Weekly Round Up: Experimental

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  This week was all about experimenting.

Eats

Food Experiment #1: make a non-meat version of a favorite stir fry

Earlier this year I made a very delicious beef and snow pea stir fry (my previous experience is here, the recipe is here, and of course shout out to Life of a Doctor's Wife for putting this one on my radar).

My  only "beef" with the recipe is that leftover meat usually doesn't reheat very nicely, so I finally got around to trying a meatless version.  The second change was for convenience's sake: snow peas are delicious but they require going to the store but grabbing a handful of Costco stir fry veggies out of the freezer does not.  I wasn't sure what the equivalent of one and a half pounds of steak and 8 oz of snow peas was in soy curls and veggies, so I took a WAG.  I prepared half a bag of soy curls according to steps 1-3 of this recipe (rehydrate 'em, drain out excess liquid, toss 'em with corn starch and garlic powder, air fry 'em for about 10 minutes until crispy) and grabbed about four cups of frozen veggies. 

Result: success.  The ratio of soy curls to veggies to sauce came out exactly right, and it was delicious on the first night and just as good as leftovers.

Food Experiment #2: use up half a package of leftover kielbasa by any means necessary

Last week I made pierogies and kielbasa for dinner and it was everything that I hoped it would be BUT as a result I had half a package of leftover turkey kielbasa and no idea of what to do with it besides try to remember to get more pierogies sometime?

Hey Budget Bytes, your sausage and rice post was exactly what I needed!  I didn't have any frozen seasoning mix or cajun seasoning, so I threw in a handful of Trader Joe's fire roasted pepper mix and a sprinkle of adobo seasoning and got exactly what I wanted.  The only other recipe note that I have is that IMO this is three sparse servings and not four so I'm glad that I made this for my lunches and not a family dinner.

Food Experiment #3: give restaurant leftovers a new life

On Saturday the hubs and I went to the Irish pub for date night and I got my standard order of a boxty.  I'm certainly capable of wolfing down the whole thing in one sitting, but I decided to hold back and bring half of it home.

What to do with it now?  My first thought was that it would make a delicious breakfast.  I revived the potatoes and the corned beef with a few minutes in the air fryer and fried up an egg.  Result: success and the hubs and I have a note that we need to go to the Irish place more often.

Food Experiment #4: satisfy a craving that I picked up from another blog while using up a whole slew of leftovers

For some time now, I've had half a can of coconut milk and half a block of tofu tucked away in the freezer.  In the meantime, San wrote about eating ramen as she was recovering from COVID.  I'm not sure exactly what she put in it, but her bowl looked delicious and I wanted some.

I spent a bit of time looking at various ramen recipes to get an idea of what I was going to put into my "fancy" bowl.  I wanted mushrooms, I wanted green onions, I wanted to use up the coconut milk and the tofu, but what else...Damn Delicious helped me finalize my plan from there.

• I made half of the recipe to accommodate half a can of coconut milk.  I was delighted to find that this adjustment also cleaned out the rest of a jar of red curry paste that I've had in the fridge forever.
• I used up the half block of tofu in place of all of the pork ingredients and the egg.  Not only did this use up leftovers but it also greatly simplified the recipe so double win.  
• I took the trouble to get mushrooms, but I didn't want to do my standard M.O. of just using the handful that I needed and then getting stuck with figuring out what to do with the rest of them.  To get around this, I sauteed the whole package in a bit of oil and salt and then froze what I didn't use for the next time that I need a handful of mushrooms.
• I threw in a handful of frozen spinach because I felt like it.
• I didn't prepare the noodles first and let them sit around while I simmered the broth...I simmered the broth and threw in the noodles for the last few minutes of the cooking time.
  
• Finally, I'm going to throw shade on The Universal Fancy Ramen Recipe Instruction. I did not follow the "flavor packets discarded" step of the recipe.  I've seen several recipes out there that trash talk ramen broth as though it was the worst thing on earth and I'm just like really????  I'm all for fancifying ramen but I can't get down with the "ewww yuk ramen flavor packets" attitude.  So in place of adding chicken broth yes friends I just used the ramen seasoning packet.

