Typically, Sundays are for homework and recovering from Saturday night.  This Sunday, however, Lisa and I decided to try a new twist on an old favorite - Pizza!

We both read the Calgary Herald online, and found an article talking about using beans to boost the nutritional value of classic foods.  We both love pizza, so thought it would be fun to try the white bean pizza dough recipe.

However, I tend to modify recipes that I read online.  If you want the original recipe, please check the above link.  My modifications are below and built into the original text.

Pizza Dough

Pizza dough with pureed white beans contains about four times the fibre of the regular pizza dough (2 g of fibre vs. 0.5 g), says Julie Van Rosendaal (from the article).

1 can of rinsed and drained canned white beans (540-mL can)

1 tsp of Chipotle pepper flakes

2 cups (500 mL) water, divided

4 tsp (20 mL) active dry yeast (2 packages)

2 tsp (10 mL) sugar

4 cups flour, all-purpose

2 tsp (10 mL) salt

3 tsp Ms. Dash (or other all purpose spice mix)

4 tbsp (50 mL) olive or canola oil

Cornmeal

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Directions:

Puree the beans with about 100 mL of the water and the Chipotle pepper flakes until completely smooth.

In a large bowl, stir together the remaining warm water, yeast and sugar. The mixture should get foamy after a few minutes (if it doesn’t it means the water was too hot and killed the yeast, or you need fresh yeast. Try again, or buy fresh yeast).

Add the pureed beans to the yeast mixture, along with 2 cups (250 mL) of flour. Mix thoroughly, then add another cup of flour, the salt and the oil. Again, mix thoroughly. Continue to add four by half-cups, and as soon as the batter is thick enough to make a kneadable dough, turn it out onto a floured counter. Knead until the dough is smooth and elastic, adding spoonsful of flour if needed, until the dough has lost most of its stickiness.  When the dough has lost most of its stickiness, fold in the Ms. Dash (or other all purpose spice mix) until the distribution of flakes is closer to normal than random (hehe, stats joke).

Wash out the bowl, dry it and add a small splash of oil. Return the dough to the bowl, turning it to coat with oil; cover with plastic wrap or a clean, damp tea towel.

Let the dough rise in a warm spot (the oven, turned off but with the light on is ideal), until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

Or, make the dough in the morning and let it rise, covered, in the refrigerator during the day.

When you’re ready to proceed, divide the dough into 2 to 3 sections. Preheat the oven to 450°F (230°C).

Roll the dough out into a rough circle, oval or rectangle as this as you like (it will rise again in the oven). Transfer to a baking sheet or pizza pan sprinkled with flour or cornmeal. Top with your favourite toppings and bake about 20 minutes, until golden.

You'll be able to get 3-4 large pizzas out of the above.

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The result?

We ended up topping our pizza with fresh tomatos, sauteed artichoke hearts, chili peppers, sauteed button mushrooms, and a skim milk mozzarella cheese.  Lisa made a mostly fresh pizza sauce.

Would we make this again?

Yes.  Definitely.

What would you do differently next time?

I thought it would be easier to use the hand blender, instead of the countertop mixer.  The dough ended up creeping up the hand blender paddles and got into the paddle slots.  That took a long time to clean up.  Also, with the dough creeping up the hand blender paddles, some dough escaped the mixing bowl.

I would also add the flour in half cups, rather than full cups, to reduce the stickiness of the dough during the main mixing.

Garmin data for the ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/101474799

Teach your children well about how it all began.

Swimming

"Just Don't Drown" - Lisa Y.

All of my friends who run or race duathlons always complain that they cannot swim.  Whenever someone says they "cannot" do something, I immediately hear that they "won't even bother trying".  A friend of mine's favorite quote is "what one man can do, another can do" - and it is just so apropos in this situation.  I am by no means a fast swimmer.  I toodle along at a pace that would just barely have me finishing the Ironman swim in time.  So my thought, therefore, is just as Lisa said - "just don't drown."

