- home-made bread is a little bit denser than store-bought, so it can be sliced much thinner reducing calories per slice

-there are really very few ingredients needed to bake a good bread.

-it’s crucial to stay on top of the process watching the bread - it may be the altitude.

-a few tricks such as folding the dough and using the oven for raising the dough help a huge deal.

 -I didn’t have much success with sour-dough.

-Lemon juice is helpful!

 My favorite bread so far? It’s 2.5 whole wheat + dark rye (1/2 cup), with 3 tbsp of olive oil (rubbed in before forming dough), 1 tbsp of lemon juice, 2 tsp of yeast, 1 tsp of sugar, 1 tsp of salt and 1 tbsp each of the yellow mustard seeds, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, flax seeds + 2 tbsp of sunflower seeds. I roast all the seeds lightly. It’s a very nice light bread with mild flavors, and as far as I can tell super-healthy. I like caraway seed myself, but the baby doesn’t so as much as I was tempted by it or fennel seeds, I didn’t add them in I only had to buy bread once this week, hoping to bake all my own the next week!

NOTE: liquid volumes & temperatures differ slightly for lower altitudes - I’d start with 1 tbsp of oil less and reduce heat by 15 degrees on low altitudes. 

 The way I assemble it is:

 Toast seeds and set to cool.

Warm up the house to 24 C. Add sugar and yest to 1 glass measuring cup of warm water (comfortable to hold your fingers in), mix with a fork. Give it at least 5 min till foaming wildly.

In one huge bowl sift and mix flours and salt. Rubb in oil, like for making crust. Add yeast and lemon juice. Mix till the dough came together in a ball. Cover with the safe-same inverted bowl and let rest for 15 min.

Knead for 5 or so minutes till nice and elastic in the bowl. Add a bit of skim milk if the dough is too dry. Knead in the seeds.

Set oven to the lowest setting (170 F in my case), turn it off. Spray my bowl with oil spray and roll the dough to oil it. Pull the cirano-wrap over the bowl and put in the oven (if it feels too hot, open it for a bit to make it feel just like a relatively hot room). Put the dough in, close the door and check in 40 min to see if dough increased twice in size (don’t let go over that!)

Fold the dough (press it from a round shape into an oval and then fold the sides in in thirds, fold in half. Cover up again, let rise for 40 min or so, till doubles, in the oven.

Take it out, place one grill rack to the top 1/3 of the oven, and another - to the very bottom. Preheat oven to 475 F.

Spray loaf pan with oil spray, shape the loaf (I lightly roll my folded dough out), place in the pan, cover with a wet but not dripping towel and put on the oven top to rise two-fold.

Once the loaf is all nice and puffy, spray the top with the oil spray and sprinkle with spice or sea salt if desired. Empty a tray of ice-cubes onto a cookie sheet and slide it into the bottom rack. At the same time put the loaf on the top rack. Close the oven door and reducce heat to 415 F.  Bake for 40 minutes. Remove from the oven, let sit in the pan for 10 or so minutes. Put on the cooling rack.

You can slice it from there on, and keep on a wooden board with the cut side down. I do wrap it in a plastic bacg for the night though.

Yum!

It nurtured, grew and birthed to my daughter.

We have a long history together and unlikely to part for a while yet.

No matter how much abuse I through its way, it rallies when I call for it.

It’s designed to do all sorts of things, the ones I tried already, and I haven’t yet thought of doing.

When I look at other bodies and feel envious, it doesn’t give up on me and walk away.

It takes me places, and didn’t give up on me in any major way.

All it needs is a bit of good food and a chance to get moving to show off what it can do.

Did you know that a human being that starts excersising improves percentage-wise pretty much the same, no matter what’s the age? Amazing, ei?

1. I will start my Halloween with a workout with or without my wee one.

2. Candies might be a staple, but so is the nutrition-packed, anti-oxidants rich pumpkin! I will wash & toast pumpking seeds for healthy snacking, and one of our pumkins was already half frozen and half pureed to become stews, muffins and soups in the future!

3. We will eat a protein packed mushroom omlette for breakfast and low cal pumpkin soup for lunch

4. Before we head out for a trick and treating session #1 in the local Recreation centre, we’ll squeeze in a family play in the pool.

5. We will do session #1 trick and treating and session #2 (neighborhood) at as fast a pace as an impatient 3 y.o would want.

6. We will have a nice nutritious dinner before doling the candies out ourselves.

7. We will not steal our child’s candies, and everything we will have left over will be split into 2 even piles that we will pack away very sturdily and stash in a secret and hard to reach location, and take to the office 1 week later, when everyone else’s offerings had run out and people are ready for more!

8. We will try to have our candie fix with the dark 70+ % chocolate instead of the less healthful sugary treats, and we’ll try to stay under 250 cals from treats.

9. We are going to rent a couple of cool movies to watch while giving the candies away to keep us occupied instead of munching & leave the candie bowl in a place remote to the couch

10. We will go to bed happy, and will not beat ourselves up if something didn’t go According to Plan! We’ll just plain forget about it.

