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Jamaican Style Picadillo

• Posted 07/09/2010
• Tags:
  nutrition, diet, strength training, fat loss, and recipe
• 6 comments

Today is another random post about food, training, and accomplishing your goals. Enjoy!

Trying new recipes – I have to admit that the past few months I have truly enjoyed trying new recipes and cooking. I’ve been trying new spices, new foods, and have found some new favorites as well. Now I’m not a gourmet cook by any standards. Most meals I make are fairly simple to prepare and cook, but I still enjoy the process and the product (most of the time).

One of my favorite new recipes I found was Jamaican Style Picadillo which I found at SavvyVegetarian.com. The original recipe can be found here.

That’s the picture you see above. Not necessarily as pretty as it tastes. I’ll warn you now some of the ingredients may sound a little strange in combination, but I think this tastes absolutely amazing.

Ingredients:

-2 Tbl oil

-1 yellow onion

-1 red bell pepper, chopped

-1 or 2 hot chilies

-2 garlic cloves, minced

-2 tsp peeled and grated ginger

-2 tsp curry spice blend

-1 tsp salt

-1/4 tsp cumin

-1/4 tsp dried thyme

-1/4 tsp cayenne

-1 (15 oz) can diced tomatoes, drained

-1 (15 oz) can black eye peas, drained and rinsed

-2 cups cooked brown rice

-1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed

-1/4 cup raisins

-1/4 cup slivered almonds

-1/4 cup water

Directions:

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion, pepper, chilies, garlic and ginger. Cover and cook until softened, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes. Stir in curry, salt, cumin, thyme, cayenne, and tomatoes. Add black eye peas, rice, peas, raisins, almonds, and water. Simmer, stirring frequently, until mixture is hot, about 10 minutes.

I doubled the recipe and used probably 2 cups of green peas, because I love them. Always have. Also, to make things go a little smoother I combined all of the spices in a small bowl beforehand, that way when it’s time to add them I just dumped them in right away instead of measuring each one individually.

It may look and sound strange, but I love it. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Focus on today, and get today right – I was reading Beyond Brawn last night by Stuart McRobert, and I came across this excellent paragraph:

By getting today right, and by getting every today right, you will get the weeks and months right too. Then you will get the years right and start to get close to realizing your potential. The secret of life is getting today right. Everyone can get today right, and if you can do it once you can do it repeatedly.

I absolutely love that, and that is something I try to stress to myself, my clients and other people. If you are trying to lose weight and transform your body, for instance, it can be daunting and intimidating to embark on a 16 week journey to accomplish that goal. However, if you simply take it one day at a time, things become much easier and simpler to deal with.

No matter what your goal is – lose weight, build muscle, get stronger, or something business or relationship related – take it one day at a time. Do everything you can today to get you closer to your goal. Get today right, and make today count. And then repeat. That is how you can change your body, your health, and your life.

Sometimes you just need to have fun in the gym – I am all for having a well designed and thought out plan when you’re at the gym. After all, that’s the best way to have success in the gym. However, there comes a time when it’s okay to cut loose and just have fun in the gym. Every now and again I get bored with my training program and need a change of pace or I know I’ll burn out quick.

What I do for myself and suggest to people who are getting bored with their current routine is to change things up, and have some fun training.

Feel free to just go into the gym and do whatever you feel like doing that day, and just play things by ear and see how you feel. Now I’m not suggesting you do stupid exercises (smith machine squats) or waste your time on useless machines (inner/outer thigh machines). You should still be doing exercises that are effective, but you don’t necessarily have to have a reason for doing them.

For example, I’ve been using an upper/lower split for a few months now. If I was going to go into the gym next week and just “play around”, I would probably do three total body workouts on non-consecutive days. I’d walk into the gym, do a warm-up, and see what I felt like doing. If I’ve been training with primarily lower reps, I may do mostly higher rep training, or vice versa. I may use some exercises I haven’t done in a while (example: front squats instead of back squats). I may even train in circuits (squats, chin-ups, dips).

Another great idea would be to come up with some challenges and see how you do. It would be even more fun if you have a buddy to challenge. Here are some examples:

-As many push-ups and chin-ups as possible in 15 minutes

-Deadlift a percentage of your bodyweight as many times as possible

-Squat a fixed weight for as many reps as possible

Those are just very few examples of what you could do. Feel free to use your imagination.

There’s nothing wrong with changing things up for a week and just having fun in the gym. If I’m feeling really crazy I won’t even bring my training journal to record what I do. That’s not smart to do long term, but one week isn’t going to hurt anything.

If things are getting stale and you find yourself getting bored, feel free to take a week and just have some fun in the gym. But, please, still be smart about what you’re doing. Don’t get hurt.