Lemon chicken salad

You know when you do something awesome, totally without even realizing it? Well, this isn’t exactly one of those stories, but sort of.

On Sunday, I was trying to make up for the rest of the weekend’s indulgences by throwing some chicken in the slow cooker before I left to spend the afternoon with my friend Suzanne. I was thinking I would come home and have some nice healthy chicken. Well, what really happened was that I ate at a pub and then at Dairy Queen, so when I got home, I wanted nothing to do with that chicken, even though it smelled delicious!

I needed something for my lunch the next day, so I cubed the now cooled chicken, cooked some quinoa and bulgar, and tossed it all together with the broth from the crock pot. Wow! A-ma-zing.

I had tossed some garlic gloves in the slow cooker with the chicken, and they turned green. According to Google, this is because of the acid in the lemon juice.

For a salad that happened by accident, it could not have been more delicious! I’ve had it cold and warmed up, and both were delicious. Enjoy!

Lemon chicken salad

In slow cooker:

– 2 chicken breasts

– juice and zest from 1 lemon

– a few garlic cloves

– 1 tablespoon dried oregano

– 1 tablespoon parsley

– 1/4 cup water

– salt and pepper to taste

Cook until chicken is done, then cool and cube. Toss with quinoa, bulgar and broth from the crockpot. I would have added nuts to this, but I was going to eat it at school, and some kids have allergies.

Getting back on track

Last week was awesome! I started running again, with my friend Suzanne. On Tuesday, I went for a run, then did two yoga classes, back to back. Power yoga and yin. Wednesday was yoga. Thursday, another run. I ate well: no sugar, no gluten. It was a good week.

Then, the weekend happened.

There’s only one word to describe this weekend: indulgent.

It was a great weekend, packed with family, friends and sunshine.

Friday, there was a surprise girl’s night for my aunt’s birthday. Enter red wine, bread and cheese, and lots and lots of laughing!

Saturday, another girl’s night, this time with friends. Fish and chips, beer, lattes and cookies. Again, lots of laughing and fun times. We even bought a lottery ticket, convinced we were going to win 17 million dollars. Sadly, we did not win.

Sunday morning, I woke up with great intentions. I went to yoga, went for a run and drank a really tasty sugar-free electrolyte water thing to counter the effects of the booze.

The thing is, Sunday was a perfect srping day. Nice and sunny. The kind of day that’s best spent on a patio with your best friend, eating more fried food and drinking more beer. Followed by ice cream. Oh my. When I got home, I sat on the couch and couldn’t move. Not good.

So today, Monday, I decided to get back to the awesomeness of eating right. It just makes me feel better. I did have a piece of cheesecake with lunch, but hey, I’m not perfect! I stopped for groceries on the way home and stocked up on delicious, non-gluteny, non-sugary, non-alcoholic food.

Here’s to a great week!

The Book Thief

Sometimes, after I’ve read a book, I’m still not sure if I liked it or not. Take Water for elephants. It’s a beautiful story, but it’s cruel too. It was well written and I tell people they should read it, but I’m not sure how I feel about it.

I just finished The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. I bought it based solely on the name. It sounded like something I would love. If I had taken a closer look, I might not have read it. Although I’m not sure I liked it, I am glad I read it. Confusing, I know.

Here are three things about this book that I think you should know before you read it:

1. It takes place in Germany during World War 2

2. The narrator is death

3. The sad moments outnumber the happy moments

It’s about a young girl trying to figure out life in war torn Germany. She is surrounded by people who don’t all believe the same things and who try to do their best, be it hide a Jewish man in their basement or leave the window to their library open so the book thief can “steal” a book.

Death, as a narrator, lets us know how it’s saddened by the state of humanity. It has a job to do, but is not happy about it.

The book is sad, but something kept me reading. I had to know Liesel’s fate. If you’ve read this, please tell me what you thought.

Run baby run!

I’m not athletic. I sometimes have shorts bursts of wanting to be sporty. Like people who play sports. But then I remember that I don’t really like sports. Sports require a lot of coordination. Also, if you play on a team, people usually want to win whatever game from whatever sport you’re playing. I don’t care about winning a sports game/match/whatever, because I don’t like sports.

It’s a good thing I have yoga.

Not liking sports doesn’t mean I don’t like to exercise. I used to go to the gym. I liked it, until I got bored. Also, I used to run. I love running. I still consider myself a runner, even though it’s been a while and I’ve never run more than a 5k.

In the past year, I’ve only been running a handful of times. I was busy. Yoga makes me happy, so I do yoga all the time and I don’t run. But running makes me happy too. Humm, this is a problem that does not require great intelligence to fix (not that I don’t have great intelligence. I’m super duper smart. Just ask my mom.)

I was talking to my friend Suzanne about this a few weeks ago. She just had a baby, and she’s never run before, but she said she wanted to start. Since I’ve been on hiatus for so long, we decided to start together and do a couch to 5k.

