Life Transplanet

The thing Britton and I do for fun and exercise is take walks. We usually go to our closest park, Ramseier Farm Park in Greeley. But in a given month we go to almost every park in Greeley. So this weekend we found ourselves in Loveland and took a wrong turn. I saw what looked like a park and thought it would be fun to walk around it while the weather is still nice. We were in for more than the regular park walking experience!

Me and a huge dog- The sculpture behind is cool too -the body progressively gets larger and larger until the feet are the most distinct things

Benson Sculpture Garden in Loveland is half park and half art exhibit. There has to be about 100 different bronze and other forms of sculpture. There are a couple of bridges and wetland areas as well. The sculptures are mostly of nature and historical figures. There are lots of horses, cowboys, and settlers, but also things like African lions, sea otters and some abstract sculptures as well. Around every corner there was a new one that I liked better than the last. It was a cool find to say the least!

Britton with the bench guy

One thing about my job, is that it is always something new. I have worked in tobaco prevention and education for most of my time with the health department and continue to do a component of that with half my time, but I have also started to branch off into the “healthy eating, active living” (HEAL) side of things which is basically community obesity prevention and interventions. Both obesity and tobacco use cause the majority of preventable deaths and disease -cancers, heart diseases, strokes, diabetes, etc. So it is definitely important work.

Recruiting for the cooking class at Milliken’s Beef and Bean Day

Even before this new assignment at work, I’ve always been interested in nutrition and good food. But I’ve never been much for the cooking side of things. Eventhough I know that people who cook more at home tend to be healthier than those who eat out, I still just never got that into cooking.I love to eat good, whole, homemade, delicious and nutritious food, but always thought of cooking as a pain and only something Britton and I had time to do on the weekends. The work week usually meant (and sometimes still means) a quick throw-together of pasta or rice, frozen vegetables and fish or chicken.

It is still hard to fit in time to cook, but ever since I have been coordinating and collaborating to help facilitate a program called “Cooking Matters” in Milliken I’ve been intrigued with trying a few new things. In Cooking Matters we have a nutrition professor from CSU (Fort Collins) as well as another health educator helping to teach the course which is primarily geared at the underserved populations.

Everyone always has their usual bag of tricks when it comes to preparing food (like our evening throw-togethers), so a healthy cooking class helps to open your eyes to the wonders of all sorts of foods.

Cumin-Would be nice to grow in the garden -I wonder if it would do well in PR

In fact, I think I’ve found my new favorite spice: cumin! I’ve never even paid much attention to it until in the class we made hummus -which is just basically pureed garbanzo beans, garlic, salt and cumin -so easy! And the cumin makes all the difference! It is also what makes Mexican food so delicious. Not only that, but this spice, like many spices boasts health benefits as well such as being a good source of iron, helping with digestion, and even cancer prevention!

Anyhow, we had a bout of cold, rainy weather this week and weekend, so for fun, we stayed in and cooked up a bunch of food. Some of these included:

Hummus with pita chips
Pearl Barley and vegetable chicken soup
Chai tea
Enchilada lasagna -slice up whole grain tortillas into strips about the size of lasagna noodles -do not cook! In a cooking pan sautee chicken, add enchilada sauce, can of tomatoes, lots of spices like cumin and oregano, sliced bell peppers (and jalapenos if you like it hot), black olives, etc. Put this mixture on top of the strips of tortillas in a large dish (13×9) and layer as you would lasagna. Add shredded cheese and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Uncover for another ten if you like the cheese browned. Let sit for a bit. Add fat free greek yogurt or sour cream if desired on top.
Apple Crisp -Made with about 5 fresh apples with the skin still on sliced to about an 1/8 inch. Pumpkin pie spices (ginger, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon), brown sugar and a tiny bit of flour. For the topping (the crisp): A little butter, brown sugar, quick oats, flour and more spices mixed together and put on top. Then bake in the  350 degree oven for about 30-45 minutes.

Slice of Carrot Cake!

Betty Crocker’s Homemade Carrot Cake -Made with 3 cups or about 8 freshly grated carrots and applesauce in a 1 to 1 complete exchange of the oil and decreased the sugar from 2 cups to 1 1/2 cups. Also added nutmeg, ginger, and cloves in addition to the cinnamon that was called for. Added chopped walnuts. And made the cream cheese frosting Betty Crocker called for (but made with lower fat neufchatel cheese). This was SOO good. And not too terrible nutrition wise!

Yum! Lasagna

Then last night we cooked up traditional lasagana only we used ground turkey in place of beef and added a lot of vegetables.

Cooking is still a pain with all the prep work of chopping and dicing, recipe reading and substituting and of course the cleaning up afterward, but the results are sooo delicious and so much better than any pre-processed options out there.

So while I started out as the reluctant coordinator of this cooking class, I am definitely turning into a convert! Plus I’ve been able to meet all sorts of nice people in the class as well. I would suggest to anyone who has “food issues” -like being overweight, picky, or a fast-food fiend that the best help is a cooking class! Very practical and fun! You control what is in your food and therefore what goes into your body. It is a freeing feeling. Cooking matters! It really does!

