Here’s how you can make your own delicious taco sauce.

How to make taco sauce

To make your amazing taco sauce, enough for 12 taco shells, you’re gonna need (ingredients):

400g tinned tomatoes (fresh if you like, you’ll hear no qualms from me!)
1/2 an onion
1/2 a capsicum (you can use the rest of both of these when you go to cook your beef if you like)
2 cloves garlic
1 small chilli (but it’s up to you how many chillies you use, isn’t it?)
A splash of white wine or cider vinegar
2 tsp of paprika
1 tsp of ground cayenne chilli (to taste)
A splash of olive oil

To actually do the sauce making, you will need to (method):

1. Place the olive oil in a medium sized pan and heat. Place a dessert spoon in your mouth and slice the onion and capsicum. The dessert spoon seems to fend off some of the onion sting and reduces crying into your food.

2. When the oil is getting hot, brown the onion and lightly cook the capsicum for a few minutes. Crush the garlic cloves and add to the pan, stirring well all the time.

3. Next chop the chilli (chillies if you’re like me) and throw them in also. Continue to stir until the onions are browned how you like them.

4. Add the can of tomatoes to the pan, ensuring the sudden temperature change doesn’t break the pan or cause the juice to spit out everywhere. If it does, you’ve got some cleaning to do. Stir and turn the heat down so that the sauce simmers gently.

5. Add a short splash of the vinegar, seriously not too much. Add the paprika and cayenne and stir well again.

6. You can now go and begin to prepare your meat for the tacos. After 20 minutes, or when the sauce has thickened appropriately, you can add it to your meat mixture, as if it was a canned supermarket sauce.

Enjoy!

The cause? Leg lifts.

Leg lifts and hernias

Before we go any further, I need to say this: If you think you’re suffering from any type of hernia, go get yourself checked out by a doctor. Your doc is the only person who can assess you and get you the treatment you need to put you right. If you need any!

Besides, too much self-diagnosis on the internet, especially when it comes to hernias, can be quite traumatic and lead to you viewing some quite disturbing things. Trust me on this one!

Anyway, you’re probably reading this because you want to know whether performing leg lifts, leg raises or leg lowers as part of your exercise routine can cause a hernia.

The answer is yes they can.

I know this because that’s how I got my very own inguinal hernia. An inguinal hernia is where a moment of immense pressure inside the stomach causes the thin, weak stomach muscle lining to tear. This part of the body’s function is to hold our insides in.

It is quite possible that a breathing error during just one leg raise (or lowering) caused the hernia, which is what makes correct form and breathing during any exercise so important. Don’t be fooled that hernias are just for older, overweight or unfit people – they can be accidentally achieved at any age.

If you suspect you have given yourself a hernia during exercise the important thing is not to panic. Hernias are common, particularly among men, and inguinal hernias are the commonest of he male hernias. Depending on what your doctor is like, a trip regarding a hernia can be the calmest trip to the doctor you ever make.

There is a small risk of a hernia becoming strangulated, severe pain in the area of the hernia will indicate this, but other than that, “people can live for years with them” I was told recently at a hospital. As such, practitioners remain calm about a hernia and take time to assess them properly when deciding on required treatment.

I have found my doctor one of the more calming influences on me since being diagnosed with my inguinal hernia, I hope you experience the same.

If you are embarking on a program of exercise, I have a couple of tips that could hopefully steer you clear of hernia-land.

Firstly, when participating in any exercise, it is important to maintain breathing concentration at all times. That is to remain 100% focused on what your body is doing regarding air in and out-take. It sounds obvious, but a moment’s concentration slip and you can potentially damage yourself.

My second piece of advice is not to participate in any routines that involve “big number ability increases”. The internet is flooded with plans that can see you achieve huge targets like “this amazing number of chin-ups within six weeks” and so on.

We all grow strength and muscle differently and at different paces. Where one of these plans keeps a promise to 100 people, it could be breaking it to 1000. Failing to reach a particular number of reps in a work-out plan may cause a psychological stress that becomes stored and accumulates.

Determination is a powerful thing and the lengths it can make us push our bodies to, sometimes beyond sense, is incredible. These are the times when damage to the body is most likely to occur. My advice is to stay away from these sorts of plans altogether, particularly if you know don’t put on muscle or increase strength as fast as the plan promises – the “magic workout plan” won’t change it.

My first advice for you if you think you may be suffering from any type of hernia is to see a doctor as soon as you can. Hernias are extremely common and the experts are the only people able to rehabilitate you back to health and fitness.

