Paleo Almond Joy-Stack (personal size)

Stressful times call for stress eating, made more difficult by this no-grains, no-sugar thing. I want cake, I say. Just walk to the store, Husband says. Cake?? says kiddo. No, I say. No grains.
So, I compromised. Docked myself a point for sugar, and made a single microwaveable paleo brownie (since we don’t have a microwave, we baked at 350 for 20 minutes. Not exactly instant gratification but it did hit the spot).

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For my next trick, I took ingredients on hand and created this exciting concoction. More like a little candy, like an almond joy, but sort of shaped like a haystack. Thus, the moniker Joy-Stack.

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Now, since we made single serving brownies, it made sense to make a small batch of these as well. Plus, as mentioned earlier, I used what I had, and only had a limited amount of coconut. These remind me of the ones I made a while ago that are in the cover photo above, but more candy-like.

It goes something like this …

1-2 tbsp coconut oil
1 tbsp raw honey
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1/4 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp almond butter

Melt the oil over low heat, stir in honey. Add remaining ingredients and stir until well combined. Using a teaspoon, scoop out a little ball, place it in a mini cupcake wrapper. Have some liquid chocolatey goodness leftover? No problem. Carefully add the extra goodness into the cups. Stick them in the frige for at least 30 minutes.
This mini batch made about six candies. Enough to enjoy and share!

Sometimes, I feel like a nut.

San Diego Dinner

Yeah, so I’m kind of going backwards on the posting. Here is another meal from San Diego. Team meals are super fun for me. We stay in a hotel that has a kitchenette in each room, which is pretty crucial as we are all careful with what we are eating during a race weekend. We are a couple of blocks from a major supermarket, and we tend to go there once or twice a day. For dinner we gather in a hotel room/cottage/outdoor patio/etc. and we all bring something to the party. On the first night my hotel-mates and I made pasta salad to go along with the chicken we were barbecuing. (Sorry, no pic)

The next night was pasta night. “Jody, you’re cooking tonight” was the command from a certain rower, much to Jody’s surprise. As a Seattle firefighter she has the experience of cooking for large numbers. It was just pasta, but a lot of pasta.

via chattycha on flickr

via chattycha on flickr

At Jody’s request we went to the store bought and some supermarket-style brownies. These were extra-special because they were topped with chocolate icing. My teammates got into the spirit of this food blog I’ve been keeping and recommended that we “plate” this next one special.

via chattycha on flickr

Click here to see the lucky coxswain who got to take a bite. I suggested she replace the existing strawberry with a clean one, but she refused. Crazy girl.

Let me apologize again for the fuzzy pics. The lighting in the room was nil and I really dislike the look of the flash (see pasta pic above). I have to figure that one out. If you have tips/suggestions, please let me know.