Category Archives: Cooking

May 7 2013

Tuesday May 7, 2013: Still here

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Thursday was my Mom’s birthday, she turned 71. We celebrated it Thursday night. May is a busy birthday month in my family because not only my Mom has her birthday, my Dad had his birthday in May too and the last one to close the line is me. I have one sister and her birthday is in January.

R’s best friend celebrated his birthday last Saturday. It was a very pleasant evening and as usual it was late again. We were in bed at 3 am. I took it easy on the wine though and because of that I was okay the next day, even though I didn’t get enough sleep.

Tomorrow is my Friday because Thursday is a Christian holiday (Ascension day) and we get a vacation day for that. Friday is my usual day off but if it wasn’t I had a vacation day too because my company is closed. That’s two work weeks of 3 days, I can really get used to that as long as I get paid for 36 hours LOL.

Workouts:

Tempo Tuesday

Tempo run of 30 minutes with 1 tempo part of 3 minutes. I took 1 walk break around 20 minutes and it still was one of my fastest runs. This is good and bad. Good because I hadn’t run in over a week and had a hard time getting out of the door for this run. Bad because I want to stick to my paces, otherwise I won’t make it through a half marathon. I need to slow down. The pace for this run was too fast. But … I had a good feeling after finishing this run. Now all I have to do is put on those running shoes again for my next run and keep doing that. And .. it was perfect running weather:

Stats:
Distance: 4.5 K / 2.8 miles
Time: 00:29:53

Speed per km: 9.04 km/hour (5.8 miles/hour)

Time per km: 06:38
Weather: dry, not much wind, 9C (48 degrees)

Last song on Ipod before finish: Philip Philips – Home

Core Wednesday

The Firm Core Solutions: 3 10-minute workouts that I all did. Standing abs, core and abs sculpting and traditional abs. First time I did this workout and I like it. Total time: 30 minutes.

Easy Thursday

Easy 20 minute run. A good run, no walk breaks, no watching paces, just run. Huge bonus at this run: I left at daylight! No more running in the dark for at least 4 months from now: woohoo!

Stats:
Distance: 3 K / 1.9 miles
Time: 00:20:24

Speed per km: 8.82 km/hour (5.5 miles/hour)

Time per km: 06:48
Weather: dry, little bit of wind, 7C (44 degrees)

Last song on Ipod before finish: Glee Cast – Somebody that I used to know.

Long Easy Saturday 

The plan was to run 7K on Saturday but as soon as I started to run I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t feel a 100% and my right calve was a bit hurting. I didn’t want to turn around and go home and decided to do an easy short run. I had to take a few walk breaks too. It wasn’t one of my best runs but afterwards I was glad I went and did something, even if it was short.

Stats:
Distance: 3.2 K / 2 miles
Time: 00:22:54

Speed per km: 8.38 km/hour (5.2 miles/hour)

Time per km: 07:09
Weather: dry, sunny, little bit of wind, 10C (50 degrees)

Last song on Ipod before finish: Gloria Gaynor – I will survive.

Struggle Monday and Tuesday

Two days in a row I got out of bed, got dressed in my running clothes and just couldn’t motivate myself to go run, not even the fact that it was already light helped. So I went back upstairs, get undressed and took a shower. It’s so hard to motivate myself at the moment but I keep on trying. Tomorrow morning I will get dressed for a run again and hopefully this time I do go.

Meals:

Monday April 29

I made meatloaf for the first time in my life. Saw the recipe in the free magazine of my supermarket and made it on Monday. And it was very, very good and definitely will return on the menu. We ate it with mashed potatoes and green beans.

Tuesday April 30

New recipe: pasta with tomatoes and mozzarella out of the oven. The original recipe is vegetarian but I’ve added some ham to it. Tasted good!

 

Wednesday May 1

I have made this Ainsley recipe before: chicken madras curry with banana with yellow rice. Not to spicy but very good.

 

Sunday May 5

A pasta dish with white asparagus, ham, cherry tomatoes and asparagus sauce.

Apr 7 2013

Sunday April 7, 2013: Spring has arrived!

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Finally Spring is here! Since Monday the weather is getting better and better and it can lift one’s spirit so much after this long Winter. It’s also longer light every night since Sunday when the clock went forward with an hour. And I’m not the only who’s happy that Spring is finally here:

I’m sorry that I haven’t been commenting much on your blogs last week. I did read everything but it’s been a busy stressful week at work. Besides that I catched another cold last Monday and have been pretty sick till Saturday. Being so busy at work and not feeling well made that I didn’t have energy at night to do much. Today I feel much better.