What does an inguinal hernia feel like?

I first spotted my inguinal hernia after performing a set of leg raises. Leg raises or leg lifts are an exercise touted by many as a better form of abdominal exercise. I was performing the variation where you lower one leg down at a time, 10 times, then crunch your abdominal upwards while pushing on the leg you just finished dropping for 10 seconds.

It was on one of the initial leg movements that my hernia arrived, in the form of a sudden, sharp pain in my groin. It was there, and it wasn’t going away.

The first thing I noticed was a small bulge or lump around the top of the pubic hairline. It just stuck out more on my right side than on my left side.

How it felt depended on the position I was in. Standing up for extended periods of time resulted in the bulge extending outwards, the lump on my groin getting tighter. Initially the tightness would be accompanied with the feeling of extreme dread, which would simply result in me sitting or lying down for a bit. Even at work!

Inguinal hernias come with pain. The amount of which will vary from person to person. I found mine extremely painful at first. The nerves in the surrounding area seem only too pleased to get caught up in the mess that’s going on down there. Add to that the trauma of having a hole inside you, and you have a pretty good idea how I was feeling.

I ain’t gonna lie: The first week or two were hell. I went from being a perfectly able-bodied, healthy, capable-of-anything 30-year-old to someone coming to terms with the fact they’re not going to be going about their usual routine for a while.

As I’ve posted before, I am into health and fitness in a big way. My weekly cardio routine used to consist of several runs, a number of bicycle rides to and from work and a swim or two depending on the tides. I’d also take on three sessions of resistance training a week.

For now, at least, I am relegated to an occasional swim and the odd walk round the block. Don’t get me wrong – there are far worse things human beings are going through around the planet – but the sudden change brought about by these limitations took its mental toll.

As the first month has progressed, I have come to terms with my injury. My trauma levels are way down compared with where they were. I have moved on from the initial feeling of regret over the incident that caused it: As one friend put it “all of us are unlucky with our exercise at some point”.

I am heading to the doctor’s next week to discuss with him what exercises I can do while I wait for my repair surgery. I’ll post an update soon.

I grabbed him last Friday and he jumped on our Flip camera and recorded this quick promo on the fly.

Monday came and Paul’s first show carried an interview with Brummie immigrant Tracey Blunn. Tracey and her partner Mark Reyes had made headlines over the weekend as apparently New Zealand “made them fat”. Henry burst straight in referring to his phone guest as “Fat Tracey”.

His interview with Kronic inventor Matt Bowden brimming with determination.

Wednesday reared its head and I found myself thrust into the studio once again. This time with Marcus to talk about being English and learning Te Reo as part of Maori Language Week.

Image gold was struck on Friday when an unwitting Northland council worker managed to hit send on a jokey FWD email – only sending it to a healthy chunk of the country’s journalists. We cracked the story and the image up online, much to a lot of Kiwis’ amusement.

Graeme Hill came up trumps on the video-front once again. This time, he provided an old off-air clip of two Brisband puppets, erm, going at it. Very funny. To me.

It just happened. Now into my 30s, I am well and truly mad about chilli. Heck, I even planted some chilli seeds today.

Despite this affection, I only had/made my first vindaloo the other week. I’ve spent a few weeks twiddling with it to make it spot on, but I think I now have it right.

Something I never knew about vindaloo, is the ‘vin’ part refers to the vinegar used in its making. Not many vegetables, either.

As always, you’re welcome to comment/suggest your improvements down below, but for now here is my hot vindaloo recipe.

To make a hot vindaloo for 4, you’re gonna need:

Some meat (Roughly four chicken breasts, or around 1kg of beef – I don’t mind what you put in your vindaloo, go for your life)

2 onions, diced

6 gloves of garlic (I crush my garlic for that authentic ‘crushed garlic’ flavour. You are most welcome to chop yours if you wish)

1 tsp of turmeric (Good for the Alzheimer’s so I use two)

3-4cm of ginger, shredded (I crack mine through a cheese grater – be careful not to take a bit of your fingers off if you do this!)

1 tsp chilli powder (Really do do this part based on taste. I actually have more like 4. Or 3 plus an actual red chilli. Chilli is a very personal thing. Like underwear)

A stick of cinnamon, crumbled (Watch out for splinters! That’s my ass covered…)

2 tsp of ground cumin seed

A splash of clove powder (I never go too nuts with cloves. I think it’s to do with my huge orthodontic problems as a child. I suffered from an abscess or two as a child and quite distinctly remember the taste of cloves as mum tried to anaesthetise her young, noisy boy!)

