Well the holidays are in full swing in the Beck household. This generally means copious amounts of eating and drinking. OK, I can hear some of you calling immediate BS and saying, "Wait, you guys do that anyway regardless of the supposed 'holiday season'!" OK, you're right generally. But the holidays will generally open up the calendar even more for doing things on "school nights" as opposed to "non-school nights".
It has gotten to the point where I am going through the multi-colored Tums container and taking out the colors I don't like (orange) so I only consume the flavors I want. This must be the adult version of taking out the oats from the Lucky Charms so you only had marshmallows in the cereal box (yes, Lisa – I am talking to you!). It's probably not a good sign when you are sorting out Tums by color. Oh well.
We kicked off things by having almost 2 Thanksgiving dinners at the house over Thanksgiving weekend. Oh, and one of the Thanksgivings had 2 turkeys served for 7 people (yes, that was 7 not 17 people). The 2 turkeys for 7 people was necessitated by a new toy that we purchased that would be used to cook the turkey, and Marc wanted a Plan B – that is where the 2nd turkey came in. So Marc owned the prep of "Turkey A", which was smoked, and I owned "Turkey B", which was roasted with a bacon-sage infused butter. Copious amounts of food was served on Thanksgiving Day, and then more food was served on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Right – and I wasn't running the Seattle ½ Marathon because……????
We had some parties to attend and then we hosted an open house, aka "Beck the Halls". It was a great deal of fun and we were able to see many folks but it is a long evening because we try and make it easy for our friends to choose to bring their kids or not bring them. This generally results in an early shift, middle shift and a late shift in terms of attendees. The party is easy in terms of prep because everyone brings a dish for others to consume, but it is a complete pain in the neck from a clean-up perspective. That took a few days after the party, but I am sure my body appreciated the extra opportunity to burn some more calories.
In the midst of this, I am in between projects at work, which was expected. So I am taking advantage of the downtime to try something new in my workout routine, which alluded to in my last blog post. In addition to switching running coaches, I am also trying Crossfit based on the recommendation of some friends who run. There is a lot to Crossfit with respect to not only the workouts but philosophies around nutrition, etc., and I'll skip that component for now.
So I took a rookie series at my local Crossfit, which included 6 classes of learning the basics of some of the exercises that they cover in the regular classes. The rookie series (aka fundamentals) is great because it is generally a smaller group of people than a typical class so you really get the attention you need to focus on technique. Crossfit is only as effective as your technique, and trust me, you can get hurt if you don't focus on it. The classes, rookie and regular, probably go from 45 minutes to an hour when you take into account warm-up or working on some weak spots to improve upon – NOTE: I have many weak spots. An hour is definitely on the longer side, so I like that fact that I feel like I worked really hard without spending a couple of hours at the gym.
It's hard to give a full-on evaluation at this stage as I just did my 1st regular class today, but I will say that I ran a pretty tough run (stomach weirdness the day before meant no food 24 hours before run – NOT SMART, Jill) on Friday with my friend, Tricia, and my leg didn't start hurting until 5 ½ miles into the run. This is a significant improvement, so I was pleased. Is it the start of things to come? I'm not sure, but I'll take whatever positives I can in what has been a long and tedious rehab process.
OK, back to the food and wine component of this entry. On Saturday I had the pleasure of leading Tricia, her family and some friends through a Pinot Noir tasting, which I wrote about on the Purple Teeth Cellars blog. Even though Pinot is not one of the wines that we make, we have spent enough time learning about it and drinking it (LOL) that Marc and I thought we could help in telling folks that they don't need to take wine so seriously in order to enjoy it. We did some food pairing experiments and had more than our fair share of laughs. One of the guests is definitely more microbrewery oriented, so I am wondering if he now has some ideas for tasting some of his favorite brews. Hmmm…..
Then last night, we were invited to another friend's house to be wined and dined at an event he called "Duck the Halls". Yes, lots of duck. Yes, lots of goodness greatness. Yes, lots of wine. Hence the "less than awesome" feeling this morning. But well worth it – thanks, Erik! I should add that another good friend made me some tasty chocolate chip pancakes earlier in the day yesterday, so life is good when you got your friends cooking for you all day! J
Life is good, but tonight is definitely a Progresso soup night with some water. My body needs to detox a bit. Oh wait, Danielle just dropped off some homemade cookies. Oh well. Guess I will have to try them.
Happy Holidays everyone!