Few changes at work. Last week my direct manager asked me if I was willing to work for our communication manager. His current assistant gets a new job at his department and he needs someone to make his appointments and answers his phone. Of course I said I would do it.

His assistant also is editor in chief of our intercompany magazine and I’ve been asked if I would do this. I had to think a couple of days about that because it’s a lot of extra work but it’s fun work. I decided I am going to do it but that meant I had to leave the vitality team. I can’t do everything and had to make a choice. Hmmm probably should update my linked in profile with “editor in chief” LOL.

I’m home alone this weekend. R. is in Italy for a motor exhibition and will be home tomorrow.

Workouts:

Tempo Monday

Half marathon training has started and I started with a 30 minute tempo run. I mean by that that most of the run is at an easy pace and 3 minutes are tempo. The tempo minutes build up and so will the time of the total run. I’m using paces for the different runs based on a 5K of 30 to 31 minutes, this means I have to run a lot slower than I usually do. I need to work on that because it will make the longer runs later in the schedule easier. Pace for the run was 06:45-7:00 per km and for the tempo part 6:27-6:42.

Stats:

Distance: 4.4 K / 2.8 miles
Time: 00:30:24

Speed per km: 8.70 km/hour (5.4 miles/hour)

Time per km: 06:54
Weather: dry, sunny, not much wind, -3C (26 degrees)

Last song on Ipod before finish: Mumford & Sons – The Cave

Strength Tuesday

I did a short workout by The Firm Express: Sculpt. These workouts are short but the tempo is high. You hardly have time to get up from the floor to do your standing exercises. They combine upper and lower body exercises in 1 too to get the max out of your workout. Total time: 20 minutes.

Rest Wednesday

An unplanned rest day, I hadn’t been sleeping well for the past 2 nights and was too tired to do something in the morning.

Easy Thursday

Easy run of 20 minutes, recommended pace 07:09-07:24/km. Still wasn’t completely rested and took it easy but without walking breaks.

Stats:

Distance: 2.9 K / 1.8 miles
Time: 00:20:20

Speed per km: 8.49 km/hour (5.3 miles/hour)

Time per km: 07:04
Weather: dry, sunny, not much wind, 0C (32 degrees)

Last song on Ipod before finish: Communards – Don’t leave me this way.

 

Rest Friday, Saturday and Sunday

Decided to take a couple of rest days to heal completely from my cold.

Meals:

Monday

 New recipe: chicken in apple-balsamico sauce. It was delicious and definitely saved in my recipe database for another time. We had baked potatoes and a salad with it.

Tuesday

 

“Hachee” of minced meat with onion, mashed potatoes and carrots with peas. I was home late and this recipe was ready in 15 minutes: perfect. Also a new recipe and also being saved for busy days.

Thursday

Pasta with zucchini, mushrooms and ham in a tomato sauce.

Saturday

A recipe by Bill Granger: chicken with shi taki mushrooms and red pepper. I wasn’t very impressed by this meal and won’t make it again. I made it for one but it was a bit too much, didn’t eat it all.

Dec 6 2012

Thursday December 6, 2012: Mishmash

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Daily stuff:
Thank you for the nice comments about the village where I live. If you ever visitHolland, you’re more than welcome to come and see for yourself.

Shelley asked some questions about the traditional costume women wear in the youtube video I posted. There are only about 270 women in the village that wear this every day. The youngest women in this costume is born in 1950. The costume is special by the use of the “kraplap”. You can see someone in the traditional costume every day in the village but it’s a dying tradition. The younger people don’t wear it except for special occasions. It is expected that you won’t see it every day anymore in 10 years.

Weekend plans: tomorrow night we’re going to a concert by The Golden Earring. The best Dutch rock band that we have but we haven’t seen them play live yet. You may know them because their song Radar Love was a huge hit in theUSAin 1973. When I looked it up I saw that Bill Clinton used the song back in 1992 when he was running for president.

But .. that is if the roads are good to drive. The weather forecast gives very bad weather for tonight and tomorrow morning: lots of snow. Hopefully the roads are clear in the evening.

