Fitness, Food and Fashion

>I just opened Susan Powter’s new yoga DVDs and am incredibly excited to see that one of the DVDs has exactly the routine she developed with our Seattle group last year. Well, it’s the beginner version, but one that can be easily revved up to a higher level.

It’s a bit amusing to hear the new age music in the video, since Susan always worked us out to a fairly raucous combination of rock, club/dance, and hip-hop. But it’s just so great to hear Susan, saying those things like “big huge oxygenated movements” and “stay in breath.” I can hardly wait to put the PowerBook in the dining room tomorrow morning, roll out the mat, and do yoga with Susan again.

>I’ve been belly dancing for the past six or seven months, and I’m trying to decide what I think of it as exercise. Here are a few observations:

• Beginning classes (for technique and basics) aren’t much of a workout.
• Power belly classes (the basic moves done in rapid succession while wearing a 10-pound weight belt) are pretty effective as aerobic, fat-burning exercise. And they are very easy on the joints.
• Two-hour performance classes (done for endurance and skill) can be quite strenuous. They’re good for burning calories, but watch out for repetitive stress injuries (and other injuries) to feet and ankles if performances are done on non-studio surfaces, such as concrete or asphalt.
• Performances are exhausting. Even your face muscles will hurt from smiling for two hours.

I haven’t tried tribal-style belly dancing, but based on my experience with mainstream belly dance performance classes, I have high expectations of them for aerobic benefit. Tribal troups do a lot of fast traveling across stages.

Belly dancing twice a week has not kept my muscles as toned as a similar amount of Vinyasa-style yoga did, so that is a disappointment. But it certainly can and does burn fat. I’m going to try to do it once a week as a good (fun) workout to mix with yoga.

>For 15 months, three days a week, I did yoga with Susan Powter at a studio in North Seattle. When Susan moved to Los Angeles, I have to confess that there were times when I regretted not having surreptitiously audio-recorded one of the classes. For while I can remember all the moves, I can’t push myself through the workout at the pace to get the amazing benefits I got from working out with Susan live.

It looks as though Susan has issued the yoga routine on DVD, and I just ordered it from her website. Stay tuned for a full report when FedEx delivers it next week.

If it is indeed the Trailer Park Yoga workout I remember, we’re all in for a treat.

>I like food. Some foods I like quite a bit. So the past three weeks have been extremely odd for me. I got the flu, and my stomach never really recovered. I’m fine as long as I eat bland foods (cereals, breads, bananas, yogurts, rice, a bit of mild cheese or an egg, poached or boiled meats, and that sort of thing). But anything spicy, or greasy, or anything like a raw vegetable, and I’m miserable and sick.

This certainly keeps me away from most restaurant food!

I’m taking lactobacillus supplements and gradually introducing small amounts of “real” (or surreal, in some cases) food.

This experience has given me a completely new perspective on food.

First of all, most of us are very rarely hungry, in the sense that we’ve burned up available fuel and are starting to draw on our bodies’ reserves. But that happened to me a few times…I didn’t get hungry, but I certainly felt exhausted.

I didn’t get hungry because I have a pretty strong aversion to food after the flu experience. That was another revelation. I didn’t realize that an active aversion to food could psychologically overpower years of liking food. Now I see certain foods (like tomato sauce) and cringe.

I am finding myself having to remind myself to eat, and to make sure I’m getting things like potassium and calcium.

By the way, if anyone thinks this is a good way to lose weight, it’s certainly not. It robs you of the energy you need to work out and maintain fat-burning muscle. I have been able to do moderate exercise, but noticed at the dance festival this weekend that I needed to eat carbs and a little protein every two hours to keep moving. And even then, it seemed as if my balance was a bit off.

>I was just watching Susan Powter talking about healthy eating and fitness on a NY morning news show. Susan was explaining the difference between drinking vegetable juice and eating (“mulching,” she called it) actual vegetables.

This is particularly ironic because I came down with a stomach virus Tuesday morning and haven’t been able to get near food for the past four days. I had no idea you could go this long without eating solid food, but, of course, it turns out you can as long as you drink plenty of fluids that contain sugar, salt, potassium and a couple of other elements. It seems inconceivable to me that I’ll ever again want to eat something as fiber-y looking as, say, broccoli, but the doctor I checked in with yesterday assured me that this will happen. In the meantime, she suggested trying chicken and rice soup, which apparently has the magic sugar/salt/potassium combination. And, of course, there are those weird electrolyte drinks. Still, at the moment they sound much more appealing that something I’d have to mulch!

Filo dough crust. Creme fraiche with cinnamon. Pink Lady apples and fresh basil. Citrus-marmalade-and-Calvados glaze.

It’s a pretty assertive dessert!

My friend Tom said the idea for this pastry came to him in a dream. Yesterday I assisted as he transformed the inspiration into a first-draft recipe. Today friends are stopping by to taste-test my half of the final tart.

Some of their (and my) thoughts:

The creme fraiche base tastes amazing, but is a little too soft when the tart is at room temperature. How could this be made more substantial without losing the taste and smooth texture of creme fraiche? (I’m concerned getting ricotta involved would make the texture too grainy.)

The Pink Lady apples were a particularly flavorful choice. And they held their shape well, even when sliced thinly.

The basil (many leaves of it) gets stronger by hour. Which is fine, right up until I find myself chewing on a cooked basil leaf. How could you get the same intense basil element in the tart without having the whole basil leaves? Chop them? Puree them?

The marmalade-Calvados glaze (my contribution to the beta version) add a second savory element, the marmalade being a bitterish citrus (crafted by my friends John and Sally). But now I’m thinking that with the filo crust, the tart might be better with a sweeter, honey-liquor glaze.