At the Water's Edge

Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts

**This post is a part of the first annual RA Blog Week, spurred on by RADiabetes. For more information and the full list of prompts, click here.

RA Blog Week Day 5 Prompt: "Exercise and RA – write about your favorite exercise. What do you like about it, and what keeps you going? Maybe you like to run marathons or do finger exercises. Perhaps you love to walk, or maybe stretching is your cup of tea. Maybe you are tired of being told to exercise? Give your readers the rundown on what does or does not move you."

I call this my "conquering RD" photo - a
successfully pain-free backpacking trip on
Isle Royale National Park

I've seen the issue of exercising with Rheumatoid Disease hotly debated. There's a huge push from most health organizations to exercise because it is good for your joints and will ultimately help you move better. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. I know a lot of people with RD who say exercise helps them tremendously. I also know a lot of people who say if they try to do any real exercise, they will end up in bed for a week reaping the repercussions. According to a survey of over 1,400 RA patients, conducted by the Rheumatoid Patient Foundation, 67% of respondents said that physical activity actually caused their RA pain to increase. Only 18% said physical activity caused their RA pain to decrease. So, what's the deal with exercise?

Here's the way I look at it: exercise is good for the body in so many ways, and an active lifestyle is of course healthy -- if your body is in proper condition to do it. But you have to listen to your body. For me, I can usually tell the difference between various types of pain caused by rheumatoid disease. There's the stiff, achiness that sometimes infects my joints and makes it difficult to move. In this state, I find that moving and stretching does, in fact, loosen up my joints and help me feel better. This is like the traditional "morning stiffness" that many people with rheumatoid disease experience (though not always in the morning!). Moving around and just getting on with everyday tasks often helps loosen me up and get me to feeling better. Unless...

This is it. The one you've all been waiting for. At least, it's what I had been waiting for my whole pizza-loving life. Grilled pizza. I'd heard of it, but being a grilling novice I had put off trying it until last year. I'm glad I didn't wait any longer. Tom is normally my grill master, but I've been learning, and this recipe helped give me confidence. It took a little bit of tweaking, but I think I have mastered the art of grilled pizza. I daresay it rivals even the famed brick oven pizza. And really, it's quite simple. I took my thin crust pizza recipe and just modified the cooking technique to suit the grill...as follows.

Ingredients:
For the dough:
¾ cups water
½ tsp. yeast
2 cups flour
½ tsp. salt

For delicious crust:
1/4 cup olive oil, salt, garlic powder, and dried herbs (optional) to taste -- mixed together in a small bowl.

Toppings:
Anything is good, so whatever you like! I will typically either use a prepackaged pizza sauce or do a blend of olive oil and herbs for the "sauce" which pairs particularly well with veggie pizzas. Chicken BBQ pizza is good this way, too. Mozzarella, Italian Cheese Blend, Cheddar and Feta are all good options for the cheese.

Directions:
1. Preheat grill to medium heat, ~300-350 degrees.

2. Dissolve yeast in warm water. Combine flour and salt in a large mixing bowl; then add yeast mixture.

3. Mix until well combined, then knead until the dough is smooth.

Crust should have some nice grill marks in no time flat!

4. Divide dough in half and place each half on a piece of parchment paper. Use a rolling pin to roll out each piece of dough to about 1/4 inch thick or less (mine usually end up being long, oval shapes.

5. Brush olive oil mixture on one side of each pizza crust and place oiled side down on the grill for about 30 seconds or until the outside of the crust is no longer sticky.

6. While the first side of the crust is cooking, brush the other side with olive oil; flip over and cook the second side of the crust the same way.

7. Turn off half of the burners in your grill and move pizza crusts away from direct flame. Add sauce, toppings and cheese.

8. Close the grill and cook until cheese is melted and bubbly. You may need to turn the heat up a bit since some of the burners are off and the pizza is not directly over the heat.

I made grilled pizza again the other day and decided to try a new twist. I wanted to make chicken BBQ pizza (I had grilled some chicken and frozen it, so I already had cooked chicken on hand -- part of the 40 pounds of chicken I just got cheap from Zaycon Fresh...but that's a story for another day!). Normally, I top my chicken BBQ pizza with cilantro for an extra zip. This year, cilantro grew like a weed in my garden and threatened to take over the entire thing (also a story for another day). I harvested grocery bags full of the stuff, even after giving away a bunch at work and making a couple batches of salsa.

Garden Cilantro, bundled and given away at work. This was a tiny portion of what was growing.

So, I made chimichurri with the rest (basically just cilantro, garlic and olive oil in the food processor) -- I froze the chimichurri in ice cube trays then put the cubes in a bag. After picking all of my cilantro, there actually wasn't much left in the garden and I didn't feel like scrounging. So, out came two cubes of chimichurri and I used that instead of my normal olive oil and garlic mixture to brush on the crust. It was quite tasty!