This is sorta random; a bit too long for a FB post, but something I want to document. I've taken to using this blog as a de facto public electronic journal, so this posting is in that vein.
As I continue on the journey to optimum health and weight, I've finally enterado (or enterrado adentro*) the fact that results are as much about the fuel we put into the body as they are a reflection of the work we do with it.
So I'm probably in the process of upping my workouts to upwards of 8 hrs/week. It's not just about the body; when I'm in classes, there's a constant struggle to exceed previously imposed limits. That's as much mental as it is physical. When I'm in the water or lifting, there's a focus, a clarity, and singularity of purpose that I welcome, even crave, but for which I find less and less time in this modern world full of distractions.
"...said the distracted woman." Getting back to the point: My weight and body fat are starting to move towards manageability, and not at the expense of my muscle mass. I'm working out more, and am usually famished by the end of a two-hour session. I've learned to carry bananas and yogurt for that quick fix, but need to have fast, healthy food on hand for when I get home. Otherwise, I'd probably just do seamless, El Aguila, or some fast food chain, most of which would just defeat the purpose of having been in the gym.
When the weather's warm, I try to always have a big salad on hand, but I like to prep my food for the week, and am not very adept at storing cut veggies. And if the salad's not pretty and fresh, I won't eat it, so tryna make a big salad doesn't always work.
I was surfing some vegan website recently and came across something that gave me the idea for my new staple food, which is what this post is about. It's nutritious, quick, easy, and tasty, and I can make a big batch of it for the week. It's basically greens and beans with some complex carbs thrown in. The list of ingredients was originally just stuff I had in the fridge and needed to eat before it went bad; I spoze you could tweak this any way you want.
My pots always start with lots of garlic and onions. I saute them in some EVOO, and add peppers, shallots -- whatever I have. Then I add the greens. First time around I think I used collards and kale, but tonite it was collards and spinach. Remembering my friends in Brazil, I wash my bunches of greens, bunch or roll them up, and then slice or julienne the rolls, so I end up with strips of greens. I'm not chopping them, I'm slicing them horizontally across the leaves. So I have this big mixture of collards and spinach, which I mix together again while washing again, and then add to the sauteing onions. (I save part of the greens for making my Nutriblasts during the week, and find that cutting them cut into strips makes it a lot easier to get other stuff into the bullet. But that's another digression.)
So we have onions/garlic and greens sauteing. Last week I used some leftover cooked brown rice in this thing. I was thinking that quinoa would be a better option, and this week decided to try some Goya product that is a quinoa/brown rice mixture. While it serves the purpose, it is prepared food, and as such has way too much salt for my taste (another distracting aside: when did salt become a food group rather than a taste enhancer? What is it with putting salt on EVERY. FREAKING. THING? Can we distinguish no taste but "salty?"). While the greens were sauteing, I prepared the quinoa/brown rice mixture mostly according to the package instructions, although I tend to add a bit more water because I don't like my quinoa too hard. After the quinoa cooks, you're spozed to let it sit for a few minutes. During that time, I added the black beans to the greens, and when it had finished sitting, the quinoa mix.
It was so good I had to write a blog post about it. As I said, it's quick, it's tasty, and I can now put it in the fridge for the rest of the week. If I want meat, I can add some of that leftover turkey; if I don't want meat, I can eat it as is. When I come home hungry, all I need to do is nuke it a coupla minutes, and I have my green leafies, my complete protein, and my complex carbs. That's worth writing about.,
And on that lovely note, my friends, I am turning in....
*"Enterar" is "to learn," but "enterrar" is "to bury." At some point I've come to associate the notion of complete learning with "enterrando adentro," or "burying something inside yourself." Not sure if it's an idiomatic expression or if I've mis-heard something and created my own malapropism.
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