2014-01-22
in
4 min read
The Northeast/Mid-Atlantic had their taste of some real snow, which meant cocooning in the house doing “work” work while regularly going out to shovel. There will be a snowblower for the next storm! Until then it was more a neighborly effort to keep shoveling before it got too deep since three houses share a 250 foot driveway. Despite all that I was able to get some good eating in and to try a new way of cooking chicken.
I started the day not sure if I would be working from home or at the office. Luckily I spontaneously woke up around 5:30 am to figure it out but couldn’t go back to sleep after I got the all clear stating we were all good to go to stay home. I therefore read the news and otherwise passed the time until about 7:30 when it was time to start some real work. I had decided I would take advantage of the working from home to catch up on some working out. I was supposed to do pushups yesterday but the headache was still around as much as Sunday. Since it’s pretty much gone today, it was a perfect time for it. The only snafu is that my upper body strength absolutely sucks. I’ll probably end up having to drop back a bit. You may notice a new chart to the right. That is where you can track my progress up to 100 push-ups in a row. I followed the pushups with a good yoga workout to try to get my legs stretched out for some running in the near future.
It wasn’t until after all that, probably about 9:30-10:00 that I finally ate my typical shake for breakfast, once again with some extra blueberries. The rest of the morning was pretty uneventful, but the first shoveling shift was around noon. Up and down the driveway we shoveled a few inches of snow. By the time we were done there was already another half inch down. Oh well, time to eat one of my typical huge salads. A big bag of mixed greens, celery, carrots, salmon, olive oil and balsamic vinegar all mixed into one. I didn’t even need to eat because I was hungry, I just knew I needed to eat. By late afternoon, however, I was starting to get more famished. I ate a big bowl of grapes to hold me over until dinner. Soon after that we went outside for the second shift of snow shoveling. The temperatures had started to drop so we were a lot colder this time.
Once I warmed up, dinner became the next priority. I had already decided I’d do chicken, potatoes and asparagus. The potatoes were zapped in the microwave for a few minutes to start softening them up. Then I doused them with some premium olive oil and kosher salt. Those went into the oven to get a thick, crispy skin on them. I next got the asparagus started, just a q quick saute and it was good to go. I made a boat load of soup stock for the next month, and to do so I had to break down two whole chickens. It was actually a good learning experience. Out of it came some legs and thighs. I decided to try cooking them a little bit differently. Rather than roasting in the oven, I simply lightly seasoned them and pan fried them. The oil makes a ridiculously dirty mess, but the taste of it was great.
After dinner we waited for the snow to stop and then got out for a third, and hopefully final, shoveling. The temperature at that point was down to 15 degrees. With that done and it looking like I was way light on calories (and the usual Zinc and Thiamin) I ate a big bowl of frozen berries and mango followed by a bowl of almonds, macadamia nuts and pecans. I didn’t want to or need to eat them, I just did.
As an at home day it was quite successful. I was just glad to be over that cold in a mere two days.