Matheletics

It was a perfect Saturday in Austin today. 75 degrees, and not a cloud in the sky. Great day to lock myself in the gym for two hours masochistically abusing myself.

This was the first Saturday in a while I could work as long as I wanted, and decided to take advantage of it. With a nice set of blueberry pancakes providing me fuel, I did indeed spend nearly two hours in the gym this morning, and I had a great workout.

One of the drawbacks of calorie deprivation is that you are short on energy when exercising. Today I made sure I had good fuel in me in order to make the most of my day, and it paid off. The hour I spent on the elliptical was good - I averaged 8 1/2 minute miles for the first 6 miles I did, then did the seventh mile in 8 minutes. I'm not sure what those numbers translate to in street-running-large-land-animal time, but I was moving, and pushing myself to keep the pace. It was hard but I did it.

So how do I keep from going positively insane standing in one spot for 60 minutes doing nothing but churning in a circle? Math. Watching the time tick away, I divide out the clock into 5% segments, so I have goals. 10% tells me if it is going to be a good workout or not, 25% is usually when I start to settle into the routine, 50% is over the hump, 75% is "I can quit now if I want to", which I don't let myself do, and so on. Setting little milestones and finish lines for myself keeps me churning, and lets me know how far into my workout I am. I also do the math on my pace and caloric content in order to keep my mind cranking at all times, so it doesn't realize I'm intentionally inflicting pain on myself.

After I got out of the gym, I took the boys out to enjoy the day (they were out in the AM with mom and grandpa). We played mini golf, and they rode cheap carnival rides. Good times were had by all. On the way home, I found fresh live crawfish at the grocery store. Score. So I made a cajun paella-risotto fusion. Recipe as follows:

2 pounds live crawfish (yields .3 pounds of meat about 100 calories)
1 cup arboro rice (600 calories)
1 cup frozen peas (120 calories)
1 small red bell pepper (30 calories)
1 tbsp olive oil (120 calories)
3 scallions
1 tbsp garlic
2 stalks celery
lots of cajun seasoning
splash sherry
lots of hot sauce, preferably Frank's Red Hot
1 tbsp cilantro

Add a lot of cajun seasoning and hot sauce to 6-8 cups of water and bring to a boil. Runse crawfish thoroughly in colander and then add to pot once water boils. Cook for 4-5 minutes and then remove crawfish and save water. Allow to cool, and remove the tail meat, saving the heads and returning them to the brine. Boil heads in brine for half an hour or so while you prepare the other ingredients.

Cut scallion bottoms, garlic, celery, and pepper into small cubes, and then add to high walled flat bottom pan with oil and rice. Cook until vegetables start to clarify and rice starts to brown, and then add the stock from the crawfish to it a ladle at a time. Keep stirring and adding stock as t gets absorbed like you're making risotto, because you essentially are. When rice is barely al-dente and just about done, add final scoops of stock and then add the peas, minced cilantro, minced tops of green onions, and crawfish tail meat, and then then cook down until done. Taste and add more cajun seasoning and hot sauce until the flavor is right. About 500 calories for a large bowl.

Note I'd probably add more crawfish to this to get the caloric content and crawfishy flavor up. I assumed when buying them it was 2 pounds crawfish for 1 pound meat. Ha. It's actually 6 pounds for one pound. Live and learn.