One Fitness Tip, One Healthy Recipe
Today at Tote Bags ‘n Blogs, I’m sharing one fitness tip and one recipe. (Just in case, I’ll post it here too.) How great is that, being that it’s the first week in January and we’re all focused on starting the new year off right, and aren’t yet depressed because we ended up eating the last of the Christmas fudge instead of throwing it out, like we told ourselves we would?
Anyway, I’ve promised myself for the past several years that I’d get more exercise, particularly yoga, which you’d think would be easy, because I love yoga and there are so many ways it’s good for us. Unfortunately, going to yoga class involves leaving the house, a barrier many work-at-home-borderline-kleenex-box-slipper-recluses may recognize. Writing works the mind, but it’s trash on the body. Yoga keeps me limber enough to create worlds like my latest Sunset Bay Sanctuary series. 🙂
But recently I discovered a great way to bring the yoga class to me, via apps! Whoo-HOO! All you need is a quiet spot with a mat or carpet, and your favorite device. You get the soothing voice of an instructor, pictures of someone in the postures and voila, you just follow the instructions to bliss and great abs. Or so I tell myself.
Here are the three I’ve found:
Down Dog has options for your level of experience, the kind of music you want and the length of practice. I’ve done it several times already and really like it. I’m using the free version so far, but there’s also a monthly membership I might upgrade to, if I get bored.
I’ve also downloaded Yoga Studio. Billed as “The #1 yoga app for iPhone” this one has many more options, making it more customizable to your own needs. As it’s only $3.99, I downloaded it but haven’t tried it yet. Early days.
There’s also All-In Yoga. As I love to have options, I downloaded the free version of this one on my phone too, because, why not, it’s free. I haven’t played around with this yet, to say whether or not I like it.
So far, my “do more yoga this year” resolution is going great, thanks to these apps. (You’ll notice I kept my resolution fairly vague. It’s the key to success.)
As for the recipe, it’s called 5 Minute Magic Green Sauce and it comes from Lindsay of Pinch of Yum, to whom I’m eternally grateful. This stuff is amazing.
It’s basically a pistachio-avocado pesto. Lindsay says she could eat it every day for the rest of her life and I GET IT. It’s delicious! I’ve made two batches in less than a week. It’s fantastic in salads, or as a dip for crackers or vegetables, or straight from the spoon. I’m eating it on toast for breakfast, right now, in fact. Here’s the recipe:
5 MINUTE MAGIC GREEN SAUCE
INGREDIENTS:
1 avocado
1 cup packed parsley and cilantro leaves (combined)
1 jalapeno, ribs and seeds removed
2 cloves garlic
Juice of one lime (or two – get lots of limey goodness in there!)
½ cup water
½ cup olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup shelled pistachios
INSTRUCTIONS:
- Pulse all ingredients – except pistachios – in a food processor until incorporated.
- Add pistachios and pulse until mostly smooth (depends on what consistency you want.)
- Serve as a dip, spread or sauce – or add additional water or oil to thin the sauce for use as a dressing or a
marinade.
Lindsay adds that you can sub walnuts or almonds for the pistachios and it’ll work, but she doesn’t think the taste is quite as good. I *LOVE* the pistachio version; those babies are expensive but worth it for this stuff. (I suspect pine nuts would also work but I have no data to back this up at the moment.)
I mixed this Magic Green Sauce with cooked farro, spinach and halved cherry tomatoes for a hearty and delicious salad. You could use quinoa or couscous, probably and it would be just as good.
I’m with Lindsay on this: it’s AWESOMELY YUMMY!
Anyone else have current favorite recipes or fitness tips to share? I’d love to hear from you!
Rock Stars
- At November 30, 2015
- By Roxanne Snopek
- In Life, Roxanne Writes On
- 0
Rock Stars
I’ve been publishing novels in the women’s fiction, aka romance, genre since 2012. And that makes me a rock star. That’s right, romance authors are rock stars. Don’t believe me? Read on, gentle reader!
From MACLEANS, April 26, 2015, by Emma Teitel:
When American filmmaker Laurie Kahn set out to make Love Between the Covers, a documentary about the women who read and write romance novels, she was struck by how often she heard the same story. It wasn’t a tale of beefy bodice rippers or love at first sight; it was a story about snobs.
