Some Food 10/30/2011
 
For a bit over a week now I have been back on eating nice and clean.  In doing so, my kitchen time has increased quite a bit and I have come up with a few fun creations.  For those of you who have been following this blog for a while, you might remember the old Courageous Meals posts I began doing back when I moved to California.  Well, now that I'm back in the kitchen thinking up different creations, I thought I'd reintroduce a couple of those into my posting (the main thing is to just get back to regular posting!),  This past week, while very good on the nutrition front, I've been completely out of the gym. I intentionally took a couple extra days off from training, then, got pretty sick and ended up taking the entire week off.  I am super excited to get back onto the program this coming week, along with the new-found wonderful meal plan; I am expecting great things!

So, on to a few of the meals I came up with!  First, at the start of this whole thing, I was strolling through Whole Foods picking up some essentials, and decided I'd just grab a few things, head back to the house and see what i could make!  This ended up being a really fun time.  I literally had a bag full of wonderful food, laid it all on the counter and let my imagination run wild, and came up with the following:

Chicken sausage and shrimp collard green wraps
I broiled some great chicken sausage (I learned from my good friend who worked at Whole Foods for a while that their personal sausages are in fact, organic, free-range ground chicken, spices and pork casing, that's it.  Totally cool with that!).  Heated up some pre-cooked shrimp, chopped up tomato's, onions and jalapenos and put the mess into a large collard green leaf.  Wrapped it up and boom, there's your meal!  It turned out to be unreal!  After that, it was open season in my brain for coming up with some new things (new for me at least, I am pretty sure I have been beat to the punch with all my ideas long ago, but I just don't research this stuff enough, so, I like taking the credit!)

Steak tip over eggs w/ coconut wasabi and asparagus

My lack of grill is killing me, so, it was back to the broiler for the meat.  To add to the fun, I cooked up a couple eggs over easy in a pan with coconut oil and steamed the asparagus.  The kick to the meal was the wasabi.  I found a great little powder at Whole Foods, added water and coconut oil and just like that, a slightly sweet, crazy spicy paste to throw on top of most meats!  So damn good!  Some great red meat meals led me to realize that I hadn't cooked up chicken in a while, so, I thought I'd try something great!

Bacon-wrapped chicken with Brussels sprouts
Yep, back to the broiler for this, again, this lack of grill is killing me!  Either way, I wrapped up my 3-inch cuts of chicken with some thick cut bacon and threw it in the oven for a good 20 minutes.  This was paired with halved Brussels sprouts cooked in coconut oil along with some almond slivers.  Yet again, another awesome meal (Lindsey is the Brussels sprouts genius of the household by the way, it's great!).  But what about a different style of dinner, like a soup you say?

Old Fashioned Chicken Soup
Cubed up a bunch of chicken, cut up carrots, celery, onion and butternut squash along with some finely chopped bacon, and threw the whole sh'bang into a pot with a mixture of chicken and vegetable broth and water.  Simmered it for a good 25 minutes and we had a perfect soup for a cold Sunday night!  But what about the sweet tooth?  My plan and goals for the next few weeks is to avoid this sort of thing as to control my emotional desire for sugar in certain situations (...); but, yesterday Lindsey and I went to a Halloween party and we needed to bring something perfect!

Almond Butter Cups

This was the one that everyone on Facebook wanted to know all about!  Go figure, right?  You have all this wonderfully good, healthy food posted up, then you post of dessert and get bombarded with questions as to how to make it!  Well, if you want to make a quick buck, start a dessert company I guess.  Either way, it was super easy (time consuming and messy yes, but easy)!  I'll give a little more detail on this one for you all then.  And of course, you can expect a few super detailed Courageous Meals posts over the coming month.  A note to make before all this: you can use any type of chocolate, depends your taste.

I bag semi-sweet dark chocolate pieces
1 bottle almond butter
Shredded coconut
Cinnamon
Nutmeg
Small paper muffin holder things

Put all the chocolate in a large bowl or plate, then place over a small pot with a little water in it.  But it on the stove and bring the water to a boil.  This will slowly melt the chocolate.  As this is happening, take about a cup or two of almond butter into a bowl, add about a quarter cut coconut, 2 tbsp cinnamon and 1 tbsp nutmeg, mix it all up and set aside. 

Once the chocolate is melted, let cool for a minute or two, then take about 2 tbsp and pour into the muffin holder things.  Use the back of a spoon to coat the whole paper thing as best you can (this is the messy, time-consuming, annoying part).  I made about 15 in my batch, just as a heads up.  Once the paper things are all coated, set them in the fridge to harden up.