If you’ve never heard of this program before, look it up, it’s great! It’s a program designed to get you to run a 5k in 8 weeks.

Today was our first day and it was absolutely fantastic! We had such a great time! I’ve always run by myself before, so this was a treat. Also, it helped that we went to Starbucks when we were done. But mostly, it was the running that was so freakin’ fabulous.

We didn’t coordinate our outfits on purpose. But it is totally something we would do.

We’ve decided to run together once a week, and do the other two runs on our own. It’s a pretty gentle start, with the first week being a 25 minute run/walk interval sequence. I have big plans for running and yoga tomorrow, so I’m pretty excited!

This next part has nothing to do with running, but everything to do with helping me become a yoga teacher! Please click on the link to watch my video and help make my dream come true! If you’ve watched it before, please watch it again, every view counts! Thanks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FymAS1je9o0

Breathe, practice, repeat

I’ve had a really good yoga week. I went to a class almost every day. Yin, power, flow, it was a great mix of everything I love. This was a very welcome week after a couple of weeks of being sick and not having much energy.

Monday, I went out for lunch. I don’t do well with greasy foods, but I had a quesadilla anyways, and I felt icky all afternoon. I went to yoga anyways and told my teacher, Megan, that I was feeling a little sick and that if I was laying on my mat, it wasn’t because I was dead or her class was boring, I was just not feeling great. Not surprisingly, I spent part of the class in savasana, but felt a million times better at the end of it.

The rest of the week went much more smoothly and was filled with happy yoga moments.

– All kinds of supported fish variations. Supported fish might be my favourite yin pose.

– Seeing my friend Ichih, after she was away for three weeks. Bonus, she did not make me do any dragon pose/gecko variation in yin class.

– Leaving work earlier than usual for a flow class and enjoying every minute of doing yoga with the sun shining through the windows.

– Doing an awesome dancer pose to half-moon to warrior two sequence and not falling down during a power class.

Also, I’ve been feeling loved and supported all week. I made a video trying to explain how much I love yoga, to hopefully win part of the cost of my yoga teacher training tuition, and I am overwhelmed at how many people have viewed and shared the video. The winner will be the person who gets the most youtube views. It’s been a week, and I’ve gotten over 700 views! If you haven’t watched it yet, please do, it would help me a lot! Also, you can click on the link every day to help my views go up!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FymAS1je9o0

 

Youtube learning curve

Yesterday, I posted my first ever video on youtube. I have no prior youtube knowledge, other than watching the odd video here and there. After I posted it and shared it with a few people, we were overjoyed to notice that each time we clicked, the view counter went up. It went up, and up, and up, until 301. Then, nothing.

I was a little worried here. I mean, the goal is to get as many views as possible on my yoga video to win part of my teacher training fees, and nothing is happening! Ok, I was a lot worried. I thought I broke youtube.

So, I looked into it. Ironically, by watching youtube videos. What happens is that, before 301 views, it’s kind of a free for all. After you reach 301, however, youtube freezes the view counter until it can verify that the video is not being viewed by robots. Ok, I get it. It can take up to a day for the counter to go back to normal. Ok, fine.

But, it had been almost 24 hours, and I was still stuck at 301. Enter another explanatory youtube video. Apparently, not only will the counter stay stuck at 301, but it will only count the legitamate views. So, if you’ve been trying to help by clicking more than once from the same computer, every few minutes, chances are, only one of those views counted. The view counter will stay frozen until the views legitamately reach 301, then it will keep going up.

You can still click a few times a day, but a few hours apart and you have to let the whole video play. Also, if you have access to more than one computer, this would help a lot!

The best way to help would be to share with everyone you know, so the video can get a bunch of different views, and hopefully get unstuck from 301.

Please click on the link! Every view brings me closer to winning 1500$ towards my yoga teacher training tuition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FymAS1je9o0

Dancing about architecture

There’s this movie from the 90’s called Playing by Heart (which I had on tape, by the way). My favourite line in the movie is “Talking about love is like dancing about architecture.” It makes no sense to dance about architecture, so why would talking about love make any sense?

I’ve decided this applies to yoga as well. I can try to talk and write about it, but I feel my yoga, I live it.

However, this weekend, I had to at least try to talk about it. I’m very, very excited about the yoga teacher training program I signed up for, but it’s pretty costly. The teachers organizing this training have given us a challenge: Make a video, post it on youtube, and the person with the most views by May 31st wins 1500$ towards the cost of the tuition.

Winning this money would definitely be a big help, so even though the thought of filming myself sent me into panic mode, I did it. I filmed myself talking, then a friend filmed me doing some yoga poses at Pure yoga, the most awesome of all yoga studios (thanks for letting me film at your studio Jen and Amber!)

