Of Killing Birds With Stones

So here's an interesting thing.

I was making a spinach and feta pull-apart today. Great recipe! I don't usually mess about with yeast and dough and kneading and rising because the end product is sometimes a little heavy and if you can't finish it the day it's made (and our family usually can't), it's a bit of a loss the next day.

Anyway, the recipe calls for 10 minutes of kneading. That's a lot of physical activity for someone like me. But I was getting into it and noticing how it was working my upper body. And then I noticed that because the dough was fairly stiff, I had to 'brace' my body so I could knead properly.

The muscles I was working were for core stability, and in particular the transverse abdominals. These are the ones I need to exercise regularly to help what (I think) Kaz Cooke calls "achy breaky pelvis" - the sacro-iliac dysfunction I got when I was pregnant and haven't yet lost due to low tone and lax joints and grumble grumble grumble. And kneading the bread was the best workout I'd given those muscles for a while!

Then I remembered how the pelvic floor works in synergy with the transverse abdominals and if I try to exercise that at the same time, I'd be making bread, toning the upper body, dealing with the achy breaky pelvis and solving the sneezing problem all in one!

This is a recipe I'll have to make more often.