Day 43: Making Soup and Kicking Ass, Vol. 2

I don’t understand people who can’t stand their own cooking, and it is all thanks to this soup.

It seems weird that I am going on and on and on . . . about this chicken, kale, and quinoa soup.  It’s just that it’s so freaking good and good for you.  And this time, I did have kale on hand.

Kale, chicken, quinoa, carrots, onion . . . is it weird to want a bowl for breakfast?

A bowl of soup, people, not that other kind of bowl.

For a Monday, this day seemed to turn out fairly well.  I’m actually doing my yoga laundry on time so I can go tomorrow and not be in a rush.  I all got myself a new travel mug so that I am not schmutzing my coffee all over every single time I make a turn while driving.  My blog post is also on time, hey lookit that.

To be honest, it helped to not have to work the last class of the day.  It meant that I was done by 10:30, which then meant that I could actually have lunch at home and not worry about optimal times to sneak out during my breaks to eat a couple of cashews.  In those cases, eating well causes more stress than it should.

The only thing about soup is that it’s so comfy that now I just want to crawl into bed and stay there the rest of the evening.

Oh my gosh, OK, so I’m listening to music as I write this, and “Turn Down for What” just came on.  Every time–I’m not kidding about this–every time I listen to this song, I think of this video:

GUYS, THE HEAD BOBBING SERIOUSLY.  So every time “Turn Down for What” comes on, I don’t actually turn down–I head bob like these cats.  Maybe that’s turning down though.

But I digress.

So I recommend making this soup whenever possible, because it makes you feel awesome, like the cats in the video.  Yeah, that awesome.

Day 42: I’m a Pro at Snail Apparently

So, the yoga’s working.  Today’s yin yoga required us to do Snail Pose:

I watched the instructor demonstrate this and thought, “nope, not happening.”  But, I decided to give it a go, because what else could happen?

I lifted my hips up.

Holy crap, my legs went back.  Not as far as the photo, but almost.  That basically means that my lower back is now really flexible and can do these kinds of bends. Nice.

Maybe vinyasa is a possibility before the end of this year.  I just need to make sure the swelling/cyst in my wrist goes down before I start though, because full-on arm weight can’t be put on it yet.  Also, I need to make chicken, kale and quinoa soup, so I can’t really go to afternoon yoga tomorrow.  Which is OK though, because this soup is the shit, as some of you know from a post from a week or so ago.

I keep thinking that hatha or yin style yoga would be a good PE class for grade schools and colleges.  I remember seeing some kids in high school doing Triangle, but instead of putting the weight on the leg, they put it in the hand for support.  And I was just like, “noooo, so wrong.”  These practices have helped so many people with their ailments, and I would love to see students just try for one class, one quarter, and see what it does.  Le sigh.

It is close to bedtime for me–need an early start.  I will see you at this space tomorrow.

🙂

Day 33: Making Soup and Kicking Ass

My apologies, again, for the delay in getting this post to you.  I was just so tired from being awesome last night, so I forgot to take this out of drafts and publish it.

I wanted to tell you about how I rocked making my first batch of soup last night, thanks to the lovely people at Cooking Light.  

The original recipe is the Chicken, Kale, and Quinoa Soup in the 2014 collection, but I go to the fridge to prepare and find that my father tossed the kale.  According to him, it looked nasty.  Then again, he thinks kale is nasty, so . . . I don’t know.

So I had to punt and omit the kale.  That did not take away from the awesomeness of a just chicken and quinoa soup though.  I mean, how can that be bad when you basically saute everything in bacon?  First, you cook bacon in a Dutch oven (not the farty kind) straight up.  Just toss in the bacon and let it sizzle and get crispy.  When the bacon is crispy goodness, leave all the drippings in there–don’t toss anything–and then you throw in onions, carrots, and garlic.  I swear, that’s what heaven smells like.

When the veggies are brown and taste like bacon, you take that out and then cook the chicken next, straight up in the pan.  That’s also essentially being sauteed in bacon.  When the chicken is all brown and tasty, you put the veggie mixture back in and add your chicken broth for yummy soupiness.  While that’s boiling, you can prepare the quinoa by putting it in a sieve, and then put all of that in a huge bowl (like really big–don’t skimp on that one, because you will not be happy about that result).  You fill the bowl with water and rub the quinoa together to clean it.  This is done twice, because I don’t know.

You can then throw the quinoa into the soup and let that baby simmer for however long it says in the recipe–I don’t remember.

That’s when you can serve the soup in bowls and put homemade BACON BITS on top.  Goddamn, it was good.  I had two bowls last night, because hell yeah.  It’s a do-over, as we say.

Here’s the original recipe, if you’re interested in being awesome:

http://www.cookinglight.com/food/recipe-finder/myplate-inspired-soups-stews/chicken-kale-quinoa-soup

Day 27: For The First Time This Month, Dinner Wasn’t a Slab of Meat

As I begin to write this post, I can feel my eyelids drooping so I will try to write as much as I can. I’m not promising anything though. It was the first week of my entire work schedule, which meant getting up no later than 6 AM. I am so excited to sleep in tomorrow.

Even though it was Saturday, I couldn’t sleep in because hatha yoga started at 9:30 this morning. As you may have heard from a couple of posts ago, I don’t do so well in the morning, but I got up and went to do yoga anyway. It’s usually hot yoga, but apparently some of the heaters were broken, so I ended up being in the cool part of the room. Cold is so not good for intense stretching. Overall, the class was okay but not warm enough.

I’m trying to remember what I have for lunch today, but for the life of me I can’t. It’s the weirdest thing. I know breakfast was an entire apple with some peanut butter, as well as my latte. I had some string cheese and cashews for snacks… but what was lunch? It could’ve been the toast I had. It’s late, so we’ll just say toast was lunch. That came with another coffee because yummy.

It was dinner that was worth mentioning, because we didn’t have a slice of meat with some kind of veggie like we tend to do. My mother made a hearty chicken and vegetable soup that warranted a second helping. It was nothing fancy, but finally having soup really hit the spot, especially with all the gray rainy day we have been having.

I’m honestly looking forward to yin yoga tomorrow. Instead of switching poses and barely having enough time for savasana, yin will give a relaxing stretch for all of my muscles while letting me basically relax on the floor. If you haven’t tried this type of yoga, I thoroughly suggest you do.

That’s about as much as my brain can muster, so I’ll be hanging up here. I’ll see you lovely people tomorrow, more rested and ready to tell you more.