Fitness, Leftovers and some Energy Bars

As we already established the last time, I'm not really going away but I will pop up time and again with something new on this tiny blog. Whether anyone cares or not, that doesn't really matter. I care and this is sufficient for me.

So what have I been up to lately? These last few month I have been doing a lot of fitness at home and this way I have bit by bit turned our living room into a gym, much to the nuisance of my wife. However, she humbly endures it. On my way I have discovered quite a few workout videos on YouTube. I started out with some Spanish videos but they seemed to be rather for women. Well, if the instructor keeps on saying 'Vamos chicas! Con alegria!' then it really seems to me like this. 

So I switched over to some guys. I did quite a lot HIIT workouts with Joe Wicks' videos and some with Alex Crockford. Finally, I ended up with the crockfit app from the latter when since he had a good offer I couldn't resist and, that is if you really stick to it, the results are quite impressive and I can only recommend it ... Well, now as it is, I just keep on going ...

While being into fitness doesn't mean, I am not going to eat a lot ... well, I kind of do it in a more controlled way now, so it isn't really clashing with my fitness goals, although I am getting braver now.

Along this line then, I got a recipe for some energy bars today. I increased the amount of protein they have by adding some leftover protein powder I had sitting there in the kitchen. Mainly, though, it's good fats and carbs.

I would say I whipped them up using leftovers as I didn't buy any additional ingredients apart from what I had already in the house. I wanted to have some honey or sugar syrup in it to bring the ingredients together. For that purpose there was a jar of sugar syrup lingering in the fridge. It was a gift from some friends. They meant well, but normally I am not so much in eating this syrup on bread as many others around here would do. This way this jar would occupy space forever in the fridge or it would turn blue or green eventually. However, for this recipe the syrup was just fine.

Ingredients

200 g porridge (or just oats)

78 g protein powder (whatever you have)

44 g peanut butter

64 g mixed nuts, chopped up

55 g ground almonds (they were really leftovers)

105 g dates, chopped up

320 g sugar syrup (or honey or whatever you have in this direction) 

250 ml water (if it's not really coming together otherwise)

Method

Well, you have seen the list of the ingredients. There is not really much telling of what you have to do with all of them. Just throw all the ingredients into a sufficiently large bowl and mix it well together. As the list says, use water if you need so to bring it all together.

Heat up your oven to 180°C (you maybe remember that this is my favourite temperature).

Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper and spread the energy bar dough on it. Do it as neatly as your personality requires.

Once the oven has reached the heat, the energy bars go into the oven for ... have a guess ... no, not 30 minutes, as would be my favourite baking time, but rather only 20 minutes this time. This is completely sufficient.

After that time, let them cool down and then you can cut them into pieces of your desired seize and eat them, gift them, guard them or even freeze them. I cut my mass into 16 pieces and according to my calculations one energy bar has about 169 kcal, that is, if you need to know.

Now let's get back to my exercises and my gym. Have a slight peek of what's there.

I guess there is still missing a little bit. I could really use some more weights, but then again I need to be careful and not upset my wife. After all, it still is the living room. As we don't have so many visitors these days it might be fine like that, but that's not going to last forever.

Now you can have an energy bar right before training or afterwards to fill up your storage again or, as I often do, just use them as a snack at work.

How are you with fitness? Have you been doing some exercise lately? As I was just sitting around most of the time, at work and a lot at home as well, I had to do something. Have you ever thought about it? Do you have some more ideas for fitness food? Just let me know below in the comments.

Thank you once more for bearing with me right to the end of this blog entry. It has been a pleasure writing for you and I hope you liked reading it and will come back in the future or in the meantime you just check out what else there is on this blog.

See ya!