts?

Progressive Rest Ladder "200", my new favorite way to do 200 16kg swings

Since I came home from vacation I've found myself training alone more often since a large portion of my regular students have also been away during these summer months. Most of my training gets done via leading my classes but when left on my own, well....that's when I resort back to the boring stuff. Boring can get alot of work done in a short amount of time (which is the point), but how can I help make it translatable for others not so motivated to do the boring stuff on their own?



Last week I came up with this combination of work/rest with the 16kg, a bell slightly heavier than my "training" weight, the 12kg or 14kg. This is my starting point to 200 consecutive swing reps w/16kg, and then w/20kg, and then w/24kg. I could do these continuous workloads now, but that's not the point. The point is how can I teach someone else how to do it? Alot of my routines are designed keeping in mind the cardio, strength and skill levels of my students. I am a teacher afterall, a coach, a leader, a trainer. (how cool is that?)

Most of my past routines/combinations use "regressive" rest periods w/progressive work periods, in other words the work increases and intensifies by decreasing the rest taken. Here in this workout the rest periods increase. You might wonder why if the goal is to take out the rest completely.

As I mention near the end of this video, short rest periods have become overrated, and I confess I've had my part in this style of training. I've recently started to revisit 1 minute long rest intervals much to the delight of my students! As Mark explains, longer rest periods use a different energy system, an example would be the difference between sprinting and running a marathon. If we get used to running long distances we adapt using techniques (and weights) that allow us to become more efficient at that gaol....which is fine if all we want is get good at running marathons.

You can become efficient at any intensity. You can be efficient at running 10 miles or at running 400 ft but the two use diffent muscle fibers. Running slow or jogging uses mainly red fibers, which requires less strength and speed having less potential of the powerful white fibers. Shorter workbouts and longer rest periods allow you to train white fibers. White fibers require more time to regenterate than the red fibers, and by givng yourself the proper rest, longer rest, you're going to get stronger and develop more muscle than just always going long and slow. It's not that one is bad and one is good, they just do different things and create different effects.

The goal is to do 200 continuous heavy swings with power. Not to simply "fall" into the swings, or to "survive" the experience, but to smoke it! When you take more time to rest between sets you can come back stronger, eventually completing more and more continuous swing reps, strongly, with less rest.

200 swing reps w/progressive rest ladder

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

200 swings 7.5 min

repeat 2x for a 15 min workout.

If you are used to doing longer workouts then use this as a warm up or a way to end your workout as I do. No need though. This is all you need to start with twice a week. We all don't have time to make training a #1 priority, but we can all find at least 15 minutes twice a week, can't we? If training to use a heavier and heavier bell always start with a weight you know you can swing for 40 continuous reps before increasing the weight.

PS I don't think I was able to finish explaining why I taped this video yesterday....I was as close as I've ever been to skipping my workout. After I taught my 30 min swing class I lolly-gagged for about 15-20 minutes whining to Mark how I wanted to stop. I knew I wouldn't, but it helped to use the video as motivation to not give in....

Hungarian Cheese Making Inspiration, and yogurt report

You know when you find something you really like but you can't get it anymore.....so you have to make it, right? Well, as I wrote about in my last post about not getting the sheep's milk yogurt anymore, I had a cheese in Hungary that just "sealed the deal"....and I don't know what kind it was...arghh! Anyway I think I narrowed it down to a kind of farmers cheese/cottage cheese/fromage blanc/ricotta. I had been interested in making cottage cheese before I left because of my smoothies so this was just one more sign that I needed to follow up.

The first picture above is one of the cheeses I bought at the Hungarian Farmers' Market (along with some yogurt and fruit). It was a soft white cheese with a very mild flavor, but held it's shape and was sold in wedges to your specification (second picture it's the cheese in the upper left corner). Elena Lakatos told me that it was a common cheese usually mixed with fruit but also used in a savory way served with bacon......hmnn....that's how I came up with my blueberry, cheese and bacon lunch I ate on the plane home.....it was delicious! Anyway, of course I can't get this cheese here so I've been looking for the most similar I can find.....or make!

The natural progression (because you know I'm all about progressions!) is to start with the easiest, yogurt, graduating to a "yogurt cheese", and then maybe cottage cheese, also similar to the two cheeses known as farmers cheese and fromage blanc. Ricotta is also supposed to be super easy, as is creme fraiche, sour cream, etc....so I started with yogurt.

The yogurt I made came out OK to be honest. I didn't follow the directions exactly because I started with some differences. First of all I bought my milk in the morning and left it out of the fridge until I started making it around 4:45pm so it was, not warm but, close to room temp from the beginning. Which was a good thing because I hadn't re-read the directions until it was too late to be reminded that the first cooking time was 2 1/2 hr, and then another waiting period of 2 hrs, before the final 8 hrs....I forgot about the 2 hrs in the middle because I go to bed at 8:00!

