We’ve Moved

After a solid day of work by the Mrs. and I (mostly the Mrs.).  The Odd Body has grown up and moved out.

So come over and visit us at TheOddBod.com

Eggplant du Jour

In my quest to add a broader range of  foods to my diet, eggplant makes another appearance.

Some good ol’ chicken breast baked with tomato sauce, mushrooms, onions, eggplant thrown on top of some whole wheat pasta.

Of course a little parsley sprinkled on top prior to the meals photo-shoot.

Louis Riel Day Breakfast

Family day in several other provinces, but since we live in Manitoba, today’s holiday is appropriately called Louis Riel Day.

We got to sleep in a little bit today which allowed for a little more time to enjoy a leisurely breakfast.

Shredded potatoes/hash browns with onions and a tomato, mushroom and extra old cheddar cheese omelette.

Garnished with my favourite food: Avocados

Time to enjoy the Festival du Voyageurs!

My Heart Beets For You

Never, ever made beets before.

Mrs. OddBody/Shortcake loves beets.

I have some in the pantry…I know, why don’t I cook them!

Genius.

Here is a recipe for a simple, yet tasty beet salad.

I used 4 beets. Boiled them, peeled them and thinly sliced them.

Cut up up several radishes mixed them all with red wine vinegar, olive oil and mustard. Which I conveniently also had in my fridge for the first time ever!

Placed it all on a bed of lettuce and sprinkled the mixture with parsley.

Surprisingly filling…and super tasty.

Beets will definitely be making a few more appearances in my meals

I mean, just look at this nutritional info!

‘Back’ at it

After getting my computer back from hp, in what I must say was record time, looks like it is time to start penning my “information” back into the blogosphere.

I’ll start off nice and lightly with my Valentines Day workout.  Which I must say, was surprisingly good.

After several cups of oatmeal, 6 pieces of pizza and breakfast pancakes over the last 12 hours, I was a big ball of potential energy and it made for a very good workout.

Started things off as per the usual with some weighted wide grip chins.  Warming up with body weight for a few reps and then 5 or so reps with 45 lbs. 

The meat and potatoes work included two sets of 6 reps with a 65 pound dumbbell.  This was followed with some close-grip chins with a 65 lbs for 6 and then 45 lbs for 8 or 9.  After the heavy weights, I always go for an all out set (of wide-grip chins) with no weight for as many reps as possible..got about 15 or so today.

Next on the menu was some barbell rows: 4 sets {135 lbs x 12; 185 lbs x 12; 205 lbs x 11; 225 lbs x 6}

Really getting a good burn today so all I needed to finish things off was some deadlifts. 

And boy did these finish me off.

4 Sets {225 lbs x 12; 315 lbs x 8; 365 lbs x 4; 405 lbs x 2}

Haven’t tried to do 405 lbs for a while (at least 18 months), but it felt good to feel some heavy weight again. 

Time to eat and recover.

Is chocolate a good post-workout meal?

Happy Valentines!

Eat Fair Trade for 30 Days

Take the One-Month Challenge!

http://fairtrademanitoba.ca/get-involved/omc/

Fair Trade Month kicks off tomorrow in Manitoba on Valentine's Day 2009

Show your love for fair-trade coffee (Kicking Horse is my favourite), tea or chocolate by attempting to eat only fair-trade for the next 30 days.

Good luck!

ps. It might be tough when that morning latte starts calling at 8 AM!

Is Catastrophic Failure a Good Thing?

Even after being a good boy. Running many virus scans and updating my computer frequently.

During the final restart, I was pleasantly greeted with the message

"catastrophic failure"

and windows refused to start!

Needless to say, the comp is in the shop right now, so the posts will be slow...

Luckily this will give me time to catch up on my hobby:

Betting on races between the washing machine and the dryer as they vibrate across the floor!

Go dryer!

Burger Meister, Meister Burger

Feeling like some Saturday night burgers? 

I know I am!

But let's make them turkey burgers.

Add:

• Some minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon ground flax
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• One whole egg
• Some salt and pepper
• An onion

Add it all into some ground turkey mix it up and roll it into balls and place them in the fridge. 

When you are ready, throw them on the foreman grill or the frying pan and when they are cooked throughout, melt some cheese with some mushrooms and onions on top.

Today, these delectable burgers were served on thin whole wheat burger buns with some home-made fries and Caesar's salad.

Train the Brain, the Body Will Follow

Well, this Saturday, heavy back day wasn't all it is usually cracked up to be.  It could have been due to the giant bowl of ice cream last night or the fact that Mrs. Shortcake and I stayed up late last night watching movies on our fold-out couch.

Whatever it was, my body definitely was not firing on all cylinders and everything seemed to be extra tough today.

So what do you do when your body can't do what it is capable of and isn't performing to the best of it's abilities?

The first thing I would usually do is lower the weight a little bit.  This will help you get enough reps.  Somewhere between 12-15 is good.

Next, try some exercises that you haven't done in a while.  I usually only do wide-grip chins, but today I decided to do several extra sets of pull-ups with a variety of grips (extra-wide, close-grip and reverse-grip).

If this isn't enough to get your body woken up. Then you might consider picking up the pace of your workout by reducing the rest periods between sets in order to get the heck out of there ASAP!

But usually when you try these simple little techniques your head will get back into the workout, you will have no choice but to focus and your body will hopefully fall back in-line!

It's easy to have a good workout when your feeling great, but the real gains come from having good mental strength and turning those tough workouts into something productive.

It only takes 30-45 minutes a day, so make it count!

You Can Do It, Just Don't Put Your Back Into It

As leg day rolled around this week my back was feeling a little bit tired from the heavy deadlifts and back workouts over the last few weeks. 

