Fitness trend revolutionizes training

2012/01/23 Fitness No comments

The workout is intimidating before you even get started.

You arrive in the dark to a warehouse tucked behind a stripmall or office park.

It’s a glorified garage with cold concrete floors, florescent lights and knotted ropes hung from the rafters, and a bare bones assortment of weightlifting equipment, wooden boxes, and inexplicably, piles of tractor tires.

And even more disturbing, sledgehammers.

There are no windows, no shiny mirrors, no treadmills with their own televisions. The music is industrial, insistent, pulsing underneath the more pervasive sounds of exhalation, the clang of metal, the thud of weight succumbing to gravity.

This is CrossFit, and it’s going to change your perception of exercise.

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Young foodies create cooking guide

2012/01/23 Food No comments

It may have started with a middle school battle for the best oatmeal cookie, but enterprising friends Phoebe Lapine and Cara Eisenpress have created their own cooking niche with their witty and whimsical take on everything epicurean for those with limited resources.

Their blog, “Big Girls Small Kitchen: A guide to quarter-life cooking” is a fresh, fun foodie website full of recipes for dorm room dwellers, those stuck in tiny apartments, and anyone cooking on a raman-noodle budget with gourmet dreams.

While geared toward “twenty-something” cooks, the recipes and entertaining tips translate well to any age.

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Winter harvest

2011/12/26 Food, Garden No comments

Touches of frost and snow may kill most of what’s in your vegetable garden, but hardy, hearty winter radishes only get sweeter with the chill. “The frost converts the carbs to sugars,” says Scott Breneman of Goodwill at Homefields CSA, where shareholders are reaping a pick-your-own bonus harvest. If our winter stays mild, the harvest can linger throughout the coldest months, offering welcome fresh produce right from your backyard. Our favorite for holiday parties is the festive bright red and green display of the watermelon radish. Sliced on a platter it offers a crisp, edible decoration. Black radishes give plenty of sharp heat during cold winter months, as do the hot and sweet shunkyo radish. The long white daikon radish is not only great to eat, but makes for a great cover crop as well by alleviating soil compaction as well as storing nutrients for spring planted crops to use. Direct seed in mid to late August with shade and heat protection and reap the benefits through the winter.

Nuts for pistachios

2011/12/26 Food One comment

Kim Zanni aims to be a taste maker, style setter, and basically achieve world domination on the scale of Martha Stewart.
On sheer nerve and all-out passion for her product, in just four years Zanni has grown her Gelato di Babbo business from hand scoops from a pedal-powered cart on the streets of Lititz to pint placement in the freezer sections of more than 90 mid-Atlantic grocery stores.
“I’m in gourmet shops like Di Bruno Brothers, family groceries like Darrenkamp’s and Oregon Dairy, and major chains like Giant, SKH, and Whole Foods,” says the 33-year-old Warwick grad.
A summer quest for premium pistachios in Bronte, Italy ended up inspiring more than just her pistachio gelato. She’s now debuting an entirely new product line, Zanni Foods, featuring the famed nuts as well as a new twist on another one of her best-selling gelato flavors.“I went to Bronte in Sicily because that’s where the best pistachios in the world are grown,” she says. “I came back with a whole new line of products to introduce to the U.S.” Read the rest of this entry »

Spirited Annapolis

2011/10/10 Travel No comments

When there’s a chill in the air and you’re looking for spooktacular getaway options, head to Maryland’s capital city to get your ghost on. It’s a great place to visit for haunted historical entertainment as well as hauntingly beautiful architecture and ambiance. Everyone seems to have a story to tell of ghosts that coexist with living residents amid the city’s 18th century building and cobblestone streets. On the campus of St. John’s College, in the graveyard at Church Circle, in local bars and restaurants, and even in the State House, the spirits reportedly linger.A number of historic city ghost tours blend well-researched history with tales of long-gone residents who seem to benignly stick around, playing occasional pranks and flickering the lights.The Historic Annapolis Foundation teams up with Watermark tours to offer terrible tales and suspenseful stories of spirits during weekend tours through town. Read the rest of this entry »

Glam-camping in the PA wilds

2011/09/25 Travel No comments

Just because you’re a nature lover doesn’t mean you enjoy spending a chilly night feeling every root and stone through your sleeping bag or waking up to stoke the fire before you can brew your coffee. Which is why the emerging trend of glam-camping has so much appeal. Spectacular sunrises paired with luxurious spa services, s’more roasting from the comfort of a chaise, and high-thread count sheets and fluffy pillows after a mildly strenuous day spent kayaking and hiking make for an outdoor experience to be savored.
Next time you head to the Pennyslvania Wilds for some back-to-nature time, leave the tents at home and get spoiled at a local resort or B&B instead. Read the rest of this entry »

