August 17th, Sunday - Curls and flys, cooking

 17.08.2025

Again, technically 18th already - after midnight. Sleep is weird again, no big deal though. The body seems to want to reset itself. Not like it used to be!

Curls / flys superset

6 kg dbs - 3 sets of 15

One arm curls / sort of a fly with 16 kg kettlebell - lowering it in front to 90 degrees or less, with kettlebell on the forearm

1 set of 10 - switching hands after 5 reps in each exercise

2 sets - 15 curls / 10 flys

1 set of 15 each

Nice pump. Feels enough.

Ribs have been hurting a lot. Deadlift is the main culprit, I presume. It's possible it's just microcracks or something. Bed is a contributing factor. Uneven bed. It feels more uneven now, more than it used to be. It'd honestly be a smart decision to get rid of it at this point.

After the DL session I really felt like my back was killed. It wasn't tweaked like last time, tweak is close to hurt. But the overall fatigue, overall muscle damage was huge. I still feel it pretty well as I'm trying to warm up my legs for some BW squats. Hams loaded up really nice too!

Squat stretches - 3 sets, until my hams don't feels quite as wooden. Right leg though, I have to admit, it feels way longer than the left today. And also I tweaked my right leg in my somewhat typical fashion, cause I screwed it into the floor on deadlifts and it hurts when I lie down and rotate it, pronate it.

Squats - 3 sets of 15 - you know, there's an absolutely underrated way to check the squat depth and that is to touch the floor when you're squatting. It's a perfect way to rid yourself of worry and just squat without tensing anything up!

***

I made a pasta like I used to make. I forgot the recipe, so I tried to look it up, found something similar. I took a whole bunch of tomatoes, more than twelve, and grabbed a bottle of leftover wine. Nobody here drinks, so I poured it all in the large baking pan we've had for ages. And dumped the tomatoes there, just whole. T found some cherry tomatoes and dropped a handful in there. As well as a couple more plum-like tomatoes, I decided to chop them up for the sake of variety. I cooked it on medium temperature for about 40 minutes. They got cooked just a little bit, cause I had the pot closed. The wine was still there, tomatoes just got barely cooked but cooked enough to have their skin burst. I mashed them all in. Mom bought some dried tomatoes in oil. I grabbed a handful of them too, a lot of that oil as well cause we don't have olive oil. That's probably not olive oil there. Way too much stuff got vegetable oil it in nowadays. And they never tell you what kinda vegetable. NWO type shit. Mom bought some kielbasa cheese and it's not even called a "cheese". It's literally just called "melted product". This is some ridiculous name. I decided not to rage about it. I don't care what people buy. I just wanna know I'm not gonna buy it accidentally. Anyway, back to pasta - I searched for any kind of pasta and ended up finding spaghetti I knew we had. Lucky we still had them! Someone here loves cooking them for themselves, hehe (not me). They were cheap but good. I dropped them right in there. Added some water I wanted to use earlier to boil them. But I wanted to keep it simpler and just cook it all in the oven. Just couldn't find the right recipe. It's a real starchy dish, really thick. A whole bunch of spice - pepper mixes, basil, garlic powder we've had for over ten years. It's good stuff. Later I added some more, as well as some nice ground black pepper and gsm (it'll be our little secret). I like adding it. It's like salt, but softer. It is literally salt. S stands for sodium. I covered the pot with a lid this time and put it on max heat. It started cooking. I picked out a whole bunch of really nice black olives, deboned them all. De-pitted. Just cut them with a knife in half and took out the pit. That's what I did. They're really good, those olives. I chopped up the olives so they're still somewhat chunky. It's pretty amazing. Dumped them in, as well as aforementioned dried tomatoes in oil. Went and picked out the old ground pork I bought in July. It's still good, cause it's been sealed. But I drained all the liquids from it and put it on a couple tissues, rolled it over them so it's got less water. The pasta was still sort of watery at that point, and I didn't want to add any more liquid. Dumped the pork in. That was good. Pork was nice. I picked up some old cheese. Only a little expired. It was sealed well, and only had a tiny amount of mold. Otherwise it was really compact, really compressed; it was sealed tight, it was slightly dehydrated, it must have been forgotten in a old bag and it rolled in a sort of oval shape. I grated it. Didn't care about size, cause I dumped it right away. Some more spice then, the aforementioned second round of spice. Mixed it all up again. Then I left for about 10 minutes, feeling really hungry. The timer bleeped and I went downstairs. It was there, in the oven. I opened the oven and took it out. It was really thick now, bourdeau sort of color. It was soaked in wine. It was all wine and not so much tomatoes. Tomatoes got reduced. But they were really good tomatoes. Well cooked. The dish was amazing. I enjoyed it, a really large dish, and I ate it whole even though I thought it could be good for a meal and a snack later. That portion was about 35-40 percent of the whole bowl. I'm sure everyone will enjoy it. And they'll probably get a little drunk from it. I'm feeling some sort of way. I was hoping there would not be any alcohol in the mix, that it'd all get cooked out. Alas, I was wrong. No biggie. Although given that it's been mixed with food it might stay in my system for a while. I wanna believe it's gonna so some kind of good for me but it probably won't. I'm a sober man, has been since August 2018. No recreational alcohol. I have some alcohol-based herbal supplements, extracts. By the way, I never referenced them in the book. I love poking fun at supplements, I think it's funny. Rhodiola and Chinensis. I used to think they were better than cocaine. And they probably were when I believed it. Power of the mind, you see. I wrote about it earlier. I stopped taking them when I realized adaptogens aren't really a thing. And I was really sceptical about it all back then. Still am, but not so much right now, a bit more open minded. I found them in the medicine corner where I left them last time. Well, I do remember these things being studied. Same ol' logic - this stuff's gotta do *something*, eh? Hehehe. That's why I gotta poke fun at it. But never discount faith, boy. Faith is the biggest power a man can have.

Utblommad rosenrot - Padjelanta nationalpark