11. We will make our Sunday a day of exemplary eating and slip in an extra hour or two of a good fast walking or hiking or doing anything else fun and active!

It is also bitterly cold here, and we had a fresh dump of snow - the first snow came in on the morning of my daughter’s birthday about a week ago… It’s would be whickedly beautiful, if we haven’t had such a short and cold summer this year. But, as usual, here, the trees turn from green to white.

We also did have a very healthy turkey dinner that even my husband can cook (and he did, in a sense!). I skinned a cheapo whole turkey, seasoned its abundant breast with lemon pepper, and loaded it into the slow-cooker. The small slowcooker got loaded with chopped sweet potatoes, coconut and pecans. My husband then flicked the appropriate switches, and the dinner was ready when I came back home, save for gravy, a bit of mushing and topping the potatoes with mini-marshmellows. I am going to make stock from the left-over turkey.

We’ve also got 2 lovely pumpkins. Believe it or not, the store run out of canned pumpkins, so I got one for making pumpkin-cream cheese squares I promissed my husband. It’s easy to process, actually, I just cut it into 8 or so large chunks, and I microwave each for 20 min, then mush it, boil it up with a bit of sugar and salt, and put in sterilized glass jars to be stored in the fridge. I have a feeling we’ll have a lot of pumkin favored breads, muffins and what not over the next few months.

A beautiful Thanksgiving, yes. The only dumper is that I managed to pull my back when we were unloading the groceries, and couldn’t take my daughter out on Monday afternoon because of it. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it heals quickly, and I can work-out again. I am planning to do a gentle stretching routine tomorrow morning… and will build up from there.

I still can’t believe how cold and snowy it is, and it’s only mid-October.

We spell it Kira. Four letters. The simplicity itself.

The morale: the humankind loves to overcomplicate things. But it’s not necessary, particulary in the healthy living department… just go with what feels good and is simple for you to do. You can’t make an elaborate meal plan? Then cut out junk &processed and eat from small plates, forgetting seconds. No time or inclination to hit gyms and discuss the fine points with personal trainers? Go for a walk or swim or a bike ride, or dance in whatever space you have for whatever time you have.

Become a simplifier, because we all know that there are plenty people and things out there who’d do the job of adding complications… because we are human and love doing just that.

A Grain of Sand Doesn’t Need to Become a Pearl to be Beautiful

Link: http://geology.com/articles/sand-grains.shtml

I (blush) made myself a motivational poster with it. I feel that I need that reminder, because I tend to lose the sight of the most important thing chasing perfection and numbers sometimes. And the most important thing is that being fit is the best thing for the body you are in.

Other than that, it was my birthday today, and my husband woke up at 4 am to congratulate me and give me my gift - heart rate monitor! Are you surprised I left for work half an hour late?

Hope you all are having a MAGNIFICENT DAY!

It was a glorious weekend. I went to the Fitness Theory course to start my fitness instructor certification process; really good information, awsome tips for my own workouts, lots of things I felt intuitevly explained… great!

My mood was dampened a bit by the second course’s cancellation, so I don’t know when I can re-schedule with our busy life, but I am determined to do it!

I had a couple beautiful runs. Weather tuned to autumn, and boy, is it perfect for running. Crips air, golden leaves, huge sunrises… Aww, nature wants us to be outdoors!

I took my toddler shopping for groceries yesterday night, after the course. Normally I dislike that, but this time I involved her into finding foods in our ever-changing Superstore layout, so we chanted together: Where are the Chickpeas?! Chickpeas, chickpeas!  Now, where is the pasta hiding?! and so on… so it was one giant Easter egg hunt. I stopped feeling tired half-way through it.

On top of it, I was not abnormally hungry yesterday. An awsome day… too bad it’s back to work today, after a whole weekend at an intensive course. But, I have a newfound mantra (got it during running hills): I am strong. I will prevail!

And now I want to play basketball.

It’s not as spectacular as my old places, where at some point I ran out on the bluff above the river, and could run trails on the terrace, but it is a good trail, that winds between the houses for a while, and then cuts between the two parts of the private golf-course for a bit, so you can see alot of the suburbia, plains taking off in the distance, and, if someone got up earlier - a glorious sunrise.

There is quite a few possibilities to extend a run (I was aiming for 30 min, but when it came close to 40, I did a couple of loops around our cul-de-sack to add it to 45).

All and all, I think it will be very nice, and I am looking forwrad to exploring it!

In the weightloss news, this month is shaping up as rather tough for keeping food on track. Housewarming party for 40 people or so on the 12th, United Way Bake Sale on the 15th (that’s where the leftover cookies from the HW party go, thankfully!), United Way Taste Of on the 6th of October and my daughter’s 3rd birthday party on the 10th.

So, I am putting my plans on hold for the moment, and will restart with a stricter diet in mid-October. Meanwhile, I will just try to stay under 120. I am having my doubts about it being wise to go lower than 117 anyway, since I am just not at my best that low. We’ll see.