Homemade Energy Bars

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."

-- Hippocrates

Homemade energy bars 6-30-14

 "Processed foods not only extend the shelf life, 

but they extend the waistline as well."

-- Karen Sessions

Homemade energy bars 6-30-14

Processed, packaged energy bars are gross.

They look gross. They taste gross.

That's why I started making my own. One of these little protein-packed babies will power you through a whole morning, or stave off the afternoon munchies.

You won't find anything gross in my bars. That's because I use nothing but delicious, real ingredients like:

Real oats.
Real pumpkin, sunflower and hemp seeds.
Real peanut butter.
Real maple syrup.
Real butter.
Real coconut.
Real dark chocolate.
Real vanilla.

I don't have to add gross preservatives, because I don't have to worry about shelf life. They get gobbled up before it's even an issue.

Know why?

Because they're real good.

(And real good for you!)

Homemade Pizza Dough

"Ideas are like pizza dough,

made to be tossed around."

-- Anna Quindlen

Self portrait with pizza dough 3-4-14

Seriously, guys.

Homemade pizza dough is not even that hard. It's actually fun to make, and it is so much better.

You don't even want to know what Domino's puts in theirs. But here's the list of ingredients in their "handmade pan" crust anyway:

Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Niacin, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Butter Flavored White Shortening Flake (Palm Oil, Natural Butter Flavor, and Soy Lecithin), Vegetable Oil (Soybean Oil, Citric Acid), Sugar, Salt, Less than 1% Dough Conditioners (Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Whey, Enzyme [with Wheat Starch], Ascorbic Acid, L-cysteine, with Silicon Dioxide added as processing aids), Yeast (Yeast, Sorbitan Monostearate, Ascorbic Acid)

Gross.

At least they don't use high fructose corn syrup and corn syrup solids, like Pizza Hut.

Shrimp, chicken and olive pizza 3-4-14

Wanna know what's in my pizza dough? Flour, yeast, sugar, salt, water, olive oil. That's it. About 50 cents worth of ingredients that are always in my kitchen anyway. Might as well use 'em, right?

And homemade pizza is a delicious way to use up leftovers that would otherwise undergo a slow, languishing death at the back of the fridge.

I made some dough yesterday, rolled it out and topped it with leftover shrimp and chicken wings, black olives, cheddar, mozzarella, dill, basil and olive oil. It looked like this (right).

Leftovers never tasted so good. They're more like "left-oh!-vers."

Seriously, guys.

Google yourself a simple recipe for homemade pizza dough and make that shit happen already. Let the delivery guy make tips off some other chump.