Once they are hardened up, add a couple tbsp of the almond butter mixture into each cup, then coat the top of it with another tbsp or two of chocolate (you may have to re-heat the stuff). Again, use the spoon to make sure the entire top is coated, then, if you want to be pretty about it, add a little swirl to the top to make it look professional!  Pop in the fridge and about 15 minutes later you have the perfect Almond Butter Cup!  You can make this as healthy or unhealthy as you want really.  Mine were pretty damn good healthy for a dessert. No added sugar, just the smallest amount in the dark chocolate.  The spices and coconut in the almond butter added a bit of a kick to the whole thing that o think really made these things that much better.  Now I am really curious about making these with zero sugar.  I'm sure they'll be nasty, but it's worth a try!  Let me know how yours turn out!

Never Stop, GET FIT.

Josh Courage
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So, out here in wonderfully awesome California while the movers take care of our stuff.  I’m sitting on our barely used balcony, not a cloud in the sky and just letting my mind wander off on all the fun I had while I was out here.  One of my athletes out here told me yesterday that every time I leave, it’s like a huge portion of the gym leaves with me.  It was funny hearing that perspective because in all honesty, every time I leave here it feels like a good-sized chuck of myself is left behind.  I have made a home for myself for the rest of my life out here and I find it impossible to think that I won’t be back here on a very regular schedule to visit, workout and hang out with all the incredible people and places I connected with. 

So, for those of you Californian who are reading this, answer me a one-question survey, either post to comments, email me or text me what you think:

If I came out here on a set schedule (like for a week every two months or something like that), would you be interested in specialty training for the time I’d be in town?

On to the update!  West Side Barbell has been going very well for me these past two weeks, and the metcons I’ve been throwing in have been perfectly supplementary and fun!  I was able to get 385# for a comfortable 3 on the back squats (matching a PR I got about a month back) and I feel as though that consistent 400+ squat is right there!  The posterior chain work I’ve been adding in to all my leg days has been working wonders.  I feel my glutes and hamstrings have been feeling stronger and stronger and I can now feel them firing at the beginning of all leg movements now, rather than sometime during the middle (inefficient firing sequence if they are going any later than before the movement starts by the way).  The metcons have just been flat out awesome!  I’ve been outside for every single one for the past month and I really can’t speak any more highly of working out outdoors.  There have been tires, ropes, sandbags, hills, bridges, and more.  And the best part about it all is I’ve been using all these tools in as many different ways I can possibly imagine.  One of the best ones I did with a good group was throwing a large car tire 50 meters, jumping over and through a swing 10 times, overhead throwing the tire 50 meters, running back 50 meters with it, and then jumping through the tire 10 times.  So much fun!

Things have been winding down for the summer for my athletes as well. With about 85% of my client base being high school and college athletes, it has hot that time of year where everyone is taking a week or so off, then heading back to school.  So, September will bring on a little lull in training before fall classes and private training sessions start up and I will be taking full advantage of the down time.  I’ll be training harder than ever, mixing in heavier lifts and a ton more gymnastics and skills work.  And my sprint work will begin to increase as I prepare my body for more focused power training in October.

For those of you who don’t know, I am actively pursuing a good sized gym space in the greater Washington DC area and have my sights set on a couple locations (now, f only the counties will work with me a little I might be able to get in to one of them before 2020!).  The Garage DOES totally rock, but 200 square feet just doesn’t cut it for the amount of athletes who have been coming through! 

What else, what else…I have signed up for what I am only assuming will be the next great ongoing physical challenge of my life: The Spartan Race.  If you don’t know about it, check it out!  If you like what you see, please join me on my quest to try as many of them as I can, including the ever-dreaded Death Race!  I have also begun the pursuit of designing a couple unique Courage Foods!  Basically, I’ve been spending so much time in the kitchen over the past three months that I have been coming up with some interesting ideas.  With my wild passion for Core Warrior Bars (and the insane success they’ve had in impressing almost every single one of my athletes!), I wanted to see if I could make a protein bar without any grains or sugar at all.  Well, after about 6 or 7 different combos of ingredients, I think I may have come to a base level of acceptable!  That’s all I’ll share for now.  Maybe I’ll having something in more detail for the public in a few months… The other idea has to do with BACON!  What else do I have to say?  Hoping to unveil that one in the coming months as well!

All right, there’s a little update for you all!  Back to the fun and sun of California! 

Never Stop, GET FIT.

Josh Courage
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