"Someday, I'll Actually Have a Date"

Probably not what you're thinking, depending on how well you know me!

One of the things a lot of us plan to do someday is start eating healthier, or at least try. My efforts tend to cycle, but there’s always a huge spike in interest immediately following a trip to The Retreat, a wellness spa in Costa Rica which I’ve now visited five times. Read my recent post about it HERE. After a week of eating such a balanced, organic diet, I’m always feeling good about continuing at least some of the good momentum when I get back home.

I still remember the first time I bought chia seeds, which was the day after I returned from my first trip to The Retreat. Since then, I’ve always made a trip to Trader Joe’s or to Whole Foods to buy some new ingredient for a healthy recipe that I may or may not end up making. Another of those ingredients, which I’ve bought repeatedly, then thrown away unopened, is dates. I’ve been repeating this since 2019, and dates last for a while (no pun intended), so we’re talking probably four times that they’ve gone wasted. On my 2024 trip, I took a picture of a recipe for date-sweetened brownies from a book in my room, written by the spa’s creator, Diana Stobo. It seemed simple enough, yet I’d bought two new packages of dates since, and still hadn't so much as removed the shrink wrap from the container.

The dates I finally opened and used. Look how happy they are!

But this is a new me! I have a whole Substack now about getting things done someday, and what better time for dates than Valentine’s Day, right? See what I did there? Ok, I still didn’t get it done then, but I finally made the damn brownies today. You guys, it took fifteen minutes, tops. I’ve been procrastinating making this particular recipe for almost three years, and it took fucking fifteen minutes. I think I always thought they would end up sticky and then not be that good anyway, so a lot of expense and mess for nothing. But guess what? They are DELICIOUS!

Again, I ask, what are we waiting for? I wish I had the answer, but at least I’m out here talking about it. What’s that thing you keep meaning to buy, or make, or try? Do you buy a bag of spinach or kale just to throw away a week later? Do you mean to bake, but by the time you get around to it, the brown sugar is hard as rocks or your baking powder is from 2011? Tell me in the comments what your food nemesis is. In the meantime, please enjoy this very easy and very delicious recipe for date-sweetened brownies: