by Henry Gould – Dec 2nd, 2020

If you’ve traveled through Mexico, you’ve likely seen the roadside stands of chickens cooking, either whole on a rotisserie or in pieces on a charcoal grill. They always look amazing, but sometimes it can be intimidating to order food you’re not familiar with, especially if you don’t speak the language.

The good news is Mexican “Roadside Chicken” is a secret many cooks have been happy to share, and is incredibly easy to make at home. Some recipes call for a complex marinade of lots of ingredients. Those are fine, but this is easier. It also leaves you time to make the quick green salsa in a mortar and pestle, or a blender.

Feel free to cook this on a barbecue, but be careful of flareups as the fat from the skin renders. Ideally you want a low and slow cooking time of about 40 minutes with lots of turning to ensure it cooks through completely without burning.

Serve the chicken on its own, over a salad, or with warm corn tortillas.

Mexican Roadside Chicken w/ Quick Green Salsa

• 8 chicken thighs, bone-in, skin on
• 1 tbsp smoked Spanish paprika
• 1 large pinch ground cinnamon
• 1 tbsp cumin seeds
• Sea salt
• Extra virgin olive oil
• For the salsa
  • 1 bunch green onions
  • 5 serrano peppers
  • Sea salt
  • 1 pinch oregano
  • 2 limes
  • 2 garlic cloves, peeled
  • 2 dried chile de arbol (optional)

Put the chicken in a large bowl and season generously all over with sea salt, making sure to sprinkle each piece. Drizzle with olive oil then add the cinnamon, cumin seeds and smoked paprika and toss to coat and combine. Allow to marinate for anywhere from 15 minutes to overnight.

Preheat your oven to 425F with a large roasting pan in the oven, which you will cook the chicken on. You want it to be hot when you put the chicken on it.

Once the oven is heated, take the pan out, drizzle with a small amount of olive oil and spread around so the whole surface is coated. Add the chicken thighs skin side DOWN, leaving some room between each piece. Put the pan in the oven for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, take the pan out and drain away some of the fat that has rendered or mop up with a paper towel. Turn the chicken over skin side up and put back in the oven for another 10-15 minutes until the skin is crispy (but not black or burnt).

To make the salsa in a blender, chop the green onions and serrano peppers into pieces and add to the blender. Sprinkle with salt, oregano, the juice of the limes and the garlic cloves. Add a little water and blend until combined. Add more lime juice, salt, or water to get a nice salsa consistency. If you have chile’ de arbol on hand (who doesn’t???) add two of them to the finished salsa to soak and infuse.

To make the salsa in a pestle and mortar, pound the garlic cloves with salt and oregano until a paste. Then add the chopped serrano peppers (1/2 at a time) and pound until you make a paste. Then add the chopped green onions and pound again until consistent. Squeeze in the juice of the lime and some water if needed. Adjust the seasoning… it should be very spicy, salty and limey.

The post RECIPE – Mexican “Roadside Chicken” w/ Quick Green Salsa appeared first on Yard Athletics.

By Henry Gould – April 23rd, 2019

This is an amazing salad for a bunch of reasons: it tastes great, it goes with just about anything (cold roast chicken, smoked / fresh fish, boiled eggs, soup), and it could not be easier to make. Also, if your fridge is relatively stocked with some basics like a cucumber, yogurt and lemon, all you need is some fresh dill and you’re in business. If you didn’t have a lemon, vinegar works great as well.

Some people insist on salting the peeled and sliced cucumbers 30 minutes before dressing, just to remove some of the water content and season them a bit better. If you want to do this, by all means, but I don’t find it that necessary.

The salad is also a relatively blank canvas, so it goes great with other additions like sliced red onion, radishes, extra herbs (fresh parsley, mint, basil) and even spices like caraway or coriander seeds.

Enjoy!

Cucumber Salad w/ Dill, Yogurt & Lemon

• 1 long English cucumber, peeled
• Plain greek yogurt, 2% milk fat or higher
• 1 lemon, zested and juice reserved
• Sea salt
• Pepper
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Fresh Dill, washed and finely chopped. 
• Dijon Mustard

Take your peeled cucumber, slice down lengthwise then scoop out the seeds. Slice the cucumbers into half moons. Put into a big bowl and sprinkle all over with sea salt, pepper and fresh dill.

