Ghee: What Is It? Why Should I Use It?

You may not have heard of ghee (pronounced with a hard "g" and silent "h") before, but when it comes to Paleo/Primal cooking, you'll find it's a staple in many kitchens. Let's take a closer look at what it is, why it's good for you, and how you might use it. 

WHAT IS GHEE?

Take grass-fed butter, heat it up to evaporate the water and let the milk solids settle to the bottom. Remove said milk solids and voila, you've got ghee. It was traditionally used for cooking in many south Asian countries such as India, Nepal, and Pakistan, but now has moved into Paleo kitchens around the world. You can actually make your own ghee like Nom Nom Paleo does, but I prefer to save time by buying it from Amazon.  Typically ghee is a solid at room temperature, looking just like butter. These pictures are right after I got it shipped to me in some hot weather, so it's a liquid here. Since the water and milk solids are not present, ghee can be stored at room temperature for months! For more on the amazing history of ghee, head over to Whole30. Did you know traces of ghee have been on pottery from 6,500 B.C.?!

WHY SHOULD I USE GHEE?
Ghee is primarily saturated fat, and by now we should all love and cherish saturated fat from grass-fed animal sources. Also, since 99.9% of the milk solids have been removed, many people allergic to casein and lactose do perfectly fine with ghee. I'm not sure if I believe in a perfect food, but this is darn close! 

WHAT WOULD I USE GHEE FOR?
I use ghee most of the time for cooking, especially sautéing, frying, etc. Basically if a recipe calls for vegetable oil to coat a pan, I use ghee. You really haven't lived if you haven't coated a pan with ghee and then fried your eggs in it. (Ok, well, maybe if you've fried them in bacon grease) I also use olive oil and coconut oil on occasion, but ghee just tastes so darn good (like buttah!) plus it has a higher smoke point due to the lack of milk solids and water. You can also use ghee in any application you would use butter. Sometimes if we have run out of Kerry Gold butter, I'll put ghee on my baked sweet potato. Or I'll even put it in my coffee with coconut oil! And I'm not gonna lie, I've been known to just drink ghee straight out of the container. The possibilities are endless!

Buy ghee from my Amazon store

CrossFit A.C.T. Garage Games Recap and Pics

This past weekend, Ditty and I had the opportunity to compete in the CrossFit A.C.T. Garage Games at CF A.C.T. in Saddle Brook, NJ. As part of the Garage Games series of CrossFit events, this was a "minor" competition where athletes could accumulate points towards the series. Although "minor," there was serious competition, with several athletes having competed in their respective Regionals as individuals. Going into this, I had not trained these specific workouts, even though I knew them. I just wanted to use the competition to stay "alive" and keep the motivation burning to train. As you'll read below, there was one, maybe two workouts that I probably would have wanted to try beforehand. 

CrossFit A..C.T. Garage Games crowd watching a demo

There were three main workouts and a fourth for the top ranked at the end of the day. With a Rx'd division and scaled division, here were the workouts and how I did:

WOD 1:

AMRAP 7 min

1000m row

Max reps squat cleans 135/95 (scaled 95/65)

I was split on how I felt about this one. I don't like rowing, nor does my short stature and light weight really lend to any stellar performance on the erg. However, I do like squat cleans. I didn't think about any kind of numbers before the weekend until the night before when my buddy, Dan, asked. He was going for 20, so I thought that was a good number. That's exactly what I hit. I got off the rower around minute 4, and had 3 minutes left. I did sets of 3s and 2s for the most part. Looking back, this is a workout that I might have benefited from practicing. Although I felt like I was moving pretty well, there wasn't much fire in me to push into the mid 20's...plus, I wasn't counting during the WOD. Out of 73 competitors, 20 reps tied me for 45th with a bunch of others. Top score was 33 by Ian Berger, Regionals qualifier.

Heat 1 ready to go 

Kacie H. from CF Apex on cleans (ended up 2nd overall)

WOD 2

AMRAP 5 min

10-7-3

OHS 115/75 (scaled 95/65)

weighted sit ups 45/25 (scaled 25/10)

SDLHP 115/75 (scaled 95/65)

