"Instant" Apricot Power Bars, Gratitude

I'll share this recipe for a super-simple snack, as promised, in a moment. It's a dried-fruit-and-seeds-based bar, which is why it's "instant," and I'll share some of my thoughts and peeves about that, too.

First, though, I wanted to share a moment of gratitude. Since my working week is so eccentric and my choice of eating establishments so "other," I tend to shy away from the whole "TGI Friday" thing. But it just happens to be a Friday, and I just happen to have been overwhelmed with gratitude today. Gratitude for the kindness of so many friends, both in real life and online. For all my blog readers! Gratitude for my wonderfully supportive and patient husband. Gratitude for my naturopath and therapist, who allow me to trust them enough that I can get help, after years of never receiving any kind of healthcare, and who encourage me to know myself and do my best. For writing groups in town and writer friends everywhere. For rooibiscus tea, and all the herbals that have been helping me through my cold. For my own ability today to take a supplement that I knew would calm me down rather than stoking the crazies and amping up even more.

I'm so grateful that I get to do work I love (most of it I really do), in a beautiful place, and that in as tiny a home as we live, I have two wonderful workstations--this one with the view...

And this "nook," which is a better place when the sun is shining in through the windows and you still have to work!

Thanks for letting me indulge in that gratitude.

Now for the bars! Nut/seed and dried fruit sweets are ubiquitous in the Middle East and were also ubiquitous as healthfood store snacks when I was growing up. They are wonderful: super-nutritious and very easy to make--but they are not rocket science, nor are they a huge innovation. I used to make them all the time, in various permutations of dried fruits, nuts and seeds, and they were always super-popular. It would fascinate me which combinations were favored by whom. I didn't like the dried banana/pumpkin seed version at all, but one of my best friends adored it, so I'd always make it for him.

But, since they are the basis of a huge repertoire of raw desserts, I have to admit to having been jaded and cynical at times when I'd look through a new Raw Recipe book, turn to the dessert section, and see all kinds of exceedingly decadently titled items--"chocolate truffle brownies!" "triple layer fudge cheesecake!"--and they would all turn out to be yet another more (or sometimes, less) elaborate version of a nut/date treat. Truth in advertising? Don't get me wrong: I'm sure they were delicious. It's also true that in recent years, even the use of nuts/dates in raw desserts has become far more sophisticated, with the advent of finely ground cashew flour and date paste, and the use of stand mixers and irish moss to make super-fluffy textures.

But aside from making my own cream cake crusts, I hadn't made a nut/date or seed/dried fruit "bar" in ages before this week. I'd been avoiding dried fruit for years because of yeast issues, and most nuts and seeds are way too high in omega-6 for me to feel comfortable consuming them as a snack. I'd gotten a dehydrator, and was enjoying concocting lower fat, lower sugar snacks that needed dehydration to bring everything together.

I also love simplicity, though. As busy as I've been, and as minimal of appetite, I wanted something compact without being overly decadent, quick and easy to make. 

I don't like "decadent" for my regular snacks: it makes me too nervous, and I end up not enjoying the food. I'd always prefer to eat something I can "justify" to myself. So, part of my current enamorment with apricots is due to their great vitamin and mineral profile and relatively low sugar. And apart from a spell last year when I avoided all PUFA's, both omega 6 and omega 3, which I don't think was a great success, I generally feel fairly good about high-omega-3 seeds like hemp and flax. Hemp has the added bonus of being a complete protein, and flax has the good lignans (fiber) too.

These Instant Apricot Power Bars (version 1) are so quick and easy. I made them in the mini chopper that came with my immersion blender, and pre-chopped the apricots to minimize the time I had to listen to a noisy motor. I'm a quick knifewoman, so it probably sped the whole process up. You'll enjoy them too, I hope!

1 cup unsulphured dried apricots (pre-chopped to save time and noise) 

1/2 cup hemp seeds (shelled hemp hearts)

1/4 cup golden flax meal

handful mulberries

Whiz the apricots and hemp seeds until they're well blended together. 

Add the flax meal and blend again. 

Throw in the mulberries just as the mixture is starting to stick together.

Form into bars and refrigerate. They'll keep in the fridge for a long time, and practically forever in the freezer.

