Healthy HuHot -- Winning Recipe

The latest in a series of guest blog posts by David Baumstark who is chronicling his efforts to improve his overall health by working out at Stafford Fitness and eating healthy meals at HuHot.

So far the healthy HuHot Stafford Challenge has leaned decidedly towards Stafford workouts. It may be amazing to you but getting to workout has been easier than getting to a restaurant for a meal. How can that be?

Well to begin with I like to cook. I do appreciate shopping for food, preparing dishes and most of all I enjoy the aroma in the house when I have things on the stove and in the oven. I have trouble starting many things but in the kitchen I am not hindered by that struggle. I can mess up my kitchen thoroughly and know exactly how to clean it back up while enjoying the fruits, or vegetables, of my labors.

So actually for me eating out is a challenge. Taking kids to a restaurant, keeping them settled while we wait for our meal, looking at the bill at the end of the evening and finally dealing with the question of what food did I eat tonight that is making my stomach queasy are all things that conspire to make eating out less than exciting for me.

After saying all that I will have to admit that my kids love HuHot. If they are given a choice about where to go for a special birthday dinner it is always Hu Hot. At least once a week one of them will ask if we can eat HuHot for dinner. Somehow my cooking doesn’t live up to their expectations the way a huge grill in the middle of a restaurant with the occasional flare of ceiling hi flames.

It was Saturday night and I was alone with my daughter Emma. Everyone else in the family had gone their own way for the evening and I decided it was time to get our first meal in for this blog. If you aren’t familiar with HuHot dining you will need to visit to experience their take on the Mongolian Grill idea. It is a fun atmosphere with people lined up around grill watching their own food being prepared and listening to the banter of the cooks while they dance their utensils around the grill.

A quick summary of our meal goes like this: Emma had the usual which is chicken and yellow noodles with three or four ladles of the house special teriyaki sauce. No veggies to my horror but I wasn’t fighting with her about two pieces of broccoli or a couple of carrots tonight.

I think my meal was a little more interesting than hers as I went with a seafood theme. I am a one bowl Hu Hot eater and I will delve into the healthy eating at the restaurant more in the next few blogs, but really one bowl full is plenty for me.

I filled up with the seafood medley which contained squid and shrimp and I threw in a few pieces of the tilapia as well. To this I added Pad Thai noodles and I would recommend, especially if you haven’t eaten at HuHot before, that having a few noodles in your bowl can help with the flavors of your meal as they tend to absorb the sauces while the food is cooking in a way that the meats and vegetables don’t.

For veggies tonight, and I admit I am a big veggie fan, I loaded up with carrots for color, bamboo shoots for their texture and crunch, green peppers for their sweetness, celery just because and finally Bok Choy which is one of my favorite vegetables often found in Asian cooking. I don’t know if the chefs at culinary institutes would be impressed but I thought my bowl looked great.

Next came the sauces:
Three ladles of sweet and sour
Three ladles of lime juice
Two ladles of garlic broth
One ladle of sesame oil

I will say simply that this meal, garnished with a sprinkle of sesame seeds after it was cooked, was light and flavorful and exactly what I was hoping it would be. I accompanied my meal with a glass of Pinot Grigio and sat back to enjoy my meal with Emma as we discussed the Olympics, her friends, and other odds and ends of conversation. It was a pleasant evening out and now that we have this first post done I will be heading to HuHot a couple of times a week and looking at how eating out can fit into a healthy lifestyle.

Mural Stories -- The Greedy Dog

Have you ever wondered about the colorful murals at HuHot? Each one is painted by hand by Missoula, MT-based artist, Laura Blaker. She takes characters from Mongolian folk tales and paints interpretations of these scenes on the walls of each HuHot Mongolian Grill. Each mural is different, the only element present in every single HuHot is the dragon.

Today's story is about the Greedy Dog. Does your local HuHot have the Greedy Dog on its walls?




Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there was a greedy dog living in the Altai Mountains.

One day while the greedy dog was walking along he found a nice bone on the ground near a bridge. He stopped to pick up the bone and looked across the river to the other side. He thought it looked nicer on the other side of the river, and decided to go on across the bridge. As the greedy dog was walking across the bridge with the bone in his mouth he looked down into the water. There in the water he saw his own reflection, and thought it was another dog with a bone. The greedy dog thought to himself: “I am going to take that bone away from the other dog, as it is bigger than the bone I have.” So the greedy dog jumped off the bridge into the water. He splashed around for awhile, but never found the other dog, and lost his own bone at the same time.

Healthy HuHot -- Scheduling Personal Training

The latest in a series of guest blog posts by David Baumstark who is chronicling his efforts to improve his overall health by working out at Stafford Fitness and eating healthy meals at HuHot.


Part two of my workout plan being deviously designed by Adam behind closed doors. We have a few different workouts that we are putting together during my personal training sessions. This way I will have a plan for different daily workouts without working on the same muscle groups each time. Before I get into the specifics of today’s workout though I want to address one of the misconceptions that Beth and I had before we started coming to Stafford.

