Christmas

Fell off the PALEO wagon – SIGH!

Let me begin by letting you know I did not just fall off the wagon but I completely JUMPED off the PALEO wagon and ate some PIZZA, COOKIES and MISC other crap for two days. And let me tell you I thought I would enjoy and love every minute of it and let me also tell you I DID NOT! I enjoyed the first few bites of all the supposed goodness and it didn’t take but a few minutes to feel like UBER CRAPOLA! But did I stop eating… HELL NO, I kept eating like a psychopath. Seriously NOT WORTH IT! Not one bit. It was like I was in a haze for 2 days. Like a hangover fog without the worship to the porcelain gods. I haven’t felt so out of it in a very long time. I can only attribute that feeling to the eating of bread, sugars, processed foods, etc. In the past 4 months I have never felt so crappy. Ernie indulged with me and he pretty much felt the same way. SAY NO TO GRAINS and processed food people! I mean it! It’s not even fun. It’s horrible. I promise.

Now that I have my PSA and admitted faults out of the way let’s move onto the day before I ate like CRAP and our Christmas Eve WOD! It was a doozy but we worked out in teams of 2 to eliminate the fear of absolute death. It went along to the song the 12 days of Christmas. So as you will see in the picture below we had a lot of reps ahead of us 🙂

Christmas Eve 2011 WOD

I teamed up with Kara and I feel that we worked well together. Thank goodness she can bust out pullups because as I’ve mentioned many times before I’m really bad at them! After our WOD which took us 14:22 to complete we played with SLEDs. The BOOM boxers presented Grant with 2 sleds for Christmas. So of course we had to play with them. It was fun and unexpectedly hard. It doesn’t help my right hip has been giving me grief but it was fun to watch everyone pull around some good weight!

So like a crazy person I went out into the world to shop and it seriously wasn’t that bad but I had a lot to do and I was already losing my voice. But with the heat of the stores, the cold of the day and the beating of the WOD about took me out for the day. After a good nap I was good to go though. Christmas Eve through Christmas morning ended up being pretty good. The family had a great Christmas and Ernie managed to keep two of my presents reserved for Christmas day. So in addition to the food processor and new Inov-8s I received a French Fry Cutter to alleviate all my prep time when I make Sweet Potato Fries! I also got a nice little gift set of Mary Kay products! Woohoo.

Christmas Present

I bailed on any workout for yesterday or today as my voice has been gone. I don’t feel bad or anything really… just random bouts of coughing/congestion and lost voice. I don’t however want this to turn into something icky so I’ve been resting and keeping in from the cold – hopefully I’ll be over this funk soon.

Other than that, it’s Tuesday. Back to work, back to the routine. I’m back on that Paleo Wagon and I hope to never jump off again. It was horrible! The new year is right around the corner. And to bring it in we are doing a NYE WOD at the BOOM Box. If you live in the DFW area and want to be crazy like us come on with your badself! Let me know. We’ll be ringing in the New Year with FRAN! I know it’s insane but we plan on feasting a few hours before and then gettin our workout on!

Merry Christmas Eve Eve

It’s Friday, Friday blah blah blah. It was a good workout at the BOOM BOX!

12/23/11 WOD

I thought Melanie and I did pretty well. I’m sure the whiteboard will tell me otherwise by end of day but I felt good! We completed it in 16:45 – I’ve only ever rowed for warm ups or shorter time periods for calories so it was nice to have some distance involved. Granted it wasn’t FAR but it was more than normal. I think I’m getting better at double unders and I got to test drive my NEW CYCLONE SPEED ROPE and I LOVE IT! It was greatness. I will be DU Master before you know it!

Tomorrows WOD will have something to do with the 12 days of Christmas! I’m sure we’ll all be moaning and groaning when we find out what CrossFit Santa is bringing us 😦 hahahhahaha! It should be fun. I hope it’s FUN… oh please let it be fun!!!

On the food note… I guess my journey to give up ezekiel bread was replaced with tasting of cake balls. Yup I finally broke down and had a few. Only a few though so I didn’t turn into a sugar monster but I still feel crappy in my head for eating the FIVE that I did. How sad am I? LOL who feels guilty over such things. It happens I know. But I have been ezekiel bread free now for 4 days! hahahahh! Go me and NO MORE CAKE BALLS!

I’m done rambling for the day. Enjoy your Friday and the whole entire weekend. Have a Merry Christmas as well! Christmas has always been a favorite time of year for me and I’m sure it always will be but this Christmas is just one I’m not into. It’s hard when you lose a parent unexpectedly to get through those “first” holiday/events without them. It’s double whammy suck ass because her birthday is just 3 days after Christmas. I know I have reasons to be happy for and I know I have a faith that will bring me through but geez I wish I could just fly through this week, hang out on a beach somewhere or just hide under the covers and sleep the whole week. Anyhow, I know y’all don’t want me to be sad and poor poor petri but I was a little bit anyways. Just a little. I’m not going to drag it out at least. It’s out there, I’m done… I hope… I can’t make any promises but I’ll try.