We are also going to buy a Christmas tree. We have a fake one in the addict but it’s so much work to put it up that we tried a real one last year and we liked that. My company sells Christmas trees and I get a discount on it which makes the tree not too expensive. Do you have a Christmas tree yet?

Workouts:

I have decided to start over with the 5K training because I missed a couple of runs. The program is only 6 weeks and the “long” runs are adding up fast. It seems like it’s easy but it’s not because I’m working on my speed. I want to be faster compared to the running version 1.0 of me. That means that the running parts are fast (at least fast for me). But it went well.

Stats:
Run-walk ratio: 6 x 2 minutes, 1 minute walking inbetween (12 minutes running, 6 minutes walking)
Weather: dry, not much wind,0C(32 degrees)
Distance: 2.5 K / 1.5 miles
Time: 00:17:52
Last song on Ipod before finish: Glee Cast – Stronger.

This morning I did a Firm Express workout: cardio and sculpt.
Total time: 20 minutes.

Outfits:
Yesterday’s outfit

Dinner:

Wednesday dinner

 Turkish pizza: meat with onion, tomatoes, garlic and spices on a wrap heated in the oven with some garlic sauce.

Dec 4 2012

Tuesday December 4, 2012: Mishmash

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Daily stuff:
Last week I heard that Bruce Springsteen was coming back to Hollandnext Summer for a concert and of course we want to go. Saturday ticket sale started at 10 am and I was ready at 9.55 am. At 10.01 am I had tickets for us. Later that day I read on FB that a lot of people had trouble buying tickets and had to wait for hours to be able to buy them. I considered myself lucky that I got them so fast. The concert is in a park on June 22nd next year.

This might be fun to watch for you: if you ever wonder where I live and how my village looks like, watch the video on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTGLNiXbIdE

Yesterday a real life soap about a few people that live in my village started on Dutch television. I have seen some of the people sometimes but I don’t know them because I don’t participate active in the community. I wasn’t very impressed with the program either but R. likes it. The comment is in Dutch of course but it gives a view shots of where I live. The total video is only 52 seconds so it doesn’t take much of your time to watch it.

Workouts:

That akward moment when you are only a few minutes in your run and you feel like you have to go the bathroom. At first you keep on going and hope it will go away. But a few minutes later you know you have to get home asap if you don’t want to get in bigger trouble. This happened to me last Wednesday at my morning run.
With all my stomach problems, this was the first time I had to stop a run and go home because I had to go to the bathroom and I didn’t like it at all. Hopefully it won’t happen again.

This morning I did a Turbofire workout: HITT 25. I like the HITT workouts, they are intense but short. I had planned to do a 30 minute sculpt session after this but I overslept and didn’t have time to do it.
Total time: 25 minutes.

Outfits:

Today’s outfit

 

Dinner:

Monday dinner

Endive with mashed potatoes, bacon, onion, herb cheese and walnuts.

Tuesday dinner

A recipe I saw on a cooking show on the Dutch cooking channel: 24 Kitchen. Chicken with garlic, onion, spices, yogurt and herbs out of the oven, baked potatoes and mashed green peas with mint. I loved it, R. wasn’t that enthousiastic.

TV shows I watched last week

True Blood, The Walking Dead, The Kennedy’s, Mad Men, Private Practice, Downton Abbey, Once upon a time, Revenge, Rookie Blue, Game of Thrones.

Season 3 of Downton Abbey finally started here and I love this show. It’s easy going and I love the English aristocrat environment.

Movies I’ve seen last week

The Hangover part II

I liked part 1 better because of the surprise element but still this was a nice movie to watch on a relaxing Friday night.

Sint

A Dutch horror movie. We don’t have Santa Clause, we have Sinterklaas on December 5th. It’s the same principle: giving gifts. This movie was about bad Sinterklaas. This one was murdered in the 14th century and every December 5th when it is full moon his ghost came back to kill as many people as possible. It was scary sometimes and an okay movie, especially for a Dutch movie.

Nov 19 2012

Monday November 19, 2012: Mishmash

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Daily stuff:
It’s been quiet on this side of the world but I had a lot of thinking and reading to do regarding my health. I like to say I’m healthy but the truth is I’m not: I have overweight, I drink too much wine and I don’t sleep enough. I do exercise and I don’t smoke, at least that’s something I’m doing right.

Lately I have a lack of energy which is (in my opinion) a combination of eating too much carbs, not enough sleep and a glass of wine almost every night. Rereading my low carb book made me realize I have a lot of symptoms that can be reduced by eating low carb.

