Banana Walnut Paleonola

This recipe is a variation of Sarah Murray’s Paleo Granola I found on Crossfit Invictus when I was looking for something fast for Paul to eat for breakfasts. I am indebted to her for this – I’ve made it many different ways and it always turns out perfectly. I call it “Paleonola.” I think I just invented that word. I hope I did, cos it’s a cool word.

Preheat oven to 350. Get two cookie sheets out and grease them up with a little coconut oil or use silpat.

Banana Walnut Paleonola, before baking.

Wet Ingredients

• 1/3 c. coconut oil
• 1/3 c. honey (adjust for less sweetness if you’re sensitive to that)
• 2 t. vanilla extract
• spices to taste: cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves

Nut Mixture

• ~3 c. sliced almonds (Mariani Sliced Almonds from Costco is what we use)
• 1 c. pumpkin seeds (the green makes it pretty)
• 1 c. chopped walnuts
• 1 c. banana chips (additive free, roughly chopped into chunks the size you like)
• 1 c. unsweetened shredded coconut

Banana Walnut Paleonola, done!

Mix all of the wet ingredients into a small pot and heat for a few minutes, just until everything’s warm enough to mix thoroughly. Let it cool slightly.

While that’s going put all of the “nut mixture” ingredients into a large bowl. Once the wet ingredients are cooled, pour them over the nut mixture and stir until the nut mixture is coated. Spread thinly onto about two cookie sheets. Pop in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes. You want the paleonola to brown, but not burn, so start checking it at about 15 minutes. I like to stir the granola once it’s out of the oven to cool it off quicker. Let it cool completely before placing it in its container. You want it crispy and if you put it in the container warm, it’ll make it soft.

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UPDATE (9/23/10): After tinkering with this recipe a bit, I found that taking the temperature down to 300F does an even better job – less chance of burning that way. Also, for the version I made today I replaced the banana chips with raisins and added about 1/3 c. of canned pumpkin and a generous measure of pumpkin pie spices, including dried powdered ginger to the wet ingredients to make a nice spicy fall version.

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I found we eat a LOT less of this granola than what we used to eat of the grain-based stuff. Even about 1/3 c. with some coconut milk does the trick for my hungry husband at breakfast. I’m more a fan of some sort of eggs/veggie/meat/fruit variation in the morning if I have anything at all, but if you’re a cereal eater looking for a nice paleo option, this works great. It makes a great snack too!

Accidental Pot Roast, and Deckosaurus Progress

One of the little joys in life is discovering that a meal you didn’t expect to work out ends up being so scrumptious it becomes one of your favorites. Even better is when that meal was so easy to prepare it’s almost embarrassing to tell anyone about it. That’s what happened yesterday with what I am now calling my “Accidental Shredded Pot Roast.” You might just call it yummy:

Accidental Shredded Pot Roast

• 1 huge roast (arm, butt, whatever. about 3-4 lbs.)
• 1 16oz bottle of Teaspoon Willie’s Spicy Sauce (get it at Whole Foods or buy it online)

Throw both of them into big slow cooker and forget about the whole mess for about 12 hours. That’s it! You’ll have to shred it a little bit, but basically the roast should just fall apart with a fork when you poke it. The taste gets richer after a day or two so make it in advance. Have it plain, fried up with eggs, warmed up over a bit of spinach bread (here, scroll down), over mashed cauliflower, or mixed in with any number of yummy veggies. You’ll need to find lots of ways to eat it because this recipe makes a ton!

Colorado Open

Yesterday I spent the day cheering on some folks from my gym who were competing in the Colorado Open this weekend down at Front Range CrossFit in Denver. I am so impressed with them – they did so well! And I was inspired by everyone there – there was so much heart and determination it was hard not to jump in and do the workout too. Actually, scratch that. It was pretty nice to just watch and cheer! But I’m already looking forward to tomorrow, sore as I still am from Friday’s WOD.

Deckosaurus Rex might be finished soon

Yesterday my dear husband made great progress on the deck. Behold, the newly-finished pergola:

Deckosaurus Rex's Pergola, done!

