Mexican Oregano Potatoes

Went to a fabulous spin class followed by a very relaxing yoga class this Monday. Gosh, I just loved it. Then did nothing for the rest of the week. Well, that's out of the way.

Tonight we will be having roasted potatoes with Mexican oregano for dinner. They are supposed to have basil, but the containers look quite alike. Which reminds me of a time in my childhood...

My mother used to feed us goulash for dinner. A lot. Not authentic goulash or anything fancy, just where you make red sauce and instead of putting it over spaghetti, you put elbow noddles in it. I was never very fond of it. Not sure why - I loved spaghetti, but somehow the noodles already in it just didn't work for my picky kid self. Mom says I was extremely particular about textures, so maybe the noodles got mushy or something.

One night she was making it. I was hanging around at her side and watching, most likely mentioning that I didn't care for it as a dinner choice. She was probably saying, "Well, you can eat it anyway." She reached in the cupboard for the large plastic thing of oregano with the shaker and shook some in. Except it happened that the cinnamon was also in the same sort of large plastic thing and happened to have no shaker. Yep, pile of cinnamon right on top of the goulash. My mom looked at me. I looked at her. I'm sure we had horrified expressions. She began to remove the top of the cinnamon pile, but of course some had already incorporated itself into the tomato sauce. I opened my mouth to protest and, before any words could escape, mom fiercely whispered, "Don't tell your sisters and you can have grilled cheese."

At the dinner table, my sisters were all, "This tastes funny," and my mom was all, "No it doesn't. It's the same as always." Then they were all, "How come Jenny doesn't have to eat it?" and my mom was all, "You know she doesn't like goulash..."

Fitness Report

Not a lot of time to write lately, but here's a quick story to let you know that I HAVE been working out.

My fabulous friend gave P and I free 30-day passes to her gym. We have been using them to the max - went nearly every day over the week break. Feels SO GOOD to be doing gym stuff again. Any stuff again! Like yoga. Especially Yin Yoga taught by this teddy bear of a guy named Todd (I think).

Yin Yoga involves holding poses longer to really get the stretch. You mostly concentrate on the back, hips and groin. It can be brutal to hold a stretch for 5 minutes, but it is also so good.

Picture this: We are lying flat on our backs. We put one leg up in the air. We catch hold of our foot (or use the yoga strap if we cannot reach it - only crazy people can actually reach it so forget that catch hold part and just imagine the strap part). Then the foot goes way out to the side to stretch the inner thigh. This actually feels really good and we do not hate this like we hate the frog thingy that we do at the end that pretty much sucks.

So this particular night, it is pretty crowded. I realize my foot is going to go really close to P's head when I bring it over so I whisper, "Hope my foot doesn't smell." As a joke. Really. It was not smelly. But suddenly this stench fills my nostrils. It is awesomely bad, thick and nasty and just hovering. I wrinkle my nose and try to avoid it, but it is all around me. I glance at P to see if she can smell it too and she whispers, "It that your FOOT?"

Hello!?! She actually thought the worst fart in the world was my FOOT! I quickly whispered back, "No way," and we cracked up. Silently. Which pretty much means we lay there and shook and tried not to look like we were laughing. We determined that we should blame the guy behind her.

It did finally clear and I could breathe again. Fortunately, thankfully, luckily, whoever did that learned a lesson and did not try that again in class. I know it is supposedly a natural thing and yoga can make it happen, but there was nothing natural about this particular cloud.

I just feel sorry for whoever they were going home to that night.