Walking Lunges With a Sandbag

The coach has been ending our sessions with walking sandbag lunges. He did give me the option of lunging with dumbbells or to do Bulgarian split squats. NO to both. If I'm lunging with dumbells, then I might as well haul a sandbag across the shoulders and walk the lunges instead. No to Bulgarian split squats either. I hate them. I recognize that they're great. The one movement all runners should be do. I will do them weekly but it's absolutely vile on PT days after heavy back squats and deadlifts. Hahahaha.

I don't bother with a 10-kg sandbag anymore. That's really too light for me now. It has to be the 20-kg. When I tried out the 20-kg, I wasn't able to haul it up in a swift clean-and-press. It wasn't the weight. It was the timing. It's also a wriggly bag with shifting sand and that was initially a bit difficult to grasp. Once I practiced a little, I got it. A straight up clean-and-press and over the head, and across the shoulders. 

Now, the coach thinks it's really cool to end all our PT sessions with this: 20-kg, 100-meters. SO DEAD. It's a great exercise to work those glutes, quads and hamstrings. The lunges are done knee-to--floor. People ask if I'm training for Hyrox Singapore in November. NO. The answer is no. I don't care about Poop-rox. All these exercises aren't unique to Hyrox; they exist pre-Hyrox. They're simply functional and great to train day-to-day strength. 

A strong set of glutes, quads and hamstrings is the only thing that would save me from breaking my bones in a fall. Piling on muscles always help with staving off osteopenia. I'm acutely aware of that. And my body needs to be in optimal condition — not for races, but to do life with minimal physical pain and hiccups. 

Hot Hot Hot Sauce!

The dear friends grew ghost peppers and harvested them. They made them into a hot sauce, and gifted a jar to us! Okaaaay, they asked if we wanted it and we shamelessly said yes. They grow all sorts of really lovely leaves and all in their home, and they have generously shared them with us. We just finished a big jar of pesto they had made.

It's a gorgeous sauce. The way is done is SOOOOooooOOOoo tasty. Intense and lovely. It's not the typical hot sauce with tomatoes. This version is done with garlic and oil, like toum. The heat is just right. Well, it could be spicier, but at this level, it can complement breakfast at 7am if the husband so chooses (I don't bother with brekkies). If it's spicier, then it would be like a lunch or dinner accompaniment. 

The husband is a happy camper. He has been having spoonfuls of this hot sauce with every thing this week, beginning with breakast. The first taste of the sauce was as is, the moment it arrived. Then it went into breakfast the next day. It goes great with scrambled eggs, frittata, an egg white scramble, Tuscan beans and Italian sausage, and pretty much everything. It also lends a good touch to pasta, buffalo chicken with rosemary potatoes and blue cheese, and all things lunch and dinner. 

I love the hot sauce too, but I don't need to slather it in all my food. I'm not eating it with everything. LOL I had it for the very first time properly with an aglio e olio fusilli and plenty of mushrooms! Much umami, many flavors. NOMS.

Pork Jowl :: คอหมูย่าง

Pork jowl is never going to be a lean cut of meat since it's heavily marbled with layers of fat. It's not a lean low-fat protein option. It's probably fattier than pork belly. Hurhurhur. Yet it's sooooo tasty. I like this in the form of Thai Issan-style grilled pork jowl (คอหมูย่าง / khor moo yang). 

However, I want the excess heavy fat trimmed away as much as I can. And that is dependent on the butcher or the line chefs in the kitchen. Most restaurants give diners to full fatty chewy oily shiny slices. There're very few restaurants who try to do it the way I like it — with as little excess fat as possible. An oxymoron, I know. But they can do it by scoring the skin and slicing it thin across the grain to distribute the fat evenly.

Years ago, I found my ideal pork jowl dish at Little Elephant. They've always been consistent in the way they slice it and render the fat. Till today, it's still gorgeous. I have bravely tried pork jowl at the restaurants around the island, and even in Bangkok. Few can do it the way Little Elephant can. I know their menu so well now that I know what dishes the kitchen seems to be stronger in, and what I absolutley would not order there, say noodles, they can't seem to do noodles well. 

I always order pork jowl at dinner. I was very pleased to see pork jowl now offered on the classic set lunch menu too. Little Elephant has a few options for set lunches on week days, and it's fairly popular with the office lunch crowd. It has no air-conditioning. The fans provide ventilation, but at mid-day, it's hot. So if you go to have lunch, go prepared to sweat. 

The waiting time for a grilled pork neck is stated as '20 minutes'. They do need to grill it. It's faster than that if your timing doesn't clash with a ton of orders going into the kitchen at the same time. At lunch, I come in at 1pm, and I always get my plate within 15 minutes. 

The grilled pork neck comes with a tangy dipping sauce of naam jiim jaew (น้ำจิ้มแจ่ว). It's mostly sweet and sour instead of spicy, made with tamarind, fish sauce, lime juice, chili flakes, and toasted rice powder. Little Elephant's version is sweeter. I'm not fond of it. I leave it be. If I want spicy, I'll take the chilli padi in fish sauce. It makes lunch so satisfying. Just don't ask me about the fat content, nutritional value and such. The egg gives me more protein.