High Protein Pecan Butter Balls

Two years of eating Paleo(ish) has taught me a few lessons:
1. Condiments are never Paleo friendly.  Paleo sauces are either weird consistencies, expensive, or tricky to make.
2. Eating out is mostly Paleo-friendly. Perhaps this is where the (ish) part of my diet is obvious. Eating out might be hard for someone following an orthodox Paleo diet. I’m guessing restaurant chefs season their chicken breasts and burgers with Paleo no-nos. But I’ll pretend not to notice, if it means not cooking every meal myself.
3. Breakfast is hard. Bacon and eggs make a wonderful Paleo breakfast. Until I’m sick of bacon and eggs and just want a warm, flour tortilla to go with them. Or, I’m in a hurry and would love a huge muffin. Or I go to a great omelet place where the chef adds scrumptious ingredients like cream cheese to his bacon and eggs. And I pretend not to notice because I cannot utter the words, “Hold the cream cheese.”
4. Paleo is tricky for snackers. Grazing worked well for the junk food diet I followed the first 35 years of my life. I lived on handfuls of Doritos, slivers of cake, Ritz crackers with cheddar, and graham crackers smeared with peanut butter. Now? Sometimes I eat frozen peas as a Paleo snack, but the sugar adds up. Ditto for raw carrots. Celery sticks are good. But do you know what’s better? Celery sticks with peanut butter. Which is, of course, not Paleo.

In search of snacks, I created these High Protein Pecan-Butter balls. Even though these aren’t totally Paleo, they do have enough protein to make me feel full (and keep my hand out of the Doritos bag).
Here’s the Paleo(ish) recipe:

Pecan Butter Balls
Ingredients

• 3/4 cup oatmeal
• 2/3 cup shredded coconut
• 3/4 cup pecan butter (recipe below)
• 1/2 cup  cacao nibs (optional)
• 1 Tbsp. honey
• 1 Tbsp. hemp seeds

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Grab your kids and tell them they’re helping you make a delicious snack. Gather around the bowl, scooping up handfuls of delicious-ness and forming it into balls. Place on cookie sheet. Chill for an hour.

Pecan Butter