What To Do When You’ve Gained Weight and Even Your Yoga Pants Don’t Fit?
Embrace denial and make this Texas Pecan Jalapeno Cheese Ball
My go-to uniform these days is a tank top and yoga pants. Specifically, Lucy Power Max Perfect Core™ yoga pants. And perfect they are: part nylon and part spandex with strategically placed ultra-compressive mesh panels in the front and back with gusseted inseams, they nip and tuck in all the right places — abdominals, waist, lower back, thighs. I feel supported and contained and generally awesome.
Until that is, I disengaged from auto-pilot long enough to scrutinize myself in the mirror. What is that? Are these the same pants? Have they shrunk?
I guess I’ve been in denial about the weight I’ve gained since the pandemic tsunami washed over us. Could the daily sampling of hubby Keith’s fresh-out-of-the-oven sourdough boule dripping with melted butter, the extra glasses of chardonnay with dinner, the hours of Netflix surfing with a carton of Blue Bell Dutch Chocolate ice cream on my lap, REALLY have made me so bumpy and bulgy in my beloved yoga pants?
Reams have been written about how to lose the “Quarantine 15” and the “COVID 19.” This is not one of those posts. This post is about extending the denial a little longer to enjoy the utter addictive deliciousness of a Texas Pecan Jalapeno Cheese Ball, or as Keith and I call it, the Why Can’t I Stop Eating This Crack Cheese Ball?
Let it be known that I am not a member of the cheese ball fan club. Cheese balls seem like a relic from my parents’ 1960s cocktail parties, along with shag rugs and 3-martini lunches. Cream cheese is not a staple in my refrigerator, so a recipe starring it as the chief ingredient mushed together with un-melted chunks of cheddar cheese is not my idea of a playful party snack.
I left cheese balls off my culinary bucket list. Until now.
The road to cheese ball nirvana
On a recent fall morning as I sat mindlessly munching on pecans while surfing the internet for what else — recipes — I stumbled across the Texas Pecan Board. The Texas Pecan Board is a commodity program whose purpose is to support research, educate consumers, and promote the Texas pecan. A little pecan trivia for you:
- pecans are the state health nut
- pecan pie is the state pie
- October is ‘Texas Pecan Month.’
To celebrate this Texas treasure — along with another jewel of Texas agriculture, wine — the Texas Pecan Board hosted a virtual pecan and wine tasting. Keith and I signed up with another couple and waited excitedly for our tasting kit to arrive.
Five Texas wines, four recipes, and a pound of pecans. We were good to go. Flipping through the recipes, my excitement dimmed when I saw that one of the recipes was a cheese ball — yuck, really?
The tasting was led by a sommelier and Texas culinary expert and food historian Melissa Guerra, aka the Kitchen Wrangler. Melissa is an 8th generation Texan, cookbook author, and is admittedly obsessed with the food history of the Americas. Her ranch is on the border with Mexico, so Texas regional, Mexican, and Latin American cuisine are front and center on her menus.
As gifted a photographer as she is a cook, Melissa’s Instagram account is chock full of amazing still life food-as-art photographs as scrumptious as her cheese ball. And she’s nearly completed a Master’s degree in Creative Writing! Making food, photographing food, and writing about food. How perfect is that?
Back to the cheese ball…
Cheese balls are not complicated: put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix. Use your hands to form a ball — my favorite part — roll it in crushed nuts and chill. Each mouthful is an eyeball rolling combination of creamy cheese, sharp cheddar, herby parsley and green onions, a kick of heat from the jalapenos, and earthy crunch of roasted pecans.
Keith and I could not stop ourselves from loading up cracker after cracker. The dopamine receptors in our brains were lighting up like Christmas trees; fat bombs will do that to you. But when you’re eating highly palatable food, you just don’t care.
If you would like to experience the GET IN MY BELLY NOW! deliciousness that is the Texas Pecan Jalapeno Cheese Ball, here’s the recipe. Put on your comfiest yoga pants and prepare to indulge.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Texas Pecan Jalapeno Cheese Ball
Recipe by Melissa Guerra, Kitchen Wrangler
Y I E L D: 12, 2-ounce servings
I N G R E D I E N T S
- 1 pound cream cheese, softened
- 4 green onions, minced
- ½ cup chopped parsley
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 4 ounce can diced jalapeños, drained
- Pinch salt
- 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
- 1 cup chopped Texas pecans
D I R ECT I O N S
- Place the softened cream cheese in a large mixing bowl. Add the minced onions, parsley, garlic, jalapeños and salt. Using an electric hand blender, mix the ingredients until well blended, about 2 minutes on medium speed. Add the shredded cheese and mix for another 30 seconds until the cheeses are well combined.
- Place the chopped pecans in a glass pie dish. Using a rubber spatula, gather up the cheese mixture by scraping the sides of the bowl (Don’t forget any cheese that may have collected on the mixer beaters!) Form the cheese mixture into a ball with your hands. Roll the ball into the chopped pecans, coating the outside of the cheeseball thoroughly and evenly.
- Wrap the cheeseball in waxed paper or plastic wrap. Chill in the refrigerator for at least one hour before serving. For best results, make one day in advance of serving. Garnish with fresh springs of parsley, whole pecans and a whole jalapeño as preferred.
Susan Randolph is a nutrition coach happily writing, eating, and cooking in the beautiful Texas Hill Country.