If I’m not back on Monday typing away, I’ll be back Tuesday (only because I have Monday off and may be lazy)! So until then… be merry and joyful and everything else. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Buddy the Elf… What’s your Favorite Color?

Thursday is for REST!

Heheh, I couldn’t think of a “good” title so I quoted one of my favorite Christmas movies! Happy Thursday! Christmas is really almost here – FOR REAL. Just a few more days and I’m still not ready! Talk about procrastinating. Not one present is wrapped. I’m sure the kids are wondering what the heck, hahaha. Ah well. It’ll be fine when it actually gets here! I’m just a slacker of a mother! They know me well enough to know I wouldn’t let them down on Christmas!!! Thank goodness they aren’t little and thank goodness I never knew about Elf on a Shelf! Geez having one of those would probably have made me lose my mind by now. I’m just happy we are almost done with the Tooth Fairy. She’s a lazy one!

So onto ME cause what’s better than talking about Me? Hahahah, I’m not that self centered. Just on the verge. Hell I started a blog to talk about me, maybe I am that interested in me. Anyways. Moving on! I got my 2nd EARLY Christmas present last night and ooooo weeeeee it’s a good one! A Cuisinart 12 cup Food Processor! Ya Buddy! It comes with a 4 cup bowl too! I’ve been using this itty bitty chopper/grinder to get my stuff chopped and cut up with and it was good because it helped but it’s so small I could only do a little bit at a time. I have a family of 5 to cook for and all boys so you can only imagine how little it helped! NOW I have the deluxe model that will process ANYTHING and in large amounts! It can’t get any better than that 🙂 But wait there’s MORE … now Ernie says he’ll be able to help me with dinner! WTH? That’s what the processor is for…to help me expedite the chopping and the mincing and the shredding of foods. And NOW he wants to help! I was like sooooo helping before was not an option? And now you’re ready to jump on board?!? Hahahha. Seriously…He’s great when it comes to the grill, so this isn’t Ernie bashing day. He did get me my new prize after all but I find it rather funny that he now wants to help with dinner. MEN!?!

Early Christmas - Excuse the messy cluttered kitchen! I've been busy!

So now hopefully I’ll be making my own nut butters, nut flours, and anything else I can get done with my beast of a machine. Or maybe it will be Ernie figuring it all out! I’ll keep you posted on how long his enthusiasm lasts 🙂

Thursday = REST DAY (at least it’s become that way lately)
No workout today but I did finish my cakeball frenzy… THANK GOODNESS! Here is the last of them – Chocoloate Mint, Butter Cake, Red Velvet and Brownie! I do have a mini frenzy scheduled for this weekend but it will only be a fraction of the 600 I made this week!

Yummy! One day I will take pretty pictures.... ONE DAY!

Short blog today. Good? Bad? Who knows, just keep reading. I’m here Monday through Friday ladies and gentlemen trying to bring you some form of knowledge, entertainment, etc… Please come back and tell your friends as well.

Rockin and a Rollin with Random Tuesday

It’s Tuesday people! Christmas is so close and I’m sooooo not ready. But that is a whole other topic that I don’t think y’all want me to delve into. I got so excited yesterday talking about our Saturday Funday WOD and our casting call with Escape Routes I completely forgot to mention the WOD for yesterday! What was I thinking?!? Oh ya I also got caught up in the cake ball frenzy which is still in action. Baking, mixing, rolling, coating, baking, mixing, rolling, coating. It never ends!!!!

12/19/11 WOD

So the WOD for yesterday was skill work on Double Unders. DU 2 mintues x 2 with a 3 minute rest in the middle. I’m getting better at those sneaky little double unders. I’m going and going and then kablam, I get tired or out of rhythm, but I managed to get 86 my first round and 83 my 2nd round.

We moved on to the METCON: Toes to Bar and Air Squats… I got this… well at least HALF of this. So I wanted to practice Toes to Bar before we started cause to this point I’ve not been able to master them. Low and behold. I got it figured out! But not for long. 3-2-1 GO, I got 5 before I thought I would die, so I moved to Knees to Elbows and those weren’t much prettier. I struggled and I struggled. It was sad 😦 I felt defeated but surprisingly it didn’t ruin my day!