Overhead squats are my nemesis, but I felt ok going into this one. The CrossFit Open in 2010 was a disaster when I went to do 120# OHS's. Since then, especially this year, I have been working on my OHS's and I was happy to get all 10 reps strung in the beginning. Unfortunately, the weighted sit up got the best of me, or rather, my shoulder. The movement called for athletes to sit in a butterfly position and hold the plate in front of their feet, then swing it up and over the head behind you where you would lay down and touch the ground with the plate with extended arms. Then you had to violently sit up with the plate in extension to bring it back in front of your feet. On my round of 7 sit ups, my right shoulder gave out and I felt a *crunch* as my torso wanted to move up from the ground, but my right arm (and weight attached to it) wouldn't let it. I eventually used momentum to get the plate up and continued with the workout, but not nearly at the same intensity. I ended up with 57 reps, just 3 reps shy of a full round, and good enough for 59th place. Top score was by Ian Berger again, with an amazing 104 reps.

me on OHS

the dreaded weighted sit up

Ditty on OHS

WOD 3

AMRAP 10 min

10 T2B (scaled k2e) (later changed to burpees)

25 double unders (scaled 75 single unders)

10 thrusters (95/65) (scaled 65/45)

Going into this workout, my shoulder was definitely feeling a strain. It was tough for me to be in an overhead wide grip position (for instance, holding a snatch over head), but I felt ok about this third WOD because everything was in a vertical plane to my torso. A surprise came when Bill, head of CF ACT, announced a change in format. Instead of toes to bar, it was going to be BURPEES. The reason was that there was only a corner of the gym with pull up bars, and it wouldn't be fair to the guys at the other end of the gym. As Bill announced this, you could hear a sea of groans ripple through the crowd. I was fine with either and was just hoping for an equalizer for the big guys who took WODs 1 and 2. 

The workout was certainly a lung burner. I kept a solid pace on burpees and dubs felt great. I knew the thrusters could slow me down, so I tried to string as many as I could. I didn't feel my shoulder during the workout which could have definitely slowed me down. In the end, I got 5+ rounds for 231 reps; good enough for 11th place.

Kurt M. of CF Apex on du's

Dan M. of CF Soar on thrusters

Overall, I got 39th place out of 73 Rx'd guys. The top five went on to compete in a 4th workout that I actually don't know what it was because we had to leave early I later found out was a 10 min workout: 15 hspu's, "Grace" (30 clean and jerks 135/95), and max c2b pull ups for women, or max muscle ups for men. The top three guys happened to all have competed at Regionals as individuals, so these were no slouches. 

In terms of the programming, I had mixed feelings. I liked the first workout and would have kept it. Although rowing and cleans are almost the exact same movement, it's a good workout and test of metabolic conditioning with strength endurance. Plus, the time domain is just right for a competition. As for the second workout, I might be biased because of my injury, but I thought the weighted sit up was just silly. To put that much torque on a joint that is already fragile is asking a lot. If they wanted weighted sit ups, we could have held the plate against our chest. I also thought the time domain was too similar to WOD 1. Instead of a 5 minute workout, program a max effort movement, such as a box jump, deadlift, etc. The third workout was a good lung burner, and I'm glad they changed the T2B to burpees. Not because I like burpees (I don't), but because T2B and a weighted sit up from before would have been very similar movements. This similarity among workouts didn't stop there. In all three workouts there was a barbell squat of some sort (squat clean in WOD 1, overhead squat in WOD 2, and thruster in WOD 3). While I'm all for squatting, I think there could have been better variety. 

Karyn Marshall (the first woman to ever clean and jerk 300#) on OHS at 56 years young

I realize there are limitations in programming a competition, so as much as I wrote my criticisms, I didn't come away with hard feelings. In fact, there were a ton of great things about the day: Overall, I thought the actual day ran extremely smoothly. Announcements were clear, heats were organized, and even the scoring system was updated live so we could all check our scores and rankings. The judges and staff ended up working basically all day, and having been in their shoes, I am grateful for their time and hard work. And at the end, the cream still rose to the top, as evidenced by the top 3 in each category. By no means do I feel like I was even close, and that's a good thing. I can walk away with more competition experience and drive to get stronger. Not to mention making more friends, as we sat next to a bunch of athletes from CrossFit Apex, another PA affiliate that we often cross paths with and had competed side by side at the Mid-Atlantic Regionals. I'm also proud that Ditty did this, as I know it was out of her comfort zone, but I think she did awesome!


 If you haven't done a competition, get out of your bubble and do one. Whether it's CrossFit, Olympic lifting, a 5k, tough mudder, thumb wrestling...whatever it is, it will make you a better person. 

Liver: Better Cold?

A short post, as tomorrow Ditty and I head up to my old stomping grounds to compete in the CrossFit ACT Games in Saddle Brook, NJ on Saturday. Considered a "minor" event in the Garage Games scoring system, it should be a good way to get that competitive fire back from Regionals without going crazy. One of my resolutions was to do more competitions, so this is the first in awhile that isn't related to the Open or Regionals. I'll be sure to update you once the dust has settled. 