In a separate bowl, put a heaped spoon of greek yogurt, the juice of the lemon and the zest, some olive oil and a smallish spoon of dijon mustard. Mix together thoroughly and then have a taste. It shouldn’t be too salty as you’ve already salted the cucumbers.

Pour a few spoonfuls of the dressing over the cucumbers and mix well. If you like more dressing then go wild, but sometimes less really is more…

The post RECIPE – Cucumber Salad w/ Dill, Yogurt & Lemon appeared first on Yard Athletics.

By Yard Athletics – April 5th, 2019

Oh baby, do we have a special edition of 20 Questions for you today.

Obviously we are #YardHard faithful at heart, but that doesn’t mean we don’t put the weights down every once in a while and get a sweat somewhere else. All-City Athletics is a perfect example of that “somewhere else”.

Introducing Anna Farrant and Jordan Bowers, co-founders of the insanely popular Gastown boxing gym whose workouts will have you feeling like Mike Tyson – minus the tigers and face tattoos.

If you haven’t been to All-City, it’s as warm and welcoming an environment as Yard Athletics, but think punching bags and left-right combos instead of kettlebells and squats.

We are huge fans of All-City so wanted to know what makes Jordan and Anna tick… find out below if Ketogenic diets are bogus, where the best dive bar is, and the 5 worst words to hear in an All-City workout.

Enjoy!

https://duer.ca/collections/womens

https://allcityathletics.ca/

10. Fastest time up the Grouse Grind?

Anna: Woof.

Jordan: You go on ahead, and carry me with you.

11. Best post-workout snack?

Anna: Avo Beet Smoothie from Body Energy.

Jordan: Like what do I eat, or what would be the best? I spend a lot of money at Tacofino.

12. All-City aside, what’s your favorite workout?

Anna: Lifting weights at Yard #NotAnAd

Jordan: Sprints! I’ve been throwing some weights around with Loaded Athletics and the Yard Hard crü. So, sprints and chin ups if chin ups weren’t so damn ruthless.

13. Ketogenic diets; way of the future, or unsustainable fad?

Anna: I think eating fats has had a bad rap but I also think people take it too far. Eating bacon or cheese exclusively cannot be good for you. But I’m not a doctor **see Jordans answer

Jordan: Unsustainable. Also, what is the environmental impact of all this coconut harvesting? But really, the way we raise and slaughter animals is brutal and gross and contributes to global warming. Let’s lay off the bacon. Probably scrapping all the wheat and refined carbs is good idea. Can’t we brew beer without hops too? Asking for a friend. Messes with your estrogen, right?

14. Favorite dive bar? 

Anna: I grew up in shit bars and now they have lost their appeal.

Jordan: I’d love a crispy brewski in the park any day. Low overhead.

15. Favorite “classy” bar?

Anna: Pourhouse! Best cocktails 🏽

Jordan: Lighting is everything. The drink is max $6, the atmosphere is the other $12.

16. Dream vacation?

Anna: Puglia on the coast of Italy.

Jordan: Boxing Camp vacation in Cuba or Mexico. I told Anna I want to do an ocean vacation where you sail and dive around collecting trash out of the ocean. I swear I’m not a nature boi, but I did buy a pair of OCIN swim trunks made from recycled polyesters and nylons.

17. Best advice you’ve ever been given?

Anna: Trust yourself and you will know how to live.

Jordan: ”I wouldn’t think too much into it.”

“Everything is always working out for us.”

“Stop talking and do it.”

18. Pet peeve in the gym?

Anna: Boxing gym – when people shadow box profiled to the mirror but watch themselves ; Regular gym – headphones on which equals loud grunting or nosies they don’t think everyone else can hear.

Jordan: When peeps are punching from their waist not their face.

19. Plans for the future?

Anna: Head to Hawaii! Oh and live a blessed life.

