Day Twenty-four: "Stepping up"

Crescent moon over Shinjuku tonight, taken from my balcony.

After the great salmon that my girlfriend cooked for me on Saturday, it was time for me to step up my cooking. And after the boot camp and workout combo yesterday, it was time for me to step up my workout.

For the workout today, I brought out a timer for the first time. What did I use it for? Why skip-rope, of course. I did the first 600 in normal fashion, and then decided to time how many I could do in one minute. The first attempt? 206. The second 202. I have no idea if that is good or bad, but it might be sort of a mini-benchmark to compare at the end. Three and change jumps per second sounds good, but I have no idea. Then I proceeded to have the best gym session yet for me on this program. I put on some up-tempo workout music and cranked my way through it. Since I had ended up doing inclined pull-ups on back-to-back days because of the boot camp, and today made it three, I started with 3 sets x 7 reps of 40kg lat pull-downs and then did 4 sets of inclines at 7,6,5,5 reps. I have wimpy back muscles!  I loved the shoulder press, by the way. For sets two and three, the last couple of presses were tough. Great workout. Planks I think I need to go longer than 30 seconds. Set two I did 45 seconds and set three 60 seconds, just to get a little more burn. I know soon enough I will hate these things when we have multi-minute reps, but for now they are fine. I have a little bit of muscle ache from yesterday, but I stepped up and it felt good today.

As for stepping up for cooking, I've had the best three meals of my PCP so far in the last three dinners. The salmon with sauteed spinach and mushrooms on Saturday I already talked about. Sunday I prepared seared swordfish with my newfound trusty salt substitute (see my supplemental post coming up) with mixed brown and multi-grain rice, and a salad. Also did some roasted red and green peppers. To my girlfriend's swordfish we added a little bit of homemade pesto (almost PCP friendly--basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil--no salt), but I opted for the no oil option so skipped the pesto. To keep the great flavour of the swordfish sealed, I sprinkled a tiny bit of 100% whole wheat flour on the outside. This also kept the fish from burning and I was able to sear it with a bit of water in the pan and just a drip of oil.  Photos of the food are below.  It was pretty darn good and I will definitely be doing that again. Wild swordfish is a bit expensive, but since my dinner protein is 90grams, it's not like I will be buying a whole lot of it anyway.

The salt substitute is phenomenal by the way. I also prepped some cod at the same time, which I took to work today for my lunch. I've had cod three times during the PCP, but this was easily the best and most flavourful.

Tonight's dinner was scallops in tomato and mushroom sauce with red quinoa and avocado. This one was another winner. In a flat dish, I sprinkled a bit of the whole wheat flour and a bit of the salt substitute. I then put each scallop in to coat it lightly on each side. Heat the frying pan over medium heat, add in one and a half chopped tomatoes and a half dozen or more chopped mushrooms. Put a tiny drop of olive oil if you must to keep stuff from sticking and/or burning. Sautee the veggies until the tomato starts to turn into a bit of a puree, throw in the scallops and cook each side. Serve yourself your carb portion of quinoa (I went with the red variety and it is so easy to cook in your rice cooker. 1 part quinoa, 2 parts water), then weigh (he he) and put your protein allotment of scallops on the side, then weigh and pour out the tomatoes and mushrooms over top. Slice up some avocado or whatever else you may fancy as a bit of garnish, to add colour, and to top up your veggie content. Make a little extra so you can take it to work for lunch. This was darn good! It was a good PCP day, even though it was a Monday.