Boy, was I a fool in school for cutting gym--

Today, I cooked quinoa for the first time. I've known how to pronounce "quinoa" for a few years now, had eaten it a few times as part of dinners that my mother had prepared, but despite my adventurousness in consuming food, when it comes to cooking it, I'm much more of a novice. Let's just say that was only about a year ago that I hopped onto the brown rice train, after a long time of believing it to be an unforgivable sacrilege against the honest, respectable white rice that I got with every meal I'd eaten at an Asian restaurant since childhood. I overcame my prejudices, however, and brown rice has become my go-to, save for a few dishes where I feel that the specific type of rice is integral. (Sorry, my oyakodon will always be on white rice.)

But I digress.

This isn't about brown rice.

This is about quinoa.

I feel like this is a landmark of some sort. Because, I mean... seriously? Quinoa? This is, like, two steps away from veggie smoothies or something. Which I've been curious about for a while, now, actually. Even though it seems like such a... well, actor sort of thing.

Actor or not, it was the right thing to do. I had finally reached the end of my Tech Diet, which was comprised of two weeks of an utter lack of exercise, the second week of which also featured impressive amounts of stress eating, as well as impressively moderate drinking. And it was time for the switch back.

For those not part of the theatre scene, tech (short for "technical rehearsal") is what happens when a production moves from its rehearsal space to its actual performance space before it opens. This is when all of the technical elements are added in: lights, sound, costumes, scenery, projections, automation, whatever is applicable to that particular production. So you have all of these new things being added, as well as all of the people attached to them. And at the center of it all is the stage manager, maintaining communications between director and actors and designers and management and crew, helping to guide the actors through integrating all of these new elements, taking cues and instructions from designers so that the show can be run correctly, learning how to troubleshoot everything, coordinating press photos for marketing, keeping management in the loop, etc..

I've long accepted the Tech Diet as an inevitability. Two weeks of less than stellar fitness and diet, I feel, is a small price to pay for mental health.

(This, and the weeks of rehearsal preceding it, is also my excuse for not writing.)

At the end of it, however, I generally find myself in need of a detox and hopping back on the wagon, so to speak. I went to bed early last night, awoke to a delightful thunderstorm this morning, nommed some breakfast and started back into my exercise routine. And it had been brewing in my mind since the night before, after having made my purchase in the bulk food aisle at the local co-op a week ago, that today would be the day for the quinoa.

As for exactly how I cooked the quinoa, I modified a frittata recipe from the self.com's Drop 10 plan collection. Fitness meal plans tend to piss me off, because I despise having my food dictated to me. Also, I hate calorie counting with a passion. To say nothing of the fact that there is no way in hell that you'll catch me drinking a light beer. Of course, I'm afforded this privilege by being in good health and having been taught good eating habits by example as a kid. But on the first point, as much as I love new recipes, it always annoys me to have a shopping list dictated to me for anything more than a meal or two. My purchases are primarily guided by price, season/availability and versatility -- the latter coming into play in that I generally only have time to go to the grocery store and do my bulk cooking for the week once, at most. (Strangely and excitingly, this is not true for the coming months, but old habits die hard and I also don't want to get lulled into complacency.) Also, I live alone, so things can't go to waste. I can't go out grabbing this and that all willy-nilly, only to use a small portion of it, especially if it's not on sale!

So my cooking is largely of the "What the hell do I already have in my fridge and on my shelves?" school. In this case, it resulted in my frittata being made of eggs, quinoa, mozzarella cheese and regular ol' white mushrooms, with a dash of dried jalapeño and garnished with spicy guacamole.

Measure out your dry quinoa (1 cup dry makes about 3 cups cooked) and rinse it in cool water. This is a pain in the ass, because you need to strain the water out but the grains are damn small. I put the dry quinoa in a bowl, filled it with water, mixed it around by hand, noted its resemblance in texture to Floam, and then put a double layer of paper towel on top of the bowl and dumped the water out over the sink. A little did end up getting stuck to the paper towel, but it worked pretty well.

Add 2 parts water to 1 part quinoa. Bring it to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 15 minutes, until the water is absorbed. Let sit for 5 minutes, then fluff with a fork.

While the quinoa is cooking, mix two hand-beaten eggs, a handful-and-a-half of chopped mushrooms, a handful of grated mozzarella and a dash of dried jalapeño. Also, turn on your broiler.

Add about a half-cup of cooked quinoa to the other stuff. Mix all of that up. Dump it into a pan or oven-safe skillet that's been slicked up with some olive oil. Cook it on the stovetop for a couple minutes. Then shove it into the oven for a few more minutes, until the egg is set. Dump it onto a plate, then add a dollop of spicy guac on top.

So that was my lunch, along with a couple cups of green tea. Dinner was my usual, a spinach salad with half an avocado and a dash of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, with today's variant being blueberries and two strips of bacon cooked up really crispy and crumbled on top. (With the added pleasure of further bacon grease collection -- I had guests over the weekend, and there was a morning of bacon and eggs -- for use of some sort in the near future. Not quite sure what it will be yet. If they have some good collards, that might be the ticket.) Dessert was some leftover sweetened peaches with homemade whipped cream, leftovers from the ginger buttermilk biscuits with peaches and cream that I'd made for my cast on opening night this past week.

I don't usually talk about food (in the context of health, that is) or exercise at all. I grew up with it being an important but gravely serious thing, with an unhealthily obese and diabetic parent with an eating addiction, and being scared to talk about it myself, with one less-than-positive comment about my own weight that I made as a young adolescent at home being responded to with "What, are you anorexic or something?" But I want to be a fit, healthy person with the energy and endurance for a demanding career -- in addition to, full honesty, being pretty vain and having certain styles that I like requiring a certain body type -- and hey, maybe some things that I've found that seem to help me with my life might be of use to others.

When it comes to exercise, it's a little like my cooking -- I don't want to have to use any fancy specific equipment. Simple, high-energy and not too asinine-looking are my main criteria. Not that I have any real objection to making a fool out of myself -- much of my life can attest to that -- but I find it much more motivating when I feel badass rather than when I'm trying to do some obscure move where I stick my butt out at a 40-degree angle for 7 seconds while twisting my arm around my ear or something. I don't doubt that some of those such moves are very targeted and effective, but I prefer a more straightforward, intuitive approach. So if I'm not out running, this generally leads me to kickboxing or dance based workouts. Workout DVDs and youtube vids are my favorites; I like having an instructor to follow, because then I can focus my energy on the action rather than trying to remember what to do.

I use this video for my "light" days, immediately following it with 15-20 minutes of strength work.

For my full-out cardio days, when it's cool enough for me to not have to escape to the gym (I don't have air conditioning), I really like this one, which is what I used this morning.

(Have any favorites of your own? I'd love to get links!)

Otherwise, I like about 45 minutes of running on the treadmill, shifting back and forth between 5-6mph and flat-to-moderate inclines, with 5 minutes warm-up/cool-down on either end. I also recently bought a Jillian Michaels DVD in a bout of retail therapy (again, work-related, though that was arguably a healthier coping method than the s'mores cookie that was the size of half my face), and I'm kind of excited and a little bit scared. Watching through the first week's workout today, to find out what I'm getting myself into, I was sometimes a little unsure about whether I was getting fitness instructed or dommed, and even more unsure about how I felt about it, but, well, we'll see how it goes.

Anyhow, the main point is: get your spirit pumped up! Like these dudes!

I bet they'd eat the shit out of some quinoa.