Jordan: They are secret right now, even from me.

20. The 5 words no All City client ever wants to hear?

The post 20 Questions w/ Anna Farrant & Jordan Bowers of All-City Athletics appeared first on Yard Athletics.

By Henry Gould – Sept 19th, 2018

I’m not that old, but in my short stint on earth it feels like I’ve lived through a lifetime of diet and exercise fads. Atkins (low carb, high protein, high fat), South Beach (low carb, high fiber, low fat), Paleo (eating like a neanderthal), Tom Brady (no tomatoes or strawberries), Tae Bo (Billy Blanks doing air punches), the Diet Coke diet (only drinking Diet Coke) and the cotton ball diet (cotton balls soaked in liquid; likely to kill you)… how does one keep up!

The ketogenic diet has been getting a ton of press recently, not only for its celebrity adherents (Kardashians, Gwenyth Paltrow, Lebron James) but for the incredible claims attributed to it: weight loss, increased energy, even things like reduced autism and epilepsy symptoms.

Now, a true ketogenic diet is probably something quite different than what your friend at work did to lose 10kg’s before their wedding. Strictly speaking, a ketogenic diet is one that puts the body in a state of “ketosis”, which means using predominantly ketones (fat molecules) for energy, rather than glucose. A true ketogenic diet would be comprised of 60-75% fat, with the rest in protein and little to no sugar.

To really understand the basis for the ketogenic diet, we need to do a quick history and nutrition lesson. Firstly, humans have been on the earth for approximately 200,000 years. During this time, humans were hunter gatherers, eating what they found or killed. This meant plants they could forage and animals they could hunt and eat. Because animal fat is such a good source of energy, evolving to eat and process fat is something we are well adapted to do. On the flip side, sugar occurs quite rarely in nature outside of fruit and honey, so this would have almost never been available as an energy source. Therefore, our body developed a process for dealing with too much sugar in the bloodstream: insulin. If we don’t regulate our blood sugar, we can easily slip into a coma and die. Not good! This is also what diabetes is; an inability to regulate ones blood-sugar levels.

In addition to regulating our blood sugar, insulin works to help the body store excess sugar as fat. Because glucose is a great source of energy, the body figures it might need some for later. Keep in mind, the body still hasn’t caught up to the fact that we now live in warm houses with unlimited access to food, so if it keeps getting fed high sugar foods with more energy than it needs, it’s going to keep storing this as fat indefinitely.

Suffice to say, the diet we evolved on (plants, animal protein, fat, low sugar) and the one common in the developed world (processed foods and carbohydrates) are two very different things. Agriculture brought the advent of crops, and with these crops came more grains and more sugar. Although this was great for feeding a lot of people and building civilizations around, it has tended to have adverse effects on the health of the masses. Sugar is highly addictive, cheap and plentiful, so it makes sense why food companies pump it into just about everything.

Circling back on the ketogenic diet, lately I think it’s been used more as a buzzword and less as something followed to the letter of the law. Instead of eating 70% fat hoping to stay in “ketosis” (something unrealistic over a lifetime of eating), what people really mean is a diet low in sugar, low in refined carbohydrates (rice, pasta, bread) and high in protein, fat, and vegetables. Despite what you may think, vegetables do have a significant amount of carbohydrates in them, but because a lot of these are locked into “fiber”, the body is less able to extract them then it would a spoon full of sugar.

Personally, I feel that eating in this way is suited both to our evolutionary development, as well as what modern nutrition tells us is healthy over the course of a lifetime. Science has more or less overturned the previous thinking that eating fat made you fat, when in reality it’s sugar (and insulin) that regulate fat storage.  Apart from that, gauging expectations in any “diet” is important, keeping in mind that moderation is key. Kale might be good for you, but that doesn’t mean eating 2 bunches of kale a day is extra good for you. In fact, it might actually be bad!

Do your research, read both sides of the argument, and consult the advice of doctors and nutritionists before starting any drastic health changes.

The post A Few Thoughts On The Ketogenic Diet… appeared first on Yard Athletics.