Written July 20, 2025
Hello Dear Readers,
While preparing my usual batch of pastry-bite snacks for the week, I made a classic mix-up. Instead of grabbing my trusty puff pastry sheets, I ended up with puff pastry shells. Whoops! In the frenzy of snack prep, I wasn’t paying attention to what I grabbed.
Now, with these pre-formed shells in hand, I had to get creative. Normally, I whip up tiny, 3-bite-sized snacks to snack on throughout the day—perfect for popping in my mouth during moments of weakness (or mowing the lawn). But these shells? Well, they’re already shaped, leaving me with no room for a creative bite-sized spin.
Why do I like my snacks tiny? Because they’re easy to consume, especially when I’m doing something like lawn mowing. On running days, I can throw a couple back at once and head out the door, but with lawn mowing, I like to spread out my snack breaks, nibbling between laps like a true lawn-mowing connoisseur. Occasionally, I even toss in some cantaloupe—gotta keep the energy up, right?
So, why am I constantly so hungry? It’s probably the sheer amount of physical activity I do, plus the fact that I’ve been building muscle. (Surprise, surprise—turns out, muscle-building works up an appetite!)
A few years ago, I asked my wife for an abdominal exercise machine for Christmas. After my brain stroke, I focused on improving my leg mobility, and as my endurance grew, I realized my body could handle muscle workouts. So, I dove into daily strength training. But here’s the catch: I couldn’t eat protein like a regular adult, which slowed down the muscle-building process. Slow and steady, though, I managed to gain muscle and, funnily enough, start putting on weight a little too easily. So now, with my food restrictions, managing my weight is an ongoing challenge—it’s like juggling, but with less grace and more snacks.
This pastry blunder also made me think of a similar moment with my wife. One time, she accidentally bought green Jasmine tea for our homemade kombucha instead of our usual roasted tea. Initially, we thought it was a mistake, but after some research, she found that green Jasmine tea actually works better for kombucha. So, voila! A happy accident turned into our new favorite tea.
Mistakes, huh? Sometimes they lead to pleasant surprises. Just like with my pastry shells—while I can’t break them into bite-sized pieces (sigh), there’s no use crying over it. The key is figuring out how to work with what I’ve got. Who knows? Maybe I’ll stumble upon a new way to enjoy these not-so-bite-sized bites. The important part is adapting, not obsessing over what went wrong.