These are soft and chewy, not as dry or dense as some of the nuttier bars that use nut butter as a binder together with the dried fruit.. The hemp and flax seeds give them a pleasant, earthy taste without the omega 6 that earthy sunflower seeds provide. The apricots are subtly sweet, and also give the whole thing an orangey hue for which I'm always such a sucker! The mulberries are just lovely: a complex sweetness, and that wonderful texture too.

Sound good?

I call this "version 1" because I'm curious to see how it would be with some added mesquite and/or carob and/or maca, and with some goji berries, or citrus zest or other spices--my beloved cardamom??...!. As ever with these nut/seed/dried fruit affairs, the possibilities are endless. I'm so grateful to be able to enjoy dried fruit again, and to consider it a nutritious, powerful food that works well for me.

Have a beautiful weekend, everyone! Eccentric scheduler as I am, I may be back over the weekend with some more body image-related thoughts. 

What do you think of dried fruit/nut/seed treats? Best new thing ever or overhyped, or other?

loves...

Massaged Chard and Horseradish Dressing; Overextended

the sea ice on Turnagain Arm looks like a lava flow!

One of the insights to come out of our rushed trip to Anchorage was that I'm overextended. We probably didn't need to be told that! There simply aren't enough hours in a day to do all that I consider essential. And there isn't a thing that I can cut out. At this point, I'm recognizing that preparing my online course is going to take a lot of work for the next month, and then teaching the course for the following five months will also be work. The more I can get done ahead of time, the less of a scramble it will be when the time comes, and the better a job I will do, which means less stress. I'm just trying to find ways to make sure that my levels of stress and busyness don't have a negative impact on Phil (as they sometimes do).

I am so grateful for the afternoons and evenings given up to writing groups here in town. Yes, it's not butt-in-chair, get-work-done prime time, but spending time with these people, giving and receiving feedback, is so validating. It assures that I'm not alone in my obsessions or my needs to honor my creative processes. My own ideas often spark against those of other people. And it reassures me that this is all so meaningful!

On other creative fronts, I'm bursting with ideas for one particular angle on nutrition, which I will share more of soon. When it comes to feeding myself, I'm finding myself wanting to be minimalist, fresh and water-rich. As is today's recipe.

When I wasn't refusing to eat brown guacamole, I had some pretty good food for our whirlwind Anchorage trip this week. Having all the veggies from Full Circle, I was conscious of not wanting to waste anything while being gone for a couple days. 

So I made this gorgeous massaged chard salad with a horseradish dressing...

...and lots of other veggies--and it fed me for the other three meals of our journey! I'm glad to share.

For the salad:
1 bunch red chard, destemmed and torn into pieces (save the stems for juicing or making veggie broth)
1 baby bok choy, torn into small pieces
1 cup purple cabbage
Sprinkle the leaves liberally with kelp powder (or you can just use salt), massage it in well, and set aside while you prepare everything else.

1 cup homemade kim chee
2 chopped tomatoes
4 chopped mushrooms
1/2 cup sprouted lentils
1/2 cup pomegranate seeds
Add these to the salad when you're ready to add the dressing.

This dressing is both simple and light, and was so easy and quick to make with the little hand-held blender. The horseradish and mustard give both pungency and a little sweetness, and the flax meal makes it thick without adding lots of extra oil. There are plenty of substitution options, so it should be easy to make with whatever's in your pantry and fridge!

Horseradish dressing
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon homemade macadamia nut butter (I'll talk about this soon)
1 tablespoon homemade coconut kefir (or just use 2 tbs nut milk)
1 tablespoon golden flax meal
1 tablespoon homemade horseradish (if you don't have horseradish, just use mustard--it'll be different, but still good)
1 teaspoon miso
pinch ground mustard
1/4 cup liquid (could be coconut kefir whey, nut milk, kim chee juice...)

Blend all together--a handheld blender works wonderfully, and probably even a manual whisk would do it.

Add the rest of the veggies to the greens and incorporate the dressing thoroughly. The chard will soften up the more you massage the dressing in--hands are good!
This salad included chard, bok choy and mushrooms from the Full Circle box.
I think the dressing would be wonderful on a 'slaw, and I have a beet from the Full Circle box and a cabbage ready to test it out on--pink beet cabbage slaw I see in the near future!