I did use a food processor.. I guess as a backup plan you could steam the cauliflower and then mash it with a potato masher.

Those salads in a jar look good. I do the same thing but use tupperware and store the dressing separately.

I got to try a bunch of recipes this weekend and thought I would share a few that were tasty.

First off is cauliflower pizza crust:

1 cup of shredded cauliflower
1 cup of shredded parmessan cheese
1 egg
1 tsp of oregano
2 tsp of parsley

(I doubled the recipe for my pizza).

Mix everything together and press into a heavily greased pizza pan and cook 12-15 minutes (15-20 if doubling).

The crust turned out golden brown after 15 minutes for me and was a lot more solid than some of the past crusts I've tried. The taste was a little salty, probably due to all the cheese I used but otherwise quite delicious.

Enjoy!

Does anyone have a good recipe for a natural BBQ sauce? I've been trying to make my own with tomato paste, honey, spices and liquid smoke but I just don't have it quite right. I figured maybe there's someone out there willing to share a sauce they've perfected over the years.

My new favourite food right now is homemade salsa. I've been adding it to everything for a huge burst in flavour. You can alter the recipe to suit your ingredients or tastes.

1/2 ripe avocado
1 medium tomato
1 small onion
1 small sweet pepper (or half a regular sized one)

Dice everything up in a bowl. Add a tbsp or two of lemon (or lime) juice, gives a bit of flavour but mostly prevents the avocado from turning into this brown mushy looking crap. Add some salt, cayenne pepper and cumin. Taste and add more if needed.

Mix it up and add it to omelets, chicken, on top of salad... pretty much anything where more flavour is needed.

My favourite use is in an omelet.. I cook up four eggs, once it's hard enough to flip over I do that and coat the cooked area with some nice fresh cheddar cheese. Put about 3 heaping tbsp of the salsa and fold over for the best omelet ever.

enjoy

sorry, didn't see these posts before. I freeze mine so that they don't turn to go on rides/runs/hikes. It helps if you have a backpack though since it will be a little cold in your pocket... which might be nice in July

If they are too gooey you can adjust the recipe.. remove some wet stuff and add more dry stuff. Maybe more sesame seeds will help. Also, I wrap mine in tinfoil and not in bags.. maybe the fact that they can breath helps a little.

I've been hearing a lot about this book. I read an interview with the author and it appears that he didn't set out to destroy wheat but rather stumbled upon it's harmful properties almost by accident. I guess maybe I should give it a look over.

thanks for the review

WOD for 2011-10-11

100 Thrusters (75#)

Every minute on the minute do 5 burpees.

workout cap was 26 minutes which I was unable to make. Had some awful heartburn. Managed to do 90 thrusters before running out of time.

I'm huge into high intensity training but I feel that a low intensity long duration training has its merits too. By that I don't mean running but much lower intensity like walking, biking at a slow pace, kayaking... something like that.

I hear you.. sugar is SUPER addictive for me. if someone brings in cookies to work and I make the mistake of having one I end up craving sweets all day and sometimes for a few days afterwards.

I wish I could pretend sugar was heroin but sometimes a home baked cookie seems so harmless.

WOD for 2011-10-06

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 of

K2E
Shoulder Press at 95# (I did 75#)
jumping lunges (each leg)

My time: 12:16

After I was done I realized I probably could've completed it with 95#. I got scared when I saw the class before really struggling with the weight.

WOD for 2011-10-04

50 Wall balls (20#)
1 Mile run
500m row

Time: 14:26

It was nice to have a pretty easy workout for a change.

Milk is bad for you?

Different thoughts on that one. Strict paleo is dairy free, I do primal which allows dairy in moderation. I used to be all about the skim milk, now if I have it I try to do whole milk.

So who do I have to watch out for? Sounds like great advice since I check this site from work, I don't want anything NSFW popping up.

Cheers

You can read the article here

or here is the pasted text:
Denmark has become the first country in the world to impose a "fat tax" on unhealthy foods.

The move will place a surcharge on foods high in saturated fat. Butter, milk, cheese, pizza, meat, oil and processed food will all be subject to the levy.

The aim is to reduce people's intake of fatty foods. But consumers have begun hoarding provisions ahead of the price rise and some scientists have suggested that it would be better to target people's salt or sugar intake.

The Nordic country introduced the tax Saturday, of 16 kroner (£1.85) per kilogram of saturated fat in a product.

The tax was approved by large majority in a parliament in March as a move to help increase the average life expectancy of Danes.

In September, Hungary introduced a new tax popularly known as the "Hamburger Law," but that only involves higher taxes on soft drinks, pastries, salty snacks and food flavorings.

The outgoing conservative Danish government planned the fat tax as part of a goal to increase the average life expectancy of Danes, currently below the OECD average at 79 years, by three years over the next 10 years.

"Higher fees on sugar, fat and tobacco is an important step on the way toward a higher average life expectancy in Denmark," health minister Jakob Axel Nielsen said when he introduced the idea in 2009, because "saturated fats can cause cardiovascular disease and cancer."

Linnet Juul says the tax mechanism is very complex, involving tax rates on the percentage of fat used in making a product rather than the percentage that is in the end-product.

Linnet Juul's organization is pressuring lawmakers to simplify the tax, but said he is unsure what will happen when the new, centre-left government takes office.

Not sure about anyone else but this worries me. First off I think saturated fat has a bad rap and is actually a health food. Also it sets a precedent that the government can decide what is healthy and what isn't and tax however they want. The article does mention some scientists think it would be more effective to tax sugar, that I could get behind.

WOD for 2011-10-02

21-18-15-12-9-6-3 of

Squat cleans at 95#
Double-unders
Deadlifts at 185#
Box Jumps

I scaled the deadlifts to 135# once I got to the 15s due to lower back pain... nothing to do with technique.. just seem to be sleeping poorly and waking up with back pain.

My time: 56:13 .. it was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

Sorry to hear that Iris.

On the bright side, being the only person to bring food into the house will probably help your diet. I know it's a problem for me to have junk food around in my moments of weakness.

I'd check what kind of foods you are eating and what kind of exercise you are doing. I've never had good luck with doing long bouts of cardio in regards to losing weight. I have better luck with long slow exercises like walking and biking at a casual pace (nothing that gets me huffing and puffing). I'm also trying to run sprints once a week.

Might be something to try

WOD for 2011-09-27
--------------------
AMRAP in 15 min of
10 wall-balls
10 T2B
10 Box jumps

5 rounds + 9 box jumps


WOD for 2011-09-30
--------------------
Max vertical leap - 16" (boo.. need to work on that)
Max horizontal leap - 93.5"
Max Box Jump - 40.5" (so happy to break 40")

WOD for 2011-09-23

4 rounds for time:
800m run
15 thrusters #95 (I did them at 65#)
15 pull-ups (I used a band, hands were still pretty beat up from last week)

Time: 29:06

I nearly do tuck jumps when I do double unders, for that last workout doing tuck jumps would've killed me. I'm not a big advocate of gear but I tried a higher quality skipping rope and was amazed at how easy double-unders were with it. I was able to do a couple sets of 30-40 reps in a row with little effort.

Another tough WOD

WOD for 2011-09-20

100 Burpees
90 DUs (did 10 DUs, couldn't get rythm, did double SUs)
80 Jump squats
70 DUs (did double SUs)
60 Box jumps (did mine at 18")
50 DUs (did double SUs)
40 Speed Burpees (or Burpee Thrusters)
30 DUs (did double SUs)
20 Over box jumps (20")
800m run

My time: 40:08 (I wanted to get under 40 so bad but as just short)

Aerobic workouts aren't the greatest for losing weight, yes they burn the most energy but if your heart rate is at a certain level you are more likely burning muscle.

Try incorporating long walks into the mix, nothing that gets your heart rate up too high, just a slow pace. Also, if you're physically able, go out and do some sprints.

For sprints, do a few warm up runs to get your legs ready. I like to do about 3 runs, 1 at around 50% and then a couple more at 70-80%. Once you're warmed up try to run at FULL speed (aka, as fast as you possibly can) for 8-12 seconds and then rest for as long as you need it. Repeat until you can't run as fast as possible for 8 seconds. Don't try to make the workout last a certain amount of time, don't go for a run after if you find the workout too short. You might only be able to do 1-2 sprints to start but after a few months you should be able to do 8-10 sprints.

