Day 5 - Friday January 9

The 24-hour flu turned into a few extra days of being sleepy and stuffy, which sort of derailed my posting, but I'd like to catch up.  Please just accept the incomplete holes in my details.  I stayed home from work on Friday, which afforded me the chance to take a 3 hour morning nap, and make these "date balls" I had been wanting to try.  Turns out, they were easy and delicious, and gone within 2 days!  I had a leftover collard green wrap for lunch, and made zoodles with tofu and veggies and pesto.  My boyfriend called as I was mid-zoodle maing, so when it was all cooked I packed it up and the date balls and brought dinner to his house.  He's a meat-eater, but has seconds of the zoodles every time!

Key Lime Coconut Date Balls
I followed this recipe, and it couldn't have been easier - thanks in large part to my Ninja food processor.  The hardest part was removing the pits from the Medjool dates - which I bought at Trader Joe's.  My method was to slice it in half, and pull out the pit.  Very technical. Once I had pitted a cup and a half of dates I was ready to begin.

Put half a cup of cashews and half a cup of almonds in the food processor and finely chop, but stop before they become a paste.  Add the cup and a half of dates, and then 5 tsp of key lime juice.  The recipe calls for fresh key lime juice and zest, but I used bottled key lime juice and added it until it tasted limey.  Mix this up in the food processor a little, and viola, you're almost done.  Roll the mixture into small balls, and then roll in unsweetened coconut to coat the outside.  They were so easy, and so tasty.  I've already bought more dates to make batch two!

Here's what today looked like....
Breakfast - yucky shake
Lunch - one mashed chickpea and avocado salad collard green wrap from yesterday
Snack - clementines
Dinner - zoodles with pesto veggies
Water - some, unmeasured

German Chocolate Cake!!

About a month ago, I made my first German Chocolate Cake and it was delicious!! I mean, chocolate, coconut. . . hello?! Heaven! I topped it with a chocolate ganache just to make it even more chocolaty. Note: the recipe above is the same as the Betty Crocker recipe, so if you know Betty at all, you know it's a winner. Also, the pecan filling is not traditionally used on the sides of the cake. It's very goopy and hard to spread unless you let it cool in the fridge for a little while.