Home Made Gymnastics Rings

 

Last night I might home made gymnastics rings. So easy to make and they are really good. Bring on the muscle-up practice!

My oven is only 60cm diagonally across so I decided to go for some horse-shoe shapes on my first attempt at these PVC rings. I went to Nakano home centre and bought a 1m length of PVC, some sand, plastic funnel from tokyu hanz, I had some tape left from the parallettes, and I have loads of Costco aluminium foil.

1. Cut the PVC in half
2. Foil one end, tape it up tight
3. Use the funnel to fill with sand
4. Foil and tape the other end
5. Into the oven at 200C for 10 minutes.
6. Use oven gloves to wrap it round a cooking pot with a 60cm circumference.
7. Hold for 5 minutes
8. Run under cold water for 5 mintues.
9. Unwrap and empty out the sand
10. Apply "Pete Sampras" tennis racket tape.
11. Feed through cargo belt

12. Test

Spaghetti Bolognaise - Paleo Style Part II

I'm not one for trying to imitate neolithic foods that I miss on the Paleo diet, I love the paleo diet for what it is; clean eating of meat and veggies. But after Gav started eating Paleo and asked me what he could eat instead of spaghetti I did a bit of research into alternatives. Then after realising they sell shirataki noodles in any shop in Japan I decided to give them a go and made some spag-bol paleo style. The shirataki was tasteless so I'll not be doing that again. Good to know though.

I was cycling back to the office at lunch time in the sweltering heat and noticed they had 金糸瓜 (kinshi uri) on display in the local fruit shop. I know the guy from when I kept buying his apples out when I was doing the 3 day apple detox. After a quick chat I found out that he'll have them in that shop up until the end of August. They're 380 yen a pop, and are about the size of a honeydew melon.

There are lots of ways to cook a spaghetti squash, most western websites recommend either pricking it with a skewer and cooking it for an hour in the oven, or cutting it in half and cooking it for 28-35 minutes in the oven. Japanese recipe websites recommend boiling it, and you can also quickly microwave it, or crock pot it for 10 hours. Spag-bol recipes on the net go for the oven option, so I decided to go for two halves on a baking tray.

I got the bugger home and went at it with a knife, SOLID AS A ROCK!  Vegetable knife was no good so I had to saw along the equator with a bread knife.









Finally got it cut into two halves and scooped out the seeds and crap. You can roast the seeds and eat them but I couldn't be bothered with that. It's summer and it's hot.







After scooping out I laid it out on the baking paper on an oven dish.








Checked up on it after 25 minutes and I could pull strands of spaghetti off the flesh so it didn't need the full 35 minutes recommended.











Let the two halves stand for a while.









Pulled out all the spaghetti from one of them, and served it on a plate with bolognaise.









The other one got bolognaise poured over the top of it.






The flavour is not very strong, but I like it. Fills you up, is a good vehicle for eating meat, contains folic acid, potassium, vitamin A, and beta carotene. It is low in calories, averaging 42 calories per 155 grams and it makes a great cold bento!

Folic acid is known to prevent anemia.

Spaghetti Bolognaise - Paleo Style

Ingredients:
Paleo bolognaise
Avocado
Shirataki noodles

Shirataki noodles are cheap, can be bought anywhere in Japan, are made from konyaku, have no calories and taste of nothing. Seems like a waste of time putting these into my body.

I like eating Paleo for what it is, not to try and copy existing Neolithic dishes. Shirataki bolognaise was an interesting experiment, but can't compete with a roast lamb, mint sauce and baked sweet potatoes.

Avocado, Olive Oil, Balsamic

this picture is stolen,
will have to upload my own pic :-o

Great rest day snack to make the day a bit more fat biased:
Avocado, Olive Oil, Balsamic vinegar

Avocados have more carbs and fiber than you think.

sauerkraut

I don't fancy taking any supplements for Prebiotics and Probiotics. I read there's a natural way to upkeep your gut flora; by eating home-made sauerkraut. Sounds so frickin' easy it's rediculous. Chop up a red cabbage and a white cabbage, cover with salt and bang in a big pot with a plate and a weight on top for a week then serve.

 Here's what it looks like so far:

And a googled image of what I hope to achieve with this.

I'll update in a week on progress.

UPDATE

What a disaster!
After a week of the sauerkraut mix sitting in the kitchen I came home last night and could smell something weird. I lifted the top off the container and was hit with a HORRIBLE smell of rotten cabbage. There were flies moving around and I saw some maggots crawling up the inside of the container. FAILURE!
Why did it fail?
I think it was due to the plate with the weight on not being flush with the container. Fermentation will failed because of too much exposure to air and oxygen which prevented proper fermentation of the sauerkraut from taking place. With such a wide gap around the plate and a cloth loosely draped over the top it was essential wide open to the elements.
The thing was full of water so the salt did it's job though.

I'm going to buy a more professional kit and try again. Something like this.
Or I could try the crock method again. Here's a good link for that.

Q: Should the plate on top of the cabbage form an airtight seal?
A: