Killer North Carolina cycling & quinoa power bars the 3 to the right of “dude” left (me) haven’t yet tried (next ride, men!)
A few terrific cycling buds asked me on a ride this weekend if I have any recipes for power bars. I do: Quinoa Power Bars and Banana Nut Butter Power Bars.
The keys to a good power bar: a mix of simple and complex carbohydrates that your body breaks down quickly for immediate burn, healthy fats and protein that take longer to break down for sustained energy burn – and killer good flavor! Both the quinoa and banana nut butter bars provide exactly that.
First, quinoa power bars because I just updated that recipe yesterday with relatively new nutritional information and directions showing how to grind whole chia seeds to get the most out of them. I’ll update the banana nut butter bars next.
Click this link or any picture on this page for step-by-step quinoa power bar picture book directions.
The other day I wanted something a little different for breakfast with flavor and substance to power me through a good late winter Hickory, NC, group bike ride. Here’s what I came up with. I call it scrambled pancake because I used most of the ingredients I use to make a fruit pancake but scrambled the batter like scrambled eggs.
These are the ingredients that I mixed in the bowl you see at the bottom of the picture below.
Those ingredients and rough proportions are (no need to measure precisely: with these ingredients, your result will turn out great): 2 eggs, dash of salt, good shake of ground cinnamon, about 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1 big tablespoon of each: ground flaxseed, cooked quinoa (the red grains in the square container above the butter), cooked steel cut oats (the white grains in the square container between the vanilla extract), and a handful of raisins.
Of course, as an improvised recipe, which is just a guide, and I was using what I already had in the fridge, specifically regarding the quinoa and steel cut oats. I can imagine you don’t have those – and possibly not ground flaxseed also – ready to grab and go. No problem: just substitute any or all the grains above with any favorite cooked or ready to eat grain, like cold oat cereal, granola or wheat germ. Your imagination is your only limit.
Here’s how to cook what you’ve mixed.
Add about as much butter as you see above to a frying pan warmed to the same temperature needed to make scrambled or fried eggs. Add and spread the batter, and give the pan a good back and forth shuffle like you see in the last picture above to “encourage” the batter not to stick to the pan surface.
After a 1-3 minutes, when the bottom of the cooked batter looks lightly browned like the top photo above, use a spatula to turn the batter. Don’t worry about trying to turn it all in one piece. (I tried doing that myself – and failed with a smile). Then use the spatula to break and turn the batter, like you would do to make scrambled eggs, until it is cooked through as shown below.
You can then scoop what you’ve cooked into a bowl and add whatever you want want: maple syrup, honey, jam, peanut or any nut butter, yogurt, whipped cream – anything. Next post, I’ll show what I added to make what you see below that easily sustained me for 40 miles on the bike, no problem.
Not too long ago, I came upon a recipe for rice cakes (nothing like the puck-shaped, crunchy variety you find on grocery shelves) put together by pro-cycling Team Sky nutritionist Nigel Mitchell to sustain top world-class athletes on long rides. Here’s a shot of Nigel’s rice cake recipe along with…
Rest day over. The men of the Tour crank it into the Pyrenees for 237 kilometer (147 miles) of serious climbing. Here’s what the profile looks like. Ouch!
With the weather turning on a dime the way it has lately as fall blends into winter, I’ve been hawking the forecast both online and out my window quite a bit lately to pick just the right time to rip out on the bike. Inevitably, I’ll find that window opens just after whatever I’ve had for breakfast or lunch has already spent all its energy inside me. Yah, I sure know a good deal of that energy loss could be due to some of the “caged Bruce” pacing I do between work tasks. Read more »
February 28th, 2022 
