Feel the burn
Not from my workout -- from my supper.
I had one of my favourite dishes for dinner, something I'd forgotten about and hadn't made for months. The original recipe came from Cooking Light -- Szechuan Potatoes. It's even more delicious with sweet potatoes, though.
I didn't bother looking up the recipe, just made it up. So this is what it was, with two-thirds for A. and one-third for me.
12 oz sweet potato, peeled and finely julienned.
(You can shred it, but that makes it kind of mushy. I wish I had a mandoline.) Set aside in a bowl of cold water.
Peel and grate (on an ordinary hand grater):
2 cloves of garlic
a large thumb's worth of fresh ginger
Heat up a frying pan or wok on medium heat. Spray with cooking spray. Add the grated ginger and garlic; stir and fry till fragrant. Drain the sweet potatoes, and pour them in. Stir and fry. In between stirring and frying, mince up
a green onion or two or three
Set aside.
In a small measuring cup, mix up
2T Braggs aminos (or low-sodium soy sauce)
2T rice vinegar
a drop or two of toasted sesame oil
Stir the sweet potatoes again. Have they changed colour a bit? Do they seem somehow softer? You don't want them really soft; the slight surprising unpotatoey crispness is part of what makes the dish.
Okay. Stir in the liquid mixture, and the green onion. Scatter with:
a generous bunch -- a tablespoon maybe -- of Korean hot-pepper threads
(These are so cool. They have a real pepper/paprika taste, but are hot as well. And very pretty: hairlike and dark red. If you can't find them, I suppose hot pepper flakes or something will have to do. Not a tablespoon though!)
Serve. Sprinkle with sesame seeds if you like -- black ones look very attractive.
With these, I had 3.5 oz of chicken (fresh-baked!) and the nuked sprouts/kimchi thing.
Huge, and filling, but I'm really not that much further off my target than I have been any other day. I think next week I shall have to Get Serious and start planning out my meals in Nutribase the night before, so's I can tweak down to the right amount. That will save time in the long run (and in the morning) but quel drag, as Holly Golightly would say.
Other eating:
Meal One: 1 cup scrambled egg sub with salsa, and Cinnamon Bun 8-grain cereal (cook it, add some vanilla and cinnamon extract, and some Splenda; eat topped with a bit of tofu cream, butter sprinkles, and more ground cinnamon), and some grapefruit (and green tea and cider vinegar/lemon juice).
Meal Two: I can't remember what the "real" version of this is called. Egg Foo Yong? Ginger, garlic, green onion and bean sprouts, stir-fried a bit; 1/2 cup of egg sub and 1.75 oz shrimps poured over, with a bit of Braggs and some hot pepper. Topped with teriyaki sauce. Very good.
Meal Three: ratatouille (made a fresh batch yesterday) and a can of tuna. Oh, and half a tablespoon of hempseed, for those all-important EFAs.
Meal Four (post-lift): oatcake, with the Jello pudding/Quark "icing" again. Glutamine, which I shot in a glass of water. I never realised glutamine had a taste... I usually put it in a post-workout shake.
Speaking of shakes, A. tried out the new stick blender today. Gotta watch yourself with that thing! He incautiously lowered it into the shake already running, and protein with Udo's went all over the place. Then, he pulled it
out of the shake before it had quite finished spinning, and got another bath. I'm so glad he got to figure that out, and not me!
Speaking of meat, I went to the butcher today. I love my butcher. He sells organic grain-fed chicken breasts that are exceedingly delicious, as well as other, even more interesting things. (Extra-spicy bison sausage, anyone? Low-fat Limburger cheese! Polish cream fudge... sigh.)
After the previous show, I made him a little poster, a graphic designer's idea of a joke, done up rather like a Victorian soap testimonial. Picture of me all oiled and flexing, with "B_____'s Bison Builds Bodies!" in nice curly type beside it, and the most foo-foo border I could find. I really meant it in fun, and because he gives me a little bulk discount on my pounds and pounds of bird.
But he was terribly chuffed, and went off and had the thing framed, then hung it behind the cash. Which is even funnier; I haven't felt this much like a celebrity since I was in a Surprise Hit show back in university, and got recognised on the street. Apparently people come in and ask about me, and all the women working in the butcher shop know me (and joke, when people ask about the picture, that it is them). There was a new girl working there, and she asked me all sorts of questions when I said I was going to do another show.
"Are you eating all the meat to get bigger again?"
"No, I'm eating it so I can get smaller and still keep the muscle. I have to lose all my fat."
"But you look so big in that picture!"
"Actually, I was really small in that picture. I went to that show in a pair of pants I can't even get my butt into now. Bodybuilding women are usually really tiny when they're ready for a show, like size one or two."
"Really? You don't look big..."
"Honest, it's all in the paint and the flexing. See?" I made her a muscle.
"Oh! Wow. You are that big."
I can be such a show-off.
splogged by compass-rose
at 7:40 PM EDT