Hectic lives make it hard to find time for complex gourmet recipes. This recipe gives you a bit of exotic “oh la la!” in just fifteen minutes. Try this punchy sauce over salmon and steamed frozen veggies (as pictured here).

Coconut Curry Sauce
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp olive oil
1 can coconut milk
3 tsp curry powder
1 tsp turmeric

Heat the olive oil in a small saucepan over medium heat and add the garlic and ginger. Stir and fry for about one minute, until the onions and garlic are soft. Add the coconut milk and spices to the pot. Continue to stir over medium heat as the coconut milk dissolves and blends with the spices. Bring to a slow boil and remove from the heat a few minutes before serving.

Ways I have eaten this sauce:

• Steam some frozen mixed veggies and quickly pan-fry a salmon fillet. Pile up the veggies on a deep plate, top with the salmon, then drown in about 1/2 cup of the curry sauce.
• Hard-boil some eggs, cool, peel, and split in halves. Arrange on a plate and drizzle with warmed curry sauce.
• Hard-boil some eggs, cool, peel. Scoop out the yolks and mix with curry sauce, then stuff them back into the whites. Curried deviled eggs!
• Mix the curry sauce half-and-half with some real/homemade mayonaise and use as a dip for veggies.
• With the curry sauce heated in a saucepan drop in some cooked shrimp, heat through. Serve over veggies or cauliflower “rice”.

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Earlier in the week I was perusing the blogs I read and I came upon Matt’s confessional post titled “My name is Matt and I am a food addict!”. His post really struck a cord with me. If you want to go so far as to read the comments you’ll see that I left the first one, with a confessional of my own.

I’m rocking the Amazon mindset but it is not totally reflecting on me in the form of a rocking Amazon body. Right now I’m doing a 37-day strength-building program from Whole9 called the “603 Power to the People” program. I’m going for a new deadlift PR somewhere above 200 pounds. That’s my primary goal, I’m focused on it, I’m following the program, and I’m certain I will have that PR when I finish in three weeks.

The problem is that I had also hoped, and partly assumed, that I would see some fat loss on this program as well. I did a 30-day strict paleo challenge back in July and stripped off ten pounds almost effortlessly but somehow (pizza and peanut butter sandwiches) those pounds have crept back on. I thought that during PTP I could do a “sanity-preserving paleo” diet of my own construction: eat mostly paleo foods with occasional cheese and one non-paleo meal allowed every five days. The problem is that I’ve had a few episodes of “spinning out” and gone on full-day non-paleo food binges. Bad Amy.

So I posed this question to Matt – just what the hell are we supposed to DO? Well he and C Wiss chimed in with something that boils down to one word – goals. I felt like I had just been smacked with a fifty-pound sack of DUH. This whole month I’ve been working on my deadlift goal and like I said, assuming fat loss would follow. Maybe if I had a secondary goal, one for fat loss or another performance goal that would help achieve fat loss it would actually happen!

I also realise reading Matt’s post that when I hit my deadlift PR I’m going to be stuck out there in success land wondering “what’s next?”. I think NOW is the time to figure out what’s next, and that means new goals.

So for the record, I am setting some goals for the post-200-pound-deadlift-achieving me:

Performance Goal: My first pull-up. I don’t care how ugly it is or how much kicking I have to do, I will get chin to meet bar.
Body Comp Goal: TEN POUNDS – ten freaking pounds, and I will still have plenty to spare. That’s ten pounds of FAT, so I will be measuring weight + bf% to track this.
START: MARCH 16
FINISH: APRIL 30 (46 days)

Matt also mentioned setting a stretch goal. I really like that term. It’s a bigger, long-term goal. My stretch goal would be to hit 22% bodyfat.

Next week I’ll follow up on this and post about my actual PLAN to reach my goals, and a bit about my team of professional coaches. Team of professional coaches? It’s called a tease dearies, I’ll see you next week!

photo credit: Martin Kingsley

Sometimes you just don’t move like you should and you pull or tweak a joint or muscle. Sometimes a mild pain in the shoulder turns into a big pain in the neck the longer you run. Being able to recover quickly from injury gets you back to your fitness routine without too much down time, but you have to know how to properly treat your type of injury.

Pain that happens during or just after a workout, usually because of something traumatic during your workout, is called an acute injury. Think of a sprain, strain, or pulled muscle. I bet you don’t think the pain is so cute, har! These types of injuries benefit from immediate icing because it helps slow the body’s healing response. WHAT? Why does that sound like the wrong advice? In essence your body often overreacts to your injury; accumulating fluids in the injured area (inflammation), and increasing blood flow. In a way that is good, because that is what tells you that you have an injury – the increased blood flow makes the area feel ‘hot’, and the inflammation makes the area feel sore or stiff. The problem is that the blood flow and inflammation also cause less oxygen at the injury site, which can suffocate the tissues and actually create more damage. Applying ice reduces the circulation and inflammation and results in faster healing.

Waiting too long and then sitting in front of the TV with an ice pack draped loosely over the injury site is a half-assed attempt to get well. Icing should happen as soon as possible – the minute you even think you might have pulled something. Placing an ice pack on the injury is adequate, but you’re more than adequate, you’re elite, so you are going to massage your injury with ice. Put a few ice cubes in a ziploc bag and rub circles all over the sore spots. If your girly hands can’t take the cold then put on some gloves. Five minutes of ice massage is going to give you the benefits of twenty minutes of normal ice-pack application. Don’t ice once and go about your day either, shoot for five ice massage sessions in a 24-hour period. 48 hours after the injury occurs you can lessen the frequency, and 72 hours after injury you’re hopefully well on your way to a full recovery.

DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) is a bit of a different beast. It’s kind of not an injury, but it is. It’s usually your body reacting to micro-tears in your muscle fibres. The pain might not come on strong until a day or two after an intense workout, but it is still caused by inflammation so the treatment is still ice. If you know you’ve just done a killer lower-body workout and you expect to be sore tomorrow, try plunging into a tub full of ice water for 30-seconds. Your quads will thank you when you stop shivering. If you’re not that much of a masochist then you could try some ice massage or basic ice application.

Though heat often seems like it would be the best treatment for an injury, it is recommended only for chronic pain. Chronic pain often exists before a workout, and is usually a dull ache or stiffness. Heat will promote blood flow to the area, relaxing muscles and increasing the elasticity of connective tissues. Regular pain in an area can indicate a more serious injury or condition. Heat can limber you up and get you through a workout, but if the pain continues after several days you should see a doctor.

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