We think Britton has West Nile Virus. He’s had a headache, fever and body aches for a couple of days. He decided to stay home sick and work from home Friday. He’s been feeling a little better but still kind of strange he says. Anyway, since he was in Greeley I asked if he would meet up with me and my co-workers down at Lincoln Park for a free BBQ meal the Greeley Stampede was putting on. I don’t know if it was to butter us up because of last year’s new policy to charge admission, but I’m always up for free food. Some people said they may not charge admission this year (2011), but according to their website they are still planning on it.  In any case, it was actually pretty good for a bbq and fun to see all sorts of people from Greeley come out! We even ran into one of the people who used to rent the basement bedroom from us, our friend Bob!

With some of my co-workers -Andrew, Marjorie, Kelly and me

Since we were downtown we thought about and  decided that Saturday morning we should ride our bikes down to the Farmers Market since we hadn’t been yet this summer. So we did! There really wasn’t too much in the way of local produce yet, but we picked up some tamales and a pretzel. Then I thought we should swing over and visit with my friend Michelle who works at the Greeley Freight Station Museum! Britton’s grandpa used to have a huge set in his basement, so I thought Britton might get a kick out of it.

The Building for the Train Museum

It is located right next to the Farmers Market Square, or the old Train Depot (680 10th Street). The museum building looks like an old warehouse or something, but inside it houses 20.5 scale miles of miniature railroad track and lots of mini trains that are set in a scene in Oregon in the mid 1970s. There are a total of 2,000 train cars!

In this part you can see logging and an old Greeley Monfort Feed Lot Train Car

For the set, the attention to detail is unreal and must have taken the staff and volunteers a ton of time to put together. In addition to all the mini trains, there’s also a full size caboose that you can climb in and check out. From what I understand a lot of this was the private property of the former owner of the Greeley Tribune (Greeley’s newspaper). When he sold the paper and a few other newspapers, he ramped up his train set. Eventually he decided this was something that the public should see and started a museum. It is set up to eventually become a Greeley public museum when he dies.

We had a lot of fun and thank Michelle for letting us visit it and her!

This is the city scene…down the street you can see my face in the mirror like a billboard -lol

Me at the Greeley Freight Station Museum

Britton in the train museum

Britton and I love to take walks. We try to walk for 20-40 minutes every day. It’s a great way to spend time together, vent and decompress from our day and of course get some exercise. Usually we take Schnoodle and go around Ramseier Farm Park as it is next to our neighborhood. It is a great park and everyone is out with their kids and dogs. And often when we are just driving around we go to Bittersweet Park or Sandborn (Westlake) Park. We also absolutely love Glenmere Park. That is probably our favorite.

But sometimes going to the same old parks gets, well, old. Today was lovely weather so after we did a few errands we decided to take a walk. But where? I told Britton I wanted to go to a park I hadn’t ever been. Was that possible in Greeley? He remembered a park that he had been to as a kid, and I’m so glad he did. It’s called the Josephine Jones Park in Greeley after an active Greeleyite. Here’s a little history of Josephine B. Jones.

Me at Josephine Jones Park

It is a beautiful expanse of xeriscaped land (apprx 36 acres) that stretches from the former home of Jones at 2631 52nd Ave Ct in Greeley (now the Greeley Forestry Department’s headquarters) all the way nearly to Highway 34 on the south. It crosses the ditch and has a small pond, playground area and a gravel walking path. Quite a few joggers were zipping past us enjoying less impact on their joints and the natural area.

Park looking southeast toward the pond and playground equipment

It was a happy surprise similar to Houston Gardens or Evans Riverside Park. I definitely think we’ll be back! What a nice park.

We’ve been noticing how our energy level rises with the warm weather and drops with the colder weather. If the weather outdoors is a barometer for our energy and health (or is it vice versa?) then when these temperatures took a dive from the high 60s into the  deep negative zone (was it really -30 out?!), so did our health! Britton and I were both out with fever, sneezing, coughing, stuffiness, and gunk for most of this week…and we’re still trying to come out of it. The cold brought us a cold!

We usually don’t get sick, but this stuff laid us out. We took two days off work (Britton still worked from home on one of them, the workaholic). The dry, dry air from the furnace only made it worse, and our little room humidifier pooped out on us. So we were dry and staticky and feeling yucky. But, I would rather have that than no furnace at all, like the animals outside…

Speaking of which, Britton built the chickens their own “furnace” with the heat lamp, a blanket covering and extra straw in their coop inside the greenhouse. And it worked! It never went below 0 in the coop! And during the day when the sun was up, it was in the 50s when everywhere else it hadn’t hit the postive numbers.

Even though we were all stuffed up and stuffed in the house, it was nice spending some time together with Britton, dozing in and out of sleep, taking long hot showers, hanging out in our robes all day, playing with the pets, making chicken and barley soup, watching old movies and daytime TV that we NEVER see. (For those of you who don’t see daytime TV, you are missing out on some of the weirdest shows out there -soap operas; infomercials; old syndicated shows; and lots of commercials urging you to sue people, to go to a vocational school, and, of course, to buy cold medicine!)

So, while it was kind of fun (minus all the tissues, hacking and lack of energy) to stay home together and hang out in this other world we never see, I’m ready to be out and about again. I am ready for spring, summer, and Puerto Rico. I am ready to be done with this COLD and be on the rise.