Day 12, January 12: Cashew Cookies!

I took some time today to do some cooking in order to prepare for the next few days (which will undoubtedly be busy). I broke out the food processor and gave it a workout, the only workout happening around here today since I am taking a rest day from Albany Crossfit.

I used some chickpea sprouts to make some raw hummus, which tastes…interesting. I made it once before, and the flavor improved after it sat in the fridge for a while. I prepared some tofu salad (ingredients: pressed tofu, vegenaise, lemon juice, grated carrots and beets, chopped spinach and scallions, a bit of garlic and cilantro, salt and pepper). And I made a whole pile of one of my favorite things, from scratch: energy bars!

I LOVE Lunabars, specifically, the “Cashew Cookie” variety. If you read the label, you’ll see there are two ingredients: dates and cashews. That's one of the reasons why I love these bars so much: there's not a lot of processed crap in them. However, they're a bit pricey, and I decided that since the ingredients are so simple, I ought to be able to reverse engineer them and make some homemade ones!

Here's what you need:

• 1 1/2 cups raw cashews 
• 30 medjool dates
• food processor
• 9x12 pan
• wax paper

Step 1: removed the pits from your dates. I do it using a chef knife. I keep all the pits on the cutting board and count them, since I lose track of how many I've pitted otherwise. Once you've got your thirty dates pitted, you can throw those pits away.

Did you hear, Trader Joes is coming to the Capital Region!
This particular package of dates traveled all the way from New Jersey.

Next, break out your food processor. I think you really need a food processor for this recipe, by the way. Chopping all these nuts and dates by hand would take forever, and a blender would just make a mess of it. Everybody needs a food processor. If you don't have one, steal your mother's or buy one from a garage sale, or spend the money on a new one. I bought this one when I was 22, and it gave me heart palpitations to spend all that money. It's still running great though! Can't imagine cooking without it!

Put 1/2 cup of cashews in the processor. Process until the nuts are a fine powder that is beginning to stick together into tiny balls.

Then pull out your pitted dates. Add them to your processor. Add another 1/2 cup of cashews too.

Today when I made this recipe, all those dates were too much for my food processor's motor. After I tried to do them all at once, I had to take about half of them back out and process them in smaller batches. But you end up with a ground mixture that looks like this:

To your last batch of ground dates and cashews, add your final 1/2 cup of cashews. You want these to be only roughly chopped, so that you'll have some bigger pieces in your Cashew Cookies. So only pulse the processor a few times.

Line a 9x12 pan with waxed paper. Put your crumbly, pasty date-cashew mixture in, spread it out evenly, and then cover with another sheet of waxed paper. Here's where you use your crossfit muscles: press down smooth out the mixture into one, giant, evenly-thick bar.

What I do at this point is stick the whole pan into the freezer for a half hour. Once it's all firmed up, remove it, take the top layer of waxed paper off, and cut your giant bar into a bunch of little bars.

I wrap my Cashew Cookie bars individually in waxed paper and store them in the freezer. This keeps them fresh for weeks. Don't worry, they are edible straight from the freezer. They are great as a quick pre-WOD snack for quick energy. 

Not only did I make plain Cashew Cookies, I also made some protein powered ones, for those times I want a little extra protein. I followed the same process outlined above, using the following ingredients:

• 15 dates
• ¾ c cashews
• ½ cup + 1 tbsp hemp protein powder
• Juice of ½ a lemon
• Zest of ¼ lemon (make sure you use an organic lemon!)

This recipe made 12 bars, and each contains roughly 7 grams of protein. The lemon juice and zest kind of counterbalances the flavor of the hemp protein. Hemp, by the way, is probably the best protein powder for vegetarians, nutritionally speaking, but it does have a flavor that takes some getting used to. I like it now, but I've been working on developing a taste for it for months.

Really, dates and cashews is such a magical combination: yum!

Now for the boring stuff. What I ate today:

• 9:30 AM: 1/2 c paleo granola and 6 oz almond milk
• 11:30 AM: 1 cashew cookie bar, 2 eggs fried in olive oil, and a piece of whole-grain toast with 1/2 avocado
• 3:30 PM: 1 slice whole grain bread with 1/2 cup of tofu salad (so good!)

My husband and I are celebrating our 10 YEAR WEDDING ANNIVERSARY today!  Wow! 10 years! So we're celebrating by going out to the Cella Bistro in Schenectady for dinner. Dunno yet what I'll be eating for dinner, but it may range into cheat meal territory...nevertheless, I'm pretty certain we won't eat dessert, since Bill and I have been competing to see who can go the longest without eating sugar, and we've been going strong for over 2 months now!