Peter Bradberry

Here’s to a new year more awesome than the last.

Here is a semi healthy recipe for you guys out there. I’m calling it Zucchini Squash Sausage Salad! Yes, the exclamation point is necessary.

crappy cellphone photo

Sorry for the quality of the photo. It looks and tastes so much more awesome than it looks.

Here are the ingredients I used sizes and weights are approximations:

1lb link sausage (I used a turkey sausage, good flavor and lower fat totals than a regular sausage link.)

1 large zucchini

2 medium yellow squashes

2 green bell peppers

1 red bell pepper

1 bag of mixed greens

1 table spoon extra virgin olive oil

Tony Chachere Cajun Seasoning

Fresh ground pepper

Cube sausage, zucchini, squash, and peppers. Keep everything in separate piles on the cutting board.

I used a smaller, but tall skillet. I want to fry the sausage with out needing to use too much oil. If regular pork sausage is used the amount of oil can be reduced due to the natural fat content of the sausage. Fry sausage for 5 minutes over medium heat.

Next add zucchini and squash to sausage. Continue cooking for 3 minutes.

Add peppers and continue to cook for 2 more minutes.

I like slightly crunchy peppers. If you want softer peppers add with zucchini and squash and cook everything for 5 minutes.

Season mixture with Tony C. Seasoning and fresh ground pepper to taste. No need to add salt. The Tony C. along with sausage already has more than we should eat already.

Top mixed greens with cooked mixture.
ENJOY!

I also didn’t use any salad dressing. Try it. I think you will enjoy it as it is.

If anyone else makes this please let me know how it turned out. I came up with this on the drive home from work one day. It turned out much better than I expected.

Or, Pete realized how out of shape he is in regard to cardio.

My friend Michael and I went down to Oak Mountain State Park this past Saturday to run with the Vulcan Orienteering club. I had not ran an orienteering race since Junior High, and this was Michael’s first venture out with a compass.  Michael is a BEAST when it comes to running. This guy does ultramarathons. For those who are unfamiliar with the term ultramarathon, an ultramarathon is any distance beyond the standard 26.2 miles. Typically ultramarathons come in 50K, 100K, 50 miles, 100 miles, 12 hours, or 24 hours. I tired much quicker than he did.

Here are the results. 7th isn’t too shabby for our first time out. We were in the top half of participants. I count that as a win! Actually, finishing is a win!

We had a blast and plan on going out again. They have these meets almost every month on the 3rd Saturday of the month. I know I’ll be back out again in February, no meet in January. Let me know if you plan on coming out. It would be fun to run with more people!

Why yes I am. Here is why: I want to donate hair. I know that it is quite an investment in time. I have tried in the past to grow my hair out to donate, but got annoyed with the longer hair. In the past, when I was annoyed I just shaved my head. I’ve held out a year at this point. Here is a shot of Lyla and I waiting for Santa last year:

Here is Amberly, Lyla and I at Lyla’s birthday this past year:

Most people ask if I will be donating to Locks of Love. Probably not for several reasons. Locks of Love wants between 10 and 12 inches of hair. I don’t know if I want to wait that long. Pantene has a charity that they run called Beautiful Lengths. Beautiful Lengths only requires 8 inches of hair. There are other reasons why I won’t donate to Locks of Love that I won’t mention here.  There is plenty around the internet should anyone want to research why.

I’ve only heard positive things about Pantene’s program. Has anyone donated before? Who did you use? How much did you cut? I look forward to stories.

Remember to Keep Doing Good!

I posted this to youtube a few weeks ago. This is the second in my series of pinhole portrait interviews.

Let me know if anyone would like to participate. I’m always looking for new subjects. I’m usually in and out within 20 mins.

Robbing the Bees by Holley Bishop

In my ever growing fascination with bees, I have been pouring over every book my hands can get a hold of at one of my local libraries. The Jefferson County Library Coop is amazing. I’ve used the library system here for years, but I really haven’t used the reserve feature until recently. I’m finding that Jefferson county has quite a few books on bees, but there will be one book at one library and then another one at one 5 miles down the road. With the reserve feature the libraries inside the Co-op trade books back and forth. I’ll I have to do is find one I want and request it. If it is not checked out there is a good chance it will be sent to the library down the street from me in 3 or 4 days. YAY!

On to the book, up until this point most of the books have been mostly introspection with some instruction on keeping of bees. This book has a little in the way of actual bee keeping knowledge, but is mainly focused on the history of honey, bees, and their uses and interactions with humans. It is full of all kinds of tid bits and facts. Did you know bees generate 450 volts of electricity when they fly? Four times the amount running through your typical home wall outlet. Tired eyes? Try a drop of honey in the eyelid. It stings, but helps moisturise, or so the book says.

If you are interested in the history of bees, honey or a fun nonfiction read, I would pick this up.

I want to start posting what I’m doing fitness wise here. Not to brag, but as a way for me to track and hopefully inspire others to do SOMETHING!

I set a goal at the beginning of 2010 that I wanted to be able to do 100 push ups in a row as well as 25 or more pull ups. I started strong, but injured my right thumb in March. I let that goal slide off my plate and was distracted by other things until a few weeks ago. I decided I had time to do this if I really jumped on it. I have to do my push ups on my knuckles due to the thumb issues. Not that big a deal. It was difficult to begin with, but now I can do push ups like gangbusters. HAHA!

I devised a schedule for my pushups based on the hundred pushups site. I pulled my pull up schedule from The Art of Manliness. I made slight adjustments to both.

I’ll post more detailed posts in the future, but last night I did 170 pushups in sets of 50, 40, 25, 25 and 30. Thursday, I did 4 sets of 6 pull ups.

I have several fitness goals I plan on working toward in 2011. One of the biggest being some adventure races, I plan on doing them with my brother. Stick around.

This book by Sue Hubbell, A Book of Bees: And How to Keep Them is not the instructional manual that the title would have you believe. While it isn’t an instructional book per se, it is a description of the mindset of the author and what beekeeping allows her to enjoy. The book is structured into the seasons over a single year, and offers a little functional information. The appeal of this book is the author’s description of the passing seasons and the little joys she experienced over this single year of keeping bees.

I wouldn’t suggest this as a single book to read on beekeeping, but it does offer some interesting insite into the mindset of the beekeeper.

The first book I read on beekeeping was Beekeeping For Dummies. I figured that if there was one book that would “dumb every down” and make everything comprehensible, it would be one of the For Dummie books. I went to the Trussville Library and picked it up. It was very concise, and thorough with out being too dull.

I’m sure if a seasoned beekeeper were to read this it would come across as extremely simple.  I’m fairly certain that a newbie could pick this up, and have a massive chunk of the information they need to start keeping bees.