Final recipe note that half of the recipe was meant to be one serving but in my eyes it was two so the universe was put into balance for the serving that I lost from the sausage and rice recipe.

Experiment #5: segue from food talk to workout talk

The final "new" food thing that I started this week isn't really new, it's something that I did briefly once and then got out of the habit of.  I decided to (re)start having protein powder right after my weekday workouts just to see if it does anything for me.  I'm not quite sure what the criteria for success is or how long I'll keep it up, but it tickled me that it's something that Jenny is experimenting with as well so great minds think alike. My "issue" is that once I go from working out to sitting at a desk I feel pretty stiff the first few times that I get up and move around.  I don't really enjoy the protein drinks, but it's a lotta protein for not very many calories so I figure that it can't hurt anything.

Workouts

I'm happy to report that the Beastmode series lives up to its name!  Week 1 of 2 is done and here are the bullet points:

• Going in I was a bit concerned that four sets of each exercise would be tedious but that's not the case.  Each set is only 40 seconds, and for things like lunges the four sets includes the repeats on each side so these workouts are flying by.
• Something about the four sets and 40 seconds each has me more willing to change up my weights with each set, so that also increases the variety in the workouts.
• I noticed that my renegade rows improved quite a bit over the course of Iron and they're really on point now.  I could not have done four sets before and now it's NBD.
• Maybe the HIIT workouts aren't my jam after all.  The one in the Pyramid series was just rapid movements with weights, so it was very do-able and got my heart rate up.  The week one HIIT in Beastmode was five million variations on planks and burpees that are not in my wheelhouse.  I ended up modifying with mountain climbers and simple burpees (no pushup) which was fine but not wildly exciting.
• Speaking of pushups, I'm certain that the key to improving is doing this simple little five minute workout that I wrote about a few weeks ago...but although I have the best intentions I keep forgetting to actually do it.  I think the best time to do it is right before or after my lunch break, so let's see if writing about it will take me from theory==>action==>habit.
  
• Outside of lifting, I'm wondering if all of the "balls to the wall" cardio is doing me any favors, so I'm taking the two weeks of Beastmode to scale back.  Instead of power walking at a 5% incline and speeds between 4.0 and 4.5, I'm doing about 20 minutes of 0% incline at 3.8 ("spicy walk" intensity).
• Not happy about: my right knee is still tweaky.  I complained about it on the blog 3 weeks ago and it was bugging me for a while before that.  I'm sure that I jacked it up with all of the squats & lunges and the good news is it's not getting worse but it's also not getting better.   It doesn't hurt when I walk and just gives me a little trash talk for certain moves when I lift, so that part isn't so bad.  Where it's a problem is when I have to get low to the ground, such as going from a standing exercise to a floor one, or anytime that I play with the dog, so it's putting a cramp in my style.  I'm giving it one more week to clear up and then I'm going to take Drastic Action...I've always felt that running is the golden ticket to happy knees so that's the next thing to try (no I don't particularly want to run and it's the opposite of what I'm trying to do in the previous bullet point but whatcha gonna do.  In any case it would only be for the 15-20 minutes that I'm doing cardio now).

Watching

TV experiment of the week: scour the internet to find an English language TV show.  ICYMI I've been working my way through a list of Israeli TV shows and they've all been great but I need a break from subtitles. 

A few years ago I was really, really, really into Australian TV but the well ran dry so I moved on.  I took another look to see what had come out since my last look and came up with a list of titles to check out and started with Mr. Inbetween on Hulu.  When you're just trying to be a decent guy in your personal life but you're a hitman in your professional life.  The episodes are fairly short and quickly paced, the characters are interesting, and the lead actor is great.  Success!

 

Reading

 

Reading Experiment of the week: none, just bide my time until the next book comes along.  I'd gotten the hubs Before and Laughter by Jimmy Carr for Father's Day so I decided to check it out for myself.  It's a hybrid memoir/advice book and it's going down well.

 

That's all for this week.  What are you experimenting with right now?  Got any book recommendations for me?