Judgement Free Zone

Though most of the items from my most recent To Do list have gone untouched, there is one item that I have checked off: joining a gym.

When I discovered that there was a Planet Fitness within easy walking distance of my apartment, I stopped having an excuse not to join. So, I took myself down there one Sunday in March, signed up, and have been attending regularly for about a month and a half.

I've been pretty pleased with the experience. Planet Fitness is almost exactly what I need in a gym. The facility includes somewhere around 150 elliptical, step, treadmill, and weight machines, all available to their membership 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even at their busiest (with an easy 80-90 people in the building), I can walk in and find more than one open elliptical to use for as long as I like without bothering anyone.

Another aspect that I enjoy is the Red Light Circuit. There's a room in the back with ten weight machines (which cover all the major muscle groups in the body) and ten step stations set up in an alternating loop. On the wall they have a set of lights that periodically switch from red to green and back again. You can choose any open station in the circuit to start. When the light turns green you start (either doing 12 reps on a machine or a minute of step depending on where you started). When the light turns red, you clean up, move to the next station, and prep til the next green light. The entire circuit takes 30 minutes and doing the step stations in between each weight machine ensures that you keep your heart rate at a fat burning level throughout the loop.

The one downside to the room is (despite being set aside specifically for the above purpose) there are people who will come in and sit on one machine for ten minutes even though there's 50 other machines in the building they could be using for that. It's kind of annoying to be progressing through the circuit like you're supposed to and to find your next station occupied by the same guy who's been there for the past five green lights.

Ultimately, I can take the annoyance for the price.

Planet Fitness is best known for its $10 a month, no commitment membership, but they also offer something called the Black Card membership. It's about $20 a month and requires a 12 month commitment, but definitely has its perks which include free tanning (which I will never use), free use of the massage chairs (which I use on almost every visit), and the ability to bring a friend for free any day (which my room mate uses on a regular basis).

Perhaps most importantly is the fact that my Black Card allows me to use Planet Fitness locations other than my home club up to ten times a month for free. So, while I'm at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas this summer for camp (have I mentioned that yet?) I can bus the five minutes to the nearby Planet Fitness... If I ever get the free time and energy to do so.

Overall, the membership has been a good investment. I'm healthier, I'm stronger, I feel better, and Planet Fitness' jarring purple and yellow color scheme is starting to grow on me.

Sun-dried tomato, artichoke, and kielbasa pasta

There are a lot of foods that my parents have tried to make me eat over the course of my youth to the point where I would never eat it on principle. One such food was artichokes or, more specifically, my mother's artichoke dip.

I have discovered in recent years that I will, as a mature and curious adult, try such foods (but only if they're presented to me by someone other than my parents). In such a way I have grown to enjoy sushi, avocado, caramelized onions, and many such other things.

And such it was when my roommate first handed me a plate of pasta mixed with sun dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts. I was wary, but willing to try it; and to my surprise I found the combination absolutely delightful. I have even endeavored to modify the concoction into the following recipe, which I would like to share.

Things you will need:

Per serving-
Sun dried tomatoes - 5-6pcs
Artichoke hearts - 2 quartered chunks
Kielbasa (optional*) - about a quarter link
whole wheat pasta (I'm a fan of rotini for this) - 2oz
parmesan cheese (optional) - to taste

*Omitting the kielbasa makes this a pretty awesome vegetarian dish; it can definitely stand on its own. If you're not a vegetarian, the kielbasa is still a great addition. I really enjoy the flavor combination when you get all four major ingredients on your fork at the same time :D


Set a good sized pot of water on a back burner at high heat to boil. If you add a little salt and olive oil to the water I find that it boils a little faster, adds to the taste, and helps keep the pasta from sticking together later on.

Slice up your sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and kielbasa. I like to go pretty thin on the kielbasa slices. Throw the tomatoes and artichoke into a large pan with some of the oil from your jar of tomatoes and cook for a few minutes on medium heat.

Once your water is boiling, toss in the whole wheat pasta, return to boil, and boil for whatever time is noted on the package (probably around nine minutes).

Add your sliced kielbasa to the pan to cook with the tomatoes and artichoke. At this point I like to throw some parmesan cheese into the mix, but that's 100% optional.

Once your pasta is done cooking, drain the water and add it to the pan with all the other ingredients. Toss and cook for about another two minutes, then serve. You can sprinkle a little more parmesan cheese over the top if you like.

Toasted Turkey Times Two Sandwich

As a kid, I always liked one very specific sandwich.  This was because pretty much every time I went to visit my grandparents, I would go grocery shopping with my grandmother for ingredients, come home, and then my grandfather would make me a turkey sandwich on rye with Grey Poupon.  As a result, the combination is as emotionally comforting as it is delicious.

I've grown up a lot culinarily since then and in the hustle and bustle of adult, working life, I found myself turning back to that old favorite for lunches, but with… enhancements.  After about two years of playing with it, I've settled pretty happily on the following construction, which I would like to share.