As of today I’m going to:

  • Eat low carb. I’m not eliminating all carbs. The book says you can only have fruits once a day in your “carb hour” but I’m still going to eat my fruits. I’m going to eat carbs at dinner and eat low carb at breakfast, lunch and snacks (except for the fruit that I eat as a snack).

    I’m going to have 1 carb moment for 6 weeks and see where I am then (that is also the end of the year). If I haven’t reached my target weight I’m going to continue with only 1 carb moment. If I do reach target weight I’m going to add a few carbs moments a week extra (this is also what the book advices).

    I hope that this gives me more energy, helps me lose weight and less IBS problems.

  • Sleep. I need 7 hours of sleep. Lately I slept around 6 tot 6.5 hours a night. I’m going to make sure I’m in bed at 10:15 pm on weekdays because I get up at 5:15 am.
  • Wine. No wine during weekdays except for special occasions.
  • Keep on exercising. I always plan 6 workouts a week of which I have to do at least 5 every week.

This is not a challenge or something I’m doing for a certain period. It’s my intention to make this my lifestyle. Unless the IBS problems continue, in that case I will let me test on other allergies.

Today I had a health check at work. We used to have them every 2 years but with the new Vitality program we introduced we get it every year. And I got an “A” for having such a good health. Yes, I do have a little bit of overweight but everything else is perfect. We talked about my low carb plans and she (the doctor) thought it was a good idea and she adviced me too to keep eating my fruits.

Something else, Saturday I went to the weekly market in my village. I used to go there every week for years but the past few years I bought my fruits and vegetables in the grocery store. However, there’s a crisis here inHollandand we have to spend our money carefully. Things like fruits and veggies, potatoes, chicken and cheese are cheaper at the market than at the grocery store. And more important, it tastes better and stays fresh longer. So, I’m going to make it a habit to go to the market every week now.

And Bella enjoyed the sunshine yesterday.

Outfits:
Today’s outfit

 

Workouts:

I got up yesterday and it was raining and I didn’t want to run in the rain. Instead I cleaned my house and did my run this morning (Monday is usually my cleaning day and rest day). I had to do 2 x 10 minutes and I can’t even remember the last time I ran 10 minutes straight, but I did it both times and felt great afterwards.

Stats:
Run-walk ratio: 2 x 10 minutes, 2 minutes walking inbetween (20 minutes running, 4 minutes walking)
Weather: dry, not much wind,0C(32 degrees)
Distance: 3.3 K / 2 miles
Time: 00:24:10
Last song on Ipod before finish: The Jam – A town called Malice.

Weekly workout review:

Not a very good week, mostly due to a low energy level.

Bella and Fran’s Autumn challenge: walk at least 30 minutes every day:

Days till the end of Autumn (Thursday December 20): 90 days
Success: 51 days
Fail: 8 days

Sunday dinner

First recipe from this cookbook: Mexican tomato soup with a pistou of yogurt, mint and Jalapeno peppers, sprinkles of avocado, feta cheese, spring onions with tortilla chips with cheese and red peppers. Delicious!

 

I made a batch of nut muesli (nuts, coconut oil, flaxseed and spices) to eat with Greek yogurt for breakfast.

 

Monday dinner

Another recipe from the Jamie in 15 minutes cook book: Greek chicken with couscous with red pepper, spring onions and feta cheese with tzatiki. Another delicious meal.

Nov 7 2012

Wednesday November 7, 2012: Mishmash

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Daily stuff
R. went to the doctor and got antibiotics for his cold. We have decided to stay home this weekend. He isn’t feeling any better despite the medicines and it’s better to stay home and get well.

Sunset Monday afternoon

Today I got an email that my photobook of my jubilee day in September was ready. I went to pick it up immediately. The girl who took the photos that day made a personal photo book for everybody. It looks really nice and is a great reminder of a fantastic day. I asked her if I could get the best photos digital and here they are.

 

Workouts

Tuesday morning I did The Firm Total Body Time-Crunch, the express workout. It’s a complete weights workout with exercises for the upper and lower body. Great workout.
Total time: 25 minutes.