2 tbsp of vinegar (I use cider vinegar, but white will do)

1 tbsp of brown sugar

1 can of tomato paste or tomatoes

Some water

To make your hot vindaloo for 4, you’re gonna need to:

1. Wash your hands. There is no excuse for poor hygiene in my kitchen, so there certainly ain’t a place for it in yours.

2. When you’re done washing your hands, and only when you’re done, may you begin preparing the hot vindaloo marinade. Mix in a bowl 1 of your onions, garlic, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, chilli, cumin, clove powder, vinegar and sugar.

3. Prepare the meat. Slice it up however you want it. I do chicken in thin strips and beef in cubes. Sling it into the marinade and leave it covered in the fridge for as long as you have time for. 4 hours is good. Overnight amazing.

4. When you are good to start cooking, slice up the other onion. Use a dollop of ghee or olive oil to brown it in a pan or wok on a medium-high heat. Nice, sugary onion!

5. Next add the contents of your marinade bowl. Be sure to scrape every last drop of your vindaloo marinade into the pan. Stir fry the mixture until the meat seals nicely.

6. Next add your tomatoey can contents. Top up with a splash of water, say 250ml. Give it a good stir and leave to simmer, stirring occasionally, for around 30 minutes or until the sauce thickens.

If all goes to plan, you will have made a great-tasting chicken or beef vindaloo using just spices and other basic ingredients. I always enjoy mine with brown rice and a helping of home made mango and apple chutney and a chilli and garlic naan (recipes to follow!).

These days, along with my three resistance sessions a week, I spend at least 20 minutes per day doing some form of cardiovascular exercise. Some days this will be the 12km round trip to and from work on the bike; in summer it will be a swim down the beach and back (1km approx); the rest of the time I will spend it running, usually on the beach.

I first ran on the beach at the end of Southern Hemisphere summer 2010 and I absolutely adored the experience. It’s true, here in New Zealand we are spoilt for nice beaches, so putting yourself in a truly stunning location while you do your cardio work sure helps the experience.

It was at a house party a year ago that I really started to learn of the benefits of jogging on the beach. A guy I met there had once been quite the runner. Sadly, however, his knees had given in on him and he had been forced to stop. He spoke of the doctor telling him that he should never have run so much on concrete and that softer surfaces are the way forward.

I took myself out for another jog on the beach the very next day and I loved it even more than the previous times I had been.

Here are five reasons why I love jogging on the beach barefoot and why it is good for you:

1. Intensity. The loose and uneven surface of sand on the beach means you get a higher intensity workout than you would from a normal jog of the same distance or time. Essentially, it requires more calories to jog on the beach.

Sure, there is an increased chance of injury from barefoot jogging on a beach, which is why I would always recommend you start slowly and on the wet, harder sand. When you have got a feel for the beach, you can raise the stakes by moving in to the softer sands. Do this for a small part of your run to begin with then work in more as your get more experienced.

_{Te Henga beach, Auckland, is a great place to jog}

We’re quite lucky in New Zealand as a lot a of our beaches are kept very clean and rubbish-free. However, I would never recommend running barefoot on a beach where there is likely to be a lot of rubbish – the potential for injury really is not worth it!

2. Good for both your feet and your joints. This was the closer for me. I already loved running on the beach, but when I started reading up on benefits of running barefoot I was totally sold. Essentially not wearing trainers and running on a soft surface combine for a very healthy experience indeed.

3. Cost. Yet another benefit of jogging barefoot on the beach – this time a fiscal one: Not having to eat through dollars for running shoes is another fine selling point for me.

4. Less foot odour. Stinky feet are caused by tiny little bacteria that live on the feet. Firstly by running barefoot, you are giving these bacteria less of a chance to hide away and multiply inside your socks and trainers. What’s more, the constant abrasive action of your feet against the pumice-like sandy beach helps remove the dead skin that helps trap bacteria. It’s like a double win!

5. Fun. Jogging on the beach barefoot is fun. The beach I frequent is actually two beaches split at a point by huge sand dunes – I just love building both beaches into my run and the feeling of success having scaled the dunes twice!

Also, on hot days, your can end your run with a straight dash into the ocean to cool off. Or why not build up to your ocean swim with a barefoot jog along the beach beforehand?

Give jogging on the beach barefoot a go and you will not be disappointed!