During the Chestermere Triathlon, we had a psuedo dock start.  There were two floating bouys, and all had to swim through them.  So rather than the group being able to disperse and swim their own line, everyone (all 82 of us) were thrashing through a 10 foot stretch.  With people clutching at my feet and kicking my hands, I did my best to get away from them.  Unfortunately, I pushed too hard and by the time I was turning past the first bouy, I felt like I was going to be sick.

Just don't drown.

After a quick coughing fit, I rolled onto my back and proceeded to do the backstroke for a short time while I caught my breath.  By then, I was leading the slow pack of swimmers, so I didn't have to worry about much.  Back onto my front, and I continued swimming.

Moral of the story?  Just don't drown.

Cycling

"Find your E3 gear, keep your cadence high, and just go with it." - Paul R.

During spin classes this past year, our instructor would constantly yell at us to keep our cadence up.  This was really hard, given that I was trying to focus on what my watts output was.  During a break, and multiple times through the class, he would constantly tell us to forget about staring at our computer, but rather to find the gear which we equated with our E3 zone, work to keep our cadence above 90, and just ride. 

While out on the Chestermere cycling course, my first thought was to get into my E3 gear, and then get my cadence up.  It paid off, as I ended up having the fastest cycle time of my training career.  My cadence ended up averaging 92 RPM, with a max cadence of 106, and a minimum of 86 (not counting when I stopped peddling to go around the corners).  I even passed a guy with an Ironman tattoo.  He passed me as well, but I still passed an Ironman :-)

Running

"Be strategic.  If the hill seems too big, walk it, but then take off running when you get to the top." - Jeremy D.

For the past 2 years, I have been training with Strides for running.  Besides having a great group of people in each clinic, the coaches have been amazingly helpful.  In those 2 years, I have gone from couch to 5km to 10km to half marathon.  Pretty good for that kid that was cursed with Asthma since birth, eh?

During last winter's clinic, we were having a hill training day.  Jeremy was speaking to one of the other members of the clinic about her getting burned out 2/3rds the way up a hill.  He said to her that she shouldn't worry about running up the hill, as it will continue to burn her out through the race.  She should walk the hill, and then take off past the people who ran the hill and burned themselves out.

Being a bit of a skeptic, I thought I'd try a little experiment.  I set my watch and ran up the hill, and then ran 500m after the top of the hill.  I walked back down, set my watch again, walked up the hill, and then ran 500m again.  The time difference was negligable, but I felt a whole lot better after walking the hill.  It's not a strategy that I will employ often, but when I am channeling my race mantra, I know that my body could use the break.

During the run at Chestermere, we were faced with what seemed like 8km up hill, and 2km down.  At one point, the uphill went from gentle to jarring.  Given that we were to run four loops of the course, I took this jarring uphill to be my break point.  It was a short up hill (<20m), so it would not be that detrimental to my time.  I saw four different behavioral patterns approaching that hill, and I was able to keep pace or beat three of them.

1. On the first loop, a few people ended up running the hill and then walking when they got to the top.  They beat me up the hill, and I beat them around the corner.  They did not pass me after that.
2. On the second loop, one lady slowed to a walk approaching the hill, sprinted up the hill, and then continued to run when she reached the top.  She and I ran step for step for a short while, and then she passed me.  I saw that she crossed the finish line about 5 minutes before me.
   
3. On the third loop, two runners continued to jog up the hill and then jog at the top.  They passed me jogging up the hill, but I passed them 20m after the top off the hill.
4. On the final loop, a runner said to me "that's a good idea" and walked behind me.  When we reached the top, I took off running, as did he.  He could not keep pace, though, and I lost him after about 50m.

Next Steps

With my next race a mere three weeks away, I have my training schedule built and ready to go.  There will be more brick workouts to help my legs get used to the jelly feeling, there will be more swim training as it is my weakest sport, and I will continue to do speed work for running. 

I'm almost sad that I am going to be taking a year off next year due to school.  But that one year off will allow me to focus purely on running instead.  Pretty good for that kid that was cursed with Asthma since birth, eh?

Found via Pundit Kitchen, via the Washington Post.

