All but one of these stretches are done standing up, so they can be done outside even if it’s snowy or muddy.

You have probably been asking yourself that question and it’s one that I hope to answer with this post. You may also be worrying that I’ve stopped blogging but hopefully this post today is enough to allay those fears.

Q. Where have I been?
A. I have not been posting.

I hope this clears everything up.

In looking back, I think my struggle to keep with my training plan was the result of three things:

1. My treadmill broke and my gym membership expired and so I had trouble getting in workouts when the daylight was limited or the weather was bad.
2. I stayed up too late and had trouble getting up early enough to squeeze in a workout even in nice sunny weather. I think my chronic lack of sleep also caused me to get sick a lot, further limiting my workouts.
3. Related to #2, my kids are getting bigger and stay up later. I used to be able to put the kids to bed by 7pm which left time (and often daylight) to work out in the evening. Now it’s usually 8 or 8:30pm before we’re done with the bedtime routine and they’ve stopped thinking of questions to ask or wandering downstairs to see what’s going on. By that time, I’m tired and it’s too dark and too close to bedtime to start a workout.

I’ve tried workout during the day. As a working mom, I try to keep my time at the office each day to the absolute minimum. It takes a full hour to run and get cleaned up and I have trouble “escaping” from clients and colleagues to workout consistently. With a 2 hour+ daily commute, I need to be focused on working during the time I’m in the office so I can get home in time to spend time with my family before bedtime. I can’t depend on working out in the middle of the day during the workweek.

My Goals for 2010:

1. Join a gym or buy a treadmill. After some research, I decided on the gym and joined a Planet Fitness less than a mile from my house. It was cheaper than investing in a treadmill and has weight machines, ellipticals and bikes for cross training.
2. Go to bed by 10pm in order to get up at 5:45am to workout twice during the work week. (But can I sneak out of the house without waking up the kids and pissing off my husband? This is one of the benefits of a treadmill in the basement.)
3. Be diligent about scheduling my workouts and sticking with my plan. I need to say NO when someone suggests I do a planned workout “later”.
4. Run 520 miles in 2010 (last year I ran 397 miles).
5. Run 3-4 times a week, extending one run to 45-60 minutes.
6. Run a 10K or simliar distance race.
7. Lose the 10 pounds again.
8. Cross train at least 1-2 times a week.

I’ll keep you posted.

Pancakes

• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 T brown sugar, packed
• 2 T oil or melted and cooled butter
• 4 t baking powder
• 1/4 t salt
• 1 1/4 cup milk

Break the egg into bowl and beat with a whisk.

Add flour. brown sugar, oil (or butter), baking powder, salt and 1 cup of milk to the beaten egg.

Whisk gently and then dribble in milk until the mixture dribbles gently from the whisk. If it blops, it’s too thick. If it runs, it’s too thin and you should add a little more flour.

Set aside while you heat up your griddle. (I LOVE my double griddle, it makes making pakcakes so quick!) Finding the correct temperature can be tricky. You a medium temperture, so the pancakes turn golder brown but don’t burn. On my stove, it’s slightly under the 3rd dot on the dial. You want the batter to rise and the griddle to get up to temperature, so wait about 5 minutes.

Pour a small amount of batter onto the hot griddle. I pour about a three inch circle. The pancake will expand as it cooks so I end up with five to six in pancakes.

After about 2-3 minutes your pankcake will be bubbling on the uncooked side and golden brown on the bottom. Flip and wait another 2-3 minutes. When the bottom is golden brown and the top bounces back when you poke it with a finger it’s done.

Serve with bacon and (real) maple syrup. Yum!

Here’s my no muss no fuss method for cooking bacon:

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Cover a cookie sheet with a piece of parchment paper slightly larger than the sheet. Place bacon strips on the paper so they don’t touch each over. Put the bacon in the oven and cook for aprroximately 12 minutes. Cooking times vary based on the thickenss of your bacon and how crispy you like it. Take the bacon out of the oven and then place slices on paper towels to drain.

• Run the Thanksgiving Turkey Trot in Maudsley State Park
• Lose 5 pounds (sigh)
• Work up to runing three 30 minute runs a week
• Cross train twice a week

Brine

• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2/3 cup kosher salt
• 3 quarts cold water
• 1 bay leaf, torn into pieces
• 3 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1t dried thyme)
• 4 garlic cloves, peeledor 1 t dried garlic
• 2 allspice berries, crushed or 1/2 t allspice powder
• 1 teaspoon peppercorns

In a large bowl or pot, mix the sugar and salt into 1 quart of the water until dissolved.

