Camping and Bootcamping

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you are a MN or WI resident, it is summer  and it is the weekend, you can probably be found at someone's cabin.  This probably isn't as true for me as it is for many others as my family does not own a cabin (my parents live in the woods already, they don't exactly need one), but whenever I get the chance it's fun to impose myself on someone else's cabin.

Luckily my awesome friend Katie has a cabin!  Whenever she is in town from Chicago, she usually invites a group of us up to Balsam Lake Wisconsin for a weekend of boating, cooking, campfiring and more cooking.  As cliche as this sounds, there is something so fantastic about leaving my laptop at home, shutting my phone off and just sitting around a fire by the lake.  Sometimes it's nice to disconnect.

Also, these weekends provide the opportunity to embark on many delicious cooking and baking adventures!  We tend to go off the rails a little bit, combining anything that sounds good together like dipping chocolate chip cookies in cake frosting, or creating the Bacon S'More (it's delicious).  This time around, Amanda arrived with a huge box of freshly-picked strawberries.  The berries were quickly put to good use in a pie and a cake, as well as some randomly improvised cocktails.

Introducing...the Strawberry Basil Mint Mojito!  Basically this happened because we didn't have enough mint and were looking for a similar herb to suppliment.  Enter mint's good friend basil. Surprisingly, this was quite a delicious combination.

Amanda and me, drinkin' up!

To make this, all you have to do is smash 3-4 mint leaves in a pint glass with 3-4 basil leaves, a lime wedge and a few small strawberries.  Muddle them with a muddler, or if you do not have such fancy equipment, the handle of a large plastic spoon.  Then add a couple tablespoons of sugar, 1.5 ounces of rum, and add soda water.  Ta da!  Mojito.

Amanda also made a delicious cake and pie - but for some reason my phone camera hacked the cake photo in half and I didn't get a photo of the pie.  Oh well.  My tastebuds will always remember them.

This next photo is a poached duck egg from Piccolo restaurant.  It has nothing to do with camping or strawberries, but it was pretty and I wanted to post it.

Good segue.  So bootcamping.  One of my friends from work is co-leading a Bootcamp program at Corepower Yoga and she somehow talked me into joining.  So for the next two weeks (well, two weeks minus two days now) I'll be bootcamping from 6-7am every day.  We are also supposed to fit in a second workout in the evening, and journal all of our meals during the program as well as set specific goals for what we hope to achieve.

I will definitely talk about the program as much as possible, but I'm not planning to blog specific workouts or meals since this blog is not a food journal and was never intended to be such...but I'll definitely post meal ideas, and I'll try to speak to which foods I've noticed negative/poistive effects from.

I've also joined Desiree Rumbaugh's 30 day Eat Green Challenge which encourages a mostly plant-based diet.  Fruits, veggies and a lot of raw food.  I think my main concern over the next couple of weeks is making sure I am getting enough calories given how much I'll be working out.  Lotsa fruits at work I guess.

I haven't set my goals for the program yet, and I'm pretty sure "not dying during Warrior Dash" isn't a real goal so I need to think about this some more.

So far, here's what we've done:
Day 1
- Workout 1: short jog, followed by a 60 minute cardio circuit (4 full rounds of the circuit)
- Workout 2: 90 min hatha class at The Om Collective

Day 2
- Workout 1: 60 minute strength training circuit alternated with 2 minute cardio
  "bursts" (this one just about killed me...)
- Workout 2 (planned): Hot Power Fusion class at CPY...although my boss just scheduled
  an urgent end-of-day meeting so it depends on how late I have to stay at work.  If I miss
  HPF I'll head home and do 60 minutes of yoga regardless.  I won't lie, I am a little
  nervous about this meeting...
So far I've been eating:  green smoothies, spinach salads (with tofu/tempeh and other vegetables mixed in), homemade museli and homemade oat bars.  Tonight we're making a potato tart with some roasted tomatoes. Mmmm... lots of cheese in the tart so I shouldn't need to worry about my daily calories ;)