Throo the Zoo and weekly recap

This week I'm going to start with Saturday first, since it was the first race I've done since I seriously started training, and its probably the most interesting part of the post anyways.

Weekly recap - 5/4/14

This week was pretty much run of the mill when it came to my workouts, although I did quite a bit of physical labor in between my workouts that I thought would drain me more. Plus, being Derby week I thought I would have more extracurricular activities to attend.

Why, because I can.

I was going to past my recap for last week but it kind of sucks since I missed two of my five workouts. I did 60 min of Combat cardio Monday and 30 minutes on Wednesday, barely made it through Tuesday's 30 min strength training. I missed the other two days because my wife and I went to Gatlinburg, TN for a weekend away.

Weekly recap - April 13th

So I'm going to start posting weekly recaps to keep myself motivated. I'm in between training plans at the moment so I decided to lighten up on the running and do cross training in the meantime.

Progress pictures & minimalist running

I decided about a month ago I was going to give minimalist running a try, that's running with the least amount of shoe as possible some people are crazy enough to go barefoot. It took me a month to decide on what shoe I wanted to wear. Luckily I had the foot agility and leg strength to pass all the tests everyone said you should be able to before starting on minimalist running.

Goals - the journey or the destination?

So my end of year performance was amazing I scored a 4.3 out of 5 and got the full bonus I was eligible for, what else do I need? Each end of year performance review ends with the same question, "Do you have an idea of what your goals are for next year?" Since I was changing jobs with the company instead my old boss offered me some advice on my new position.

My new life quest - a healthier me.

I know its January and everyone makes some silly New Year’s resolution (a tradition that still continues to baffle me but that rant isn't for this post) but I started a new life quest about 6 weeks before Jan 1 to lose the weight I gained since my daughter was born. Roughly, between being a new father and traveling 5 days a week for work, I packed on 35 lbs.

Yummy Rum Cake

I love rum and I love cake, it took me a while but I discovered rum cake is yummy. I've discovered and modified a great recipe. It takes a little bit of work, but its always worth it.

The Perfect Pork Chop

Now that I'm now longer traveling for a living, I've taken over most of cooking responsibilities now. With that I began the search for making the perfect pork chop, as such I've discovered this is about as good as they get and still remain decently healthy.

The Turkey part 1

Obviously Thanksgiving is tomorrow so the Turkey prep started a little over 24 hours ago. This is my first post from the iPad so it may not be as pretty as my other posts.

Currently there is a 20# tom turkey in my fridge enjoying a nice brine bath, recipe down below. I like  to let my turkey's brine for at least 24 hours before cooking, since this bird is so big I opted for longer rather than shorter, I'm not getting up at 6am to make a brine and then again to cook. 

Book's I've read

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

Bone-In spiral sliced ham

I love country ham, end of story. If I didn't think the amount of salt would kill me I would eat country ham for every meal. Since it takes at least 6 months to salt cure a ham I decided to settle for smoking a ham.

A little deli I frequent in Maryland gave me the idea of smoking a precooking spiral sliced ham so I thought we'd give it a try.

Spare Ribs - 3 - 2- 1 method

We had some family in town the other night and made up some spare ribs with loin meat attached. The ribs came from the local grocery store, nothing special today, except that the ribs were over 2 inches thick...yum!

Bourbon brine smoked turkey

I think turkey is my favorite thing to smoke, I love turkey though I'm the person that never gets tired of Thanksgiving left overs. I've even been shackled as the official Thanksgiving turkey cooker since last year.

Smoking a turkey is kind of misleading because you aren't really smoking it like you do ribs or brisket. You really are roasting it at 350, the same as you would in your oven, only with smoke. Oh well call it what you will its dericious!

Baby back ribs - 2-2-1 method

Ribs are a tricky thing and the way you make them can ruin them completely or make them heaven in your mouth. Luckily mine were heaven in my mouth. First, I wasn't really feeling up to cooking so this was kept really simple. Second, the kid had been sick all week so we were incredibly tired and Sandy and I were recovering just as much, only slower, than she was.

Standard BGE setup

For my 29th birthday my beautiful wife Sandy let me buy my first BGE. I got it at one of the Eggfests and it was one of the best purchases I've ever made. I'm still working on outfitting it with all the fun toys but so far this is what I have; 

1 - Large Big Green Egg

1 - BGE Plate setter

1 - BGE Large Pizza stone

Smoked pork butt

This time I tried something a little different from my standard setup. Instead of filling the firebox with charcoal I decided to use all wood chunks will a small helping of charcoal to get the initial burn going. I didn't like it. The temperature was harder to control and after about 5 hours it seemed to drop off quicker than charcoal does. Oh well live and learn right?

Smoked Pizza - Successful failure...

I'm an avid fan of having people work on my house and cooking dinner for them, its cheap and I like cooking! So I had my dad and father in law working around my house for 4 days starting around the 4th. We decided to finally try using the Big Green Egg to make a pizza since I had picked up the pizza stone on sale.

First, what I learned. Do not, under any circumstances use a Papa Murphy's pizza for this. The crust is too thin and you can't get it off the paper tray without considerable effort. By the time we did get it transferred to a pizza pan the pizza was misshapen, we didn't attempt to move it from the pan to the stone. A frozen pizza would have been better than what I attempted.

Garlic Pepper Beef Jerky

A few weeks ago I tried my hand at making beef jerky. As usual I spent hours looking at recipes and finally came up with something I thought would taste pretty good. 

Working in Maryland and living in Kentucky sucks when I want to grill something because I have to rely on Sandy to go to the meat market for me, but this time I just picked up some low fat steak at Meijer and gave it a go. When picking out your steak you will want to use something with as little fat as possible (flank was recommended to me) because the fat is what will ruin jerky since you are never getting hot enough for the fat to melt like you would when normally grilling a steak, I used a couple of top sirloin's.