A regular, quiet weekend this time, three loads of laundry, the third having just made the 'snap snap' sound telling me it's ready to be hung up. As usual there has been another flurry of knitting activity, with me starting yet another project which I will be showing and telling you about in a few weeks........
I used some red beans (also called adzuki) I had leftover from making energy bars last week. I knew vaguely that red bean paste was made from cooking red beans with sugar, but I had no idea that it was as easy as pouring sugar onto red beans and then whipping them up in the food processor!!
I love red bean paste buns, but the kind you get at the grocery store often have a lot of bun and just a tiny bit of paste, and you have to eat very carefully around the edges to get just the right amount of bun/paste ratio, and then at the end you are left with one big bite of mostly paste and a little bit of bun. Not so these, which I packed with as much bean paste as I could and rolled the dough very thin, you can see in the middle of the foremost pot here that the wrapper was a bit too thin and some paste oozed out. I made so many that I actually used both my steaming pans at once, which I don't normally do. These also come with the distinction of being Chris approved, he ate 4 in a row as soon as they were cool enough.
Regarding my last post on Insanity and P90X, Adam asked if I liked them and what I thought etc. I think P90X was great because it was so well rounded, there was yoga and martial arts and weights and lots of stretching, but the workouts were pretty LOOOOONNNNGGG, an hour for most, and 90 min for the yoga. They recommend that you do it fully the first time through, and then only do half the workout time once you are up to speed, so that is my plan after Insanity. As far as results, I saw great results in the first two months of P90X, losing about 13 lbs, but I think the first 10 are the easiest and the last 5 the hardest. I haven't lost weight on Insanity, but have stayed the same which is better than increasing. I find the workouts are easier, but geared to plyometrics more than anything, which hasn't sculpted my figure (except my thighs, which are muscled monstrosities now) but has increased the power in my cycling every day, which is perhaps more useful to me then a svelte figure. The workouts are also generally under 40 min, including warm up cool down and stretching, which I find psychologically easier to face in the morning than 60 min for some reason, though it's not that different. Insanity is also more portable because you don't use weights or mats or anything, just your body weight. If you think you will have to travel during your workouts, this is a much better option. The schedule is also a little different, with P90X you do some of the same workouts throughout the 90 days, whereas with insanity you do the same 3-4 for 4 weeks, a week of the same "recovery" workout, then 4 weeks of different 3-4 sets of workouts. So you get a week to get used to it, a week to improve, a week to really kick ass, and a week to think, I'm so done with these. We'll see how my results are when I'm done, I'm in the middle recovery week now, so I have 5 weeks to go, then plan on doing a 50 % effort P90X.
After all this working out you need to refuel, so I'm off to the kitchen to do some cooking to last me a week, raw taco salad for dinner, quinoa soup for lunch, baked oatmeal for the week and veggie burgers to freeze and have on hand for desperate dinners.
Cheers
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