your meals & moves! erika g.

• my name: Erika
• where i live: I am from Boston, MA (well a little town in the suburbs, but Boston sounds better!)
• my blog: Dancing Around the Kitchen
• my move: Picking a favorite move for this was easy.  The meals part, not so much, because I love so many different things!

As you can guess from my blog title, I love to dance.  Mostly ballet, but I will try anything once.  I am so the clumsy white girl in hip hop, but it is too fun to care what I look like!  My favorite move is a series of moves done in ballet barre work.  Much healthier than the other bar I like to belly up too…  Ballet barre work combines a lot of isometric moves, flexibility, and cardio.  It is a great overall workout and a lot of people do ballet moves without realizing it.  Squats?  Turn your knees and toes out and you are doing a ballet plie.  Because I do not have any recent pics of me doing ballet, here is one of my little ballerina in a plie, she is totally working her glutes as she squeezes on the way down and up as well as stretching out her calves in the same motion. Same as a squat though, keep your knees over your toes so you don’t get hurt.

• my meal:

Pepper Steak Over Rice

• 3 cups cooked brown rice (try quinoa too!)
• 1 lb steak tips – fat trimmed
• 1 T paprika
• 2 T butter (I use less)
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 onion, sliced
• 2 green peppers, sliced
• 2 large tomatoes, cut into wedges
• 1 ½ cups reduced sodium beef stock
• 2 T cornstarch
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup reduced sodium soy sauce

Brown the meat in the butter, add garlic and beef stock.

Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

Stir in onions and peppers, cook for 5 minutes.

Combine cornstarch, water and soy sauce, stir into meat.

Stir until clear and thickened.

Add tomatoes, cook for a couple more minutes and serve over rice.

If you use lean meat and up the veggies, this can be a pretty healthy comfort food meal.

Thanks Janetha for hosting the mini-posts (mine seems kind of verbose though!) and have a great time in Jamaica!