Back to the topic at hand. You may have read my Liver post...if not, be sure you do after this. Anyway, people, including myself, are always coming up with more palatable ways to get down the superfood and tonight I found a way that will probably work for me from now on. I included a recipe in the old post for pate, or even not blending everything together and eating the liver like steak. This is similar, but instead of eating it hot, I ate it COLD.

artery-clogging, heart-attack-causing, delicious bacon grease

I did this tonight because something was cooking in the microwave and I was too impatient. So I ate the liver cold with solid bacon grease slathered on like butter. I'll tell you what..it was GOOD! The grease had a more substantial taste, so everything tasted more like bacon than liver. So if you're looking for the simplest way to cook liver, do this: cook your bacon first and leave the grease in the pan. Once cooked, take the bacon out and put the liver in (sliced). Let it cook until just about firm and then take out. Put everything, including the grease, in a container and put it in the fridge overnight (or a few hours). Then, enjoy whenever you want. 


And if at any point you thought "but isn't that bacon grease going to clog your arteries?" then you need to watch this. 

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...He'll Want to Be Lean and Strong!

When I was a youngster, let's say around three years of age, I believed in Santa. I bet most of you did. That Christmas Eve, my parents and I set out cookies and milk. Or as I referred to them, "tooties and murr." There's a VHS tape (If you know what that is, I know you were born before 1990) of me standing by the dining room table and just staring at the tooties. I had already had one, and it was time for bed, but I still wanted another. Behind the camera, my dad asks, "Chris, what is it?" I respond, "Tooties." "What?" "I want tooties." "It's time for bed, Santa's coming." "But I want tooties!" Needless to say, I lost that battle.

People are greedy. Especially CrossFitters. When I ask CrossFitters, whether new or old, what their goals are, they usually respond something like this: "I want to get bigger and stronger. But I also want to lean out. And I want to be a fast runner. And I want 10 muscle ups. And..." 

Wait, what? 

It's not that I don't understand where they're coming from. They realize that to get better at CrossFit, they need to be stronger and that usually includes being bigger with added muscle mass. But at the same time, they don't want to gain weight and instead want that shredded look or to be "toned." Plus, they want to get better at running, gymnastics, etc. They want more than one tootie, and as the phrase goes, if you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to want a glass of milk. 

The problem is that trying multiple strategies usually leads to a net result of zero and frustration. They may start strength training and reducing metcons, but also cut calories thereby cutting protein, fat, and carbs, thereby reducing their recovery and ultimately, their strength gains. Do you see where this is going? 

So here's my advice to you. Figure out what you REALLY want, and go for it. Can you deal with putting on some belly fat because you are upping your calories and possibly drinking dairy to get stronger? Or can you tolerate your deadlift/squat/bench numbers going down because you are in a leaning out phase? Or even worse, NOT fall prey to the sexy metcon because you know it will drive cortisol up and therefore, body fat? With any of these decisions come consequences, for good and bad. You need to decide what you TRULY want and dedicate at least three months to it. Not a week, or two weeks, or even three. Three months. And even then, some people would say it should be longer. That number is ultimately up to you and your goals, but the point is that you can't fiddle around with something short term and expect long term results. Because if you give a mouse a tootie...

always ready to eat

CrossFit for Hope Fundraiser: Greater Philadelphia recap

On June 9, 2012, various affiliates on the Greater Philadelphia region gathered in Manayunk, PA to perform the "Hope" fundraiser workout:

3 rounds of 5 stations, 1 minute of work performed at each station:

burpees

power snatches, 55/75#

box jumps, 24"

thrusters, 55/75#

chest to bar pull ups

Among the affiliates represented were CF 215, CF King of Prussia, CF Manayunk, CF Explode, CF Go Hard, CF Center City, CF Generation, and CF Delaware Valley and many more. It was a fantastic way to celebrate the CrossFit community and raise money for St. Jude's Hospital. Thank you to Micah from 215 for setting this whole thing up. 

Here are some of my favorite pics from the event that I took, plus the whole slideshow of pictures at the end. 

Where did you do the "Hope" workout? How did it feel compared to Fight Gone Bad?

Laura from KoP mid-snatch

Kyle from KoP with a modified db snatch

Kyle and his coaches aka "pit crew"

burpees!

Perrin from 215 on box jumps

Los from 215 keeping it cool

Megs from KoP keeping it close