General Fitness article by Ben on Thursday, December 24, 2009 5:20:32 PM EST
One of my all time favorite treats during the holiday season are homemade butter tarts! I absolutely love them and have since I was a little kid. My grandma used to make them when I was younger and I remember I used to get so excited about going over to her house on Christmas eve because I always knew there would be honey baked ham and fresh, gooey butter tarts! Her house is still the first thing I think of when I smell either fresh baked ham or tarts.
Anyways this is definitely not a low-cal recipe and to be honest I wouldn't even want to know how many calories each one of these little pieces of heaven have packed in them! It's the holiday season though so indulge a little bit and enjoy this favorite holiday treat of mine!
Grandma's Homemade Butter Tarts
1 cup of raisons
1/2 cup of butter
1 cup of brown sugar
1 cup of corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of vanilla
2 eggs, lightly beaten
18 unbaked tart shells
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
In a heavy saucepan, combine the raisons, butter, sugar, syrup and salt. Heat it up on a warm stove on low heat until the butter is melted and the mixture is warm. Remove the saucepan from the heat and add the vanilla and beaten eggs.
Spoon fill the tart shells so they are 2/3 full. Do not fill them up too full or they will spill over while baking.
Bake the tarts for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees F. and bake for another 5 minutes or until the pastry is golden. Do not let the pastry filling bubble and let the tarts cool before attempting to remove them from the tart tins.
General Fitness article by Marlaena on Thursday, December 10, 2009 11:31:15 PM EST
I completed my first half marathon on the weekend in Vegas... it was a great experience! They shut down the entire Las Vegas strip for all the half and full marathon runners... they started the race off with 4 sky divers, fireworks, and Bengal tigers at the start line... there were Cheerleaders, multiple bands along the way, Elvis running around and of course a 3 minute wedding chapel couples could stop in on along the way to tie the knot... only in Vegas!
When I had made the decision to sign up for the Half Marathon I figured I'd be able to do it in an hour and 45 minutes or hopefully something close to it... I didn't know what to expect but I had 2 1/2 - 3 months to prepare so figured it was good place to start... I started training, trying to increase my speed and distance along the way, unfortunately a couple weeks in I ended up tearing my calf muscle and had to take 6 weeks off of running. I went to physio a couple times each week for over a month... I've never had a sports injury before so it was a little frustrating and painful! While rehabbing, I took up rowing to try to make up for not being able to run and I managed to get up to 7500 meters but that's when I strained my IT band... at this point I had only been able to do one test run which was 10 minutes long but because of the IT strain I had to take more time off running AND rowing and try to recuperate... all said and done I ended up having about 2 and a half weeks to prepare for the race...
In those last couple weeks before the race I could only run every other day and increased my time by 10 minutes each time to avoid any further injuries... I was only able to do the full 13.1 miles once and I only ran on the treadmill up until the actual day of the race as I didn't want to risk re-injuring my calf. I was a little stressed about my time and how I was going to feel seeing as it had been over 2 months since I had ran outdoors...
The morning of the race I headed out to Corral 3 in the parking lot of Mandalay Bay and started to warm up while I waited for my groups wave start... it was amazing to run down the entire strip with all that was going on and I was making pretty good time... I had ran a little over 8 miles by the hour mark and had started to feel a little tired around the 10 mile mark but kept on going in hopes to finish somewhere around my original time that I had set of 1:45
I crossed the finish line with a time of 1 hour 44 minutes and 41 seconds, finished 1009th out of 17,827 (1/2 marathon runners) 207 out of all the women, and 35th in my age group, so all things considered I think I did pretty well and am happy with my time!
General Fitness article by Ben on Sunday, November 29, 2009 3:42:07 PM EST
I won my boxing fight the other night via 3rd round TKO. It was a really hard fight and I fought an incredibly tough guy from Vancouver Island, B.C. I give my opponent a ton of credit. He came into the fight in great shape, was really strong and he hit like an anvil! The fight went back and forth throughout all 3 rounds and we battered each other with both lefts and rights, each knocking the other down during the fight. The fight was eventually stopped late in the third round because of a deep cut that I opened up over his left eye from a solid right hand. It was after an awesome flurry of punches where we were both able to land some pretty big shots! It was a great fight and a very satisfying victory and hope that maybe we can do it again in 2010!
General Fitness article by Ben on Friday, November 27, 2009 2:48:05 AM EST
I'm boxing again tomorrow night for the first time in over 15 years. It has been a lot of hard work and a very long road to get back into fighting shape but I made weight tonight and now hopefully most of the hard work should be behind me. I managed to get down to a svelte 184.5 lbs. which is about 17 lbs. lighter than I was when I started training for this 10 weeks ago. My opponent still has to make weight by tomorrow at noon and as long as he does, we'll be duking it out later in the evening!
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