Chocolate Pistachio Energy Bites

Energy balls, bites, bars, whatever you call them, are everywhere.  And rightly so.  They are full of protein, fibre and other healthy nutrients that make the body run just that much smoother.  If you have a food processor, you can make your own in no time flat, well, maybe just 5 minutes.  Save a few bucks and customize them as you like.  For my latest article in Culinaire Magazine, I created these little chocolate pistachio gems.  Dates, figs, nuts, and yes chocolate are major players here, so you know already they are going to be delicious.  These are great for a post-workout fix, a snack while you catch up on GIRLS or breakfast as you're running out the door.   Head on over here for the recipe.

Rhubarb Fool with Lavender Cream & Pistachios

I do this thing every year, every day, at this point in Spring - a walkabout around the yard.  I poke at perennials to see if they are still alive - most are but for some wild and crazy reason some don't make it.  (I lost Lamb's Ear and Globe Thistle and Purple Coneflower this year - what the hell?!).  If I were more organized and more nerdy I'd totally make a journal with drawings so I can remember where the hell I planted what, because I'm getting old and the short term memory is just not there anymore, though I can tell you who won the Stanley Cup in 1990 and what year Shakespeare in Love won the Best Picture Oscar.  If you're curious, keep on reading.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, garden nerd talk.  So in this walkabout around the yard, I'm always excited to go back to the veg patch - there is no action there yet - it's just a sad heap of wet, rotten leaves covering dirt until the Rototiller Man can come and work it up for me.  But there in the corner, thriving away in all of its big leafy business in my old friend Rhubarb - or the Barb as I lovingly call it. 

Little Blessings: Cream Cheese & Pistachio Cinnamon Twists

 

So I'm reading before bed last night, like I do most nights, and in the acknowledgements section of Still Life by Louise Penny (a great book if you dig crime fiction or if you've ever loved Agatha Christie like I do) I come across this:

I went through a period in my life when I had no friends, when the phone never rang,

when I thought I would die from loneliness.  I know that the real blessing

here isn't that I have a book published, but that there

are so many people to thank.    

Louise Penny nailed it, no?  I haven't felt the pit of loneliness for a very long time, but I remember it.    Sometimes the void was filled with chocolate or inadequate boyfriends and we all know the former is better than the latter.  Friendships truly are little blessings - be it old friends who knew you when you had the baddest hair and biggest glasses, or new friends you met over Twitter.  There's a bulletin board in my den, and it's absolutely plastered with photos of loved ones - from the faded pic of me and my sis sitting on our pet cow Susie when we were 3 and 5, to the latest pic of a sweet friend's little boys.  There is no room for lonely here.