Today he’s working on benches and railings. Next weekend our table should be delivered by the stone masons so we need to figure out a base for that. Then all that’s left are some planters and a fire pit. Paul has done so much work on our house over the past three years, I would be thrilled if he took a good long break and just enjoyed himself and got back into some of the activities he used to do a lot – mountain biking, snowboarding, etc. I have helped a little, okay sometimes a LOT, but they’ve really been his thing. He has more projects he wants to tackle, like refinishing the basement (actually, that’s basically all that’s left!) Normally he enjoys the problem-solving aspects of projects, not to mention just having things around him he can look at and think, “I made that!” (he does such amazing-quality work), but this one has taken so long and has had so many disappointing setbacks it’s wearing on him. But it’s almost done and it’s gorgeous! I’m so proud of all the great work he does and feel lucky to live in a home he has made so beautiful for us.

Early to Bed, Early to WOD. Also a New Portrait Sketch

It used to be when I wanted to work out, I had to wake up early and get it done before I could talk myself out of it. I haven’t had that problem so far but my schedule on Friday makes an early start necessary anyway.

Before I got to my Friday morning painting session with my group in Longmont, I headed into Boulder for the 6 am WOD at FCF. We started with 5 x 10 deadhang pullups. Since I couldn’t kip, I had to go back up to three bands. On most of the sets I’d get two or three pretty nice pullups in, only to crap out on the last ones. I had to just pull myself up as far as I could go and hang there for a few seconds before I let myself down slowly. Our WOD was:

5 rounds for time of:

• 5 heavy squat cleans (65#)
• Run 150m

Such an odd sensation to try and run fast after squatting. Pretty much all I could do was work in some kind of shake into my stride to loosen my quads up a bit. I didn’t get down deep enough on a lot of my skwats and that’s what I want to work on next time we do these. I thought my cleans were pretty good but I heard Tim tell me to get back on my heels – a LOT.  I could definitely feel myself leaning forward.

1.5 hour sketch, Bobbie, 12" x 9"

Had time for a nice breakfast of eggs/spinach/a little cheese (cooked in bacon drippings, mmm.) with a bit of coffee and cream before heading off to paint with my group. There are some incredibly talented artists I have the privilege of painting with on a weekly basis. People like Scott Fraser, Claire Evans, John Taft, and Jason McPhillips. This morning we painted a new model and I opted to do a portrait sketch of her instead of a full figure. There are a lot of things about painting a face I still don’t understand as well as I’d like and these kinds of quick sketches are incredibly useful. I learn a ton every time I paint, like this morning I figured out something new about using temperature transitions to turn the form (i.e. manipulating how “blueish” or “reddish” the skin tone is right where her cheek turns away from the light to give it volume, as an example.) I can easily work from photographs but there is nothing in the world like painting from life. She’ll model again for us next week and I’m going to try and knock out two sketches from different perspectives.

As a Friday Link I thought I’d share a nice article with some of my relatives (hi Mom!) who seem nervous for some reason that I am doing Crossfit. There seems to be some kind of bad reputation that precedes it for some folks and who knows, maybe there are some affiliates that do something valid to earn that. All I can say is if you are wondering if you should check out Crossfit, make sure the gym you go to warms you up well before each WOD and your coach takes the time with you to make sure your form is solid. The thing that makes it such an effective method is that it’s ultimately scalable, so no matter how out of shape you are currently or how fit you become it will always be a tough, and great, workout.  Hopefully this Grandma will inspire you:

Crossfit is for EVERYONE

Wounded Hands and Deep Thoughts about Art

Today I learned there exists such a thing called “climbing tape” and if I want to keep the skin on my hands intact I’d better make it a permanent fixture in my life, doublequick. After about a minute of one-handed kettlebell snatches during our WOD today an innocent looking blister I’d gotten on Monday (from also doing kettlebell snatches) unceremoniously detached itself, along with a good bit of skin around it, from my hand. Oh  well. Thank goodness one of the women there had some climbing tape in her locker and she fixed me right up so I could finish the second and third rounds. Thanks E!

Other than that, the workout was still pretty tough. We had a new (to me) coach today who was really good. My only complaint was that he didn’t bring his adorable 9-week old puppy in with him like he did earlier this week, and I just think he should bring her as often as possible. I’m just sayin’.

