Mistakes? Ha! That’s just part of learning no matter how skilled you are in any field. And, no way to sugar coat it, the Chocolate, Grain & Nut Butter Power Bars I made recently, and intended to add to the recipe lineup here, just didn’t work out as planned – not even with the terrifically flavorful ingredients shown here.
The first signs regarding intended purpose as power bars: crumbling dough when I formed it a baking sheet. Then, cracks in the finished loaf (see the red arrows below), which was a clear sign the bars would fall apart easily, especially if tucked in a pocket for a hop on the bike or run.
The worst part: the flavor wasn’t as full on as I’d expected – and that happens.
But no way were all those terrific ingredients getting tossed in the trash. Instead, I did what the bars wanted to do anyway and crumbled them into a container to be “repurposed” as a chocolate-granola cereal and then…
…made this much more full-on flavorful chocolate, grain and nut butter cereal breakfast bowl.
I’ll get that picture book recipe out right after I first put together a purposely made picture book Chocolate, Grain & Nut Butter Power Cereal recipe.
More very soon!
April 19th, 2022 Blog, Fruit, How To & TipsComments Off on How to Speed Up Pineapple Ripening
At the end of the last post I promised I’d show how to improvise on very easy-to-make pineapple, yogurt & jam. That plan sounded fine until I realized that the pineapple I was going to use to make and shoot those directions wasn’t yet ripe even after I’d had it on top of my fridge for about a week, as shown below
No problem. Just another opportunity to improvise in a different manner. Though I’ve not done this with a pineapple before, I figured I could probably speed up the ripening process by doing what I do with other fruits and avocados that sometimes take days or longer to ripen out in the open.
Last night I put the pineapple in a paper bag (can’t use a plastic bag for this because plastic doesn’t allow for needed air exchange that makes ripening work; paper does),…
…then clipped the bag closed (because it would’t stay closed just by folding the bag top), and…
…put the bagged pineapple on top of the fridge, which I’ll now keep an eye on to see how quickly the pineapple ripens.
More soon!
April 11th, 2022 Blog, Breakfast, FruitComments Off on Pineapple, Yogurt, Jam, and Dried Fruit Picture Book Recipe
Last post showed how to ripen and cut a fresh pineapple as easily as possible. Here’s a fully flavorful, very easy-to-make way to enjoy cut pineapple for breakfast, lunch, dessert or as a refuel snack after pushing yourself physically. As always, the ingredients you see below are only suggestions. Use your imagination to make your pineapple, yogurt, jam, and dried fruit all yours!
Click this link or any picture on this page for an easy-to-follow step-by-step picture book recipe.
Next post: an example of how to improvise on this recipe.
April 8th, 2022 Blog, Breakfast, Fruit, How To & TipsComments Off on How to Ripen and Cut Fresh Pineapple Picture Book Directions
The sweet, tropical flavor and soft crunch and pop texture of fresh pineapple is just as fully satisfying on its own as it is mixed with other flavors. More about that later.
First, the picture book directions you can get by clicking this link or any picture on this page…
…show how to ripen a pineapple (that almost always comes to market underripe),…
…how to make a ripened pineapple take up less space in your refrigerator and…
…how to cut a pineapple as easy as possible.
Next blog: some easy-to-make pineapple recipes. All fun and full-on flavorful!
Last post earlier this week discussed what’s really in an ingredient and what that means to you, especially if you have dietary restrictions. Then, entirely coincidentally, this week I got a text from a good cycling bud asking whether to use sweetened or unsweetened coconut flakes and what type of chocolate chips to use to make Banana Nut Butter Power Bars. He couched his question with a note that his skills are pretty much limited to toasting Pop Tarts. Excellent on all fronts!
I loved the question! Right away, I tore down the old recipe to revise it with this more descriptive list of ingredients and…
…these new directions that you can get by clicking this link or any picture on this page.
Always glad to make changes – that’s “learning and adapting” life in action. And what I like best is hearing what works and doesn’t work for people actually using any recipe I put on this site so that I can help make your work – and mine – in the kitchen as easily fully flavorful as possible. That’s life enriched!
What really is in an ingredient needed to put together a recipe?
That question – and the idea of fairness – popped in my head while I was laying out the last post that compared the ingredients of a random sample of store bought packaged power bars…
…with a homemade power bar sandwich made with the ingredients shown here.
As shown above, the packaged bars all have their ingredients listed by quantity in order of the most used to least used ingredient.
I listed the ingredients used to make the power bar sandwich in the same way: whole grain bread; choice of honey, jam or cookie spread; nut butter; fresh fruit; raisins; and chocolate chips.
But my list doesn’t say it all. Sure, bananas are bananas, blueberries are blueberries and raisins are raisins. And, the nut butter I use I make myself with just lightly salted and unsalted almonds and ground flaxseed, as shown here.
Almond butter ingredients
But the rest of the ingredients are much more complex, meaning that they themselves are made with a lot of ingredients. Here’s what’s in the whole grain bread I used to make the power bar sandwich:
Though I’m not a big fan of the added sugar, the rest of the ingredients look fine to me – and I’m sure not going to start off making the power bar sandwich by first baking the bread needed to make that sandwich.