Today, I put it all together with some music and it came out awesomely amazing, if I do say so myself! It’s still weird to see myself on video, and it’s a little choppy, going from one scene to the next, but I had so much fun doing this! It really made me step outside my comfort zone, and we all know that’s where the magic happens!

As a blogger, it’s always interesting for me to see someone’s video, because then I can put a voice to a person’s face. I hope you feel like you get to know me a little better by watching this.

Every click counts as a view, so if you have a minute to spare after you’ve watched it, you can click a few more times. It would help a lot! You don’t even have to watch the whole thing for it to count.

Thanks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FymAS1je9o0&feature=youtu.be

Please click often and share with all your friends, even with people who aren’t your friends!

Maple madness

Apparently it’s spring. I’m not so sure, because it’s kind of cold and it’s supposed to snow on Friday. Up to 15 centimeters. In April. I believe the proper term for this is icky. The yuckyness is bad for people, but good for maple syrup. Maple syrup is made by boiling the sap from the sugar maple. The sap flows best when it’s not too warm.

Last Friday, I went to the sugar bush with my students. I will be honest here, I didn’t want to go. I was feeling sick and the idea of spending the day with small people eating lots of sugar was not appealing. It actually turned out to be a very nice day, so I whined for nothing. (Because I did whine about going, to anyone who would listen.)

I’ve been staying away from sugar, but I figured a little maple taffee wouldn’t hurt. Ha! I almost went into a diabetic coma. I ate a few bites and had to throw it away. It was, however, pretty funny to watch the kids eat it. It was melting off the popsicle sticks faster than they could eat it. They were sticky beyond belief. Like, I love you but don’t touch me, sticky.

Speaking of don’t touch me, while most of the kids were standing around, eating their taffee, kids from my class were rolling around in the mud. I tried to pretend they weren’t mine, but no one else would claim them. So they were pretty dirty, on top of being sticky. Lovely.

Here are some photos of my sugary, sticky, muddy day. The baby goat is my favourite.

The dream I didn’t know I had

When I tell people I don’t like public speaking, they’re usually surprised. I get it. I talk a lot. Also, I’m a teacher. It’s my job to speak to a group all the time.

The thing is, I work with children. They are beautiful, non-judgemental, loving, tiny people. They are curious and believe everything that you tell them, because they don’t expect you to lie. They are, quite often, what adults should be.

I try to live my life the same way I teach: Expect people to listen without judgement, laugh as often as possible and be patient. It’s not always easy, because we all know that some people didn’t get the memo about being nice and all that stuff.

I’m going somewhere with this, I promise. But first, let me change the subject.

My first contact with yoga was when I was in college, 12 years ago. (Wow, I’m old.) I didn’t particularly care for it. It was ok, and that was it. Then, I started practicing about six years ago. This time, I was much more interested, but it was still a very sporadic practice. A couple of years ago is when I discovered how much I love it. I can’t imagine my life without yoga now.

If you put public speaking and yoga together you get….teaching yoga!

I have officially signed up for yoga teacher training! I never would have imagined this is where my life would take me. I’m not even sure I want to teach, all I know is that I want more yoga. I don’t just want to know how to do a pose, I want to know why to do it. The asanas are just the tip of the iceberg and I am ready to dive in with every part of myself.

I’m so excited, I don’t know how I’ll wait until July!

These are some of the pictures I posted last summer in an effort to counter all the negative “thinspo” pictures out there. I feel like they represent my feelings toward teacher training: joy, fear, excitement, determination, happiness. Also, let’s not forget to have fun!

I’ve got nothing to do today but smile

It’s already April, yay! It seems like not too long ago, I was complaining about snow and posting happy pictures of my best February moments to get over the winter blues. It’s still so cold, it feels like winter, but at least now, the snow is melting!

Today, I’m home sick, so I thought I would post some of my favourite moments from March as well. Maybe this will become an every month thing, but I’m not comitting to it just yet, in case I forget to do it next month!

Yoga in my happy place with some of my favourite people.

Doing yoga in the snow.

Spending time with my friend Suzanne and her new baby Stella, a.k.a., the mini muffin.

Funky ashtanga flow to the music of Madonna with Natalie, most awesome yoga teacher.

Making a cake for my little sister’s birthday.

Sisterly love.

Deciding to stop eating sugar. I still really, really want a chocolate bar, but it’s been a few weeks and I don’t feel tired as much. I guess it’s working! (Confession: I had a Luna bar yesterday. I was sick and grumpy and couldn’t help myself!)

This salad. Oh.My.God. Bulgar and quinoa mixed with almonds, cucumbers and tomatoes, drizzled with lemon juice and lemon infused olive oil. So simple, so delicious!

Learning how to get into a new yoga pose. Fallen angel. Amazing.

Making sugar free cookies. Delicious!

New books! This always makes me happy. I actually got more than three. This is just a sample.

Learning a new way to get into an arm balance. Something fun to work on.

What made you happy lately?