3 rounds of:
KB snatch 1:00 each arm
Then AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) in 3:00 of:
5 push-ups
10 wallballs
15 stick jumps
Rest 2:00 between rounds

Going to try to paint for a little while tonight. I haven’t been spending nearly enough time in the studio lately but I’ve sort of been enjoying spending some time with new friends, or just coming home and cooking, or helping Paul out a little with The Deck That Never Ends. Saturday I’m going down to Front Range Crossfit with some folks from Flatirons to cheer them on during the Colorado Open Games. But I’ll leave you with the first of six parts of a wonderful show by Robert Scruton, writer and philosopher, on “Why Beauty Matters.” The show, really his treatise, is about the importance of beauty (and beautiful art) and he presents a compelling case for restoring it as a foundation in our lives. If you don’t have time to watch all six videos, at least watch the first one. There are some important ideas in there, even if you’re not all that interested in art. Maybe even especially if you’re not that interested in art. You might quickly get some insight as to why you’ve never been interested, and you may even be challenged to give contemporary artists a peek.

I’ve always found it sad how most people could name their favorite five living musicians without much problem at all, but if you ask them to name their favorite five living painters or sculptors, chances are you’re going to get nothing but blank looks, or maybe a tentative question about whether Michelangelo is still alive (I have been asked this before.) This is a travesty, and I lay the blame at the feet of most modern “art.” Roger does an excellent job of telling the story of that. In fact, I feel a series of rants about this topic brewing. Hoo boy.

Some Progress, and my first Ten on Tuesday

For about a week now our Crossfit trainer has been taking us through some pretty extensive warm-ups prior to the WOD. I take it this is a new thing and I really love it. Lots of active stretching – hip flexors with walking lunges, things like that. We’ve also been doing some great shoulder stretches which seem to be strengthening and loosening that whole area and lessening the amount of pain I have when doing overhead movements. Woohoo!  We did Overhead squats yesterday and while I used only the aluminum bar with no bumpers I could feel my shoulder joint “lock” into the girdle once or twice. I was less shaky than I have been and I was able to get down pretty far in my squats. Next time I think I might be ready for the big-girl bar.

I got 185# for my very first deadlift PR last Wednesday (!) and for the first week since starting Crossfit did three workouts during a week. I think I like that pace for now. Some people in my gym thrive on 6 days a week, and others think that 3 is just fine. I’m sure it’ll take me some time to figure out where I fall in that but 2 times was definitely too little. Other than that, I’ve been noticing that the changes in my body have been accelerating – I have been feeling much leaner and smaller and I’m down a pant size, gotta love that! Definitely stronger and I have tons more energy! I’ve been eating pretty good but then again, who wants to stray from an eating approach that includes as much good fat as you could possibly want? And with that, I’d like to lay out this week’s (my first week’s!) Ten on Tuesday:

Ten Ways to Eat Coconut Butter

1. With a spoon (duh!)
2. Softened and poured over berries
3. Mixed into a smoothie
4. In banana “ice cream” (recipe to come)
5. In Paleo Steve’s Coconut Butter Bars
6. Mixed into the wet ingredients for Sara Murray’s Paleo Granola
7. In soups like this one from Nutty Kitchen, in place of butter or coconut oil, and, uh…uh…
8. with a big spoon (for a quick breakfast)
9. with a bigger spoon (before a workout)
10. with whatever spoon you can find (just because)

What can I say? I mostly eat that stuff with a spoon. And some water, because it’s kinda sticky. Although, maybe this is jut me but I would avoid eating it at night. When I got my first jar I snacked on some (okay maybe a little more than “some”) that evening. A few hours later when I went to bed I was WIRED and couldn’t get to sleep forever. Well, come to find out coconut butter is rich in Medium Chain Fatty Acids, and your body prefers to burn that rather than store it. There seems to be a good bit of peer-reviewed documentation you can browse through here, if you’re so inclined. For me the empirical evidence is good enough so I save this stuff for before a workout of earlier in the day. What do you think? Have any of you other Paleo Freaks (you know who you are) had this experience?

And, if you have any favorite ways to eat coconut butter post em up!

A Very Good Weekend, and an Epic WOD

The humble set up. Originially I wanted to paint the tomatoes but there was a box in the way. I suppose they were trying to run a business or something. So I settled on the beans, which were farther away, but I had a better view of them.