Honestly you've had better progress than I so you should be giving me advice. You can try doing these for a few weeks and see if it works. Worse case, you can now chase someone down if needed

One other thing that I found has really helped me is that I only weigh myself every second week. Your body can fluctuate quite a bit and two weeks should be sufficient time to see if you've dropped weight. My doctor recommended this and it's been WAY more encouraging that working my ass off one week only to see a gain and then drowning my sorrows into a box of cookies.

oh, almost forgot Tabatha's.. they are awesome. It's 8 rounds at 30 seconds per round. You do a certain exercise for 20 of the 30 seconds and then rest for the remaining 10 seconds. You keep track of the amount of reps you do for each round and your score is the lowest amount.

I use Gymboss for a timer on my iPhone which has a whole bunch of preset timers built in (including Tabatha). Otherwise you would need someone to time you.

If exercises get too easy you can simply switch up the routine rather than adding weight. You can do AMRAPs (as many rounds as possible) in a given time.. for example, do as many rounds of 5 push-ups, 10 sit-ups and 15 squats in 15 minutes. A month later you can try to beat that number.

You can do something called the chipper. Start at 1 of each and increase by one each round until you reach 10 then go back down to 1.. example:

1..2..3....10..9..8....1 of
push-ups
Sit-ups
squats

So round 1 you do 1 push-up, 1 sit-up, 1 squat... next round you do 2 push-ups, 2 sit-ups, 2 squats.. you get the picture.

One of my favourite workouts is called deck of death. you grab a deck of playing cards, assign an exercise to each suit (hearts is push-ups, spades is pull-ups, clubs is box jumps, diamonds is lunges.. basically whatever you want) you then draw a card and do that many reps of the exercise you drew... pull a 8 of hearts, do 8 push-ups. Your workout ends when the deck is empty. There are variations to this. If you don't feel you're up to 52 little workouts you can remove face cards, or maybe all face cards are 10 reps, you could put in jokers for a 30 second rest or use them to cancel a workout.

There's no limit to the fun you can have

Man, I'm really slacking on posting.. I think I need some software to post my WODs for easier lookup.

WOD for 2011-09-15

10 rounds for time of
120m sprint
10 pull-ups
120m sprint
10 burpees
30 sec rest

my time: 43:58 (cut-off was 45 minutes so I was happy to complete it). I did it RX until round 7 when I ripped a callous on my hand and had to switch to a band for the rest of the pull-ups.

One of the coaches at my gym just posted a video of him doing a muscle up to handstand push-up.. I guess that's next in the difficulty progression.

I got mine on eBay for about $40.. they are ok but I wished they came with S clips so I wouldn't have to tie them.

If you get some don't forget that ring push-ups and ring dips are also excellent exercises. Ring dips are quite hard until you train up your stabilizer muscles.

Once you get those you can work on ring handstand push-ups

I've always wanted to learn Olympic lifting so I was very happy to learn it last year when I started doing Crossfit. I have to say they are quite difficult but very efficient. I could never go back to doing arm curls or leg press now that I know that I hit all my muscles in one movement.

Congrats on getting into Crossfit, most people who start never look back (although I've known a couple who left to concentrate on power lifting).

I wish I could find the article about the guy who trained for a marathon by only doing Crossfit. He didn't do ANY long distance runs. After a few months he decided to test his training out and ran 16 miles on his first run. Probably helps that he was in killer shape to begin with.

Back from vacation!

WOD for 2011-08-29

17 Min AMRAP of
8 Wall balls
8 Med ball cage throws
8 Med ball cleans
8 Med ball wall throws (16 feet out)

5 rounds + 31 reps (yup, one short of 6 rounds)

WOD for 2011-08-16

For time: 50 pull-ups
Every time you let go of the bar you must complete:
5 KB Swings (45#)
5 Burpees

My time: 7:41

My first set I did 18 pull-ups, a new PR