Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

Winter makes me want soup and sandwiches, but I can only eat tomato soup three ways: plain, with skim milk and with Mexican spices. Min Jung Kim gives us the recipe for her Pumpkin Curry Soup that looks delicious and healthy.

• MinJungKim.com – Braindump v 5.0 » MJ’s Awesome Pumpkin Curry Soup Recipe

One word of warning, the Golden Curry spices are a little high in fat, so make sure you take that into account when you are calculating your caloric intake. On another note, it’s completely worth it. I’ve never been able to spice things up right without Golden Curry. You should be able to find it in your grocery store with the Asian cuisine. If not, you can order it online here:

• S&B – Golden Curry Sauce Mix

If the cold weather has made you rushing indoor for soup, here is a recipe for you that will warm your mouth and belly.

Valerie from iPortion was the first to send me a link to this video game bike controller.

• I Make Projects – VR Bike Simulator

I was so excited about it, but the specifications looked out of my league, so I emailed Mike, my personal hack-king. This project is very clever, but the components probably won’t stand up to heavy duty use. If you ride your exercise bike as much as I do during the winter, then you’ll probably have to reattach or readjust parts of this controller from time to time. You may even need to replace the most vulnerable components with repeated use.

More importantly, my house is very small, so my exercise bike sits in the living room. There’s no way that I’m going to let a Frankenstein video game controller sit in the living room with the Christmas tree and the puffy pillows. Sadly, I’m far too vain to even try this really cool controller, but that doesn’t mean that people with bigger houses can’t make something like this work. It might be ugly, but it looks like it works pretty well.

The question of the week comes from a comment from a reader:

Hi all.

I’m heading into week 4 of the WW plan with the girls from work. So far it’s going well, but I’m finding it hard with the holiday approaching. I’m getting sick of smart pop popcorn, and find myself craving things I never did before. Does anyone know some good snack ideas that are low points for the holidays?

Sally

What do you do when the feeling to snack hits you? Do you choose items that are low in calories so you can eat a lot or do you choose a small serving of a beloved food?

Help Sally out and leave your ideas on the comments here.

Elaine left this post on my entry about Nike clothes being so elitist:

• Starling Fitness » Why I’m Angry At Nike

“I have this experience every time I go to REI and most of the outdoor shops locally, not so much with tops as with bottoms. What, a woman with some hips can’t go hiking?

“I really need a pair of rain pants to keep cycling in the fall/winter, and I’m totally dreading the experience. (Suggestions welcome, actually.)”

The cool thing about REI (unlike Nike) is that they listen. They left this comment on Elaine’s weblog:

• emergency weblog » links for 2006-11-14

“I read a commentary of yours from 9/3 regarding REI not having any rainpants to fit you (Why I’m Angry at Nike). Please keep your eyes open at REI (especially REI.com) beginnig in Jan. 2007! I hope you will be pleased. If you have any questions please email me – I am personally working on this project. Take care!”

Next time you feel hopeless about the way you’re being treated, remember Elaine’s experience. She let the world know what she needed and the world listened and responded.

A big kudo to REI for releasing plus-sized exercise wear!