This weekend couldn’t have been better if I’d planned it all out exactly. Early Saturday I trundled up to Cheyenne to participate in the Quick Draw event for the Wyoming Plein Air festival. If you don’t know what a quick draw is it’s exactly what it sounds like; artists have a limited amount of time to paint a completed work – sometimes it’s 45 minutes, or 60 minutes. Ours was 90 minutes, and a lot of times there’s an auction at the end. The artists who were participating (about… 50 of us?) set up in the Farmer’s Market in the middle of old town Cheyenne wherever we saw something interesting and got to work when the whistle blew.

The final painting, "Beans and Beets" 9 x 12 oil on linen. Note the clever title - that's just how I roll.

Since I do 15 minute “quick draws” almost daily, 90 minutes was no problem. My painting was fairly successful but I wasn’t wild about it and considered not entering it in the auction. There was a lesson I had to learn here about paintings I like and paintings collectors like. I’m glad I ended up entering it because not only was it sold at auction there was actually a bit of a bidding war for it in the end. That was surreal, exciting, gratifying and frankly I was rendered speechless by the whole event. That doesn’t happen very often.

After the auction I had a blast wandering around the town and checking out some art with a new friend and Estes Park painter Dawn Normali. It’s so nice to meet people you just click with. We had some time before the gallery opening to head over to some Mexican restaurant to split some fajitas (totally easy to stay paleo there) and toast our successes that day over some yummy margaritas (well, hey, not everything can be paleo, right?) Thanks for such a fun day, Dawn!

When I walked into the Link Gallery later that evening for the opening I had even more good news – “Windy Prairie” had a big red dot on the tag (meaning it had been sold)! The show will be up for another six weeks or so so maybe my other two will sell as well. Fingers crossed.

Bye bye, Windy Prairie. It was nice while it lasted.

While I was toiling away at my easel Paul was toiling away on building our new deck, which is so enormous  and overbearing we just call it “deckosaurus rex.” We have a few more rows to put down as of this evening, then we can finish up the pergola and the benches. But we’ve been able to have the grill hooked up for a few days now so there’s lots of steak leftovers in the fridge, which makes us very very happy.

O grill, how we have missed you!

Epic WOD

I realized that wondering how I’m going to make it through the WOD is just normal, is probably going to happen during each WOD and I had better get used to it. Today’s started out with some active stretching for our shoulders and hips (active, meaning we’d take a lunge step and stretch our hips back and forth across the box several times.) then

2:00 of stick jumps for reps
in 8:00 establish a max clean and jerk

Rest 3:00 and then

30 deadlifts 95#
20 – 20″ box jumps (I think? maybe it was 18″)
30 pull-ups (2 bands)
20 squat cleans 45#
30 push-ups
20 toes to bar (got a little farther up with my knees this time.)

I have no idea how many stick jumps I got. I really need to start paying attention to those details. I maxed at 85# clean and jerk and I think it took me like 18 minutes for the rest? I completely lost track – of my reps on the stick jump, of my time, of even my water bottle after the workout was complete. I kind of wandered around in a daze for a little while and eventually made it back to work.

Of Kipping and Tires and Bowers.

I took a break in catching up with some work stuff and preparing for the quick draw and Wyoming Plein Air opening tomorrow morning in Cheyenne to get a workout in at my gym. I warmed up with some lunges, walking pushups and pullups, which I’m growing to like a whole lot. I still used two bands but somehow I got into a nice kipping rhythm right from the outset and cranked out 12 in a row. After that I played with doing deadhang pullups but was unable to do one.

E is making it look easy to flip this 400# tire.

Then Amy and I flipped a 400# tire about 30 times in 5 minutes. We were both in awe of Karen though – she flipped that thing by herself.  Holy crow.

After that was the actual WOD, which was 50 Snatches with a 35# bar (I think? Tim picked the bar for me so I could be wrong about that – could be 25#?). I really have a hard time with these b/c of my shoulder and oops, yeah. I forgot I had a slight neck injury a few years back. It’s a testament to my awesome chiropractor that I’ve forgotten about it but it looks like I’m going to be paying him a visit soon.

Tomorrow morning I leave bright and early to get to Cheyenne for Quick Draw which starts at 8:30. I have no idea what to expect since this is my first one but I’m pretty excited!

TGIF Links

• In a funny article that will surprise exactly no one, John Durant at Hunter-Gatherer explains why the recent marketing ads aimed at men by Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig are doomed to fail. What, you mean you never wanted to look like George Costanza?
• Murray Frees the Animal with some impressive results.
• Can animals make art? Check out this NOVA video on the elaborate bowers made by bowerbirds and let me know what you think.
• On the other end of the technology-and-art spectrum, painter David Kassan paints an amazing portrait on an iPad. I want one now!

