Date Bars and Compliments

I fall asleep at live performances: musical, play, symphony, even Cirque du Soleil. Snore, snore, snore. I am embarrassed that I am not cultured enough to stay awake.  However, the one exception is the opera. Although I have yet to attend a real opera performance, I absolutely love the opera: the grandeur, the costumes, the overly dramatic emotions. I love the way the notes reverberate through your body. Last Sunday I watched the SF Opera for free at the Stern Grove Festival, a summer concert series. It is the first concert I have been able to attend this summer. (This weekend is the last. So go if you are free.)

Concert officially starts at 2pm but early birds such as me get there at 9am for good seats (worth it). Thus, a picnic is required. I decided to make vegan date bars from Oh She Glows. I love her blog: vegan and easy to make. The recipe: http://ohsheglows.com/2011/03/28/5-ingredient-no-bake-vegan-date-squares/

 

Random notes: One sheet of parchment paper is enough. I used more coconut oil, maybe ½ cup. It’s ironic since I usually ruthless leave out every bit of salt and oil from a recipe. As the oil is the only binder, I figured more was better. This is where being good at math is bad: ½ cup = 8 tablespoons, 1 tablespoon of coconut oil = 59% of your RDV saturated fat, the recipe has 16 pieces = each piece has 30% of your daily saturated fat. Thus, I cut the bars into 32. That and I like the smaller size better, especially when feeding vegan food to nonvegans.  Make sure to serve this chilled. At room temperature, it falls apart/is like eating jam on blended oatmeal. No worries, just stick them back in the fridge until firm again.

People actually liked it. I told people it was raw and vegan after they ate it. Also, the strangers next to us were very friendly and offered us curry wraps. So I shared my date bars. This is my first time swapping food with strangers and it turned out well. They liked the date bars enough that they asked for the recipe! One guy also gave me a tip: soak the dates in water overnight so it’ll blend easily and quickly. I will next time since I could smell my motor burning even though I divided the recipe into 2 batches. My food processor claims to be 4-cup capacity.

My favorite part of the day was having a complete stranger like my food enough to ask for the recipe. I love it when people like what I make, especially when it’s what I consider “weird” foods like vegan or sodium-free. When I didn’t cook and only ate other people’s cooking, I always felt bad about not cooking. The cooks always said, “It’s ok. I’m just happy to share.” As a cook now, I realize that sentiment is true. Your excitement about my cooking is just as good as you cooking for me. Please, please eat my food. You don’t have to love it, but it’s nice to know my food is edible. When you like it, it’s a bonus.

What is the best compliment you've received on your cooking? 

 

Keep on eating,

BookEatsPaper

Sexy and I know it