Oh look, it’s Monday.

By today I was supposed to have 5 different meals cooked and ready for the week, have visited Homegoods, Salvation Army, Sam’s Club, the grocery store and cleaned my house.

Those were the “must dos”.

But somewhere around 2am Saturday morning I woke up with that nagging chalkiness in the back of your throat that you just know means you’re getting sick and then proceeded to spend the rest of the weekend on the couch finishing Divergent (awesome, awesome read by the way) and doing the bare minimum which somehow translated to baking these high protein cinnamon cake bars, a trip to Sam’s Club (only because our membership expires in a month and we’re not renewing it. I now have enough napkins to last until I’m 40 and 36,000 sheets of toilet paper) and 1 cleaned room in my house because I was getting out of breath from pushing the vacuum.

Does that happen to anyone else when you’re sick?

I was literally eating carrots yesterday and gasping for air as my mouth was shut trying to chew.

Weird.

Apparently, the bare minimum also meant making cashew butter.

Here’s my logic…

I have to have a nut butter besides peanut butter open at all times.

I just do.

In my mind peanut butter has very specific uses while all other nut butters are much more flexible (I’m aware of how loony this sounds, don’t worry).

We also happened to just finish off the last of the almond butter the other day.

Now, I totally have like 4 Trader Joe’s almond butters in my pantry but the effort of mixing the oil into the rest of the jar was just too overwhelming.

Especially, when chewing carrots makes you lose your breath.

I might’ve needed my inhaler for an event like nut butter mixing and that was upstairs. Stairs also equal an olympic feat for my lungs while sick.

Solution?

Stay on the same level in the house, roast cashews because I’ve been meaning to make cashew butter for awhile anyway and have a new nut butter ready to go with the simple press of “pulse” on the food processor.

Mouth happy, lungs happy and the damn black ants that invade my kitchen every year at this time happy to eat the crumbs off the floor.

Ever felt an ant being squished in a paper towel between your fingers? They kind of “pop”, it’s gross and satisfying (when you’ve been tormented by them for 5 days now) at the same time.

And since that’s not the most appetizing visual to end on, how about these roasted maple cashews instead?