Jump Past The Fear

Pretty cool parkour video:

Good song I've heard a few times on the radio lately:

Tomorrow I'm competing in Run The Jail Break 5K:
http://www.runthejailbreak.com/austin-2012.php

I was really looking forward to Run The Jail Break, however, I suffered a knee injury and haven't been able to train for the race. I can't even take stairs. Uhg. I'll still do the race, but probably not run it. I'll have knee pads and an ice pack ready for sure.

Darryl Edwards: The Fitness Explorer

There's a great guy in London that one day came to the realization that exercise should be fun. That guy is Darryl Edwards.

Darryl Edwards

While I was doing some website volunteer work for PaleoFX, I found out Darryl Edwards was coming in town to provide some movement workshops during the conference. I looked him up and watched a few of his youtube video... interesting stuff! I was excited about taking his workshop and boy am I glad I did! It was two hours of play - exactly that, play! I found it interesting and informative. Darryl led our group through a series of mini-games and challenges. I can honestly say I had a blast and it was the highlight of PaleoFX for me. Yes I did really enjoy listening to the many doctors lectures (Sebring, Rosedale, etc), but it was really nice to take a break from the conference setting and go have some fun. Make sure to check out Darryl Edwards site, The Fitness Explorer.

My movement session with Darryl was filmed and they've already produced a video, wow! Check out the back of my head here:

Thanks Darryl for coming out to PaleoFX to lead these movement sessions. I really appreciate it. I hope to bring some of your energy and enthusiasm to our local movement group. Hope to see you next year at PaleoFX again or hopefully sooner than that!

Since I'm posting videos today, how about this awesome parkour video?

This week I've been experimenting with intermittent fasting and observing the results. I will update more on this later.

Some good reading
Why Fast? Part One – Weight Loss
Why Fast? Part Two – Cancer
Why Fast? Part Three – Longevity
Why Fast? Part Four – Brain Health

Late March Update

I was experimenting with growing my own oyster mushrooms a couple of months ago. I used coco coir and coffee grounds as my substrate and the mycelium covered the surface nicely. Then one day, I left the greenhouse dome lid cracked open a bit and I guess the fresh air caused them to pop up and fruit. The first photo is from when I first notice them and the second is about 10 hours later or so. These things grow fast!!

Woke up to see them like this

Roughly 10 hours later, they got BIG!

Here is my late entry for What I Ate Wednesday.
There's been a lot of talk in the Paleosphere lately about pork. There's some evidence that suggests pork is safer to eat once it has been marinated or cured. Kudos for bacon, right?? You can read about it in the Weston A Price Foundation's article: How Does Pork Prepared in Various Ways Affect the Blood? To me, this evidence is inconclusive. I won't call it junk science, but their sample size is too small in my opinion. I do however hope that this introduces further discussion and more research on the matter. Since I never really like the taste of plain farmed pork anyways, it's easy to buy into the marinating/curing idea. It doesn't take much convincing for me that cured bacon is better than plain ol' fresh pork. A couple of weeks ago I tried curing my own pork belly into bacon and then smoked it over hickory, it turned out very tasty! I'll do it again soon and write up how it goes. As for marinating, I decided to try that experiment the other night. I marinated a few pork chops in apple cider vinegar and seasoning for almost 24 hours before tossing them on the grill. I didn't have any veggies planned for dinner, luckily there's plenty of stuff growing in my aquaponics system right now.

Frying some fresh picked kale and chard in butter, soy sauce, olive oil, and sherry.

Grabbed some mixed greens from my salad table.
Everything from my backyard, except for the pork chops.. they were grown at Costco!

The verdict: not good, I'm sad to say. I just didn't like the tasty of apple cider vinegar with the pork. It wasn't bad, just not good. I'll be looking for other marinate recipes for pork chops that involve something more palatable than apple cider vinegar.



Events coming soon :

It's almost time for the Austin Funky Chicken Coop Tour. They have a terrible website, but the tour is great non-the-less. Go check out some cool chicken coops around Austin if you are thinking about getting into chickens! fccooptour.blogspot.com


Speaking of coop tours, there is a new one called "Hill Country Coop Tour" that is about a month after the Funky tour. It'll be on May 5th and mostly up in N/W Austin, such as Cedar Park, Liberty Hill, and Leander. They don't have a website yet but maybe they will be posting more details on their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/events/292393660808736/?ref=ts

 Jack Ingram will be playing a free show on Wednesday April 4th at the Nutty Brown Cafe as part of the KVET Texas Music Series.


Speaking of music, Shinedown has a new album due in five days. I've sampled all of their new songs and I'm having mixed opinions. I do need to listen to all of the whole songs when the album comes out, but I'm thinking it may not be as good as their previous albums. I could be speaking too early, though. Their last album was fantastic and I was unsure of how it would turn out before it was released as well. We'll see. I'm excited about it though!

Here's the music video for the first single, Bully:

Yay it's March.

March is my favorite month, it's such a great time. Trees are budding, flowers are blooming (have you seen the bluebonnets yet?), birds are chirping, and the air smells crisp and fresh.

My home grown gourmet oyster mushrooms are starting to pop up.

Both kale and chard love aquaponics and springtime.

Links for this week: 

Heather Woods answers "It's not realistic to give up grains" with "how realistic is it to be overweight, tired, and take a whole list of medications just to be able to get going in the morning?" She is documenting her and her family's experience of going on the Primal Blueprint in her blog. You may have heard of her husband, Tom Woods, a New York times best selling author.

PaleoFX is going to bring some of the biggest names in Paleo together for a conference in Austin this spring break. I'm very excited about it!

Something to think about:

You must take a little risk to get a reward

You must get a little lost to find yourself

You've got to speak up a little to be heard

You've got to be a little quiet to understand