Drowning sorrows in a Pecan Bar

So lately I have been having a rough time. More specifically, my eyes have been really sensitive to light, they tear up a lot, and they are very irritated. All because the contact lenses I was prescribed are the wrong size and caused ulcers and tiny scratches. Greeeat.

So I have been wearing my glasses, not using much face moisturizer or makeup, and generally feeling sorry for myself.

In what I guess was partially a way to indulge my self pity, Chris brought me this delicious Pecan Bar from a place in Philadelphia called Sofisticakes. Let me tell you, it was as tasty as it looks!

How do you deal when you have a bad day? I have to admit, I may be a bit of an emotional eater!

A healthier rice pudding for once!

I know the first picture looks like wall paper paste, and the second one is just blurry. But try to imagine a really delicious rice pudding, ok?

So I love rice pudding- the really good kind that is creamy and a little sweet and the perfect base for mix-ins like fruit (dried or fresh.) But rice pudding (especially the rich, creamy tasting kind) can really stick to those areas you try so hard to keep slim.

Not this kind though! The batch above was made with rice milk (you could use lowfat or nonfat dairy milk or soy milk too), arborio rice, and a bit of honey (agave nectar works well too!) to sweeten. I left it plain so Chris and I could add mix-ins as we please. He prefers more raisins than I like, I love to throw in some toasted nuts and cinnamon. You can find the recipe here. Let me know how it goes for you if you try it! :)

Pancakes :-D

Don't these look amazing and full of juicy blue-ness? We had some blueberries we needed to use up before they started going bad. We also had some leftover toasted almonds, from that ice cream I posted about ealier. So we whipped up some pancake batter (from scratch! No Bisquick needed when it is so easy and you probably have all the ingredients in the house already, right?), tossed in the fresh berries, and voila. We topped them off with the almonds and pure maple syrup (no HFCS here, and the taste is soooo much better.)

Chris and often wake up on a lazy weekend morning, and turn to each other and say simulataneously, "Pancakes?!?!?"

What do you like in/on your pancakes?

Let's have a smoothie

I love smoothies. They are just so, so SO versatile. You can put just about any fruit in them. You can use chocolate in them to make them more of a sweet treat, you can use peanut butter to make them more filling (and delicious.) You can add green tea matcha powder- a small dose of caffeine, some antioxidants, and all around goodness. You can make them vegan by using rice milk or soymilk instead of regular milk or yogurt. Really, the possibilities are just endless. And you can pack it up and take it to go in a travel coffee cup or some other container. You can have it as a snack, or a small meal, like for breakfast. What is not to love?

This combination here (and believe me, I have many more up my sleeve to share in the future) is frozen berry medley, rice milk, Organic Midnight Moo (Trader Joe's version of chocolate syrup- High Fructose Corn Syrup free!), and some ice cubes. I generally put the ice and any frozen fruit in the blender first and press the ice crusher button first. I add softer or liquid ingredients once the hard, frozen stuff is broken up a bit, and blend or puree.

We make smoothies like this a lot, but most often when we want something filling and healthy, but we want it quickly and without much work. Like Saturday mornings when we have a lot of yard work and house cleaning ahead of us. Or weeknights when we are too hot and exhausted to make a real dinner. We definitely vary the combination depending on how filling we need to make it, or if we want more protein in it.

Do you like smoothies? What do you put in yours?

Grocery list- a glimpse

Grapes, cherries, bananas, watermelon, figs and rainier cherries. Just a few of the things we got last time we really grocery-shopped (last weekend). This is all the fruit we got, and then in the middle of the week I picked up some more bananas and one of those huge cartons of blueberries from Trader Joe's.

What kind of fruit do you keep in the house? Do you decide depending on what is in season?

Homemade energy bars

Fruit in it's natural state is the ultimate, perfect grab-and-go food. But it's nice to change things up, no?





That there, my friends, is a raw, vegan, homemade energy bar, not unlike Larabars. The difference is that mine were much cheaper to make.

Larabars are typically $1-$2 apiece. While I think they are definitely worth the money you pay for them (they have only 3 or 4 ingredients, are raw, vegan, and organic, they give you a serving or two of fruit and sometimes nuts, and they are crazy high in fiber and offer a good amount of other nutrients), I do not have that kind of money to buy them and eat them on a regular basis, so I buy them as treats or if we are going to be on a long road trip.

But now that I have made my own and I was successful, I may not buy them even then. I found some recipes here and here, but I really only used them as a guide. I didn't want to get to the point (as I often do) where I find a recipe and go on a crazy hunt for crazy ingredients of which I had never heard (which happens a lot lately.) I wanted to use things I would have in my own kitchen at any time. Bars like this are easy to experiment with in that way, and isn't that what cooking should be anyway?

So basically I find dried fruit and pulse it to form a paste, adding some water to help it along. You still want it to be dry though so that it holds the bar shape easily. For this bar I used dates (Larabars seem to use them as a base in most of their bars) and prunes. Prunes are slightly less expensive, have less sugar, and more fiber and potassium than dates. But dates have an awesome sweet taste- they're like nature's candy. So, I pulse the dried fruits together, and once it is paste-like I throw in other stuff. I used pecans, dark chocolate pieces and cocoa powder for the bar shown.

Sorry for not including actual amounts- like I said, it involved some experimenting to get to the right consistency.

Once I had everything mixed together, I lined a pan with wax paper and dumped the mix in. I cut another piece of wax paper to lay on top and pressed the mix down to even it out and flatten it. Then I put the pan in the fridge to get the soon-to-be bars cold and hard. After a few hours, I pulled it out, and used a sharp knife to cut into it into bars, but I left the wax paper on- both sides. It acts like a wrapping, making the bar portable. I keep the bars stacked in a tupperware container in the fridge where they are easily accessible so one can reach in, grab one and go. They make a good, high energy, high fiber breakfast, or an anytime snack for when you need sustenance but you don't have time for a meal.

Chris and I loved them, and a friend who had one seemed to enjoy his as well. Since they were a hit, they didn't last long. But that's ok, that just means I can experiment with different flavors. Chris suggested apricots for a future trial- sounds good to me!

Apparently you can buy date paste ready-made, but I haven't found it in any grocery stores yet. I checked Giant and Trader Joe's. I read somewhere that it can be found in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Stores, but here in Phoenixville, I doubt there are many of those. So for now, I will be making my own paste.

Do you like to have grab-and-go food on hand? Do you buy it, or make your own?