What you'll need:

-Rye bread (I prefer light, seeded rye)

-Sliced turkey (pretty much any deli-style turkey will do)

-Turkey bacon (just as tasty as real bacon, but only half as bad for you)

-Mustard (Grey Poupon is best :D)

-Sliced provolone cheese

-Baby spinach

Before I do anything else, I put four slices of turkey bacon on a microwave-safe plate and pop them into the microwave for a minute and a half. Turkey bacon is pre-cooked and thus safe to eat without cooking (just tastes like ham uncooked), but I like it a little crispy.

Next, lay out two slices of rye bread and spread your mustard over them. Pop one of them (the designated "top" slice) into the toaster oven for a light toast.

On the other slice, pile on your turkey. You can go a little crazy with the turkey (at around 10 calories a slice, you can afford to be a bit frivolous here). Lay your cooked turkey bacon over your deli turkey. Top it off with a slice of provolone cheese. Switch your "top" slice out of the toaster oven and pop your "bottom" one--meat, cheese, and all-- in for a light toasting cycle. At the end, your turkey will be warm, your bacon will be a bit crispier, and your provolone will be all nice and melty.

Remove your "bottom" slice to a plate, pile the baby spinach on top (once again, completely guilt-free sector in which to go crazy since spinach has only about 10 cal per cup!), top off with your "top" slice and voila: delicious sandwich!

All said and done, this sandwich is pretty good for you, too. All told, you've got:

-About 380 calories

-17g of fat

-27g of protein

-and 21% of you daily dietary fiber

Notably, if you take out the turkey bacon, it loses 120 calories and 12g of fat, which is a significant difference.  You also lose 8g of protein and some good flavor, and turkey bacon is still WAY better for you than regular bacon. If you're REALLY concerned about calories and fat, knocking off the provolone will lose you an extra 60 calories and 3.5g of fat.

Minus the turkey bacon and cheese, you're down to 200 calories and 1.5g of fat and you still have a nice sandwich.

If you're trying to avoid sodium, losing the turkey bacon and using regular yellow mustard instead of Grey Poupon will make a serious dent in the sandwich's sodium content.

Because an elephant never forgets

Evernote is a piece of software for your computer (Mac or PC) and mobile device that makes it easy to keep track of any information that you come in contact with during the course of the day.  It allows you to save and label websites, documents, files, and even searchable images that you take yourself from within the app, all of which is synced to your account and other devices for retrieval at any time. It has an incredible range of uses from informational organization in one's personal life to managing the sharing and development of information for entire companies or communities. And it's free.

I first encountered Evernote while searching for fun and useful (and, if at all possible, free) apps back when I first got my iPad 2.  A number of different articles I read at the time mentioned Evernote in their top ten as a great tool for storing pretty much any and all types of information in one searchable, sync-able app.

So I downloaded it, played with it briefly, but ultimately forgot it.

That is, until the camp season started.  In the hustle and bustle of running camp, I accumulated lots of To Do lists, drafts of rule sets for the kids, diploma drafts, scribbled bits of inspiration, etc. All of these things existed on white boards, notebooks and yellow legal pads, all of which were prone to be lost, misplaced, or erased within the course of a busy day.

I had discovered in my early play session with Evernote that you could take pictures right from within the app and store them in its digital notebook. Very quickly, I started snapping pictures of my lists to be stored instantly in the iPad that I took everywhere with me.  I even began drafting diplomas and newsletters in the app itself.

Capture and tag notes, sticky notes, dry erase boards, scribbles, etc.

But it wasn't until I started seriously thinking about and working on my book idea that I saw the real value of this program to me.  I've started working on and saving the individual bits of the book as notes in Evernote, all tagged according to what chapter (or issue) and section they belong in for easy organization and reorganization as my intended structure changes and evolves. It's made it so much easier to keep track of what I've done, and I can hop around from thought to thought as the ideas flow to me.

The syncing feature is especially useful.  For example, I started working on this blog post on my laptop.  Part way through, my dog came to my bedroom door and starting giving me the 'I want to go out' routine.  So I dumped what I'd written so far into Evernote, hit the "sync" button, and walked downstairs to let the dog out. When I picked up my iPad and opened the Evernote app, there was what I'd been working on upstairs.

Another neat little add-on is the Evernote Web Clipper.  It installs automatically in Internet Explorer and Safari when you install Evernote on your computer, and the extensions are available for Chrome and Firefox as well. What it does is allow you to clip websites and articles, send them to the Evernote notebook of your choice, add tags, etc., all without leaving the browser.

One of the coolest things to me is the fact that Evernote is searchable. No big deal, usually but, as I mentioned, Evernote allows you to take pictures of documents and store them. This includes hand written documents, all of which are searchable.

I can search my written documents!

So, overall, Evernote is a pretty cool, pretty versatile application for all your computing and mobile information organizing needs!