Then there’s the choice of honey, jam and/or cookie spread. As shown below, the honey is just honey. The jam is made with fig paste, sugar, water and lemon juice. Simple enough.
But then there’s the cookie spread, which tastes great but is also made with many more ingredients than the honey and jam, including a good shot of added sugar. (A quick side note regarding nutrition labels: the first thing to check on any nutrition label is serving size. As you can see in the above picture, the cookie spread serving size is 2 tablespoons, which is twice the serving size of the 1 tablespoon serving size for honey and jam. That means that tablespoon for tablespoon, which is about all you need to make the power bar sandwich, fig butter has 45 calories, honey has 60 calories and cookie spread has 85 calories.)
Finally, here are the ingredients needed to make the chocolate chips:
The point here is that there are actually a lot of unseen/unnoticed ingredients that go into complex ingredients, like the bread and spreads, needed to make the power bar sandwich just as there are many ingredients that go into making any recipe that calls for prepared ingredients like canned or jarred products, sauces and seasonings – or just about anything found in the center aisles of the the grocery store.
The key take away here is that it’s important to be curious about what exactly you are putting into any food you make, especially if you have dietary restrictions. Being curious then means actually looking at nutrition labels in the store and deciding what works best for you before actually buying that food. Yes, that takes a bit more time, but the payoff to you and those sharing what you make for them to eat is well worth that time.
Very easy to make, fully flavorful, energy sustaining power bar sandwich
A good friend, George, popped me this power bar meme the other day.
The reason for disappointment: just look at the ingredients listed on a random search for power/protein bar nutrition labels.
Sample of commercially available power bar ingredient labels
About the only flavorful – and potentially real – ingredients in the above three labels combined are organic cashew butter, chocolate, peanuts and peanut butter.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
For the past 2 weeks, since two good cycling buds, Sean and Eddie, asked on a ride about making homemade power bars, I’ve been reworking older power bar recipes and working up new ones – and have sure learned a lot.
The most important lesson learned – that sometimes came the hard way: make is fully flavorful as quickly and easily as possible. And that’s how I approached this very easy-to-make power bar sandwich made with only the fully flavorful and full-on energy sustaining ingredients shown below: whole grain bread; nut butter; choice of honey, jam (fig butter) or cookie spread; fresh fruit; raisins; and chocolate chips.
Power bar sandwich ingredients
Regarding proof under fire, the power bar sandwich you see here – with coffee -…
Power bar sandwich
…sustained me easily, with no need to refuel on the fly, for a 40+ mile North Carolina bike ride.
Click this link or any picture on this page for power bar sandwich picture book directions.
Here’s how to take banana nut butter power bar flavor from good to great!
No doubt you’ve had the experience; You bite into something and think, “Yah, that’s good, but it could really be better if…”
That’s exactly what I thought when I tasted a fresh batch of the banana nut butter bars I posted recently – and you know the deal here: flavor rules. And not that those bars didn’t taste good. They did. But good isn’t good enough. So, right away, I made another fresh batch with adjusted ingredient quantities, as shown in blue below.
Here’s how a bowl full of flavor boosted banana nut butter power bars came back after coffee with my good Hickory buds.
Click this link or any picture on this page to download the freshly revised picture book recipe.
March 8th, 2022 Blog, EmpowermentComments Off on Celebrating International Women’s Day Beyond Today
I’d never heard of it until an NBDA (National Bike Dealers Assoc.) “Women in the Cycling Industry” Zoom call last month, but today is the 111th International Women’s Day.
Earlier today, the first song I heard on an a cappella music station was “In the Blood” by Home Free that started with the words,
How much of my Mother Has my Mother left in me
My answer: quite a lot, which I always appreciate and never take for granted.
And, in the same way I remember my mom for who she was and her spirit that lives on in me,…
…the real deal about recognizing today’s specially designated day is living daily with a respectful and positively constructive attitude in every interaction with women – and men.
As a narrow point of approach, we’re planning an International Women’s Day: Together We Ride bike ride this Saturday here in Hickory, North Carolina, to include cyclists of all abilities. That, too, will be a specially designated event, but the long-term intent of the ride is to make cycling more welcoming to women, who are greatly outnumbered in our community by men cyclists. I look forward to seeing that gap close – and not only in the cycling world!
These potently flavorful, easy to make banana nut butter power bars work great for dessert or as an on-the-go sport power bar. As you see in the picture above, I prefer making them in the toaster oven for ease and speed, though the picture book directions linked to this post also show how to bake them in a standard kitchen oven.
Regarding the ingredients shown above and below, I know it looks like a lot – but don’t panic. The spices (cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and nutmeg) along with vanilla extract are the cornerstones of the full flavor of these bars. If you don’t have some of those spices, just use a little more of what you do have. You can also use juice (apple cider works great) instead of coffee and substitute ground flaxseeds, chia seeds, and whole grain cereal with any other ground similar type of ingredient, like ground nuts or your favorite cereal. The bottom line: imagination and available ingredients are your only limits.
Click this link or any picture on this page for a complete, easy-to-follow step-by-step picture book recipe.
April 25th, 2022 
