chunky + creamy

There’s no better way to spend a Sunday than at home making homemade nut butters.  Especially because doing so will save quite a bit of money (especially with the coconut butter).  To be completely honest, I have never bought or tasted the coconut butter that you can buy in the stores, but all I know is that the recipe below is so simple and delicious there is no reason to spend more than a couple of dollars to enjoy it.

And all you need for either of these recipes is a food processer – couldn’t be much easier than that, right?

Chunky Almond Butter

• 10 oz raw almonds
• 1/4t salt

1. Preheat oven to 325*.

2. Roast the almonds for 15-18 minutes, until slightly toasted.

3. Let cook on the pan for 5 minutes.

4. Place 8 oz of the almonds in a food processor and process for 6-10 minutes or until it has reached a butter consistency.  Add in the salt and mix it a couple more times.  Pour into a mixing bowl.

5. Chop up the remaining 2 oz almonds into small to medium size chunks (whatever size you like the most).

6. Add the chopped almonds in with the almond butter and stir to combine.

7. Place in a mason jar and enjoy!  You can leave your almond butter at room temp for a couple of weeks, or put in the fridge to last longer (although it probably won’t last that long, especially in this house!).

Chunky perfection.

Coconut Butter

• shredded coconut

1. In a food processor, place as much coconut as you’d like.  I normally stick to half of a 12oz bag for this which makes 6-7 fluid ounces of coconut butter.

2. Process until creamy.  It will take between 6 and 10 minutes, just scrape down the sides of the processor if needed.

Mmm creamy.

I wish I could say that I didn’t just make these both last weekend and had to make them again today.  Although most of the consumption happened before Kinley’s 1/2 marathon on our delicious pancakes.

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tropical islands

I love islands.  Well, to be honest I have only been on a couple of islands.  I went to Hawaii in 2005, I’ve been to Martha’s Vinyard, Great Britain, Long Island… apparently besides Hawaii I have not been to any other tropical islands…  Man, that needs to change!  I do know however that I love tropical flavors.  Pineapple, coconut, mango, papaya – count me in!  And I can’t wait until I get to go back to Hawaii in November to be able to eat Dragonfruit again!  My favorite from what I can remember :).

Anyways, since it is almost officially summer (only a few more days!), I thought a tropical-inspired granola sounded pretty good.  Coconut, mangos, cashews… if only I had a beach and a cabana to sit by to enjoy it in.

Tropical Granola

• 2 cups old fashioned oats
• 1/4 c coconut
• 1/2 cup ground flax
• 1/2 cup raw cashews, cut in pieces
• 2t cinnamon
• 1/2t ground ginger
• 1 serving dried mangos, cut into pieces*
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 2T mango butter
• 1t vanilla
• ~2T water (optional)

1. In a small pan over medium heat, toast the coconut for a few minutes to develop its flavor.

2. Combine all the dry ingredients into a large bowl.

3. Mix together the wet ingredients and add them into the dry.  The addition of water in the wet ingredients helps to make your granola clump together so there are more clusters.  This was the first time trying it but it seemed to work pretty well!

4. Bake on a baking sheet in a 350* oven for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring every 15 minutes.

*In normal granola recipes, raisins and other dried fruits are added in after baking.  It wasn’t intentional to bake the mango in this recipe, everything just kind of got thrown together ;).  Baking it makes the mango a little more crunchy, so it’s up to you whether or not you want to bake it or add it in at the end.

Whether you’re headed to a beach with a cabana, or simply to your backyard with a beach towel to enjoy the sun, this granola will not disappoint.

little ball of energy

I typically do my longer run on Saturday since it used to be my only day off of school/work for the week.  I’ll still keep up my Saturday ritual since it will work well with training for my upcoming races, but this past weekend I switched up my routine a bit.  I attended my baccalaureate service for Graduation on Saturday morning with my family and then we went out to brunch.  Needless to say, I did not want to wake up early to run the usual distance, so Kinley (my sister) and I did a quick 3 mile run instead.  I was then planning on running on Sunday… but then I wimped out because of the 45mph wind gusts, there’s lovely Wisconsin for ya ;).

Monday it is then!  It was still a little windy, but the sun was shining and the temperature was in the 40’s which is what I am used to.  So I woke up around 7, ate a rice cake with 1T trader joe’s peanut butter and set out for my run at 8.  I’m not quite sure why, but my energy was just not with me.  I ended up running a 10k in pretty good time for myself but I just felt like I was dragging.  I used to run without eating anything before, which is not very effective but I think I still must not be energizing enough.

I definitely could have used some of these energy-filled balls as a pick-up halfway through!  I found this recipe for Chocolate Coconut Dough Balls from The Edible Perspective and changed it up just a bit based off of what I had on hand.  They taste very similar to Larabars, which I love and these were so simple to make!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup ground almonds (I had a pack of pre-ground trader joe’s raw almonds)
• 12 pitted dates
• 1T unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2T unsweetened shredded coconut

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. In a food processor, chop up the dates (make sure you have pitted dates, or otherwise take the pit out before you do this).
2. Add in the ground almonds, cocoa powder and shredded coconut.  Mix together until it will form into balls.  I also added about 1T of water to the mix to get the correct consistency (I think because the original recipe called for medjool dates which I did not use).
3. Roll into balls (mine made 13) and keep refrigerated.

I’ll definitely be bringing these along with me on Saturday’s run to see if they’ll help me keep up my pace (if they’re still around that is, they’re delicious)!