Year: 2005

I went swimming this morning. Big deal, right?

Up until year 7, I went to 2 or 3 times a week in swimming season as well as school PE classes and then club on Friday nights. Once I hit year 8, the training went and I went to club every two weeks or so. Then that stopped in year 9 and all I had left was school carnivals and PE Class. I was not the best swimmer but I still could hold a reasonable pace.

Then I finished school and in all honesty, I don’t think I have done actual lap swimming since the carnival in year 12 that was 2002, it is almost 2006.

Since the summer of 2001/02, I think I have swum at the beach three times? In a pool maybe five times? If I said I lived in Ukhta, Russia, that answer may be quite reasonable but I don’t I live in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, we are on the coast line with glorious beaches up and down the coast line and a public pool 3 mins away, yet I can count on my hands the amount of times I have gone in the water.

Since I have the summer off, I decided it was a great time to stop talking about exercising and actually do something. Since it is too hot to ride a bike and if I go out walking I will just take a camera and not get any exercise, swimming reasoned to be the best idea, so I picked up a pair of speedos on Saturday, all ready to go on Tuesday morning, well I didn’t have a cap and you can’t swim without a cap, so I bought one on Tuesday night before work. Couldn’t go on Wednesday morning as I finished at midnight the night before which meant by the time I got up it would be too hot to go training. Then Matthew said he was to start work at 6am on Thursday, I thought great! That gives me a reason to be up early, I can drop you at work then go the pool!

So I did, I got there, paid my admission, put on my cap and got into the pool along with all the others there already.

I started off with freestyle, trying to go at a reasonable pace, yet I got to the other end of the 25m pool and had to have a breather, I eventually got up to doing 75m sets between breaks. After 15mins of freestyle I switched to breaststroke for another 20mins and then finished off with another 15mins of freestyle.

Back in the day at club, I used to dive in and do freestyle for 18m before I needed a breath and was pretty good at doing 5 strokes between breaths. Yeah well that was a while ago. Today for the most part it was stroke, breath, stroke, breath, however I did after a while get back into doing stroke, stroke, breath, stroke, stroke, breath 🙂 This is going to be a long process but worth it.

Observations on my swimming today.
Increase the kicking power; don’t let the arms do all the work.
Improve breathing.
Your technique is lazy, concentrate on stroke movement.
Get some goggles; chlorine eyes aren’t fun.

That is what I call it if you take a Chicken Risotto recipe and replace the chicken with mince and the rice with pasta, etc etc. One thing that is important in my cooking is that I like to use what is already in the house, so if I cooked this next week it may have totally different vegetables in but still the same idea: To create great tasting meals with what is already in the kitchen.

I borrowed Campion & Curtis in the Kitchen (Essential Recipes for the Modern Australian Home) from the library the other day, I came across a basic chicken risotto recipe and thought mmm I like the sound of that, so that is what I planned to cook for dinner tonight but we had no chicken or risotto rice so I improvised … a lot.

Beef Mince Pasotto
1 carrot
1 onion
1/2 capsicum
600gish mince
1/2 pack pasta
1L beef stock
Tin of tomatoes
Mushrooms
Butter
Mixed herbs
Garlic

Bread to serve

Dice the carrot, onion and capsicum. Melt the butter in a large pot and add vegetables, cook for a couple of minutes, add the mince, taking time to break it up into nice small bits. Add the pasta and gradually add the beef stock. Bring to a gentle boil, leave covered for a while till pasta is partially cooked, remove lid, add tin of tomatoes and herbs, and bring to a full boil to reduce the liquid a bit. Add the mushrooms and leave to boil moderately till the pasta is cooked.

Serve with freshly made bread 🙂

It is sort of a cross between savoury mince and spaghetti bolognese. Doesn’t look like anything special but it tastes quite nice.