Stretching for Life

Last summer I decided to make stretching part of my daily routine for the rest of my life. I have to admit that I haven't been doing it every single day for the last six months, but I've been pretty good about doing it almost every day. The reason why I decided to start stretching is because I went home for a visit and shared a room with my gran for the summer who got me stretching every night before I went to bed. She is 85 years old and can kick my butt when it comes to stretching. Well...let my back up a little bit. Since I can remember, she's been able to kick my butt in stretching. I remember when I was 12 years old and she could do these stretch moves that I couldn't do (pretty sad huh?) but being 12 years old I got bored and forgot about it after one or two tries.

I'm not sure what made me finally decide to stick with it this time other than the fact that my mom is also stretching every day and she's never been more flexible than me. We're a competitive family I guess.

My grandmother told me that she started stretching when she was about 40 years old because she met an old man at her church who told her the secret to his youthful walk was stretching everyday. Have you ever met an old person who drags their feet because they can't pick up their feet anymore? Apparently stretching helps to prevent this. My grandmother's youthful walk was enough proof for me to get started on stretching.

Here are a few of the simple stretching exercises for your legs that she taught me:

1.


This is your basic hamstring stretch but one of the most important. I usually try to hold it for 20 seconds and then do a few other stretches and come back to this one.

2. Do the hamstring stretch standing up. Although it seems like you're stretching the same area, you'll notice a difference in the type of stretch you get.

3.


I had to draw the one because I couldn't find an images online that was close to what this exercise looked like. If you're doing this for the first time you'll want to start out with just stretching your legs and don't try to push your head forward. After you get used to it you can start to try to touch your forehead to the floor. Make sure you keep your knees on the floor and your heels should be as close to you as can. According to my grandmother this one is the most important one to keep her walk nice and light.

4. Quad stretches are a basic stretch and also help with the hamstring stretch. I like this one because they really help you loosen up your legs before doing any type of exercise.

5.

This is the side of hip, hamstrings

1. Sit on floor with right leg straight out in front
2. Bend the left leg, cross your left foot over and place it outside of your right knee
3. Pull left knee across body toward opposite shoulder
4. Hold 10 to 20 seconds
5. Repeat on other side



6. Stretches lower back, side of hip, and neck

1. Sit on floor with left leg straight out in front
2. Bend right leg, cross right foot over, place outside left knee
3. Bend left elbow and rest it outside right knee
4. Place right hand behind hips on floor
5. Turn head over right shoulder, rotate upper body right
6. Hold 10 to 15 seconds
7. Repeat on other side

I recommend you also do other types of stretches such as arm stretches or back stretches.

Happy stretching!

More on Car stuff

I know I wasn't going to talk about my purse being stolen anymore but I thought I'd share some of my research about my car.

After getting a grilled chicken club at my local ice cream shop, (who gets lunch at an ice cream parlor), especially the nice old fashioned ones, I decided to get the Unbreakable Autolock Pro instead of the Club. I'm not sure what made me get the club sandwich and then decide against the Club car lock but you have to go with your instincts. It could have also been that my friend's friend recommended that I get the break lock type over the steering wheel type. I didn't speak to him directly but I'm guessing it's because you could easily cut into the steering wheel, take off the club and still drive off with the car pretty easily. It would be a lot harder to drive off with a car if your break pad was cut off. The Autolock Pro is a different design and prevents the break pad from being depressed so that the car can't start even if you have the keys. Other than that, I'm not sure what the difference is. They both seem like they are made of material that's difficult to cut so that's how I made my decision.

The other nice thing about the Autolock Pro is that they offer a $5000 guarantee if your car is stolen with the Autolock installed properly. You just have to fill out a registration form and send it to them within 10 days.

I also made more phone calls to Honda dealers in my area. Wow, I was so surprised to hear what a difference each dealer charges for their services. One office quoted me about $500 to change out the locks and the other one quoted me $1300-1500. The other day when I said it was going to cost $1265 for the locks and alarm, that was with the dealer that was going to charge me $500 just the keys. Either way it's not worth it since my car is over 7 years old. I'm going to look into how much my insurance will cover if my car is stolen. The other good thing the service guy at Honda told me is that I could just get a new remote and reprogram it. That would cost about $89 dollars.(Duhhh why didn't I think of that?) He also recommended that I call my insurance company to ask if my car keys and alarm remote is covered by my insurance. I'll also have to ask how much the deductible is and if my premium will go up but that will have to wait until Monday.

Day two

I'm still feeling the aftermath of my purse nabbing incident. Today I spent the morning making phone calls to try to sort out this mess. After calling the dealers and being told that it was going to cost at least $1265 to replace my locks and get a new alarm, I thought of the most ghetto thing to do and called my local Walmart to see if they had the Club. I bet the younger generation doesn't even know what the club is.

The Club

Just in case you're curious.

Unfortunately, my local WalMart does not carry the Club but they had the Masterlock for just 19.99. Meanwhile I'm holding out hope that the thief ditched my bag and some good Samaritan will turn in my keys. I've decided to borrow my friends club for a few days but will probably end up getting the Club from Kragen. My local Kragen is closer than Walmart and has the original Club. Ooooo.

Ok so the whole point of this blog is not to talk about theft, car alarms and Clubs. I wanted to talk about my obsession with food. Currently on the menu is pizza pizza pizza.

Who doesn't love pizza? According to Wiki answers, the average American eats 834 slices of pizza a year and according to Yahoo.answers, the average American consumes about 23 pounds of pizza per year. That is a whole lot of pizza.

