Saturday was a dream day but with the temperature threatening to take it’s first dip below 40 degrees, it was time to harvest the remaining tomatoes in my garden.
Tomatoes are recognized as an outstanding source of lycopene, a powerful antioxidant that has been linked to a reduced risk of certain cancers, osteoporosis and heart disease.
The beefsteaks were sliced up for a quick lunch of bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches.
Here’s what I did Sunday with the rest of the tomatoes:
Tomato, mozzarella and roasted vegetable skewers
Zucchini, cubed
Yellow Squash, cubed
Whole baby bella or white button mushrooms
Vidallia onion, cubed
Red and yellow bell pepper
Grape or cherry tomatoes
Fresh mozzarella balls
Fresh basil
Cube all vegetables except tomatoes into similar sized pieces so they will cook evenly. Place in a shallow pan (13 x 9 works well) and toss evenly with italian dressing to marinate for 30 minutes. Place vegetables in a grill pan and grill vegetable over medium heat until tender and slightly charred. Let cool to room temperature.
Thread roasted vegetables, tomatoes, mozzarella and basil leaves on appetizer-sized wooded skewers. Alternatively, you can also serve these vegetables and cheese as a side salad or tossed with pasta.
And to preserve tomatoes for the upcoming weeks, I roasted the plum tomatoes using this recipe from Ina Garten. These tomatoes are great served (hot or at room temperature) as a side dish or on a slice of crusty Italian bread. I have also stuffed these tomatoes into the cap of a portabello mushroom, topped with a mixture of panko (bread crumbs), parmesan cheese, butter and garlic powder, and baked them until the bread crumbs get golden and toasted.
“Coming together is the beginning,
Keeping together is progress,
Working together is success.”
~ Henry Ford
Picture this… A new teacher is in her first classroom a week before school starts. Between in-service trainings, new employee meetings, and all the other pre-season duties, she tacks up posters, arranges furniture, neatly places resources and lovingly prepares her space for the hopeful success of her students. She makes six different approaches before exhaling, sitting chin on fists and saying, “there, that’s it.” She resigns herself to the fact that actually starting the year is the only way to ease her nerves.
Enter Hurricane Irene.
Six feet of water and a heartbreak later, this room is covered in mud and mold.
Working together to keep towns and schools strong for us!
We’re here at an exciting gathering of health and risk pools that serve schools, towns, and other governmental agencies.
WAIT!
Before you grumble, “doesn’t apply to me,” STOP!
Your roads, your emergency services, your parks, your town halls, your city clerk, your schools, and your communities are deeply affected by this topic. In other words, your tax dollars are hard at work here. Don’t you want to know that it’s all efficient and productive?
Well, that’s why we’re gathered, to network and grow “efficiency” skills. Pools help municipal groups come together for better purchasing strength, better knowledge dissemination, and a myriad of efficiencies we can’t even imagine, making them smarter on our behalf – many minds, many hands. Imagine the small county in West Texas with 10 employees and the nearest hospital is 100 miles away. Imagine the mountain and valley towns in Vermont with 5 employees who are facing the rebuilding of miles of roads after Hurricane Irene’s flood. Imagine towns in the far corners of Maine and Alaska in January.
Maybe you had no idea your local government was so well intentioned! Having spent the better part of 15 years hanging out with government risk pools, I can testify that they are working their tails off to help towns and schools run as effectively as possible, from the tiniest detail to the worst disaster. In the wake of so much sad disaster lately, your local government and state agencies have been fully stretched and we want to take a moment to say how proud we are of their effort. We also want to say how much we support their growth and development as community support and leaders, however they feel they may struggle.
Organizational development guru and friend Bob Burg pointed me to a lesson of how healing might work from a community leadership perspective. It really applies here:
According to an old story, a lord of ancient China once asked his physician, a member of a family of healers, which of them was the most skilled in the art.
The physician, whose reputation was such that his name became synonymous with medical science in China, replied, “My eldest brother sees the spirit of sickness and removes it before it takes shape, so his name does not get out of the house.
“My elder brother cures sickness when it is still extremely minute, so his name does not get out of the neighborhood. “As for me, I puncture veins, prescribe potions, and massage skin, so from time to time my name gets out and is heard among the lords.”
“To overcome others’ armies without fighting is the best of skills.”
Pools serve local government with the intention of being all three of the above, thwarting even the notion of war (or disaster in this case) before it twinkles an eye.