Unfortunately, in order to get a thigh stimulation from squats it usually tires my lower back out a lot, so I quickly devised a plan and hit my legs hard!

Started off with some leg presses, and since I was doing them first, I was able to push a bit more weight than usual: 4 Sets {230 lbs x 30; 410 lbs x 20; 590 lbs x 20; 770 lbs x 12}

This got the ball rolling quite well, so went over to the squat rack and did some front squats, 3 sets {135 x 12; 175 x 12; 185 x 8}.  All the goodness of squats without any of the lower back stress.  Although, also a very good biceps workout.

Same rack, 2 sets of barbell lunges with 135 lbs x 8 reps.

I still did some stiff-legged deadlifts (although they involve a lot of lower back), but I kept the weight low and did them on top of a wooden box so that I could go extra deep and I only raised the bar up to my knees.  This helped keep the stress on my hamstrings and not my back. 3 Sets {135 x 20}

This was followed up with 3 sets of lying leg curls and some seated calf raises and quite a bit of stretching.

The legs were nice and pumped, and now "the back" feels good and ready for Saturday.

Have a good weekend!

A Kitchen of Mass Production

Sometime I just get into a groove and to save time for the rest of the week I cook 3 or four meals at once.

Last night was one such night!

First on the menu, well mostly to snack on while I cooked, some hummous and veggies!

I finally prepared some soup from the vegetable broth I had slaved over last Friday (by slaved I mean thrown veggie debris into water and cooked for 4 hours without paying attention)

This hearty soup consisted of:

1 cup of black beans

2 Russet Potatoes

1/2 cup of basmati rice

Several medium-sized carrots

An onion

Several stalks of celery all sliced up

Some green onions

One large Green Pepper

Minced Garlic

some salt and pepper

I brought it to a boil and let it simmer on low for a couple of hours while I prepared my pasta (The actual meal of the day)

Today's pasta ended up with a mixture of left-over spaghetti mixed with some shell noodles to finish off a couple of bags (luckily both were whole grain, phew, dodged a bullet there)

The sauce was rather meaty with a pound of extra lean ground beef, an onion and several cups of spinach simmered in a can of tomato sauce.

Magnifique!

When all was ready, I mixed all of the noodles up with the sauce to make it all so hamburger helperesque

Throw on some mozzarella cheese, blur the picture and you have a good meal...or three!

Does anyone else have a day of dinner mass production?

Breakfast of {Boring} Champions

Tonnes of protein, tonnes of energy...Perfect!

Here is my typically breakfast right now:

About a cup of egg whites + 1 whole egg + a whole wack (wack is a unit of measurement right?) of mushrooms, scrambled.

1 Cup of oats + raisins or banana + almond or peanut butter sprinkled with shredded coconut

And a cup or two of Joe (fair trade of course) to set my gears in motion!

No bowling balls here

Sorry about the slow posting rate over the last couple of days.  I have been in an all out battle with a virus on my laptop, a battle that hopefully I have won.

But that has not stopped me from having some very productive workouts over the last couple of days!

On Monday I had a chance to make it down to the school gym and use some more useful equipment for training my shoulders.

Due to my very long arms and short muscle bellies in my arms and shoulders, I have found it very tough getting my shoulder muscles to fill-out really pop!

Coupled with several shoulder dislocations and wear and tear from my short lived baseball career (which I am sure Canadutch can attest to) my shoulders have been somewhat of a disaster area.

But they are feeling good now, and it's time to see what they are made of!

Hopefully not Jell-O

The shoulder is a very tricky joint and one that demands stimulation from a multitude of angles as well as different set and rep schemes to hit all three heads (front, side and rear delts)and muscle types.

In order to put some bulk into my heads, I have added some more power movements to my routine after reading some excellent shoulder training advice from Got Built?

This weeks routine started off with some standing lateral raises, which actually got surprisingly heavy: 3 Sets (30 lbs x 20; 35 lbs x 20; 40 lbs x 12)

Then into the real meat and potato exercises:

Some Standing Overhead Push Presses (With barbell. Push meaning I used a little leg umph! when got tired to lift a little more weight): 3 sets (95 lbs x 12; 115 lbs x 12; 135 lbs x 8)

Seated dumbbell presses: 3 sets (50 lbs x 12; 60 lbs 12; 65 lbs x 8)

Hang Power Cleans (These Really made my forearms sore the next day!): 3 sets of 12 reps with 135 lbs. Really gassed at this point, almost cramping!

My training partner and I decided to see how many one arm chin-ups we could do (with the weight assisted machine). I got a few reps with 80 lbs of assistance.  Not bad considering I weigh 190 lbs now. Not really a shoulder exercise per say, but was tiring none the less.

We then finished it off with some barbells shrugs (3 sets of 20 or so with 225 lbs) and some reverse peck deck flyes.

If that doesn't put some bowling balls on my shoulders I don't know what will!

Pizza Friday, now showing on Sundays

This Friday, we found ourselves a little burned out with Friday pizza but just as I had suspected when Super Bowl Sunday rolled around...we were craving it once again!

And here is the result:

Super cheesy, non?

I'm glad things are back to normal.

Super Sunday Omelette

Although this omelette has nothing to do with football; it is a bit of a Sunday tradition...so today it is super!

Sorry it's a lousy picture, this super-omelette is filled with fried mushrooms, some old cheddar cheese and some green onion and is composed of about one cup of egg whites and two omega-pro eggs.

Accompanying the omelette is hash browns (4 potatoes worth) with an onion and a finely sliced orange.

This was all eaten post-oatmeal of course, can't go a day without oatmeal.

Enjoy the game!