One More Valentine’s Heart, Salad, My Week of Workouts

1) One More Valentine’s Day Heart. Y’all seemed to enjoy the Valentine’s Day message delivered to you by all the produce in my fridge, but there’s one more photo to add to the collection.

I tweeted out a link this morning to my Valentine’s Day post, which reminds me: Are you following me on Twitter?  I’m @KeepItUpDavid (catchy, huh?) and I love my Twitter followers! Anyway, I got a tweet in response from my friend Leibya Rogers.  Leibya is a singer/songwriter, a vegan activist, a poet, a trained ice dancer, an amateur ice sculptress…  she’s one talented lady who really does it all.  She’s also the alter ego of my friend Mindy Raf, a very talented stand-up comic in New York, who created Leibya as “a loving parody of Ani Difranco and the female singer-songwriters of the 90’s.”  You can check out Leibya’s hilarious music video, and here’s her most popular YouTube video, although I should probably be a responsible blogger and add that neither is really… what’s that acronym? NSFW (not safe for work).

Leibya decided that all her Valentine’s Day tweets today would be haikus (she is a poet, after all), and she saw my blog, and sent me this haiku tweet:

Will you please take a

Picture of heart-shaped tofu

For your kick ass blog? 

I’m certainly not above taking requests, especially from musicians who can rock both the guitar and the autoharp (another NSFW link, BTW) but unfortunately, I’m currently out of tofu.  So I found the next best thing that would hopefuly appease a vegan rocker who makes jewelry out of eco-friendly, unused feminine products (true story), and took a picture:

QUORN MEATLESS & SOY-FREE NAKED CHIK'N CUTLETS

I haven’t tried one of these yet, but picked them up at Whole Foods because I was intrigued that they’re both Meatless AND Soy-free.  The principal ingredient in Quorn products is mycoprotein, and I tweeted Leibya, asking what mycoprotein is.  The answer came back, naturally, as a haiku:

Mycoprotein’s a

Fungus that uses glucose

As its food to grow

I looked around online for some elaboration, and came upon Quorn’s mycoprotein website, which says “it’s a meat-free form of high quality protein. Mycoprotein is made by adding oxygen, nitrogen, glucose and minerals to a fungus called Fusarium venenatum… Products made with Mycoprotein have a meat-like texture because the harvested strands (hyphae) have a similar structure to animal muscle cells (ie they are filamentous with a high length/diameter ratio).”

Huh.  Sounds complicated.  Have you tried Quorn products?  What are your thoughts?

2) Salad. Since all my produce expressed their heart-shaped love for me, I thought today I’d express my love for my produce… by eating it.  Time for a big salad!

Salad ingredients:  Mixed baby greens, which I augmented with 1/2 of a head of radicchio (which isn’t that much, radicchio heads aren’t that big), sprouted mung beans, cucumber, zucchini, roma tomato, green pepper, a few tablespoons of lite Asiago Parmesan dressing, and one more very special ingredient:

Yep, they’re capers.  But they’re very special capers.

Way back in October, I blogged about the huge jar of capers I had – it’s literally a one-quart jar (read that blog here).  At the time, it was still half-full.  Here’s the photo from October:

That’s a bottle of wine behind it, for a size comparison – it’s a lot of capers!

Well, it was a lot of capers, because that spoonful pictured above is the last of the capers.  They’re gone.  I’ve gone through a 1/2 quart of capers in about 4 months (it took me maybe 3 years to get through the first 1/2), and while I love capers, I don’t plan on buying more any time soon!

3) My Week of Workouts. Haven’t done this in a week, so time for an update!  In reverse chronological order:

• Monday, 2/14: Used the exercise bike in my building’s fitness center.  Didn’t push myself too hard.  According to the bike, I went 52 minutes, but according to the clock on my iPod, I went 60.  There must be a worm hole or disruption in the space/time continuum in that fitness center.
• Sunday, 2/13: Rest Day!
• Saturday, 2/12: Richard Simmons’ class at Slimmons.  It was Valentine’s Day themed, so all the songs he played had the word “love” in the title.
• Friday, 2/11: Great day at the gym.   15 minutes of toning, 50 minutes on the Arc Trainer, and 10 minutes on the StairMaster, taking the steps two and a time for the entire 10 minutes.  Holy crap – I felt ready to collapse afterward, but burned 185 calories in those ten minutes alone!
• Thursday, 2/10: My first Los Angeles swimming workout, which you can read about here.
• Wednesday, 2/9: My near-fatal run, which you can read about here.
• Tuesday, 2/8: Boot Camp class with Craig Ramsay.  Brutal.  I really hate burpees.
• Monday, 2/7: 45 minutes on the elliptical at the gym.

Keep it up, David!