today i am celebrating the end of my bakery night shifts!  

no more going to sleep at 4 pm, no more having to get dressed in the dark, no more "sorry, i can't get wasted with you right now because i have to work in two hours." 

i am so excited. 

i will still be working at the bakery, oh yes! my hours will be fewer to make way for some more writing, some scheming, and possibly even some commissioning. but they'll all be during the day. the glorious day. the glorious, sunny, vitamin d-filled day. yay! 

so far my celebration has included: buying gum paste, taking a shower, eating cheese on toast, daydreaming about the cake that i will make tomorrow, and making larabars from scratch. 

shit, you guys, making larabars is so easy. 

literally the larabar people have us fooled! i feel like if i were to buy a larabar now, it would be like buying a stick figure drawing.

i've seen a bunch of larabar recipes floating around the internet, so i know i'm no groundbreaker here, but it was just today that i got around to making some. i tailored my recipe to the amount of dates and the kinds of nuts that i had... and when i finished making them (in less than five minutes) i stood there all wide-eyed and shocked at how easy it was. and then i became flooded with ideas of what kind to make next. marzipan larabars. halvah larabars. so many larabars!

so much poop. 

anyway, it just occurred to me that i haven't yet had a celebratory i'm-not-nocturnal-anymore drink. bye!

pistachio & hazelnut larabars 

 makes 5 bars

1/3 c roasted hazelnuts*

1/3 c roasted pistachios*

salt, to taste (if your nuts are already salted you may not need to add more) 

1 tb unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 c pitted deglet noor dates  (an 8 oz. bag is about 1 1/2 cups)

*don't just stick to these, feel free to experiment with other nuts

clues 

combine nuts, salt, and cocoa powder in a food processor. grind them up until you have a mealy mixture and then pour them out into a medium bowl. 

place the dates in the food processor and then grind them into a paste. add the paste to the bowl and knead in the nuts (it may seem like a lot of nuts at first, but keep kneading).

on a piece of parchment paper, form a rectangle with the dough and then cut into bars. store in an air-tight vestibule(s). 

enjoy while watching this music video. 

-yeh! 

oh, bahahah p.s. happy halloween!