What almost ruined my day was the non stop downpours of rain and bad drivers when I left work. But when the rain slowed it’s roll and the sun peaked out the slightest bit, it turned the sky into amazing beauty. I took a picture with my phone but it doesn’t do it justice. Everything had a deep warm orange glow and it just made me smile. It’s great when the world opens up like that and shares 🙂

Beautiful!

Enough gushy talk I suppose. On to today. There’s not much to report in general, I had a good workout today at bootcamp. Lots of pushups. I can do them but I still struggle. One day I will be the master of pushups but that day is still not in sight for me.

As I sit here staring at the screen writing without a plan, I did realize I do have big news. I’ve been holding on to one grain source Monday-Friday …. EZEKIEL BREAD! I have not been able to let go of my one slice with almond butter and a smidgeon of jelly. It’s warm and fuzzy and makes me happy. But I said enough is enough. If you’re going to blog about crazy CrossFit, Paleo and other healthy stuff you do then you have to step up your game. I’m not saying I’m never going to eat a grain again, I’m just saying I need to eliminate it from my ROUTINE. Break the habit. So I told myself after I ate my last piece (yesterday) then I would give up my lil slice of grains. So today, I brought me an apple to dip in my almond butter. It was good but it will take time to move forward without second thoughts going to my Ezekiel bread. I’ll be sure to post if that little bit of grain gone out of my life makes any major changes. It’s hard, cause when you feel good you don’t want to nitpick yourself. You just enjoy feeling good. So I may  have nothing to report in general, but if I notice anything measurable I’ll be sure to let y’all know!

Is it really only Tuesday?!? I gotta get on some more recipes to share with y’all but our days have been busy so I haven’t made the effort to try out new things. I will, I promise as that is part of my intentions with this blog. But it may have to wait a few more days. It’s still Tuesday, damn. Oh well. Have a Happy Day, please 🙂

WOD-tastic Friday UPDATE!

I do have one picture and it was my early Christmas present! New Inov-8s!!! wooohooo! They are shiny and pretty and I love them… oh ya they feel good too and that is why my WOD today was WOD-tastic! 🙂 Thank you Ernie!

PRETTY INOV-8s

They are brighter in person than the picture lets on. More Aqua in color. Thanks for tuning in on this double post Friday 🙂

WOD-tastic Friday

And a slacker blog day. No photos. No treats. I got nothin for ya today! And I apologize. I figure these things happen so long as I don’t let them happen often, right? Who’s with me on this? Hahaha.

We did go to Outback for dinner. Which is our GO-TO restaurant as of late. If only we had a place that served grass fed steaks! That’s close and not some schamncy fancy place.

We get home, I’m tired and I need to catch up on American Horror Story. Lame excuse I know but I knew I had an early morning and I didn’t want to be up all night. If I haven’t already told you, I get my WODs in at 5 am. M/W/F so it’s early and TV prevailed :/

So let me get to the Boom Box report. We worked on 5RM of Overhead Squat (OHS). This movement/lift takes a lot of flexibility that I still need to build but I’m getting there. Little did I know that today it would feel like my wrists were on FIRE and I had a hard time moving up in weight 😦 Overall I think I could handle the weight but the darn inside of my right wrist was just not having it. So I maxed out only at 60 lbs. I was real sad about that but you have to move on and work on wrist/forearm mobility. I guess.

The MetCon was:

METCON
Team WOD
7 rounds
5 Muscle ups OR 5 chest to bar pullups & 5 bench dips
8 Plyo Push-ups
11 Plyo Air-squats

It was guys vs gals this morning. Melanie and I did pretty good today. It helps that you can have someone finish out the reps for you and we got through our 7 rounds in a little over 8 minutes …. I THINK! I can’t recall. Granted we didn’t do Muscle UPS but we still pushed and worked hard. So Kudos to us 🙂

And that’s all I’ve got folks… This weekend will be one of rest and getting to those treats I’ve been needing to make. Good Luck to our Boom Box Coach at the All Cities Open tomorrow. We’ll be there cheering him on for sure! It’s a beast of a competition so that is why I am not participating. I’m just not a firebreather yet.. hahahah 3 1/2 months in… still a beginner 🙂

Oh and my kid note for the day: I was trying out one of our NEW lara bars, Chocolate Cherry Torte or something like that and it was YUMMO probably cause the chocolate chips had some sugar, ha, ah well. So I expressed that it was tasty and my 12 yr old (Jonas) says “can I have a little of it?” My immediate response was NO sir! And he was all poor poor petri and I said maybe if you’re good Santa will leave some in your stocking… OH that’s right you don’t believe in Santa anymore do you son?” And to his credit he’s become a little more quick witted and responded with “I BELIEVE IN PALEO SANTA!” Are you kidding me! It made me laugh, he will leave him almond milk and a walnut date bar. And straight up carrots for the reindeer! Good times, Good times indeed! Happy Friday people!!!

It’s a Gloomy and Rainy Monday… boooooo!

Saturday funday WOD 12/03/11

Of course it’s weekend recap time! After crashing hard friday night EARLY cause I’m an old fart, I woke up to a very chilly morning. I started the day off right with iChooseFit bootcamp. We were inside most of the time but we had some running and boxing outside in the drizzly dreary morning. Then because I’m super awesome I went home, put dry clothes on and headed out to the Boom Box for the Saturday Funday WOD and HELLO fun shoudn’t be the word for it but more like a beating. As you can see from the picture it was a 10 min AMRAP of insansity! I chose to do the 60 BFB, 20 Front Squats and 10 Ring Rows/10 Ring Dips. I barely got through one round and just for grins got that one burpee in before time was called.

I will tell you I had already done about 60 burpees at iChooseFit, then I had to do another 60 for the WOD!!!??!!! Those burpees were a beating and took up most of the 10 minutes in the WOD. I was spent!

Oh ya, and prior to that we had our 90 sec max rep Hand Release Push Ups! I ousted Coach Grants MOM (she’s a tough one to beat)! She had the wall record for 40 in 90 seconds and I barely scraped by with 43!!!! Woohoooo! I think with better pacing I could have pushed out 45. Maybe next time 🙂

The rest of Saturday consisted of one of my son’s football parties and lots of “rest” the rest of the day. As always Sundays are our shopping days. We gather up all that we need for the week, it just happened to be not as fun because it wouldn’t stop raining/drizzling. I did however buy some items to make for Christmas events for the kids, for work, for parties, etc. I hope to do some trial baking to see if it’s worthy to the NON PALEO folks out there.

My first trial was an almond flour chocolate cake. The batter tasted good so I was hopeful for a great outcome. And low and behold it was pretty tasty, I just overcooked it a tad bit 😦 While I was overcooking my cake I was whipping up a chocolate frosting to mix with the cake because my end goal was to make some paleo cake balls! For the past several years I turn into a cake ball machine in December. Well seeing as that I’ve changed my whole eating lifestyle cake balls just weren’t going to be my thing this year but if I can get this paleo style cake ball going it might be worth if for the holidays! So I used the cake that was still edible and mixed it with my frosting (that may be a little too bitter since the chocolate bar had zero sugar) and rolled out little balls. I set them in the freezer and hopefully tonight I’ll get them dipped in some dark chocolate and get my taste testing on! I’ll let you know how it goes. In the mean while I’ll share my PRE BAKED cake and the recipe. I forgot to do an after picture because I was so sad it was overdone. Trust me it would not have been a pretty picture.

Almond Flour Chocolate Cake

Chocolate Cake (makes about 24 balls)
(From “the Gluten-free Almond Flour cookbook”)

2 cups almond flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup raw honey
2 eggs
1 Tbsp vanilla
(I added grapeseed oil because the batter was thick, and to be honest I didn’t measure it out. I’ll modify this when I bake again, but I’d say I did at least 1/3 cup)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease (with coconut oil!) and flour (with almond flour!) an 8 inch cake pan.
Combine the almond flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking soda in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the honey, eggs and vanilla. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan and bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool the cake completely.

Courtesy of http://paleobrat.blogspot.com/2011/04/paleo-party-with-cake-pop-demo.html

I did not follow their cake ball directions but feel free to try your own thing. Below is the frosting I made that I mixed in with my crumbled up cake.

Chocolate Frosting:
1 cup of dark chocolate. I tried to use 75% cacao or higher, but only had this 60% one laying around, so I used that
1/2 cup grapeseed oil
2 tbs agave nectar
1 tbs vanilla extract
pinch sea salt

Chop dark chocolate up and place into a small saucepan
Pour out half cup of grapeseed oil and mix with chocolate in saucepan
Heat over low heat until melted and blended
Stir in agave, vanilla and salt

Once the chocolate is melted, place in mixing bowl to cool. When it is warm to the touch I put it in fridge to cool more quickly. This still wasn’t quick enough for me so I put in freezer for a little bit as well.

Once chilled, place in mixer and mix on a high speed until its rich, fluffy, and creamy. It will lighten up in color quite a bit and almost have a light buttercream consistency.

Courtesy of: http://www.instructables.com/id/Gluten-Free-Paleo-Friendly-Delicious-Vanilla-Cu/

I have not tried the cupcakes that went with the frosting yet but I’m sure they are yummy.

Once I taste test the cake balls I will be more detailed about making them and show you some pictures. Wish me luck! And if you have any questions or things to add about anything I’ve shared just leave a comment 🙂 Happy Monday