What do you do with your pecans?

Edit:  A better title would have been something like "What do you do with your nuts?".

My running routine is well on it's way back!  My eating?  Meh, it's not bad.  I do really well during the week but slack on the weekends.

You can not find a single vegan item on a Texas restaurant menu.  "What about salad?" you say.  People here only know of Ranch, Caesar  and Blue Cheese dressing.  Or in the case of Mexican places, frankencheese poured all over the top.  And the salad is always the half assed item they throw in just to round out the menu.  Basically you get a quarter piece of iceberg lettuce.  It's actually extremely frustrating.  This is why we don't eat out much (and we're poor).  We can make far more flavorful dishes, fresh, and with a tenth of the calories right here at home.  Anybody can slather something in butter and Crisco and make it taste good, but a true artist and chef can work magic with just the ingredient and some spice.  Paula Dean is not a chef.  Barely a cook if you ask me.  It is no challenge at all to make tasty dishes with ass loads of butter.  Pun intended. 

But running has been going good.  I did a 7.5 mile long run over the weekend that felt nice and I like the the route.  It was slow.  I ran in the ditch in my Saucony trail shoes so it was slower than it would have already been had I been on the road.  I've never run over 2 or 3 miles in these shoes so I was pleased when they were still comfortable after 7.  A few nights I've gone out after the kids have gone to sleep and done my interval workouts back and forth in front of the house.  I'm slow, it's a fact, but I'm getting back into it.

My son can ride his new big bike!  This is first real bike with pedals and all.  His first bike was the Strider balance bike and I am going to highly recommend it to anyone vs the typical training wheel route.  He still has trouble getting going on his own because his feet barely hit ground when he's on the seat, but once he's going the balance part comes natural to him.  Here is a video I took of him.

We have a lot of pecan trees in Texas and if you know someone who has one in their yard, you are sure to have a freezer full of pecans every winter.  Previously, my only thought was to make banana nut bread or pecan pie with my bounty of nuts.  Then I starting thinking about how much money I spend every week on almond milk, and how expensive almond butter is, and why don't they make any of those things with pecans?  So last night I did.  And they were both good!  And easy!  Pecan milk tastes similar to almond milk.  I'm going to save so much money with that one.  And the butter (like peanut butter) is different but really good.  You roast the pecans first and I love that flavor that comes out.  I might sweeten it a little with honey.

You can find me on pinterest as hughjass then go to my vegan food board for the recipes.  It's so easy it's ridiculous.

Another addition:  I am very proud to say that Oliver is 6 months old and I have to purchase a single disposable diaper.  By my low ball estimates, that's a savings of about $350- $400 and 1100- 1500 diapers that would have gone to a landfill and still be here 500 years from now.  Yay me and yay Oliver!

-Hugh Jass