Homeroom Meeting

I shall lure you in with some quality food porn…

While I have your attention, let me lay out the agenda for today’s meeting.

• Physique 57 Challenge update
• Wellsphere blog awards
• Food-purchased-on-Internet bargain of the month
• New Springpad partnership (you can save and print my recipes!)
• The Free Cookie Guy!

Stay with me…

Banana-maple syrup oats with chocolate chips in a dying almond butter jar

1) The Physique 57 Challenge is going well. Week One is in the books and I’m no worse for wear; perhaps just a little bit tighter (?). It’s really too soon to tell. What I’m loving, however, is the challenge itself! I didn’t anticipate this, but just the fact that I have a sense of needing to see this through for the full four weeks has kept me motivated so far. It also compensates for any boredom I might feel from having to repeat the videos quite often. It’s sort of a bad-ass feeling, actually, knowing I’m going to push through all these difficult moves for a whole four weeks, no matter what.

For anyone unfamiliar with Physique 57, it might be interesting for you to know what equipment is required to perform the workouts at home, other than the DVDs, of course. The videos tell you to have a set of light and medium weights on hand, as well as a playground ball (think dodgeball) and a sturdy chair/sofa back at hip height to serve as a “ballet barre.”

I have the weights but strangely enough I keep neither a ballet barre nor recess equipment in my apartment, so I’ve had to be creative. Believe it or not, my foam roller works quite well in place of a playground ball, as it has about the same diameter as the ball and spends most of its time squeezed between my thighs anyway. Heh.

As for the ballet barre, I actually rest my hands on a drawer from my bureau pulled out all the way for balance. There are some segments where you need to lean on your “barre” a bit, but it’s not intended to be a full support anyway, so I find that just pulling my drawer out provides all the balance I need.

I will just leave to you the task of making a that’s-what-she-said joke about squeezing thighs and pulling drawers out.

2) The Wellsphere people’s HealthBlogger awards. Not much to tell here, but hey, you could vote for me if you really wanted to. [Insert your full vocabulary of happy emoticons here.]

for Diana D. http://www.soapandchocolate.com

3) Best internet bargain of LIFE! In my humble opinion, at least. I am fully aware that many people could care less (more?) about coconut oil, but I love it and find it quite expensive, especially when looking for the organic, extra-virgin, cold-pressed, basically-performs-alchemy variety. A 14oz jar will generally set you back about $15.

This is a lot more than 14oz:

This head-sized (54oz) jar downed me a mere $21.39, so I’m still coming down off my shopping high. Score for yourself here.

4) SPRINGPAD! This is really exciting.

is a free online personal organizer that helps people get things done. From food and entertainment to parenting and managing the day-to-day, springpad makes it easy for you to collect, use and share content from bloggers, brands and trusted friends to help organize your life. To date, the springpad community of hundreds of food bloggers and thousands of members have already collected and shared more than 50,000 recipes and created more than 15,000 weekly meal plans.

I really encourage you to check this website out—it makes all my nerdiest list-obsessed bits tingle. But more importantly, this service will allow you to save my recipes to a centralized database that you keep within your springpad account. From there, you can print them out (not the ghetto way!), generate shopping lists, make a meal plan, etc. And yes, there is an app for that!

So going forward, I will include a “save it!” springpad button with each recipe that I publish here. It looks like this:

When you click that button, a window will pop up, linking you to your springpad account (or prompting you to create a new one, as the case may be). From there, it’s up to you how you’d like to organize your recipes (which will be mostly mine, no doubt)! Tres cool, no? You can even sign in using your Google account, if you like to link such things.

Here is a screenshot of what my recipes will look like in springpad:

I have added the “save it!” button retroactively to the following recipes:

• Cabbage Cookies
• Pumpkin Lentil Stew
• Pulp Crackers
• Pumpkin Pie Crockpot Oats
• Raw Tohini Soup
• Raw Fudge Brownies
• Turkish Delight Blondies
• Stoopid Easy Vegan Coconut Ice Cream
• Tibetan Ratatouille
• Slow Cooker Winter Mole
• Saag-y Squash

I really encourage you to take advantage of this website! I mean, how many food blogs do you read? More than you care to admit, right? And bookmarking all those recipes can get out of control—I should know. Well, gone are the days of cut-and-paste, kids. Save anything from any website (and this goes for more than just recipes) into one centralized account on springpad and you’ll make your life a whole lot simpler, trust me.

5) Last but not least, the Free Cookie guy! By following him on Twitter, I found Scott handing out vegan orange chocolate chip cookies on the south side of Union Square Thursday night. Just look out for the inflatable green couch!

He just hangs out and makes friends. The Power of the Cookie is strong, as we all know, so methinks Scott has a veritable goldmine in this free cookie gig, though without any particular agenda as far as I can tell. Novel concept!

And with that, meeting adjourned! Happy November, and I hope the time change didn’t throw anyone for a loop (or a hangover…wink).

As if the pop-up homeroom wasn’t bad enough, I shall shamelessly assign you homework as well: Cast your Top Health Blogger vote on Wellsphere and hook yourself up on springpad! You’ll be rewarded with a hall pass to use the potty.