Wildwood Days

2011/08/08 Food, Travel No comments

Stuck in a shore rut? Discover new ways to enjoy your favorites at The Wildwoods, where the kitchy Do-Wop culture makes for a mash-up of retro memories and inspired playfulness on the New Jersey island, culminating in a carnival cacophony of color, aroma, and sounds along the boardwalk.
Friday night arrivals throughout the summer are illuminated for arriving vacationers with a canopy of fireworks mirroring the amusement-lit piers. The resulting fanfare couldn’t be more welcoming. Cruise through town to take in the ‘50s throw-back architecture, a mixture of preserved nostalgia and restored Jetson’s campiness. Then dive into the press of boardwalk masses to take a spin on the merry-go-round or send your stomach churning on the new gravity-mocking “it” ride (which may be short for vom-it). Read the rest of this entry »

Sweet and sour balances this cook

2011/06/09 Food One comment

For Holly High, good food fixes everything.

A nurse by profession, her nurturing spirit sends her to the kitchen whenever she senses a need — soups for a sick friend, cake to celebrate a co-worker’s achievement or mend a heartbreak, hearty casseroles after group outdoor adventures.

“I’m drawn to do that. It’s my hobby,” she said. “If someone is having a bad day, my first thought is that maybe they need some cookies. I’m the person that forces food on people, like dropping off zucchini bread at a friend’s house.”

For High, there is no distinction between comfort and food.

“I love to feed others,” she said. “It brings me joy. It’s my way of showing people I love them.”

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Life as a Tri Wife

2011/05/23 Travel 2 comments

The sickness began with a big birthday that ended with a zero.

For a mid-life crisis, it seemed harmless enough.

After all, I knew he was the competitive sort when I married him.

And spending a morning along a farm lane, waiting for a few fleeting glimpses to applaud seemed the least I could do.

But rather than a passing fancy, that first race was only the beginning of my life as a triathlon wife.

That whim of a competition has turned out to be a newfound way of life.

Stopwatches and metronomes hang from the family key rack. Training charts eclipse the report cards and drawings on the refrigerator.

Vacations are planned around the tri-state summer race season.

Saturday mornings start with a “brick”: back-to-back workouts of two disciplines.

But most significantly, our cupboards changed, much to the amazement of his mother.

The man who didn’t touch green vegetables was now pulverizing spinach and chard into morning shakes. Mysteriously, the berries I froze for pies and crisps disappeared from the freezer. And trips to Central Market for produce have doubled.

Rather than me clipping health articles to leave at his breakfast spot, he’s now the researcher, sending me links to specialized techniques like chi running and total immersion swimming.

I know it’s a subtle attempt at recruitment.

So far, I’m resisting.

After all, my big-zero birthday comes five years after his.

Still, I’m happy to humor his lust for solid-wheeled bikes and Rocketeer-style helmets. I don’t mind the wetsuits and unitards that hang dripping in the garage. They’re cheaper than a red convertible, and more conducive to our marital harmony.

I view the varied attempts to improve transition times with bemusement, witnessing experiments with rubber bands and bike pedals that defy the laws of physics.

In awe of his commitment, I’ve moved from the cheering section to full-on support staff.

Found an interesting race in Avalon? I’ll figure out accommodations and menus.

 

Need to train for the intense SavageMan? I’ll plan weekend excursions to the mountains to prepare for altitude acclimation.

At a loss for nutrition to power through? I’ll experiment with greens and berries and protein sources to find the perfect shake.

Just don’t ask me to compete, yet.

Favorite May plant: columbine

2011/05/13 Garden No comments

The delicate woodland columbines (aquilegia) are a graceful late spring favorite in the garden, both for their fanciful single and bi-colored pastel flowers, as well as their ability to attract the season’s first hummingbirds to the garden. Their nectar-laden blooms are keeping both the ruby throated birds and a bevy of hard-working bees busy this week in my garden.

 

Best in partial sun or dapple shade, they enjoy moist, rich soil that drains well. A biennial, don’t count on flowers if you plant the seeds this year. Once it’s established, the vigorous plant will need dividing every three or four years for better blooms. Some varieties re-seed, casting plenty of volunteers to share with friends and neighbors. With plenty in the garden, feel free to cut some blooms to enjoy indoors for delicate spring bouquets.