Homemade Cocoa and Orange Nakd bars!

"Warning - these are very morish!"

Before you've made these bars you'll never have realised quite how easy they are to make, and when you have made these bars once, you'll never go back to buying them again!

These are perfect for having as a mid-exercise snack, or with an office coffee, or just as a mid-afternoon treat; and as they are soooooo easy to make as soon as you've eaten the first batch it won't be long before the next ones are ready to go!

The nutritional values of the recipe are based on splitting the mix into 20 portions, but as you can see from the photos I sometimes cut them into smaller bars to make them last a little longer - so shape them and cut them to how ever you fancy, and enjoy!!

Ingredients

• 200g pitted dates
• 100g sultanas (or raisins)
• 66g plain cashew nuts
• 5 tsp cocoa powder
• 2 tsp orange extract

Nutritional Values

• Energy 67 kcal
• Carbs 12g
• Fat 2g
• Protein 1g
• Sodium 1g
• Sugar 10g

1. Pop the cashews into a food processor and blitz until coarsely chopped
2. Add the dates, sultanas and cocoa powder and blitz on a high speed until finely chopped and well combined
3. Whilst the food processor is still on add the orange extract. Keep an eye on the texture of the mixture at this point, and add a teaspoon of water at a time (waiting for it to be fully taken in by the mix) until it all comes together in a ball in the machine
4. Tip out in a silicone baking tray (or onto cling film) and mould into shape, place in the fridge for at least a couple of hours to set
5. When set take mixture out of the mould and cut into desired number of pieces
6. Enjoy however you fancy! Warning - these are very morish!

1. Measure the cashews and blend until coarse

2. Add dates...

...add saltanas...

...add cocoa powder...

...and blend until combined

3. Add orange extract whilst still blending...

...and a tiny amount of water until it fully combines

4. Tip into silicone baking tray...

...and mould into shape, before popping into the fridge

5. Slice into pieces and enjoy!

2017 - February update

"I'm only actually moving around for LESS than 7 hours a day!"

So February ended with more of a whimper than a flourish as I didn't manage to get out and do any exercise in the last couple of days due to the amount of work I had on. The last weekend in the month saw Ali and I complete our first event of the year (a night run in Bristol - read the review here), and then I managed to get us out for a Sunday morning jog to try and stretch out the legs, although some legs were more willing to be stretched than others!!

Events

Our event calendar is slowly (alright, quite quickly) filling up with dates of various runs, mud events and triathlons for the year - with one event already done, Ali is off doing a mud run this weekend and has at least one event planned for each month throughout 2017! I'm a little less packed out with these events (I'd quite like to go fishing and watch the rugby as well!!), but have planned to take part in a summer series of evening triathlons near home, I just need to get on and book it now (and then make sure that I can still swim at least that distance required!).

We're both already booked into four Endurance Life Coastal Trail Series events before the end of the year in Exmoor, Gower, West Sussex and Dorset, but I'll leave the details of those for another post - let's just say we haven't eased ourselves in gently!

The majority of any exercise thus month has been running, as usual, as it's so much easier to go with the dogs and is able to fit in quickly around the amount of other stuff we always seem to be doing! We did, however, manage to get out on the bikes this month, and popped along the towpath of the canal, with dogs and all! If you haven't seen the video of Ali getting towed along by the dogs them head over to the video via this link and have a little look! I've got to admit that I wasn't too keen on having them on the lead on my bike but it certainly tired then put a lot quicker than a normal run - apparently 12 miles at doggie running pace is the way to make sure that both of them sleep well for the remainder of the afternoon...!

I've also had (and I still have as I haven't had time to sort it out yet) a slight problem with damp (and so mould) on my road bike (video here)... After a couple of posts on some Facebook groups the useful comments were to wipe it down, maybe give it a bit of a scrub, and then ride the **** out of it..! Whilst it would be nice to be able to follow the other comments (and Velominati rule) of just getting a new bike (because the ideal number of bikes is n+1!) I'm not in a fortunate enough position to be able to do that! :-( Hopefully, I'll get a bit of time over the next few weekends where the weather is nice enough to be able to clean the bike sensibly, let it dry and then get out and give it a good ride.