Add the bay leaf, thyme, garlic, allspice and peppercorns and mix well. Fresh herbs are definitely better, but if you don’t have some ingredients the substitutions I suggest work pretty well.

Clean the raw chicken and remove any excess fat. Make sure you remove the giblets from the inside of the chicken cavity.

Add the chicken to the bowl or pot.

Pour the remaining 2 quarts of water over the top. Make sure the chicken is completely submerges. You may need to put a plate or heavy bowl on top of the chicken to keep it under the water.

Cover and refrigerate for at least 4-6 hours. But you can leave it up to 24 hours. I usually do this after the kids are in bed in anticiaption of starting the roast the following afternoon.

Chicken

• 8 -9 lb Whole Roasting Chicken
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup butter
• 2 garlic cloves, halved
• 2 T fresh sage leaves, chopped
• 2 T fresh rosemary, stemmed and chopped
• 2T fresh thyme, stemmed and chopped
• salt and pepper
• 2 carrots, sliced
• 2 celery stalks, sliced
• 1 medium onion, cut in six chunks

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Remove the chicken from the brine pot and let it drain for a while. Dry the chicken completely and put it in a roasting pan.

Melt the butter and stir in garlic, sage, rosemary, thyme. You can add salt and pepper too, but it’s difficult at this stage to know how salty the end result will be from the brining. I usually wait to season the gravy later. Pour most of the butter mixture over the chicken, using your hans or a spoon to make sure all the exposed parts of the bird are covered.

Here’s the messy part: take the chicken out of the roasting pan. Spread the dripped butter all over the pan and put in the vegetables. Pour the remaining butter over the vegetables and mix. Push the vegetables to the edges of the pan and put the chicken back in the pan.

Cook chicken at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, then decrease heat to 350 degrees and cook for 2-2 1/2 hours or until the internal temperature of the bird reaches 165 degrees. You can baste the bird with the butter periodically. In the last 15 minutes, increase the heat to 400 degrees. I find that brined chickens take a little longer to cook.

Helpful chicken roasting times, temperatures and methods: Help with Cooking’s Guide to preparing and roasting a whole chicken.

As a general rule, calculate a cooking time of 20 minutes per pound of meat plus an additional 10 – 20 minutes at a temperature of 350ºF (176ºC). Therefore, a 5 lb chicken will need to be roasting in the oven for at least 1h 50 mins. A 5 lb bird will serve between 4 – 5 people.

Adapted mostly from SFGate’s Bird Meets Grill and a recipe in a cookbook at my mother-in-law’s house.

• 20th Anniversary Apple Harvest Run 5 mile, 5k and 1 mile in West Newbury on Sunday, October 04 @ 12:00 PM.  I plan to run the 5 mile race.
• Dorothy’s Run 5K in Newburyport on Sunday October 18 @ 12:45 PM
• 20th Annual Turkey Trot in Maudslay State Park on Thursday, November 26 @ 8:20 AM.  3.1 miles X-country

Make: Science Room Home

Greetings citizen scientists, budding biohackers, and backyard explorers! We think you’ll find the Make: Science Room a fun and useful resource. We hope you’ll use it as your DIY science classroom, virtual laboratory, and a place to share your projects, hacks, and laboratory tips with other amateur scientists. Your Make: Science Room host is Robert Bruce Thompson, author of Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture. (Make: Books, 2008) and Illustrated Guide to Forensics Investigations: Uncover Evidence in Your Home, Lab, or Basement (not yet published). We’ll be drawing material from these titles first, but will soon branch out into biology, astrononmy, Earth sciences, and other disciplines. We’ll be adding lots of material on a regular basis, so check back often.

About MAKE (published by O-Reilly Media):
MAKE Magazine brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. MAKE is loaded with exciting projects that help you make the most of your technology at home and away from home. We celebrate your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will.

Facebook is now a kind of “social hub” for teens. As the social network has increased its offerings and integrated more with third-party applications and software, it now functions as their main portal to all online communications including e-mails, news and chatting with friends. The convenience and functionality is the main pull for teens and, let’s face it, for adults, too. With such a strong reliance upon a relatively new technology, how can we ensure that our kids know how to stay safe as they integrate more and more of their lives onto Facebook?

“Not only is this project simple, you can likely complete it with whatever you find around even the most basic of workshops. This boat can also be built in around an hour.

Full instructions and schematics are on the site.  I’ll keep this in mind for our trip to the in-law’s lake house in September.