Final Painting Day in Cheyenne

Blocking in today's landscape.

Today I headed up to Cheyenne for a final day of painting before the opening of the Wyoming Plein Air on Saturday. It was so windy where I ended up (the wind farm I passed on my way there should have been a good clue, huh?) that I set up my gear  in the back of my car and got to it. Turns out it’s a lot more pleasant to paint with some sort of cover than it is totally exposed. Also I can listen to my audio books – my preferred painting soundtrack. This session went a lot more smoothly than my previous attempts and I walked away with a painting I was pleased to frame and drop off at my gallery:

Windy Prairie, 10" x 8" Oil on Linen.

The most distinguishing features of the landscape around Cheyenne – at least where I was today – is the overwhelming expanse of sage and tawny grassland and endless clouds that create these patterns in the sky. I kept looking for other interesting but smaller things to paint and though there are plenty I really felt that this sort of landscape captures the essence of the area. I actually love having a little mobile studio and I am starting to see why people call plein air painting “addictive.”

Two Bands!

I had moderate success this weekend up in Cheyenne cranking out paintings for the Wyoming Plein Air event next weekend. I’m new at outdoor painting and I’m not sure if it’s something I’m going to do a lot of. I love being outdoors: the fresh air, the sunshine, being surrounded by such amazing beauty, the quiet (sometimes) and just generally wandering about, finding cool stuff to paint. If anything there’s too much stuff and it’s challenging to find a focus. The cons can be summed up as generally uncontrollable and quickly changing conditions – especially light, which, if you’re trying to figure out value and color relationships in your environment is pretty key. Not to mention the temperature, wind, critters, etc. I ended up scraping up a lot more paint off my canvases than I allowed to stay put. But I came up with some nice paintings, a few of which I’ll actually sign. I’ll be heading up again on Thursday for another try. I’ll be bringing a LOT less gear with me, but I won’t forget my bug spray this time. I’m thinking that might have a positive affect on my attitude.

Today was my first WOD since last week. We warmed up with lunges, walking pushups and pullups, which I did with Two! Bands! Down from four a little over a month ago when I started. Dang! I am pretty happy about that.

Clean and Jerk 1-1-1-1-1

I didn’t really follow this. Our trainer had me do a few sets with 65# then went to #75 to work on form. I’m in no hurry to add a bunch more weight just yet. This is all so new I feel I need to regroup myself and concentrate like crazy on every rep. The actual WOD was 5 rounds for time of:
15# overhead walking plate lunges (15 steps)
15 burpees

My time was something like 11:40 and I honestly don’t know how I got through it. I never considered quitting really, I just didn’t know how I was going to get to the end of the fifth round. But somehow I did, and I felt amazing the rest of the day. Exercise might hurt like hell right while you’re doing something intense, but it is good medicine.

Primal Plein Air

Tomorrow I head up to Cheyenne for some plein air painting to prepare for the 2010 Wyoming Plein Air. Opening day for the exhibit is next Saturday, August 14 at the Link Gallery in Cheyenne. I’m pretty excited about it – it’ll be my first “quick draw” which is basically a 90-minute speed round of painting (I think we’re going to have a model in the city plaza somewhere) after which the artists’ work will be judged by a panel then auctioned off.

I’ll be traveling with a small cooler full of goodies – jerky, avocado, apples, almond butter and a few “slices” of my Spinach Bread and some turkey. Staying primal while traveling has proven really easy.

WOD

Today we had the same warm up as we had on Monday: hand-stand push ups, walking push ups and snatch ups. I was happy to discover that all of those were easier for me this time around with no shoulder tweakage.

Workout was 3 clean and jerks every 3:00 x 8, or a total of 24, at 80% ORM. Since I don’t know what that is I went with 65#. That was heavy enough to challenge me, but not enough to really compromise my form at all after a dozen or so reps. I spent the entire time working on my form and keeping my shoulders scrunched together. I think I got it down pretty well – the bar felt light on the way up and heavy at the top.

Stuff that’s caught my eye this week:

My Journey to Crossfit (a post by a fellow Flatirons Crossfitter!)

Paleo 101

American Painting Video Magazine