Something about living so far from Texas, and missing Austin, has made us swing far in the direction of embracing ATX hippie culture — more than ever before. As you’ve seen over the last year, my head has added a ponytail. In addition to physical appearance, we started making kefir and kombucha, and practicing yoga. Kefir is a fermented milk product that contains high levels of different vitamins and probiotics. Our thought was that because our stomachs are still adjusting to a lot of what we eat here, we figured incorporating more probiotics into our diet would help, and kefir is one of the best ways of providing it.
The cultures resemble cottage cheese.
So every morning, Kristen changes the milk and we have a jar full of kefir that we eat with our lunch.
Kombucha, according to wikepedia, “refers to any of a variety of fermented, lightly effervescent sweetened black or green tea drinks that are commonly used as functional beverages for their unsubstantiated health benefits.” I love that last part…”unsubstantiated health benefits.” Yea, I don’t really know how or why we hopped on the kombucha bandwagon, but we did. We think it tastes good and if we receive one of those “unsubstantiated health benefits,” then we’ll take it. But beware, the picture you are about to see is scary/grotesque…
This is what Kombucha looks like while fermenting. That alien looking thing inside the tea is called a SCOBY “symbiotic ‘colony’ of bacteria and yeast”… aka nasty-raw-chicken-lookin-thing.
Every 8 days we fill these jars with newly brewed kombucha!
To really embrace our new “hippie” ways, 3-4 times a week, Kristen and I do yoga together. We have a sweet app that we use (this is my plug for the yoga app called Yoga Studio – you all should download it). Kristen has always enjoyed yoga and I have “participated” (I use that word loosely) in a few classes back in Texas. But with some joint-pain recently, I decided to give it a try.
My downward dog needs some serious help. For proper form, my legs should be straight, heels on the ground, and my back completely flat. I should look like an upside down “V”.
My flexibility may need some work, but I can “crow” and “head-stand” with the best of ’em…
All kidding aside, yoga has gotten rid of the pain I was feeling in my hip, and has helped my flexibility a ton. I can touch my toes now!!! So my encouragement to all of you would be to give yoga a try. It’s a great compliment to strength training.
I’ll end this blog with my favorite yoga pose, and one that I have fully mastered. It’s called “corpse”.
nomadic texan 