Most often the one whose name is never mentioned – the proverbial unsung hero. That’s the goal. Quietly on the scene, but also behind the scenes so disaster is averted. Prevention first. And that’s why we, as an employee wellness company, support pools nation-wide. Pools and wellness go together like ram-a-lama-ding-dee-dong! (Sorry, couldn’t help it – Grease movie fans get it) The one-two punch of prevention.
Let us know how we can support your pool!
If you’re not in or aware of a pool, let us know who you are and how your local government supports you. Then… Become a part of it today. Your local community needs you!
We discovered a confusing study last week that is getting a lot of air time. The study said you can’t increase your athletic performance by focusing extra energy on your core (your abdominal muscles in particular). When these headlines hit our local health club it felt as though an act of heresy had been committed.
Cue the needle-on-vinyl-album-screech. All motion stopped and sweaty people stared, mouths agape. You could hear a sweat ball drop.
What? Crunches don’t matter? No need for that washboard stomach?
Nope. Not in terms of the quality of your athletic prowess, anyway (or your quality of life for that matter).
The “six-pack” abs are a symptom of three factors:
low body fat (which isn’t always the best for your health, depending on how you got there)
lots of exercise focused either at the abs specifically, or not
genetics
It’s the “or not” verbiage to which the study speaks clearly. Research is now showing that athletes will gain strong abs, lower back and basic core muscles by default – simply by doing what they do best for their sports. In fact, they can’t do any better than that. Extra “ab” training simply doesn’t improve performance. Rather, using that time and energy for their actual sport does.
But what about “we” the common folk, dripping sweat from backyards, to home gyms, to parks, to fancy fitness centers? Does that mean we should give up the infamous “crunch” and eat bon-bons instead?
No. Body fat is body fat and will only go away if you burn it off. The more dietary fat and excess calories you add to your day, the more likely fat will cling, literally. The first place it likes to cling is in the gut where it is most accessible should you need it later in a calorie burning pinch.
The bottom line in decoding the research is this… Unless you’re actively engaged in a variety of sports or training for some competitive edge, it’s important to keep your body strong in all functional directions, thus keeping you fit for the simple sport of life. By all functional directions, we mean all the ways a body might need to move to be able to live life to its fullest — bending, squatting, stooping, reaching, twisting, lunging, swinging, dancing, jumping, skipping, you get the picture. This is the essence of the term “cross training.”
Play a lot, get a strong core! And, hey, maybe that washboard will happen by default.
Finally, remember that muscle is muscle. When taxed, all muscles need recovery time. Treat your abdominal muscles like any other muscle group and give it a day or two between workouts.
When doing crunches, strive for just a few at a time. These are not huge muscles like your back or butt and their range of motion is limited. A little bit goes a long way as we like to say.
In health writer Tara Parker Pope’s NYT’s blog on this core issue (pun intended), Dr. Stuart McGill, a professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo in Ontario dispels an ab crunching technique myth as well:
“Don’t flatten your back into the ground,” he said. “Instead, place your hands, palm down, beneath your lower back to lessen pressure on the spine. Bend your knees, and pretend that your head and shoulders are resting on a bathroom scale,” he said. “Lift them only enough to send the imaginary scale’s reading to zero.”
Start with 7-8 and work your way to 15 repetitions, but again you only need to do them two to three times a week. Let them recover and move on to other muscle groups. Or better yet, get out there and train for a lifetime sport that will train your whole body!
See you on the non-washboard-but-strong-core PATH Ahead.
Last week we talked about emotions being contagious. That made me much more aware of the emotions around me. I was watching for the discontent and trying to avoid it like the plague, literally.
Suddenly I realized there is no hand sanitizer to wash off feelings of discontent. No shield against it.
So I got to thinking. If it’s going to be in the air like a bad virus, maybe we can create a weapon to kick it off.
We know that exercise enhances mood — research really kicks you-know-what on that.
Then I remembered this tip from Olga’s Pilates library. This exercise should keep your body strong and your heart pumping but I also thought, “wow, wouldn’t it also feel good to kick those nasty discontent feelings to the curb.”
The idea goes along with the notion that swearing or yelling helps dissipate pain when you stub your toe. “Get it out!” In other words, purge. I’m feeling like this kicking exercise will do exactly that.
See what you think:
Get out those icky emotions by kicking it!
Start by kneeling on the ground.
Lean down to your right until you are propping yourself up with your right hand.
Put your left hand behind your head for added balance.
Lift your left leg up and straighten it out parallel to the floor, in line with your body.
