Today is brought to you by the not-so-humble macaron. Not macaroon. Not Macron. But macaron, those little sandwich cookies that cost $3–5 at a bakery or mall kiosk, or 3 for $10 but cost 20¢ to make in ingredients.
About a year and five ago, I experimented with trying to make them. I tried twice, I failed twice, years apart. For some odd reason, I woke up this morning and decided today was my day to figure out how to make them properly.
Batch one (attempt 3) resulted in a fried-egg spread-out appearance that were chewy and stuck to your teeth and the chickens loved. Batch two (attempt 4) resulted in macarons that were a bit sturdier, but still had enormously spread-out feet and a hollow, brittle shell that cracked just when I picked it up. Doing a lot of reading of various trouble-shooting guides and watching two tutorials, I also realized I live at 6200 ft elevation. So then I started looking for advice on making them at high elevations. Oddly enough, there was an entire Reddit thread about a person who just moved to Denver, CO (USA) and their tried-and-true macaron recipe from sea level oddly had all the same characteristics of mine now that they were a mile high. Following some advice on that thread, the trouble-shooting guides, and a Facebook cooking group, I succeeded in getting my feet right and a sturdy shell. They are still somewhat hollow, but they at least look right and I think I’m headed in the right direction. That was a few hours out of my day.
However, I still managed to do a bit of prep cooking, making a tequila-lime chicken that I chopped up and put into five small containers for snacking during the week. With my meal planning, it looks like I can avoid protein shakes twice this week due to protein from the chicken and meals, so that’s also nice.
And, I followed most of my plan and got in cardio. I even pushed myself – again calling on my OCD tendencies – to get a full 40 minutes of cardio in: I was on the rower and got to 15 minutes but hadn’t reached 100 calories yet, so I stayed on ’til then (+34 seconds), then was on the elliptical and so very much wanted to get off it, but I stayed on ’til 20 minutes, pushed another two to get to 200 calories, then pushed another 2.8 to get to 225 calories, then another 10 seconds to get to 25 minutes even so that the rower+elliptical got me to 40 minutes of cardio. I really don’t like the elliptical, but it is one of the most efficient little buggers for me in terms of calories burned per minute, though last time I biked I was pretty high … but with the elliptical I can have a fan right in front of my face and a towel around my shoulders. Sigh.
Oh, and I was able to count all the macarons I ate (um, taste-tested) and still make it in my calorie and macro goals without cheating! And, I didn’t nap.
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