April 2012 – Page 2 – Betsy Schow

Snack Smart: Whole wheat pitas and Smoky Hummus

Here’s another yummy recipe. I had it on my other blog, but thought I would share it here as well. Plus a new Smoky Hummus. Both are the brain child of my husband. I take no credit other than the fact that they’re yummy

Recipe for: Whole Wheat Pita Bread

To prepare: Bake in oven on pizza stone at 450° F.

Ingredients

Directions

3 cups whole wheat flour

1½ Tbs sugar

1½ tsp salt

2 pkg (1½ Tbs) active dry yeast

2 Tbs olive oil

1¼ cups warm water

Mix all ingredients and knead for about 10 min.

Let dough raise in an oiled bowl until doubled, 1-1½ hours.

Preheat oven and pizza stone to 450° F.

Punch down dough and divide into 8 equal pieces (divide again into 4 for mini-pitas) and roll into balls.

Roll out balls on lightly floured surface into thin, 8” rounds (2” for mini-pitas).

Place rounds on pizza stone and bake until they puff up, then about 30 seconds more (about 3½ minutes total).

Note: instead of a pizza stone, you can use a baking sheet. Just make sure to preheat it in the oven.

Recipe for: Smoky Hummus

Ingredients	Directions
1 can (16 oz) chickpeas (garbanzo beans) ¼ cup lemon juice 3 Tbs tahini (sesame paste) 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 tsp smoked paprika ½ tsp salt	Drain and rinse chickpeas. Combine all ingredients in food processor or blender. Puree until smooth, adding a small amount of water to thin if necessary. Garnish with olive oil.

No picture for the hummus. I ate it too fast 🙂

U is for Unicorn

This is a new fascination for my little one. If you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, it’s a unicorn. Specifically she wants to be Celestia from My Little Ponies.

Do you remember a time in your life when you wanted to be something like a unicorn, and it totally made sense to you. The world had yet to beat you down and shove you into a little labeled box. Infinite possibilities. Unfortunately, reality seems to seep in younger and younger.

So when my daughter dreams of being a unicorn, I don’t tell her they don’t really exist. I ask her what color hair she’s going to have and what they eat for lunch. I want her to enjoy that magic for as long as she can grasp it with both hands.

Fitness Tip: R.I. C.E

Whenever you have an ache or pain in the knee, hip, back… whatever- listen because your body is trying to tell you something. It needs RICE.

Rice is not a only the foundation of good sushi. Its also the acronym for the foundation of good training. Follow the letters to help avoid injury, especially if you are working your body harder than it’s used to.

Rest- muscles need a chance to heal the microtears they incur from exercise. Its the rest and healing that make it grow stronger.
Ice- Ice packs reduce the swelling. Feels good too 🙂
Compression- wrapping the injury or sore muscle reduces swelling and provides necessary support while its healing.
Elevation- Keep it up and keep off it for a little while. Keep the blood from pooling in it.

T is for Tired and Time Out

This a-z challenge has been fun, but I’m tired. Blogging everyday on not one, but two sites has tuckered me out. So I’m giving myself a well deserved Timeout.

The Long Run: You can do hard things

Today’s long run is 18 miles. I’m not gonna lie, it’s given me heart palpitations all week. It’s big and scary and really, really, hard.

So this week I have been repeating our family mantra- You can do hard things.

The mantra was given to us by my daughter’s occupational therapist. When my daughter was 4 yrs old, she refused to do anything. Everything was too hard. Tying her shoes, walking, getting dressed… you name it. She stopped trying to do anything because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to do it. It was going to be too hard. That’s when her therapist told her that it’s ok that the big scary thing was hard. Because she was a supergirl. And she could do hard things. It took some convincing and a whole lot of practice, but now all it usually takes is that gently reminder to get her back on course.

I’m not four but I still have the same problems. I look at something and all the work it’s gonna take and I say nu uh. It’s too hard. I don’t want to do it.

I know for sure I can run 18 miles. I’ve run 26.2. But even though I know I can do it doesn’t mean it’s not going to be tough. It’s still intimidating, but I just have to tell myself over and over that I can do hard things. I grew two little human beings. It doesn’t get much harder than that.

So everytime I feel that little tendril of fear creeping into my belly and want to crawl back in my shell, I look back and find something I’ve done that was tough, but I survived anyway. So take that 18 miles, I can do hard things.

S is for Success

So What is Success? What does it look like? When do you know you have it?

These are all questions that I’ve struggled with (ok still struggling).
Whatever I did, someone was better. Half of my friends went to Ivy League schools and the other half skipped school and became actors, writers, etc. And who was I? A stay at home mom. Big freakin whoop.
I didn’t have a big important 9-5 corporate job. Hilary Rosen would accuse me of “… never having worked a day” in my life.

Well this past year I’ve learned how to look at success a little differently. I even have a whole chapter about it in my book, Finished being Fat: An accidental adventure in losing weight and learning to finish. (coming out in January 2013, 🙂 thank you for asking ) As darn near every woman can tell you, motherhood is the hardest and lowest salaried job on the planet. First you have to grow a human being, which is pretty impressive considering I can’t even get my veggies to grow. You are responsible to teach your kids right from wrong, clean up sick, feed them healthy stuff, feed them crap when they won’t eat the healthy stuff, get them to school in semi clean clothes, make sure when they’re teenagers that they keep going to school, and the list goes on and on. Motherhood is definitely not 9-5, it’s 9-life.

