Yummy Gluten Free Beef Chili

I am currently concocting a gluten free beef chili from scratch and blogging along the way. I started with a little over a pound of ground beef and a medium yellow onion diced. Combined in a large pot to brown:

I love onions and may have gone a little nuts with that. Once the beef is browned, I drained the grease out of the pot and put the onion and beef mixture back into the original pot. Note that the beef doesn't need to be fully cooked cause its going to simmer for a while and will be fully cooked at the end guaranteed!! Browning the meet just draws out the excess fat :) 

Next add garlic. I use this

And since I love garlic, I added this much

Yup. That's a heaping tablespoon!! 

Once that's added to the pot, I added one can of diced tomatoes, half a small can of tomato paste, 3 celery sticks chopped up, a dash of cinnamon, about 15 shakes from the cumin, 20 shakes of the chili powder, 5 shakes of turmeric, a pinch of salt, some pepper, and about half a cup of organic, gluten free no-chicken broth (since its what was in the fridge). Let that simmer about an hour adding more broth if it gets thick. I tasted it after a while and figured it probably needed a little more salt and pepper, and some red chili flakes for a bit of heat, but adjust the taste how you like it!

After about an hour, I added one can of drained kidney beans and one can of drained pinto beans and let that cook for about fifteen more minutes. The pot of chili looked like this:

And then you are ready to eat! I added a couple slices of avocado just because and some hot sauce for extra heat!

New Drinking Habit....

I have a drinking problem. I have become COMPLETELY obsessed with drinking ginger lime water. I know I may have been jerking your chain a bit, but I couldn't resist. This drink is refreshing and a good alternative to drinking boring ol' water. Since I live in Hawaii, we have access to great, fresh, local produce. I have been drinking pitcher after pitcher of this stuff. All I do is, squeeze some fresh lime water into a pitcher and cut ginger into chunks and fill the pitcher with water. Very simple. I let it marinade in the pitcher for a while, before I feel the urge to start drinking to allow the ginger flavor to seep out of the root. And you are done.

For some added texture, I sometimes add chia seeds to my bottle to increase the nutrition. And remember, use those refillable water bottles to make the earth a happier and clean environment!!!

Back to the Grind

I completed the Ironman 70.3 Hawaii on June 1st (see, evidence!)

and then decided on taking a mini-break from training to reward myself for completing my first half-ironman. That mini-break turned into a 6-week of basically no training and crappy eating. I have found that after such a long break, my drive to workout has been somewhat impacted by my laziness. I needed some motivation and decided to purchase this:

Thus far, it seems to be working... I have completed one four-mile run. But in all seriousness, it is really has given me some insights into how to properly train and phasing of my workouts. The section that really fueled my need to get moving was a section titled "Reversibility". It explained how quickly physical fitness attributes can fade with inactivity. My years of competitive swimming should have taught me this, but I suppose I was too young to really take note. Nonetheless, I am truly excited to get back into the swing of things with working out. It really makes me feel better and gives me more energy... like I need to be more energetic.

"Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going."                   
                        -Jim Ryan

Locker Hook Rug (In progress)

I recently purchased a house that is HUGE... well huge by my standards considering the last ten years were spent in spaces 1000 square feet or smaller. This house, although it is a major fixer, has a lot of floor space (close to 2000 square feet) and I figured in my time not working on the house, I would make a rug to cover a portion of this floor space. 

I had previously purchased a rug canvas with the intent of doing a latch hook, old tee-shirt type rug, but found that to be WAYYYYY too time consuming for me and put the canvas in storage for a while... While perusing things to do on the internet, I came across the ladder hook method for creating a rug. I thought that it look like an interesting thing to do and when I decide I want to do something, there is no going back (hence the reason I am hell bent on finishing a full Ironman one of these days).

The following video from Youtube got me started on this whole rug thing:

The rug canvas that I purchased is similar to the one that you can find here: Rug Canvas . 

I already had the canvas so I went to the store in search for remnant pieces and a locker hook tool.  First stop - hate to admit it - was Walmart. Here I was able to to find nice remnant pieces, but had no luck finding a locker hook tool.  The Big Island of Hawaii has so many craft stores that I found myself next at Ace Hardware (note the sarcasm). Surprisingly, this Ace Hardware (and Crafts) is the largest craft store that we have on the Kona side of Hawaii. I thought, FOR SURE these guys would have the locker hook tool. Seems simple enough. NOPE. Since I was so gung-ho on working on this project, I had to improvise. I purchased a plastic crochet hook and a plastic yarn needle or whatever those are called and came up with the following:

This was made by drilling a hole in the bottom of the plastic crochet hook, cutting the plastic yarn needle in half, inserting into the hole, and taping closed with packing tape.  Now before you start judging me, you must know, 1) this thing gets the job done and 2) I didn't have the patience to wait for the "real" thing to arrive. By the way, all the needed supplies are shown in this photo: locker hook tool, rug canvas, remnants, and yarn. If you want to purchase the "real" tool, it can be found here: Locker Hooking Tool.  The remnants need to be cut, or torn, into one-inch thick strips, but I found that depending on the material weight, this width may need to be increased or decreased (i.e., thicker weighted material should be made into thinner strips and thinner material should be thicker). The yard is used to keep the material strips from slipping through the rug canvas holes. My rug started out like this: 

Not too much to look at, but it is definitely a work in progress. I didn't know how i wanted to finish the edges, so I left approximately an inch and a half of canvas around all the edges.  The current product looks like this: 

After about six rows the long way, I decided to switch directions and make for a more interesting finished product (hopefully). I will add to this post once I have added more.