So this new gubbins, the ActiFry jobbie... it's real selling point it making chips with less fat but still crispy and nice. Better have a go at that then.
Again, I didn't really read the instructions awfully well. Just "cut them this big", "dry them", "drizzle on oil" and "don't add salt before cooking". And it went like this...
Peel and cut potatoes into approx 13mm x 13mm cross section chips.
Dry them with a tea towel and put them in the Actifry; drizzle oil on top and set timer based on the weight of unpeeled potatoes.
Watch the little screw thing turn them about and over.
Serve and eat.
So they turned out well-cooked but not all that crispy. And I think, having read back over the booklet again properly this time, that I was supposed to wash the chips thoroughly to get the surface starch off properly and then dry them like I did. It makes a lot of sense as they were a great texture all the way through, just the outside as if they'd been sweated rather than crisped with hot air. It could also be the potato variety and the next lot of potatoes are categorised as good for making chips so we'll have another go. Don't get me wrong, they were nice! Just not crispy.
Well, it was a hard session for a few reasons I think.
We had a bit of a chat about where I'm at, what I've done and what I want out of my gym sessions and then set off into some warm ups on the TRX. I did mention I won't usually want to use those as my gym local to work doesn't have them but this was a getting-to-know-you session so it didn't matter so much. That wasn't so bad, and there was some nice stuff to get the core going with bodyweight exercises on the TRX straps. Then we launched into... kettlebells! Yay!
And, gosh, either I was really not physically up to this session (tail-end of a nasty cold, plus perhaps not well fuelled enough either) or they really are a bugger the first (few) time(s). Each set made me feel light-headed and vomitous (no idea what my heart rate was but given the feeling I had, I'm guessing well over 180) but I pushed on through. I think I get it a lot better now that I've had Geoff explain how to do the various swings and snatches and it's very different. More practice required. A few bits and bobs with some cables and we were done.
Warm up on TRX -
incline pull ups - 2x10
incline W pull ups - 2x10
incline push ups - 2x10
jackknifes - 2x10
cycling legs - 2x2x10
rotating jackknifes - 2x10
pikes - 2x10
Kettlebells -
2 arm swings - 2x10 (16kg)
1 arm swings - 2x2x10 (12kg)
1 arm squat and snatch - 2x2x10 (12kg)
1 arm swing and snatch - 2x2x10 (12kg)
Military press - 2x10 (2x8kg)
Cable machine -
2 arm row - 2x10 (??kg)
1 arm row - 2x2x10 (??kg)
Squat with row - 2x10 (??kg)
Incline row - 2x10 (??kg)
2 arm lat pull-down - 2x10 (??kg)
1 arm lat pull-down - 2x10 (??kg)
My HRM really isn't playing ball at all these days. I've replaced the battery in the transmitter, washed the strap umpteen times, made sure it's really sopping wet each time I use it and there's no low battery warning on the watch itself so that's fine. But it still craps out and registers stupid heart rates like 221 randomly and the heart symbol flashes erratically instead of with my heart beat. Very tempted to throw in the towel and get a new watch. It'd be a shame as I've got 176,6xx kcals of exercise on the totaliser on this watch and it'd've been nice to break 200,000 with it, but... it's just getting too frustrating now to keep plugging away with it at the moment.
Anyhoo... first proper session booked now with Geoff (silly moving work deadline permitting) and I'll have a few more goes with the kettlebells this week beforehand (if I get to go to the gym during the week this week).
I've not been to the gym for a week (mostly work related but slightly illness related). I've not had a session with a personal trainer since October. I have a session with my new trainer at 13:30 today and I'm nervous about it.
I have loads of confidence in my new trainer; I've seen him around in the local gym lots and read his bio and he gives off quite an aura of quiet competence. Will let youse all know how it goes when I get back. Wish me luck!
It arrived on a rainy day, so the box got a bit wet on the way home from the tube station...
Hence the grey spots on the box here. As you can see, the packaging is a bit dated-looking (I dunno about you but I always find cartoon pictures of "mummy and child" really 1970s no matter how re-vamped the cartoon style may be) but then who cares about the packaging as that's off to the recycling! It does seem to have been designed by a European marketing team and the words are a bit clumsy for the UK market.
The eagle-eyed reader may notice that it's a pretty big box and almost takes up the entire depth of my (admittedly quite shallow) kitchen work top. And that's a good indication of the size of the appliance inside as the packaging inside the box is mercifully sparse; enough to protect it but not way over the top on loads of plastic bags over every single component and manual and booklet and plug and removable part. That's quite refreshing and means I feel less bad about the packaging part of this new toy at least.
It arrived on a day when I got home late from work, ravenously hungry and with no idea about what to do for dinner, beyond the fact that I'd got a couple of Abel & Cole salmon fillets out of the freezer in the morning. Which meant that, of course, I had to try cooking something in the new ActiFry regardless of whether it actually went with the fish or not. Thankfully I had some sweet potatoes to hand and decided that sweet potato wedges would be a good compromise between seeing if it worked, something that could potentially get a bit crispy, and not actually making chips (partly because I didn't fancy peeling and chipping potatoes when quite so weary already).
We generally don't peel root vegetables unless the skins are particularly tough and rough/have an unpleasantly textured skin. So all I had to do was flick through the included recipe booklet to the chips and wedges section to get an idea of what to do, check the quick start guide on how to make the thing actually cook, wedge up the sweet potatoes, toss them in oil then flour and paprika, whack them in the bowl on top of the turning screw, drizzle a bit more oil on top, set the timer and press go.
So I did all of that, after picking off a few errant bobbles of polystyrene from the inside of the lid, pressed the "On/Off" button and then was rather taken aback by the noise of the thing! You see, what makes it clever is -how- it cooks the food. Not just by getting it hot. It uses hot air circulated in the chamber and a low-angle screw to agitate and turn the food over and the way it gets the hot air to move in the right way is a fan. In general fans are noisy and this one is no exception. What makes it simple is that there are only two settings, On and Off. There is a timer which you can set and once you press the "On/Off" button, the heating, fans, screw and timer start up. All that happens at the end of the timing is some beeping. It does not turn itself off.
However, it's rather effective and after 40 minutes we had some crispy skinned, wonderfully soft inside, nicely seasoned sweet potato wedges. I did read the quick start guide properly -after- we'd had dinner and I did a few things wrong: you're not supposed to use salt before cooking anything like wedges/chips (probably because that draws water out of the vegetable and stops them crisping properly) and you're supposed to wash and completely dry the wedges/chips before cooking them; again for anti-sogginess, but I kinda knew that and didn't mind squishy sweet potato wedges
as that's part of their charm usually so I was more than pleasantly surprised by the really crispy skins we ended up with.
And it's pretty simple to clean afterwards. You can simply pop the pan out with the screw and with judicious application of a kitchen towel and a bit of shaking about it's clean enough for me after this sort of recipe. As you can see, all that's left at the end of the cooking is a pile of crispy crumbs of seasoning and pretty much no greasiness that can't be shifted with a bit of kitchen towel.
So, initial impressions are that it's a clever toy, takes up a reasonable amount of space, is really quite noisy, but the final results are not bad at all. Full review to follow in a few weeks after I've had much more of a chance to play with it, try more recipes (the booklet that came with it has a few surprises in it which I'm hoping to get to try) and put various bits through the dishwasher.
Thames Turbo Triathlon (TTT) sprint races were the ones I did last year. I missed the first one due to the skiing incident and completed the other 3/4:-
Race 2 - 347/411 (top 84.5%) overall, 39/54 (top 72.2%) in my category - 01:35:02
Race 3 - 268/341 (top 78.5%) overall, 31/49 (top 63.3%) in my category - 01:28:32
Race 4 - 219/369 (top 59.0%) overall, 22/61 (top 36.0%) in my category - 01:24:37
(category by TTT rules is F30-39, not BTF F35-39)
Oddly, I was convinced that my final race was slower than the one before it but, blow me, it was a good 'un! Need to think about what times I want to be aiming for this year. The goals at the moment are:-
Improve times through the 4 TTTs
Improve times through the Clapham Common 10Ks
Get around the Sheffield Half Marathon
Get through the London Triathlon (Olympic distance)
Set a benchmark time for the Blenheim sprint triathlon (different swim distance to the TTTs)
(beat the Blenheim time at the Windsor sprint triathlon if places come available)
Either; beat last year's 5km Swimathon time, or set a time for a fast Swimathon distance
