Why couldn’t
my mum be from the Maldives? I hear it’s the flattest country in the world.
Very flat, no big hills, level. But no. Ireland it is and not just any old part
– Connemara with its hills, bogs and lashing of rain. Now on a good day
Connemara is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It’s also good on a
bad day when you’re in a car or a pub. When it’s not good would be when you’re
running for two miles up a fairly hefty gradient knowing that it’s only the
start of the half marathon, or so I imagine. Soon I won’t have to imagine and
will actually be experiencing this joyous event for myself.
For some
reason I agreed with The Thew when he said that when visiting my family we
should time it so we could do the Connemarathon. Ok I agreed to half but still,
the course looks brutal. This now means that I have to actually train for it. I’m
not saying that I wouldn’t have to train for a normal one but it would be so
much easier training for one in say the Maldives, than building hill training into
my regime and thinking about waterproof clothing. I’m not the biggest fan of
running at the best of times so I’ve decided to try and be a bit healthier so I
have less of me to drag around the course.
So I’m
afraid that today’s recipe is fairly healthy (although the dried fruit has a
ton of sugar in so not that great – yay!) However it’s very easy and doesn’t
involve putting the oven on. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a
while as The Thew eats a lot of Nakd bars and I think that they are dry and
horrible. However when looking at the ingredients the bars should be moist so I
decided to try them myself. I’m guessing that Nakd have to dry theirs out more
in the cold pressing process they use so that they stay more rigid and can be
packed easily. These bars retain the juiciness of the dried fruit used and
are fairly sweet with the cocoa adding a nice touch of chocolate. I actually enjoy these and they have gone down
well in the office. Also gluten and dairy free, along with being vegan!
Ingredients
290g dried
dates (stoned)
175g cashew
nuts (not roasted or salted)
100g flame raisins
(so I didn't use flame raisins once. You can read what happened here)
10-30g good
quality cocoa powder (it’s more to taste and depends on how chocolately you
want it. You can always add more so start low and just add more if you think it
needs it.)
1. Whizz the cashews buts in a food processor until
they are in tiny pieces.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients and whizz into a
mush. You’ll see what I mean.
3. Turn out into a silicon or lined tray. I used a
20cm x 20cm silicon tray so something of similar dimension. Smooth out with the
back of a spoon.
4. Cover the top with baking paper and top with
heavy books. Ideally the first book would roughly fit the dimensions of the tin
to give an even press. Put it in the fridge for anything from 3 – 48 hours.
5. Remove from the tin and cut into whatever size
pieces you want.
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