I am starting my 3rd or 4th cycle of the 21-Day challenge. When it finishes, I just start over at the beginning. It gives me some structure, which I sorely need. I’ve been doing pretty good on the plan so far. I feel good, have good energy levels, I’ve lost weight. Losing weight is both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good because I’m healthier. It’s bad because I have to spend money on new clothes. And boy have I! I’ve recently rediscovered dresses. I bought this hot little number at Old Navy last week. When I tried it on for Tim, he said I looked like a hot Mexican cleaning lady, which I think is a good thing. I wore it out today for the first time and was amazed at how cool and refreshing it is! I may never wear shorts again. In fact, I ordered another dress from Old Navy today. This will be the summer of the dress. Shorts be damned.
Back to the whole primal thing. I’ve been sloppy this week. Tim’s been on Spring Break this week, so we’ve gotten out of our regular routine and habits. I’ve been eating more and worse food (buns! bagels! popcorn!) and drinking more beer. I’m not sweating it too much, however. I know I can and will get back on track when Tim’s schedule gets back to normal. I feel so much better when I eat strictly primal, that I’m not too tempted to fall off the wagon permanently.
To keep myself from overindulging in non-primal sweets (hello Whitey’s Moose Tracks malts!), I made Caramel Pecan bars from this recipe. I have to say, they didn’t turn out half bad. You can see a photo of one in my Instagram feed to the right. Tim even professed to like them and said that no one would guess they were “primal.”
With a food processor they were not difficult to make; although, I did dirty a tremendous amount of dishes. Also, the “caramel” sauce on top is really made of ground up dates, mixed with vanilla and a few other ingredients. I have bad luck putting dates in the food processor. I assume they are supposed to get all chopped up into tiny pieces, but whenever I do it, they get chopped into medium size pieces that form a huge clump above the spinning blade. I scrape the chunks back down to the bottom, turn on the processor again, only to have them spun above the blade again a few seconds later. I don’t know what I am doing wrong. Maybe I need to chop them up into smaller pieces before putting them in the blender. I soaked the dates in water for an hour like the recipe stated and everything. Oh well, they still turned out pretty tasty. I may have actually overcooked the base. The recipe said to cook it for 20-25 minutes. I cooked it for 20 minutes, at which point it was already a little overcooked.
So that’s been my week in a nutshell – eating, exercising, shopping, cooking. Good times.