When Stafford Fitness opened downtown Beth and I had heard that it was a personal training only facility. We heard the monthly dues were around $1000 and that every session was with a personal trainer. We have learned that is not at all the case.

The club offers memberships with various options from the most basic which includes use of the facility but no training or classes for $49/month and the most in depth which includes daily personal training along with classes and facility use for $499/month.

Beth and I have enrolled in the most common membership plan which can be as low as $82/month and included with the orientation covers four sessions with a trainer to begin with and then one monthly personal training session each month to assess and modify our workouts as needed. After that if we want additional personal training we can do it al a carte for as little as $29 for a quick thirty minute session.

The personal training is great but one of the issues I have run into is that it can take a few days to get on the schedule if you haven’t lined up your training sessions for the month ahead of time. A combination of my busy life and trainers being scheduled with other members can make it difficult to coordinate a day or two in advance. It is nice to be able to come down and run through a workout without having to schedule it though and that is how our membership is structured. You really need to visit the club to find a membership option that works for you.

So today’s session was a legs focused workout with the same goals of muscle strength and endurance. Again there was a mix of cardio and strength work and overall I found this workout harder to do than my first one. I feel like my legs are strong but the workout pushed me and I have a pretty good feeling I will be sore tomorrow.

It feels good that we are slowly progressing and getting more challenging as we go without feeling like I have been pushed to quitting. The training isn’t stressful and yet having someone say let’s do two more reps and you realize you can do it instead of quitting when you felt just a little fatigue.

Customer of the Month

This month's customer of the month was found via Twitter!



Name: Alicia Schram

Age: 20

Job: Student, nanny & office assistant :) (I'm a busy girl)

Where I HuHot: Green Bay, WI

How I HuHot:
Meats: Pork, Beef & Sausage
Noodles: Combo Chinese & Pad Thai Noodles
Veggies: Potatoes, Baby Corn, Sprouts, Green Beans & TONS of pineapple! (it balances off the spicy sauces)
Sauces: 1 Ladle Khan's Favorite, 3 Ladles Mean Bean Garlic Sauce, 1 Ladle Kung Pao...Yow! (to prove bravery :) ) & 1 Ladle Lime Juice

Why I HuHot:
If I were to explain all of the reasons why I HuHot, it would take ages. I'm going to narrow it down...
First of all, I'm a picky eater (to say the least). With HuHot, I get to include just the right ingredients in my dinner. Not only that, but I can be sure that those ingredients that I choose are fresh. Secondly, speaking of fresh food, I can be sure that my food won't be sitting idly under a heat lamp after being cooked. I take it to my table hot. I'm never worried to try something new, either (ie. a new sauce, a new vegetable, new meat, etc.) because I know I can go up to the food bar again to replace my plate. It's hard to imagine not liking something at HuHot, though. It'd be wrong of me to stop at the main entree. One of the best parts about the meal at Hu Hot is the dessert - smores! Not only delicious, but it's always a riot to watch the envy in people's eyes as they stroll past your table watching you enjoy it! Overall, there's nothing better than HuHot. Hot, fresh, and delicious, with an attentive staff to top it off, HuHot is a delicious dinner at a spectacular value!

Healthy HuHot -- Get to Work!

This is a continuation of the Healthy HuHot guest blogger series written by David and Beth Baumstark.

Let’s get to work was the theme for today. My assessment complete I am ready to start attacking the workout routine. Well maybe attacking is a little bit strong of a word. In fact, if I didn’t have an appointment scheduled with Adam today I wouldn’t have gotten a workout in. Man is it easy to put off and put off a workout. Fortunately my appointment was scheduled before work and I managed to stop at Stafford Downtown without driving straight through to Break Espresso. No one said that exercise doesn’t require sacrifice.

I ran into another gentleman in the locker room at Stafford and he commented on the great facility and the fact that a workout was just what he needed to start the day. His enthusiasm was contagious and I couldn’t have agreed more. A morning workout sets the tone nicely for whatever comes that day.

The personal training I had scheduled with Adam introduced me to the workout routine he had designed with my goals in mind. So before I go to much farther let me give you and idea of the goals I had discussed with him in an earlier appointment.

I am a relatively active guy so exercise isn’t completely foreign to me. I play hockey a couple of times a week in the winter and I play soccer in the summer. For those two sports I am looking for some increase in strength and flexibility to keep injuries away. I am also interested in either running a marathon, ½ marathon or a triathlon with Beth. So strength and endurance are key elements to help prepare for those challenges. I think most people are surprised to learn that strength training can have a huge benefit when you are training for endurance events especially with injury prevention. Stronger more coordinated muscles help to move our bodies more efficiently so if you are starting to put on miles on the road for the Missoula Marathon or something similar you should consider getting into some form of strength training to help you reach your goals.

With all of that in mind Adam designed the first part of my strength training routine to help build muscle strength and endurance to match the goals I had set. He had work through a series of exercises for my upper body interspersed with cardio sessions on the elliptical between sets on the machines. He thoroughly explained body posture, goals for each exercise and how to use the machines. We took our time and got through a couple of sets of my routine before the session was over. It felt good to get my muscles going and to challenge them a little more than we had the previous week. I am feeling like I have taken a good easy pace to get started and I am hoping to increase the frequency and intensity of the workouts in the next week.

