earning those splat points

the old lady and i have found a new fitness obsession!

a lot of my friends have been raving about orangetheory fitness for a long time.  there are OTF studios all over the country, but for a long time the closest ones to us were either in rancho cucamonga or pasadena.  i don't love working out enough to drive my happy ass all the way out to either of those locations on the regular and i was plenty happy with my barre classes anyway, so there you go.

and then last summer the news came that an OTF studio was going to open in glendora, in a newly revamped shopping center that was under construction.  word was that they were hoping to open in october, and so i was super excited and added myself to the wait list for updated information

october came and went, and then it was supposed to open in december.  well, december came and went and while they were still posting teasers on social media no one was getting any updates on when it might actually open.  the old lady and i happened to be in the area one day in early february, so we strolled by and saw some progress:

it still looked a long way away from actually opening though, so we were pretty surprised when we got an email just after valentine's day that said "we're finally opening soon!  VIP week is coming february 22nd!"  that's the "free" week for those who signed up for memberships pre-opening, securing the lowest rates and giving those of us who are newbies a chance to try the workout for a week before we're committed to the membership.

mind you, neither the old lady nor i really knew what to expect from this workout.  but i really don't know a single person who has done it and doesn't love it.  even my friends who don't love to work out at all rave about it.  good enough for me.  we went in on the first day the studio was open for tours to pick up our heart rate monitors and check it out:

and then the next morning, we went in for our first class.  this one happened to be one of their "endurance" sessions, and i'm not gonna lie - i was miserable.  that shit was HARD.  and for some reason, one of the instructor's assistants kept coming over to me to pick on my form on the rowing machine.  and i'm not making it up - even the old lady was like "damn, he's not leaving you alone!"  i'm pretty sure he came over to make a comment like four separate times.  it was kind of annoying.

we came out of there drenched in sweat but happy to have gotten our first session done (she's going to kill me for posting this again, since i posted it on instagram that morning):

and because i was still participating in a 30-classes-in-45-days challenge at xtend, i went straight from there to a barre class.

luckily, it was one of their roll & release classes which actually helped get me all stretched out and loosened up after the intense workout at OTF that morning.

we went back for our second class on monday, and found that we had the same instructor but no extra assistants during class.  still, i was pretty apprehensive since he'd killed us during the last class.

but this time, the class was a mixture of endurance, speed and power - so while it was no piece o'cake, it was just the right amount of challenging for us.  this time, we left pretty encouraged and excited to continue on with our OTF journey.

this morning, the heart rate monitor software in the studio was finally set up and we were able to glance up at the screens periodically to see how we were doing.  there are color codes to tell you how much effort you're putting in, with blue and green being kind of a warm-up zone and orange and red for the higher levels.  and as soon as the workout was over, i had this in my email to tell me how i'd done:

when i asked on twitter WTF those "splat points" were for, one of my friends said it was how many minutes i'd spent in the orange and red zones.  interesting.  i'd been hoping it was some sort of rewards program and i could do some shopping, since i'd seen that there was some fun OTF-branded gear for sale on a table in the lobby.  heh.  no such luck.

in any case, the old lady and i are pretty excited to continue with our classes and build up our strength and endurance.  when we're on the treadmills i'm still "power walker" mode because i haven't done any running in months.  we're both signed up for a membership plan that gets us 8 classes per month, which will work out perfectly with my barre schedule.

maybe it'll even get my running mojo back.  who knows?  i guess we'll see.

recipe round-up

with all the craziness going on in my life lately (and i still need to blog my easter pics, yikes), i haven't written about my adventures in the kitchen. sad! but i've been good about photographing them, so i decided to just gather 'em all up and throw 'em all in one post.

i found the easiest, super duper delicious recipe for marinara sauce to make for the teen. i've actually made it twice already, and she enjoyed it over some penne pasta as her easter dinner last weekend. it's seriously so simple and easy to make, and i'm never going to buy a single jar of pasta sauce ever again. and i always have the ingredients in my kitchen, so i'll always have a go-to recipe for those times when i'm totally lazy and don't feel like cooking. yay!

i had a bit of leftover corned beef brisket from dinner last week just kickin' it in the fridge. we usually end up devouring the whole thing that night, but somehow we ended up with a little extra. so on saturday morning, i woke up and decided it'd probably be yummy chopped up and cooked with some potatoes. homemade corned beef hash, yo!

'cept for that i didn't have any potatoes. d-oh! but i opened the freezer and found something even better and way easier - can you guess?

oh, yes. i cooked up some tater tots, tore 'em apart, and mixed 'em in with that diced-up corned beef. a little salt and pepper, a couple of scrambled eggs, and some sweet rolls, and the hub and i had quite a lovely breakfast. hell, i wish i had some right now.

i didn't get a picture of it because we were extra hungry when i served it up, but i took some leftover bbq'd chicken, some fresh veggies, and egg noodles and served up a yummy chicken noodle casserole. i was really glad i'd grabbed a bag of packaged-up leftovers at the ILs that weekend, because it sure made for a great dinner that took maybe half a brain to put together.

my friend ssinca is a total cookie enabler. i get so many great recipes from her, although she's usually trying to get me to be the guinea pig and test it out before she makes it herself. haha! she knows i'm only too happy to be the sucker. er, tester.

she sent me a recipe for chocolate peanut butter surprise cookies a few weeks ago, which she'd swiped from the martha stewart website. and i sat on it for a while before i gave it a shot, mostly because it looked like a pain in the ass to make and i liked the ease of just using peanut butter chips to get the same flavor. not to mention, it calls for shortening - which is something i don't typically have in the pantry. but of course, i'm a sucker, so on friday i bought some butter-flavored crisco sticks and mixed up the batter.

these are good. really soft, and the dollop of peanut butter is pretty fabulous. although i polled the hub and the teen, and they prefer the peanut butter chip version - which is a relief, because these were a lot more work. remember, i'm a lazy ass.

i had a couple of pork roasts in the freezer that i'd bought at costco a few weeks ago. i'd already used one in a bacon-wrapped brown sugar roast that was truly delicious, but i wanted to try something new - pulled pork. so i googled and found a great looking recipe that used a homemade rub and got some good reviews. i busted out my spices and got to work.

i wrapped up the relaxed, rubbed-down roast and stuck it in the fridge to marinate overnight. then yesterday morning, as i got up to make breakfast, i put it in the crock pot and left it alone for eight hours. when it was done, i used two forks to shred ("pull") it all up, dumped in some barbecue sauce, and left it again to heat through.

i served it on some hamburger buns (the teen ate a gardenburger, which was really yummy too - i know because she let me try a piece), and it was a huge hit with the hub. we ate it with chips and carrots and dip, and it made for a great dinner.

while the roast was cooking, i got a wild hair up my ass to make some sugar cookies with icing. as crazy as it sounds, i was kind of tired of making chocolate chip cookies (blasphemy, i know it) and wanted to do something different. but i wanted to find a recipe that would make really soft sugar cookies with some icing that would harden, but not chip a tooth when you bite into it. there are cookies like this at the grocery store, which we've bought quite often but are on the pricey side. and, of course, google came to my rescue again.

i found that my food coloring choices were limited to green (remember the st. patrick's day cookie debacle?), black (how morbid!), and orange. i was wearing an orange tank top because it was butt-ass hot, so i decided on the latter. and they sure made for some happy, spring-y cookies!

with the teen home this week, our meal plan has me exploring the world of quiche, revisiting the black bean enchiladas, and falling back on good ol' spinach salad (sans bacon, how sad!). we'll see how it all comes out.