“I can’t tell you how many people I interviewed,” says Kahn, “who told me that people will walk up to them on a beach and say, ‘Why do you read that trash?’”
Apparently, where lovers of romance novels go, contempt follows. Sometimes it’s subtle contempt—a raised eyebrow from a colleague, or a snarky comment from a friend (usually the kind of person who claims to read Harper’son a beach vacation). Other times it’s more overt, even potentially damaging.
When Mary Bly (pen name Eloisa James), an academic and New York Times bestselling author, began writing romance, she was advised to keep her fiction writing secret or risk not making tenure at the university where she worked.
For some reason, argues Kahn, perhaps because its subjects are female, romance novels are perceived as fundamentally silly, when other popular “genre fiction”—namely, fiction by and for men—is not.
“Nobody,” she says, would walk up to “a man reading Stephen King, or a mystery or sci-fi novel” and scoff. And she’s right: Stephen King is a prodigious talent… right up there with romance novelist Nora Roberts. Yet Roberts has been the butt of jokes—a universal default example of “bad writing,”—while male contemporaries with far less talent get a free pass.
Perhaps, as the graphic says, it’s a woman thing. If the majority of these books are written by women and read by women, and the majority of people knocking these books haven’t read them… maybe it’s not about the books.
Maybe trashing romance novels is more about trashing women.
Read the full article at: Why romance novelists are the rock stars of the literary world.
Check out the video here.
Furniture Serendipity
- At November 05, 2015
- By Roxanne Snopek
- In Life, Roxanne Writes On
- 0
So you know how you go to the mall for shoes sometimes and end up buying a couch? Well that happened to us recently. To be fair, we’d been toying with the idea for a long time. A long time. Because you know, there’s always a better use for the money, right? Anyway, it all started in the Bay, when hubby went to the bathroom.
I’m in line to buy a housecoat to replace the one that got amniotic fluid on it when I was in labor with baby #3. (She’s in second year university now. Don’t worry, I washed the housecoat.) Hubby texts me. Meet me in furniture. Ah yes. You have to go through the furniture department to get to the washrooms.
Be right there I respond. Shouldn’t be long; there are only two women in front of me. The first one has three bras from three different tables and one second AFTER the cashier completes the sale, exclaims, “Hey. They’re supposed to be on sale.”
“Sorry,” says the cashier. “The ones ending in .98 are excluded.”
“That can’t be right,” says the woman and proceeds to usher the cashier to the various tables, arguing with her about it. This goes back and forth for awhile.
You coming? texts hubby. I want to show you something.
Seen it I respond.
No, not that. It’s a couch.
The woman with the bras is considering whether or not the $2.50 is going to make or break the deal. She goes with break and stalks off, affronted.
“Wait!” calls the cashier. “I need your credit card to void the purchase!”
A chase ensues.
A few minutes I text.
Hurry he responds.
They get rid of the bra-less wonder, finally, and what do you know. The next one is using a gift card that may or may not have expired.
On my way I tell him. The tide turns. The gift card works. My housecoat is on sale. All is well in my world.
We cross paths on the escalator, he coming down to find me, me going up to meet him. He leaps the divide and drags me over to this enormous Natuzzi sectional.
“Sit,” he says. “Isn’t it comfortable?”
“You win the lottery?” I ask, running my hands over the buttery-soft leather.
It’s solid, big and gorgeous, just the kind we’ve been drooling over forever – and way, waaayyy more than I want to spend. Ever. For that money, it should have wheels.
“Look,” he tells me, pointing to the tag. “Half price.”
Okay, I’m impressed. But it’s still more than I want to spend. But he has a triumphant, hopeful expression on his face. He takes me over to another sectional. It’s disassembled, so it looks a bit sad, but it’s exactly the same as the one I just sat on.
“What?” I said. “It’s the same one. Still too expensive.”
He points to a teeny, tiny scuff mark. “See that? Twenty percent off the sale price. The sale price!”
Whoa.
We go home, take some measurements, think about how to rejig the room. And yup, two days later, it came home. We spent the day moving stuff, reorganizing and cleaning. My back hurt but you know what? I got to alternate hot and cold packs while sitting on an awesome new couch!
What do you think?