Health

Now being an accountant there was no way that I was going to go through these monthly updates without getting a few stats in! As I said in my 2017 plans post I got a Fitbit at the start of the year and so have been able to track steps, activities and sleep on that and so know when I'm hitting my targets and when I'm not! I've actually managed to hit my daily step count of 6,000 steps 52 out of 56 days this year, and am pretty sure that it was actually 53 days but forgot to put the watch on one morning so missed out a whole day! :-(

So far this year I've taken nearly 640,000 steps, which equates to over 535 miles (the distance between London and Randers in Denmark - as the crow flies!) meaning that on average I'm travelling over 9 miles a day (or taking just over 10,000 steps). You'd have thought with that amount of steps throughout the day I would be moving pretty constantly during the day, however, this doesn't seem the case - apparently, I'm spending over 17 hours a day either sitting still or asleep!! Therefore I'm only actually moving around for LESS than 7 hours a day! At least, moving on my feet so that my watch picks up that I'm moving (I'm not actually just dozing at my desk at work!)

One thing that I'm really proud of both Ali and I doing this month is keeping to our meal plans for the majority of days - if you missed the photo on the 2017 plans post then have a look here, but it's basically a two week plan of our evening meals meaning that we should be eating better and saving money at the same time as we're not having to constantly pop to the shops on the way home to pick up some food as we forgot to get ingredients out of the freezer! Most of the meals have been enjoyed, although we have now swapped out the smoked fish, new potato and beetroot salad because Ali managed to have it for a couple of weeks before admitting that it wasn't her favourite dish of the fortnight (which is fair enough considering she doesn't particularly like fish or beetroot!)

Lunches and breakfasts have been much better than last year as well, with a bit of pre-planning and bulk cooking meaning that the lunchtime shopping spend has decreased quite a bit for me, and the baked and sweet potatoes with a variety of toppings have kept me full for the rest of the day so not so much snacking during the working day… Another thing that I've been working on are homemade Nked bars, and I think I've got the Cocoa and Orange ones nailed! After seeing one version of the recipe online I gave it a go, tweaked a few things to make it taste as I wanted, and have been rolling out a batch each week. I'm going to write up the recipe and post it on here during the next month or so, so keep your eyes peeled for it!

Blogging

So one of the things I said I was going to do was to only write additional posts when I felt I had something to add, or if I felt strongly about that particular subject and wearing a helmet is one of those such subjects - if you haven't read my post on helmets and why I think people should then click here to go and view it. There was one thing that I didn't put into the piece - one reason was that I forgot about it (so it's a subconscious reasoning that drove me to write the piece), and the other was whether I actually wanted to write it...

I have a permanent reminder of why a helmet is a potential lifesaver - the scars across my knuckles mean I don't forget a bike ride out over 10 years ago - going down a steep hill and getting the handlebar shakes, slamming on the brakes and finding it was all gravel, and then doing the following 10 metres on my knuckles and the front of my helmet all down the asphalt! The overhanging couple of inches on the front of the helmet had been worn back by the time I had stopped, and it was going to be my face that met the ground next. I'm pretty sure that if I didn't have the helmet there would be plenty more scars in worse places, but I'm also counting myself lucky with it!

I've also managed to make sure that I write the first monthly update post (you're reading it right now!) so I'm counting this as a success, and so should you if you've got down this far! Thanks for sticking with me!

The one thing that I haven't managed to do this month is put together any video blog pieces - I was going to put up a video of one of the runs that I did with the dogs the other day, however when watching it back it made me realise quite how much I lope along when out running and the whole experience made me feel a little seasick! By the looks of it, the video footage is going to be a more long-term thing and will be more of a montage of different events rather than individual runs. Saying that I think I'll be taking the camera along to the Coastal Trail Series events, and trying to get a bit of the footage before, during and after the race so each one of those might have a video to go with it, and when I'm along supporting Ali at any of the events that I don't do I'll be taking at least one of the cameras then and getting as much footage as possible (with a couple of dogs in tow!)

'til next time

One Life - Liv 4 It, Love It

Rob