102 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
102 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
---
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layout: post
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title: Brian Bars
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---
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It actually blows my mind it's been 4 years since I used this blog. It was
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previously a tech blog, but then I started putting all my tech-related posts on
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[the cryptic blog](cryptic.io). As of now this is a lifestyle/travel blog. The
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me of 4 years ago would be horrified.
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Now I just have to come up with a lifestyle and do some traveling.
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# Brian Bars
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This isn't a real recipe because I'm not going to preface it with my entire
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fucking life story. Let's talk about the food.
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Brian bars:
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* Are like Clif Bars, but with the simplicity of ingredients that Larabars have.
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* Are easy to make, only needing a food processor (I use a magic bullet) and a
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stovetop oven.
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* Keep for a long time and don't really need refrigerating (but don't mind it
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neither)
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* Are paleo, vegan, gluten-free, free-range, grass-fed, whatever...
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* Are really really filling.
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* Are named after me, deal with it.
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I've worked on this recipe for a bit, trying to make it workable, and will
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probably keep adjusting it (and this post) as time goes on.
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## Ingredients
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Nuts and seeds. Most of this recipe is nuts and seeds. Here's the ones I used:
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* 1 cup almonds
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* 1 cup peanuts
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* 1 cup walnuts
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* 1/2 cup flax seeds
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* 1/2 cup sesame seeds
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For all of those above it doesn't _really_ matter what nuts/seeds you use, it's
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all gonna get ground up anyway. So whatever's cheap works fine. Also, avoid
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salt-added ones if you can.
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The other ingredients are:
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* 1 cup raisins/currants
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* 1.5 lbs of pitted dates (no added sugar! you don't need it!)
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* 2 cups oats
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## Grind up the nuts
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Throw the nuts into the food processor and grind them into a powder. Then throw
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that powder into a bowl along with the seeds, raisins, and oats, and mix em
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good.
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I don't _completely_ grind up the nuts, instead leaving some chunks in it here
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and there, but you do you.
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## Prepare the dates
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This is the harder part, and is what took me a couple tries to get right. The
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best strategy I've found is to steam the dates a bit over a stove to soften
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them. Then, about a cup at a time, you can throw them in the food processor and
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turn them into a paste. You may have to add a little water if your processor is
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having trouble.
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Once processed you can add the dates to the mix from before and stir it all up.
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It'll end up looking something like cookie dough. Except unlike cookie dough
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it's completely safe to eat and maybe sorta healthy.
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## Bake it, Finish it
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Put the dough stuff in a pan of some sort, flatten it out, and stick it in the
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oven at like 250 or 300 for a few hours. You're trying to cook out the water you
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added earlier when you steamed the dates, as well as whatever little moisture
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the dates had in the first place.
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Once thoroughly baked you can stick the pan in the fridge to cool and keep,
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and/or cut it up into individual bars. Keep in mind that the bars are super
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filling and allow for pretty small portions. Wrap em in foil or plastic wrap and
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take them to-go, or keep them around for a snack. Or both. Or whatever you want
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to do, it's your food.
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## Cleanup
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Dates are simultaneously magical and the most annoying thing to work with, so
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there's cleanup problems you may run into with them:
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Protip #1: When cleaning your processed date slime off of your cooking utensils
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I'd recommend just letting them soak in water for a while. Dry-ish date slime
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will stick to everything, while soaked date slime will come right off.
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Protip #2: Apparently if you want ants, dates are a great way to get ants. My
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apartment has never had an ant problem until 3 hours after I made a batch of
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these and didn't wipe down my counter enough. I'm still dealing with the ants.
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Apparently there's enviromentally friendly ant poisons where the ants happily
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carry the poison back into the nest and the whole nest eats it and dies. Which
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feels kinda mean in some way, but is also pretty clever and they're just ants
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anyway so fuck it.
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