I scheduled an appointment for another training session with Adam for tomorrow and we will go through the rest of the exercise routine he has planned for me. I am looking forward to it.

Healthy HuHot -- The Power Plate

This is a continuation of the Healthy HuHot guest blogger series written by David and Beth Baumstark.

I have another personal training scheduled with Adam for Friday. I didn’t want to wait a full week to get my exercise plan from him before I started doing something at Stafford Downtown so after my session on Friday I put my name down for one of the small group classes that Stafford offers. Whitney, one of the trainers at Stafford who led the class this morning, described the group classes as more of a personal training session with a few other people. Generally there are no more than six people in each group session that way the trainer can still give you some one-on-one attention and make sure you are getting the most benefit from the exercises. Well today’s small group really was small as I was the only one signed up. Apparently Monday morning at nine is a good time to come to Stafford if you want things to yourself.

So the class I signed up for was something completely new to me. I mentioned in my first blog that Beth and I tried out the Power Plate to see what it would feel like and today’s session was a morning stretching class on the Power Plate called Shake It Out. So if I say Power Plate one more time without telling you what it is you are probably going to stop reading. And if I told you to come in to Stafford Fitness and try it instead of telling you all about it you may actually hate me. I guess I will give you a brief description of the machine and today’s class then I will encourage you to come and check it out.

The Power Plate looks a bit like a treadmill with the tread part cut off. There are hand grips about chest high in front of you along with the screen and start and stop buttons. At the bottom is a pedestal that you stand, sit or lean on while you perform various stretches or strengthening exercises. The important part about the machine that makes it so unique is that the pedestal vibrates while you perform your exercises. It made Beth and I think of the fat jiggling machines that promised to melt fat away just by standing there and letting them jiggle your jelly.

Well this machine has a little more going for it than fat jiggle machine. The basic idea is that the vibrations in the base will cause your muscles to remain in a state of confusion over relaxing and contracting which will allow you to stretch farther, or strengthen them more by preventing them from reaching a static end point. OK maybe that isn’t completely clear and I am sure there are very good kinesiologists who could write me a better description of what happens on the Power Plate. However for this article I will say that the vibrations helped during each stretch that I did and they allowed me to reach a little farther throughout the exercise. Not to mention the machine is cool and stretching suddenly becomes more interesting because you get to push some buttons and then vibrate your way to better fitness. See here is a new tag line for Stafford to try in its marketing efforts, “Come check out the Power Plate and Vibrate Your Way To A Whole New YOU.”

Healthy HuHot -- Movement Screening

This is a continuation of the Healthy HuHot guest blogger series written by David and Beth Baumstark.


Ok so it has taken a little while to get back on schedule here. I have several weeks of work out of town and a few fun days as well but it hasn’t meshed well with my workout plans. I guess I am still in that hard to get started phase of exercising. Today I am finally meeting with Adam to do the movement screening we talked about at our orientation. Beth couldn’t make it with me at the same time so I will get feed back from her when she completes hers.

I met with Adam this morning to take my test. Well it felt like a test but I didn’t actually have to give any answers. Adam was laid back and patient as he explained the movement screening to me. He didn’t rush through and he answered questions as I asked them. He explained that he would ask me to do a series of specific movements and after they were all completed he would explain what he was looking for and what it said about my fitness level.

Don’t be afraid of the movement screening. It isn’t scary like the Presidents Fitness Challenge our kids do in school. You might remember the pull-ups, shuttle runs, sit-ups, push-ups and endurance runs that you had to do as a kid, and the movement screening at Stafford isn’t a bit like that. So cross that excuse off your list. The goal of the screening isn’t to push you to your physical limits it is more of a starting point to see basic strengths and flexibility as well as to compare how one side of your body works versus the other.

After completing all the tasks Adam went through each one and explained what he was looking for and how I moved with those things in mind. What this information should give Adam is some specific things that I will need to work on in my exercise plan which he will be completing over the next week. I can’t wait to get started and to see what exercises he comes up with for me.

I relaxed a little after worrying my way through the fitness test and Adam took me through the best part of the morning’s activities. He introduced me to the Movement Prep exercises that the folks at Stafford Downtown encourage you to do before you begin your workouts. Essentially this is an active stretching/warm up you can do before you run, walk, lift weights or attend a class at Stafford. In fact after going through this short routine I am tempted to do it in the mornings to get over the stiffness and general aches that accompany getting out of bed.

I will say that I felt good after doing the movement prep even though I didn’t go on to do an actual work out. I felt comfortable, less stiff and more awake than I had before we started. I also feel that my first couple of sessions at Stafford has not rushed me into exercises where I walk away feeling sore. I am easing into an exercise plan here not jumping in and feeling like I have been beaten up. I think that is especially important for anyone who hasn’t had any regular exercise for a while. One of the surest ways to end your plan to make exercise a part of your day is to have it hurt all the time. So take it easy, get started slowly and see what next week brings.