My obsession for pizza started about two months ago. I used to live in a city that was mildly obsessed with pizza chains such as Papa Johns and Dominos, receiving about one or two ads a week in the mail. I recently moved to a city that sends me (on average) about 10 different pizza ads a week. I got to thinking how cheap could I make my pizza and how much better could it be compared to these chains? (not to mention healthier)

I knew the first and most important thing to perfect pizza was the crust. Of course everyone is particular about what type of crust they prefer. Who's a fan of thin crust, who loves deep dish, New York style or Chicago! I decided that I would start with the thin crust because it seemed like the easiest style to go with and it meant I wouldn't have to buy any special deep dish pans.

Although I have made pizza in the past, I always had a problem with either the crust not crisping up or uncooked pizza dough in the center of the pizza. I knew that the fancy Italian pizza ovens could heat up to 900+ degrees and conventional ovens in the US only heat up to 500 degrees so there in lied the problem. I really wanted gourmet Italian styled pizza with a thin and crisp crust.

I started out with buying the pizza dough from my local Trader Joe's. They have a nice selection of gourmet foods at reasonable prices. Their pizza dough is wrapped in a bag and comes in regular and spinach. I prefer the regular for pizza and the spinach for bread sticks. One bag of pizza dough is enough for a large pizza and is under 2 dollars. The instructions say to roll out the dough and put your toppings directly onto the pizza and stick it in the oven for 8-10 minutes. This will almost always end up with a soggy or uncooked crust. The trick is to lay out your dough onto a cookie sheet and put it into a preheated oven at 400 degrees for 8-10 minutes first. Also, it's important to poke holes in your dough with a fork to let the air through so that you don't end up with big bubbles on your crust. After the dough is cooked but not golden brown, you're ready to top your crust. Does everyone remember Boboli? I based this idea off the Boboli concept. It looks like they are still in business but I don't see their commercials anymore.

Boboli

Ok so here's the next best thing about making super tasty pizza; it's in the sauce and I don't mean Prego. I'm sorry but it's NOT in there. I found this recipe for pizza sauce on the Almighty allrecipes.com:

It's truly exquisite.
Pizza Sauce

I omit the hot pepper flakes and cayenne pepper but for those of you who like it spicy you can follow the recipe to a tee. The anchovy paste says optional but I think it is a must, and a little bit goes a long way. If you can't find the paste, you can get a can of fillets and just use one. The fillets fall apart easily so there's no reason to chop it up. A whole can will only cost you a dollar and there are probably about 6-8 fillets in a can. I also use less honey. I recommend about 1 tablespoon of honey since 2 tablespoons is a little sweet for my taste. You can also double the recipe and save it in your freezer for next time. It's also a great dipping sauce for garlic bread!

Once you've spooned a thin layer of sauce (you don't want to drench it with sauce because that's another reason why pizza crusts end up soggy), next comes the cheese. Many pizza novices will put the veggies and meat next and the cheese on top but by putting the high moisture toppings such as tomatoes on top, it will allow them to cook better and keep the crust dry.

Once you've topped your pizza, the next step is tending to the edges of the crust. Brush the edges with olive oil and sprinkle some shredded mozzarella cheese on the edges. This will give it a more polished look. The olive oil will help the cheese stick to it and give it a nice golden color. Now you're ready to toss it into the oven until the cheese starts to bubble and the crust is a nice golden color. 400 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

If you decide to go with fresh mozzarella cheese, I recommend squeezing some of the water out and leaving it in the oven a little longer for about 10-15 minutes.

Here's a picture of the half and half yukon gold potatoes and tomato-salami-onion-olive pizza I made 2 days ago.



I'll write more on my experiment with making homemade dough and using the pizza stone next time.

My First day as a blogger

I was excited about the prospect of finally learning HTML and I decided that blogging was going to be the best way for me to get started. I've been unemployed for about seven months now and after reading endless job descriptions about skills that I don't possess, I thought I would get started on learning something new.

As it turns out, I've also taken up taiko (Japanese drumming). I've always wanted to learn it but I never had the time with my job and busy schedule. I've been taking classes since November last year and even though it's not in the best neighborhood and it's quite a trek to drive there, I've been committed the last few months. Tonight however, during my taiko lesson, a kid came into the studio, stole my purse along with all my keys and my wallet. I was about 10 minutes into my taiko lesson when this happened and the rest of the night was spent dealing with the mess. I spoke to the cops, my credit card companies, my landlord and had to get a classmate to drive me home to get my spare key so that I could pick up my car. Of course when I got back to my car, the alarm went off and I couldn't start my car. (I only had one remote controller which of course was stolen) A bit of advice: Keep some tools in your car because it may be the only way you can disarm your alarm to start the car. Luckily my classmate had some tools in his car and he disconnected the battery which disarmed the alarm and I could finally start the car. The only problem is that I'll have to do it again every time I lock the car because it arms the car again...
Needless to say, I'll be going to the dealers tomorrow for new keys and possibly a new alarm code. I'm wondering how much that will set me back.

Other things I learned. The police man told me that there are three easy to use websites that you should register for a fraud alert to to make sure that your name and information is not used for fraud:

Equifax
TransUnion
Experian

He advised me to register tonight and check again in 30-60 days, 6 months and then one year. He also said that once you register at one, the other two will update your information as well since they all work together.

Tonight, unfortunately I will have to sit tight since my landlord has informed me that he will not be able to change my locks tonight and that it might take until the weekend. I guess it's a good thing I don't have a job so at least I won't get robbed.

I have a rickety old couch in front of the door. yea...it's probably not going to stop intruders but hopefully I'll get some shut eye.

This is my first day as a blogger. I promise my posts will be more interesting in the future. I felt the need to vent so I suppose my blog served it's purpose tonight.

p.s. please stay tuned if you have a love for cooking. I will be writing loads of stuff on cheap but tasty recipes!