Keeping your leg up parallel, in a controlled motion, move it out in front of your body, hold it there for a count of one, and then move it back behind you and hold for the count of one. That’s one full “kick.”
Repeat 5 kicks and then quickly switch sides and repeat on the other leg for 5 kicks, completing one “set.”
Duh. We’ve been saying that for years but now we’ve got proof. It’s also nice when science gives us permission to do what comes naturally.
Mark Twain said, “There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.” I wonder, is that really such a bad thing?
Our friends at the Well Being Wire (a subsidiary of Healthways) recently pointed us to a Harvard study where researchers actually used an infectious disease model to see how emotions might spread from person to person — a novel approach that makes perfect sense given our social nature.
Real, in-person social networks (I’m not talking Facebook et. al.) transmit all sorts of things. Disease, of course is one (think colds and flu), behavioral norms another (think fashion trends). But what about the spread of happiness? How powerful is it and can we use the avenue of infection for good against evil here?
Yes indeed we can! Happiness truly is a social contagion, Mr. Twain, according to Harvard:
Each encounter with “content” emotions in a personal relationship increases your own chances of feeling fully content by 11%. Further, each infection of happiness lingers long after the experience! Wow.
The lingering impact tells us that while infection has to happen through social contact, recovery (so to speak) does not. That implies the infection’s impact is akin to being taught a “life skill that can persist without a constant stimulus.”
It’s like osmosis! You don’t even have to read the Cliff Notes. Just show up, enjoy someone’s company, become infused with his or her joy and you too shall be joyful. And then so too will your other social connections. Like the famous shampoo ad of the 80’s, you’ll tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends, and so on.
Sweet.
Beware, though. We also learned that it’s even easier to spread discontent. One encounter makes it 100% likely that you too will feel discontent. The good news is that a discontent infection last only half as a long as a happiness infection.
Why? One reason: people who are content and people who become infected with contentment tend to cluster. By contrast, people who are infected by discontent tend to isolate. That’s a good mechanism when it comes to avoiding other malcontents but bad in terms of reversing the effects or in trying to re-infuse the sad with contentment.
Of course, we didn’t really need a study to tell us this, but the reminder and the solid evidence are inspiring – infused with contentment for sure. It reminds me to say “no” when bickering or backstabbing or bogus blues seep into my day.
“Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.” ~ Dalai Lama
Honestly, I know you’ve been thinking about that one person in your world who is a drag to be around; a persistent Eeyore personality – you know who I’m talking about, you conjured him or her as you were reading this. As his or her good friend, you now have the power to say, “Cheer up. For your health and mine, please cheer up. How can I help you do so?”
By contrast, I bet you also conjured that person who walks into a room and lights it up — content to the full extent of the law. Imagine your world filled with several of those people. Imagine their collective power to inadvertently shift Eeyore’s angst. It’s possible and it happens.
Dump the discontent and jump on the joy wagon. As the study shows, a little bit goes a long way and lasts a lifetime. Build happy infection upon happy infection and the discontent may just dwindle to a faint memory.
Pass the good infections on, as we see you on the PATH Ahead…
It seemed as though the countryside was absolutely teeming with bicycle riders this past week. Come to find out, the National Triathlon Championships were held in Burlington Vermont this weekend.
It’s so exciting to see norms shift on a dime when a whole group of people are inspired by great athletes. We see it every time the Olympics air on television. All of a sudden there is a surge in the desire to master slightly obscure sports such as curling or fencing.
This weekend there was a cyclist or three everywhere I turned — all dolled up in gear and looking swift like the wind. I wanted to be out there too.
Role models have amazing power and, when it comes to being active, we can’t get enough. Further, Oscar Wilde said, “Repetition makes and impression on the dullest of minds” (one of my favorite sayings). The more we see people being active, the more likely we are to feel the pull toward the same. Eventually it becomes a “way of being” for an entire town. Perhaps that’s why cities like Burlington, Vermont and Boulder, Colorado are ranked as the healthiest in the US.
If big kitchens are making big healthy pots of food, I want in!
What’s all this I hear about school lunches and how bad they are? The back-to-school frenzy is rumbling and it’s always a big topic.
In some cases it’s true, mystery meat is alive and well. On the other hand, we’re hearing stories of big change across the country and I want in.
Imagine, for example, a utopia where school lunch is so good even we adults flock to it during our workday.
Better yet, what if we all could hop off our exercise ball chairs, walk to a local school, order a healthy meal, then walk back? 15 minutes there, 5 minutes to order, 15 minutes back, and 20 minutes to eat; leaving 2 minutes on either end of the hour to change our shoes if necessary. Oh, wait, one more…. How about this? You go for your walk, you come back and the school has delivered food to you! That leaves you extra time to stretch or meditate. Nice. Continue reading “A Twist on School Lunch”
Talk about abundance! Zucchini is one vegetable no one seems to struggle with growing. One plant can take over the garden and easily yield 4-5 zucchini per week in mid to late summer. If you don’t grow your own, you can easily find zucchini at your local market or farm stand. Zucchini is inexpensive and low in calories (a medium one only has about 24 calories) yet it offers a lot of nutrients including Vitamins A, C and B complex, foliate, potassium, manganese, and calcium.
Seems the only challenge I hear about zucchini is how to cook it once you’ve had your fill of zucchini bread, grilled zucchini and ratatouille. So here are a couple of my new favorite zucchini recipes. The first I created last week, when I was low on groceries and in a pinch to put a quick meal on the table. It is surprisingly good. The second was passed on to me by a friend who brought it to a potluck. It was by far my favorite dish of the night. She made it by ‘feel’ and, since vegetable sizes can vary, you may need to experiment a bit with my quantities.
I ran my first 5K last night. For some reason when a group of friends said, “grab your shoes and let’s go,” I did, never mind that I’m a painfully slow runner. The first badge of courage came when I actually said yes. The second was when I arrived to the greeting, “aren’t you the PATH lady, you’ll dominate this;” and unlike the cowardly lion, I did not retreat. The last badge came when I whimpered, “do you guys realize I seriously only run a 15 minute mile right now.” No one heard me and poof the race began. Again, I carried on.
Five minutes into it I got a couple of humiliating calls from friends way up ahead, “How you doin?” The same friends, I mocked, who said, “Don’t worry, we’ll go slow, we’re scared too.” HA! Liars. There I was grunting along, trying to keep up and caught behind a little girl in a cute pink shirt who was determined not to let me pass. She walked mostly but every time I lumbered near her, breathing like a freight train, she’d pick up and sprint. Argh.
So not only was I in a race against my middle-aged out-of-shape self, I was now in a knock-down-drag-out with a 10-year-old. I hated that pink shirt. Good thing kids are cute because… Her mom eventually made her stop and let me go ahead. Oh my she was ticked. I spent the rest of the time thinking, “I will NOT let her catch up.” Sick, I know.
To add salt in the wound, ¾ of the way through, all alone in the woods, hating myself for wanting to be faster than Pinky, a man passed me running the race with a 3 year-old on his shoulders. Really? What, are you superdad-runnerdude?
As if I wasn’t hateful enough already, queen grumpy pants reared her head full on!
Desperate to keep as little distance between me and superdad, I picked up the pace (I had to admit he was inspiring). Young, uber-fit college kids urged me on toward the end with polite but sluggish “almost there” nods and lazy golf claps. The nausea meter reaching perilously close to tilt, I ignored my urge to punch. Running the last 50 yards I saw most of the racers pulling out of the parking lot, long finished. Ugh. I crossed the line and a man in a chair monotoned, “runner number 775, done;” which he followed with a weary “rah-rah.” Scheesh!
Well, someone had to be last I thought as I stumbled toward my group of fresh faced friends all chatty with one another.
“Hey! You did it!” one hollered. “Shush shush” I whispered with a tiny wave off. Draw no attention to the lady about to hurl. I walked off my cramps, queasiness and disgrace for a minute and then joined them. “You were only 5 minutes behind us,” they clamored with encouragement and back pats. “You showed up and you finished! That’s what matters. Let’s eat!”
Thanks, I guess. And then as the fog of exertion lifted, I realized no one really cared how I did but me. My pals invited me back for next time. “Someone has to make us look good, right?” They lovingly ribbed. I glanced once more at the finish line to see a few others trudge in including Pinky jogging gracefully, holding hands with her mom and laughing. Sweet.
The moral… My humiliation was purely mine. And in my humiliation I ran faster, and better yet, harder, than I have in years. It’s part of the game of positive peer pressure. The social aspect of being active together forces you to grow. The only thing I lost was the time to enjoy the trail, to soak it up, rather than wasting energy on being hateful and scared. As bad as I felt during, I’m on top of the moon today. I want to be back on that trail and do better next time, if only in attitude.
And so it begins. The story of how people get addicted to the spirit of friendly competition.
Bring it, Pinky.
Oh and…
How do you run a 5K for the first time? Any way you want. Just do it, but do it with friends.