Through researching online the common theme was to get the milk to a certain temp and then let it come down and maintain the lower temp for around 8 hrs, or overnight (same thing). Because my milk was not cold when I started I only needed about 1 hr 15 min to get the temp at 150-155 degrees. It took a little over an hour to come down to 115-ish that's when I added the starter and left it overnight insulated with the towel covering the crockpot.

4:00am....the picture in my last post is what I woke up to. Although it was a bit runny and curdley I wasn't worried about the texture as much as the flavor. I seperated it into small containes and put it in the fridge thinking it may firm up a bit....it didn't. No biggie, firm yogurt is not as important as how it tastes..... I didn't find the flavor to be better to be honest. I've had a few really good store bought yogurts, in fact the one I used as a starter was better! (Strauss Family plain full fat) I'll try again of course, but what to do with this batch?

I ended up making yogurt cheese with it (3rd picture). I put it in a strainer lined with a floursack kitchen towel and let the whey drain out. The result? Hmm, hmm goodness, thick goodness! And I for every 2 cups of yogurt cheese (also known as Greek style yogurt), I had 4 cups of whey protein! (4th pic)

This of course is just the beginning. The idea and ease of making my own dairy products is exciting but I'm not going to go crazy on you all by sprouting stuff or going vegan! I may look into fermenting, but only because I read an interesting recipe for fermented lacto-salsa (I have to use that whey!).

My attempt at bread is today/tomorrow (it's got to rise for 12-18 hrs!).

Making Yogurt

Last night / this morning I made my first batch ever of homemade yogurt (hard to make a batch of store bought yogurt, huh? lol). I don't have time to write the details of the experience, but the inspiration came from the awesomely gorgeous and delicious sheeps milk yogurt I can no longer get at the Farmers' Market....(apparently sheep only produce milk for a short time during birthing season...the nerve!)

You can find this basic "slow cooker" recipe a zillion different places by googling it, but I'll save you the trouble. (I'm sure I'm one of the few people that did not own a crockpot so I had to buy one.)

Ingredients:

1/2 gallon milk (not ultra-pasteurized)
1/2 cup live-culture plain yogurt for a starter
Slow-cooker
Heavy bath towel

Put the milk into the slow-cooker and heat on low for 2 1/2 hours.

Unplug the slow-cooker and let the milk cool with the lid on for another 3 hours.

At the end of the cooling time, take out 2 cups of milk and whisk in the starter. Pour it back into the yogurt, then whisk all together.

Wrap the whole pot in a heavy duty beach towel, and let sit for 8 hours, or overnight.

Store in a sealed container.

I did, in fact, use a store bought yogurt as a starter but delved further into my new interest of cheese making and found this website:

http://www.culturesforhealth.com/

I orderd yogurt starter, along with some other basic cheese making supplies and instructions. Cottage cheese, fromage blanc and ricotta are next on the list.

Much more to come, but I'm off to yoga and then to see my little angel Sophi! Lucky me I can take my lunch that includes some of my fresh homemade yogurt!

Walking.....underestimated?

Back to my roots, walking…. I’ve been here in Hungary for 8 days now, wrapping up an eleven day stay and the one thing that I’ve done without fail is to walk everyday. I’m not talking about a 30 minute stroll while eating gelato, I’m talking about 1 ½ hours a day, minimum.

It started last week day one of RKC 1. I was too jet lagged to train kettlebells feeling a bit weak, and knowing I had my pick of the three days here at the Cert to train….no hurry. I also knew I was guest teaching two swing classes on Monday, so taking Friday off to recover and training a Sat/Mon split would be fine. I was not feeling my best for kettlebells but I knew I had to do something so I took off walking in one direction, with my cell phone and a few forints in my pocket I told Mark I’d be back in about 1 hour. It was a hot and muggy day and I didn’t have a clue where I was going or how long I’d be gone. As much as I love attending RKC’s I also love to work up a good sweat!

That was my first walk of the day…. I ended up walking only the residential streets around the high school Cert location, so later that day I decided to go off in the other direction….another hour, or so.

On my first walk I was feeling a bit guilty wondering if I was spending my time in a valuable way. Here I was in a far off country full of history and culture and I’m walking in some neighborhood that could be nearly the same as being at home. All by myself, the clock ticking away some of the short time I would spend here, shouldn’t I be doing something more productive, or at least more entertaining?

Day 2. When I got the Cert Sat morning Elena Lakatos told me about the Farmers Market going on just down the street…well, you know I high tailed it down there and hit the mother lode! But it was only a 30 minute walk and besides I had some swings to do. Finally a killer swing workout, and some decent snatching, I was able to design a couple of new routines, and then? Another walk, another direction, another hour (at least), another hot and muggy day.

