The weekend that wasn't

Talk about lack of a weekend.  :-(

The Mr had some work that needed to be done this weekend since he's the "lucky" one on call and he ended up working (from home or wherever we tried to go in between) for over 40 hours.  Needless to say, he took today off.  I'm going to try to talk him into taking tomorrow off too but Mr Work Ethic likely will decline.

Saturday night after he'd been on the phone for well over 10 hours I was bored out of my gourd so I decided to make some pre-workout snacks for the week.  I'm sure you've seen recipes for date bars/balls whatever you want to call them all over the internet.  I don't follow someone else's recipe, I just chuck some stuff in a blender and go with it.  Here's how my version went...

10 dates...

Open 'em up and remove the pit.  The pit looks like a pecan.  Wouldn't it be nice if the pit was a pecan?  Then you could just eat the whole thing and it would be like eating pecan pie for about 25ish calories.  Dare to dream...

1/2 cup of raw cashews.  Chuck 'em in your Magic Bullet (affiliate link)  or blender and break them down a bit.

I add about 1 tsp of vanilla bean paste and give it the final whirl...

Then it's time to grab your 1 tbsp cookie scoop.

Scoop away...

It makes 12 balls.  Oh great, I suppose you want nutritional info now?  Well, lucky for you, I have it!  ;-)  Calories per ball:  73  Total fat 4g  Sat Fat 1g  Sodium 1mg  Potassium 45mg  Total Carbs 8g  Fiber 1g  Sugars 5g  Protein 2g

I gave one to the Mr while he was on the phone and he had to put it on mute the more he chewed to groan in approval.  We're gonna pop one for a little energy boost before workouts.

Sunday I wanted to get up and make him a nice big breakfast I'd pre-planned the night before in the tracker.  Don't you love it when you go to make something and you don't have what it says you need?  I forgot we used the rest of the milk.  I checked the ingredients on the Trader Joe's Pumpkin Pancakes I've been squirreling away and it had buttermilk in it already so I crossed my fingers and used water.  Here's how it turned out...

Beautiful, fluffy and yummy.  Of course just before we sat down to eat it, his phone rang so I told him he was going to at least eat breakfast before he got on the phone the rest of the day (which he was NOT scheduled to work.  IRRITATING!)

Lunchtime rolled around and I realized having any sort of weekend was completely shot and I would likely not see the outdoors at all which was fine given it felt like the 3rd circle of Hell outside.  I decided to get going on what I had planned for lunch which involved reviving the last bit o' beef roast we had left.  My hard work paid off when I froze some beef broth from the roast.  I put it in the fridge and skimmed all of the fat off then I measured out 3 tbsp into small metal bowls and froze them all for future use in sauces and such.  I bagged them up and threw them in the freezer.  (Pic 1)  I cut up some shallots and sweat them out, added some fresh thyme, oregano and rosemary then added 2 broth discs (Pic 2)...

I let it bubble up into saucy goodness (Pic 3) and then I added 4 oz of beef roast, turned it down to low (Pic 4) while I multi-tasked.  It smelled like Christmas in here.  It was WONDERFUL.  Unfortunately I didn't multitask well because I got my Hawaiian buns a little more brown than I like but they weren't burnt thankfully.  So we had BBQ beef sliders, no salt tortilla chips with homemade pineapple salsa and fruit salad.

The Mr said he was eating way better than anyone on his call.  I love it when I can make stuff that makes him happy.

I hope crab stuffed flounder and grilled asparagus made him happy because that was the last meal I prepared for him while he finished up and logged his 40th HOUR since 6pm Friday night!

Before dinner, it was a matter of being able to fit in our workout.  He said he didn't care if he had to put it on speakerphone while he was doing it, which he did, he wasn't missing it.  We had Supreme 90's Back and Bi's scheduled so we got that in while he ran up and took care of stuff and got back to it and we were able to finish up together.  Needless to say it got done and we're glad the weekend is over.  We hope to enjoy ourselves a bit today and we're getting the hell outta this house!

Tomorrow we're going out for a family members birthday at Red Lobster.  Ugh.  I hate that place.  You might as well hook up a salt IV to my bloodstream.  So I'm going with the half serving of salmon, asparagus and I always have one biscuit.  I'm gonna tank up on the water too.  That also means a morning workout which we loathe but I guess it'll be good to have it out of the way.  We'll be looking forward to this weekend when we go on a road trip for some much needed relaxation.  Man we haven't even been back a full month from Hawaii and we're already getting just as stressed as we were before we left!  *rolling eyes*

What did you do this weekend?

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