I got my butt out of my warm bed to do training 2 of my 5K program. I knew I only had to do 20 minutes which made it much easier to get up and go outside. And it wasn’t bad at all. The only thing was that my right calve started to hurt halfway, this happened last Sunday too. I’m starting to think my sneakers are causing this, I have them for over two years and wear them everyday during my walks with Bella. Maybe it’s time to buy some new ones.

Stats:
Running 2-3-2-3-2-3 with 1 minute walk breaks (20 minutes total)
Weather:dry, not much wind,11C(51 degrees)
Distance: 2.9 K / 1.8 miles
Time: 00:20:10
Last song on Ipod before finish: Marco Borsato – Kom maar op

Outfits

From your comments it seemed you like it if the outfits will come back. I’ll post as many as possible from now on but not with me in it. I don’t like it when there are too many photos of me on the blog.

Tuesday I wore a grey dress with a black jacket and grey suede boots.

Today a grey skirt with red and black stripes with a red sweater and high black boots.

 

Dinner

This is where all the “magic” happens. One of my favourite things in our house.

Tuesday dinner

I made an oven dish of potatoes, chicory, ham and cheese. Very simple and easy to make and very tasteful.

Wednesday dinner

Spaghetti with onion, garlic, bacon and spinach.

Book I’m reading

George R.R. Martin
A Song of Fire and Ice – Book4 AFeast for Crows

Still don’t read much and still haven’t finished this one.

TV shows I watched last week

Mad Men, Rookie Blue, The Walking Dead, Once upon a time, Revenge, The Big Bang Theory, Parenthood, Game of Thrones, Grey’s Anatomy.

Nov 4 2012

Sunday November 4, 2012: Starting over

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Daily stuff:
Because some of you still got a virus alert when they tried to read my blog, I have decided to delete everything and start all over again.

Not all is lost because before I deleted everything I transferred the old posts to the blog I had before I got my own domain. I’m going to make a book of the 2011 and 2012 posts like I did for 2009 and 2010. But these hackers were driving me nuts and the best thing that I could do was start with an empty “page”.

When I was securing and writing down things, I noticed the subtitle of my blog: a blog about living, health, running and cooking. And I realized that I haven’t been writing much about some of those. Actually the restart of this blog, can also be the restart of focusing more on these subjects. It feels like a new start. So here we go.

In the past I have been showing outfits but lately I haven’t. I want to buy some new clothes but don’t want to spent much money on it so I’m searching Ebay for second-hand or new items for not much money. Last week I bought 3 dresses and a longsleeve for about € 15 (around 15 USD). This is one of the items, you can wear it as a dress or with pants underneath it. When I get the other dresses, I’ll show a photo of them too.

I’ve booked a weekend at a lodge hotel at the sea in February. Last week I got one of those one day deals in my mailbox for this and it was a very good deal so we decided to go for it. Bella can come too and since the beach is close, she will have a blast.

We have also plans going away for the weekend, next weekend. This time with 2 friends couples. This is also close to the beach but in a different area. Bella will be coming on this trip too. But we’ll have to wait a few more days because R. got really sick again last week and still isn’t better. If he’s not feeling good, we won’t be going.

I have a question for you:

Some of my favorite bloggers quit blogging this year. I used to read a lot of blogs that were only about running but I’m now more interested in “lifestyle” blogs. The ones that have a little bit of everything in it, like Shelley, Helen, Roz, Bizzy, Amy, Lori and others.

I’m looking for some new blogs to follow. Can you recommend blogs you like, and that you know I would like, to me?

Workouts:

 I started the Running Coach plan for a 5K today and it went fine. I decided to stick to the recommended paces as much as possible. My goal is to run a 5K in about 30 minutes after I finished the program (which will be at the end of this year).

Stats:
Run-walk ratio: 6 x 2 minutes, 1 minute walking inbetween (12 minutes running, 5  minutes walking)
Weather:almost dry, windy,2C(35 degrees)
Distance: 2.5 K / 1.5 miles
Time: 00:18:03
Last song on Ipod before finish: Wings – Maybe I’m amazed.

Weekly workout review:

Not the best week ever, but I’m satisfied with it.

Bella and Fran’s Autumn challenge: walk at least 30 minutes every day:

Days till the end of Autumn (Thursday December 20): 90 days
Success: 38 days
Fail: 6 days

SUCCES!

Dinner:

I made a stew this afternoon: beef meat, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic and bacon. It was good and I made plenty of it so we can have it again for dinner tomorrow. The recipe came out of one of my cooking magazines: Light Cooking.