Day 3. Sunday is testing day for all of the candidates…not much for me to do so I wonder what I could do? Take a walk? Mid morning I took off in yet another direction, and I’m sure I took another before the end of the day.

The point of this post is not to write a play by play of my walking schedule, but to share some of my thoughts I found myself having during the hours and hours of my “alone time”, putting one foot in front of the other.

I have had a lot of time to think about my life during the 8-12 hours of walking I’ve done this past week. Funny how when I'm at home I don’t have the patience to walk barely more than 30 minutes, and my thoughts would be completely different. My mind at home is always one step ahead (no pun intended) thinking of all the things I could, or should, be doing other that walking. But here, and now, I have no where to go other than where I am, and I have nothing to do, other than what I’m doing.

I thought I had many habits and behaviors that were just part of who I was, or who I’ve become, especially in these past few years but some of that stuff can get shot to crap the minute I step into an airport or onto a plane. The anxiety of not being in control of every bit of my life creates panic. Panic creates obsessing. Obsessing is over focusing, and when you over focus on not being in control then guess what? You become more and more not in control. Maybe it's that feeling of being trapped? A victim.

There may have been a few things that I felt not in control about, but the one thing I could control was walking. Walking puts you back into your body but it keeps you in your mind as well. Walking has saved me many times, and on this trip it was no acception. I'm so grateful for my two legs that have carried me so far. Mile after mile, thought after thought, year after year, walking is one of my best friends. I'll never underestimate it's power.

Back to Badass. Hungarian Hundred Slide Show and Advanced Version

Edzés Tracy Reifkind-el és Juci RKC-val from Gabor Rode on Vimeo.

Finally I'm feeling like my old badass self! I don't often use that word, "badass", to describe how I feel about myself because I don't really feel like "a" badass, I just feel badass...there's a difference and everyone that trains kettlebells knows what I'm talking about....it just comes with the territory!

I've posted a couple of versions of my Hungarian Hundred swing workout based on the original....the hardest, the most boring long repetitve swing sets only for the truly badass! (do I really expect anyone to do this workout? No....but maybe that's a challenge....) I might of mentioned before that the original name of these routine was "1-2-3 to 1" because the theme is to progressively work up to a 3 to 1 work/rest ratio. This workout totals 1000 swings!

While in Hungary I had the honor of being invited by Judit Lantos to guest teach a couple of classes in her kb dungeon. The first class was more of a beginning/inter level and that was the first time I had made modifications, which I posted along with an intermediate version. But the second class was the advanced.....and I held back none of the boring stuff! Little did I know how long the entire workout would take so I did cut them (and me) a break in order to get in some snatch training (sorry I put you through it guys!) To me swings are like vegetables.....always eat your veggies first!


1-2-3 to 1 workout (Advanced Hungarian Hundred)

Equal work/rest

10 2 hd sw 15/15
20 2 hd sw 30/30
30 2 hd sw 45/45
40 2 hd sw 1.0/1.0

5.0 min 100 swings

1 to 1 + 2 to 1

10 tr 15/15
10 tr + 10 2 hd sw 30/15
20 tr 30/30
20 tr + 20 2 hd sw 1.0/30
30 tr 45/45
30 tr + 30 2 hd sw 1.5/45
40 tr 1.0
40 tr + 40 2 hd sw 2.0/1.0

12.5 min (19.5 total time)
300 swings (400 swings total)

1 to 1, + 2 to 1, + 3 to 1

5/5 x 1 15/15
5/5 x 1 + 10 tr 30/15
5/5 x 1 + 10 tr + 10 2 hd sw 45/15
5/5 x 2 30/30
5/5 x 2 + 20 tr 30/15
5/5 x 2 + 20 tr + 20 2 hd sw 1.5/30
5/5 x 3 45/45
5/5 x 3 + 30 tr 1.5/45
5/5 x 3 + 30 tr + 30 2 hd sw 2.25/45 (we got all the way to this point! well done guys!)
5/5 x 4 1.0/1.0
5/5 x 4 + 40 tr 2.0/1.0
5/5 x 4 + 40 tr + 40 2 hd sw 3.0/1.0

22.5 min (42.0)
600 swings (1000 swings)
Averages out to 42 sec work/18 sec rest

We stopped 240 swings and 9 minutes short of the entire workout, but still managed almost 800 swings in about 1/2 hour! I had planned on a full 60 minutes of ballistics but forgot about the first 15 min of joint mobility so there were a couple of people wanting to get on with some snatch practice...on with a 1-2-3 to 1 snatch workout.....and wait until you get my 1000 rep snatch workout!

Slideshow above: I was also lucky enough to have the whole workout video taped by Gabor Rode who did a fabulous job putting a slideshow together to some of my favorite training music. He also posted two 10 minute long videos on vimeo.com (just type in my name in search).