I’ve decided that if my kids are still alive at the end of the day, I’m a success. It doesn’t matter if they’re the cutest dressed kids on the block, or the lead in the school play. As long as they are growing and improving as little people, then I must be doing something right.

Now for the hard part, applying what I’ve learned to writing. At first, my only goal was to finish a book. Once I did that the next logical step was to get it published. Okay, did that. Now I’m told that if I want my book to be a “success” it’s up to me to market the heck out of it. So I’m working my butt off, doing all the things my publisher has asked me to do: work on building an author’s platform, blog, gather facebook friends, tweet stuff, get endorsements.

I’ve started having nightmares. I’m over analyzing everything I do. Do enough people “like” me? Do I have enough followers? How many people are reading my blogs? Once again, whatever I’m doing, it feels like it’s not enough. I feel like a failure compared to everyone else.

Stop. Reboot. Go back to my original question. What is success? Is it being on the New York Times Best-sellers list? Is it have 5000 Facebook friends and hundreds of likes per post? Is it getting on a daytime talk show? If I did all these things then could I finally call myself a “success”?

Those things are all nice and fabulous, but I think success is something a little deeper. Just like in motherhood, I think success is changing one life for the better. Even if it’s your own. If your story, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, has touched someone… congratulations- you are a successful writer. So What if you self publish, or have a small indie publisher. Doesn’t matter.You have made a difference. Something you created has made the world a little brighter.

If that isn’t success, I don’t know what is.

Exercise for the Soul: Meditation Primer

Meditation is not the practice of emptying the mind. It is the practice of focusing the mind. Over the next few weeks I am going to be providing some mediation exercises. But first, you have to prepare your body, just like you would any exercise.

Find a quiet spot and sit with a straight back. Make sure the kids are at grandma’s or asleep or in another room. If you need help quieting your mind, try some white noise or the sound of rolling waves. Try to clear your mind of the laundry list of things to do. Focus on your body.

Start with your toes. Connect your mind to them. Become aware of all the muscles in your foot. Flex and relax them. Continue up the rest of your body. Calves, hamstrings, glutes, back and core, hands, forearms, biceps, neck and facial muscles.

The goal is to be aware and in control of every muscle in your body. Making a connection that last long after the meditation is over. With practice you will be able to relax any muscle at will.

This is also a great bedtime exercise. Relax and drift off to sleep.

R is for Recipe

Here’s my favorite recipe for healthy whole wheat pitas.

Recipe for: Whole Wheat Pita Bread

To prepare: Bake in oven on pizza stone at 450° F.

Ingredients

Directions

3 cups whole wheat flour

1½ Tbs sugar

1½ tsp salt

2 pkg (1½ Tbs) active dry yeast

2 Tbs olive oil

1¼ cups warm water

Mix all ingredients and knead for about 10 min.

Let dough raise in an oiled bowl until doubled, 1-1½ hours.

Preheat oven and pizza stone to 450° F.

Punch down dough and divide into 8 equal pieces (divide again into 4 for mini-pitas) and roll into balls.

Roll out balls on lightly floured surface into thin, 8” rounds (2” for mini-pitas).

Place rounds on pizza stone and bake until they puff up, then about 30 seconds more (about 3½ minutes total).

Note: instead of a pizza stone, you can use a baking sheet. Just make sure to preheat it in the oven.

Potpourri: Dark Chocolate

Don’t know if it’s true. I just found this quote and footnote. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Bring on the dark chocolate.

Exercisers can improve their performance by as much as 50 percent if they eat dark chocolate regularly.At least they can if they’re mice. Researchers fed mice the flavonol epicatechin, a key ingredient in dark chocolate, then put them through two weeks of treadmill tests and observed “an integrated response that includes structural and metabolic changes in skeletal and cardiac muscles resulting in greater endurance capacity.”

Leonardo Nogueira et al., “Epicatechin Enhances Fatigue Resistance and Oxidative Capacity in Mouse Muscle.” Journal of Physiology, 2011, doi: 10.1113/jphysiol.2011.20992.

Q is for Quilt

My mom is the quilter, I’m not. I attempt to quilt, but learn very quickly that I can not sew straight. At least that’s what the puncture holes in my thumb tell me.

But I’m ready to try again. I have a goal. I’m going to make a fat quilt.

If you have been reading this blog as well as my Finished Being Fat blog, you would know that I recently lost 75 pounds. I have an entire wardrobe of ZZL clothes that I will never need again. And to prove it to myself, I need to get rid of them.

I debated for a long time what to do. Some of my ordinary clothes I gave away. Some of the more hideous ones I burned. Passing that blue floral muumuu on to another victim would be inexcusable. Some of the rest have special memories attached. The dress I wore for my tenth anniversay. My Winnie the Pooh overalls always made me happy- even though they looked horrible.

So I have been cutting my favorite fat clothes into 6×6 squares so I can piece them and sew them together. It won’t be pretty. It won’t be fancy. But it should make me smile and keep my newly skinny butt warm on cold winter nights.