Growing up as a good little geek, I only had eyes for the stars.  There are pictures of me in grade 2, posing with a home made alien for a science project.  All of my bedrooms growing up (4 of them, each in a different house) had glow in the dark stars on the roof.  I would truck my telescope out and ask the neighbours to turn their lights off so that I could spend some time gazing through the lens.  At summer camp, I would often be more interested in gazing up to the night sky than at the girl sitting next to me.  I have worked my way through most of the hard sci-fi (Asimov, Heinlien, Scott-Card, Niven, etc) and still read Astounding and Asimov before bed.  I loved the idea of science camp at the Calgary Science Center, and would take home packets of space ice cream to eat while watching Star Trek.

In a word, I was, and still am, obsessed.

I don't remember when or how I was introduced to the notion of space exploration, but I was absolutely enamoured with the concept that would forever be burned into my brain as "Space, the Final Frontier."  Yeah, 'Sea Quest, DSV' was an attempt to show how cool Earth's oceans could be, but it did not even begin to hold a candle to all of the good (Space: Above and Beyond), bad (original BSG), and awful (Star Trek: Voyager) space based sci-fi that was out there.

As a kid, I built model rockets with the dream of being able to go up in one of those rockets one day (not through a "honey I shrunk the kids" type of arrangement, either).  I slowly, and hesitently, abandoned that idea after learning of NASA's requirements to be a space pilot.  I would not enter the US Military and have jet fighter experience; I would continue to wear glasses; I had no desire to study Math or Physics (though in hind sight, I should have taken Engineering at uni).  And so, I resigned myself to being a cheerleader.

The American Space Program was, what I perceived, the greatest thing ever.  It was Manifest Destiny IN SPACE!  Until it wasn't.  Increasing regulatory requirements, increasing costs, and decrease public interest basically killed it.  Meanwhile, the Russians and Chinese were all like "FIRE ZE MISSILES", wherein 'ze missiles' was their exhuberance for continuing the space dream.  And then along came Obama and the left's space policy that has effectively shut down NASA.  While there may be some praise for this move, Buzz Aldrin seems to be the only one who has a veiled criticism appear as praise for this move - commercial spaceflight is the answer to the American space dream.

On this day, July 8, 2011, I will sit back and think of Homer Hickam and the Rocket Boys, the folks over at Virgin: Galactic, and everyone who was involved in the Ansari X-Prize and think of them as the next steps in space exploration.  But until there are signs of proper exploration, I will remain quietly resigned and think of the 10,000 NASA employees who have been laid off or are being forced to retire when Atlantis returns.

Given that I'm not particularly into dead tree and lugging a binder about, I fired up Google Docs and started a new file.  I spent 30 minutes hammering out everything I could think of as a best practice.

My first line item, which came from a fortune cookie that I have taped to a photo frame, was Promise Only What You Can Deliver. 

I always find it interesting that that quote bubbles to the top of my mind when I think of effective Project Management.  There have been so many instances in my consulting career that I have seen individuals say "yeah, I've got this" only to be followed by "I don't got this." 

My second line item, which I have seem to have borrowed from the same site, is to ask people "how do they got that?"  (Or, more formally, ask your team members to explain what their plan of action is for a deliverable).  It is impossible to over communicate with your project team, so the notion that you need to confirm how people plan to action a task should seem like a fairly simple idea.  And while it may seem like a motherhood statement, it is so important that your team communicates with you as much as you communicate with your team.

And this leads to my third line item (don't worry, I'm not going to go through all three pages) - involve your team to manage the project like you would stack an executive team.  Make sure that everyone is involved as the CEO, COO, CFO, and CIO.  Start with the CEO - Communicate Expectations Often; move to the COO -  Communicate Outcomes Often; then to the CFO - Communicate Facts Only; and finally the CIO - Communicate Information Often.  Applying this technique may seem weird and cutesy, but it can help bring some transparency to the way that you manage your projects with your team.

That's the start of my Project Management knowledge book.

What are some of your Project Management best practices?  Are there any worst practices that you would prefer to eliminate before going down the path of best practices?