First Time Compote

Fruit is the essence of living off the land, so having a supply of wonderful fruit makes a belly happy.  I saw the pears sitting in the fruit bowl looking very sad, and brown. I also had a large collection of kiwi. I decided to look up a recipe for compote.  Very basic stuff, you cook the fruit, add a little juice like, wine, or citrus, cook, add a sweetener, cook, then cool before the fruit gets to mushy. It's a glorious desert with yogurt and pecans!   Here is a picture of the compote after sitting in fridge for a bit.  Add this to fresh Vanilla Yogurt and top with crushed pecans and enjoy!

Compote recipe:
Sliced Pears (2)
Sliced Kiwis (2)
splash white wine
splash lime citrus
Log Cabin Brown rice table syrup
cinnamon
a drop of almond extract and vanilla extract.

(*The original recipe calls for Vanilla flavored sugar. sounds easy enough)

Upper Body Fitness Routine

The feedback for the lower body routine was so good, that we tailored it to an upper body routine. This is SO easy to do with two light free weights and you can do as many sets as you want. Four sets of this will take less than 40 minutes. I recommend a little full body warm up such as light jogging in place, or a few Zumba moves, or whatever strikes your fancy.  The routine is as follows:
15 Push ups
30 sec. straight arm plank
15 Bicep curls
30 sec. spiderman crunches
15 Bench or floor dips or table top swing throughs
30 sec. Right side plank (elbow or straight arm/lift your leg for more sensation)
15 Lateral raises
30 sec. Left side plank
15 Overhead presses
30 sec. Table top pose

That's it!! It's really not too hard, and you can increase the reps to 20 for more intensity and duration. Have Fun and remember to cool down with a few stretches of the shoulders, chest and arms.

Fitness on the GO!

For the past year I have been teaching a fitness class at Colgate University called - Tone & Stretch two days a week. Every class is something a little different, and we incorporate, yoga, pilates, strength, stretching, balance, core, etc. into each class with the goal of targeting all areas of the body.   This week I took an idea that I found on a website called: fitsugar.com and designed a 40 minute class consisting of 10 exercises grouped into five sets of two. This was by far one of the most fun, challenging, and fitness packed routine I have done.  The routine can be modified with weights, without weights, and using different exercises upper and lower body.  Wednesday's class (pre-Valentine's day) targeted lower body with core sprinkled in between. After class I received a number of emails about how much they LOVED the class. One suggestion was to make every Wed. "Boot Camp Wednesday."  Let's get to it,   here is the routine and we used a kettle bell for the wide squats, and two light ones for the step lunges.   We did the entire routine FOUR times through with no breaks.
15 x Wide stance squats
30 - sec. straight arm plank
15 x Narrow squat (power pose with arms up)
30 - sec. spider man crunches (straight arm plank with crunching knee to same side elbow)
15 x Rt. leg forward step lunges then Lf.
30 - sec. Mountain climbers
15 x Push ups
30 - sec. Right side plank (elbow or straight arm)
15 x Rt. leg rear step lunges then Lf.
30 - sec. Left side plank

It was a BLAST!!!!!!!!!!!!