I’m a snacker, always have been. As a kid I remember having Saltine Crackers and American Cheese slices as a snack after school. Three slices of cheese and eight crackers was the proper cheese to cracker ratio. Today if I have crackers in the house I usually keep them on a top shelf or I find my hand digging in every time I walk into the kitchen. Because I have over consumption issues, I no longer keep snacks in my drawer at the office unless they require cooking (ie: popcorn). In a nut shell, when I have snacks around me I eat them, ALL DAY LONG. I try to keep my snacking points to 3-4 per day. TRY, being the key word in that statement. So every day I bring to work 3-4 baggies filled with snack foods. Usually one bag of cut up veggies, a pieces of fruit (sometimes two) and a yogurt. Sometimes I splurge and bring a granola bar.
Okay I LOVE GRANOLA. LOVE IT. Its my crack, breakfast, lunch or dinner, I can eat granola. I love the sweet, salty, crunchy. What is not to love?
Of course since I love it so much I have issues not eating the whole bag or several bars. (one exception: Naked Granola, it sucks).
So last night I made a big batch of crack.
Homemade granola bars are really easy to make.
My basic recipe is
2 cups hot cereal grains such as oatmeal (I use a Barley, Oats, Rye and Wheat Blend)
1/2 cup dried fruit of choice
1/2 cup chopped nuts of choice
1/2 honey
1/4 brown sugar
2 tsp butter
1 tsp salt
- on a cookie sheet toast grains, fruit and chopped nuts for 10-20 mins on 350. Stir every so often.
- in a sauce pan and heat the rest of the ingredients, whisk ingredients together
- in a mixing bowl add oven ingredients an then add sauce pan ingredients, mix well.
- in a baking pan lined with parchment paper pack ingredients into a pan. (should be a thin loaf) Bake on 300 for another 20 minutes. ( I remove from the pan via lifting the parchment paper and bake on a cookie sheet)
- cool and cut into squares. they are hard so you might need to use some brute force to cut them.
I made 3 kinds last night
apple, blueberry and pecan
blueberry, cherry and almond
blueberry, pecan, chocolate (i used dark chocolate mini chips I had left from Christmas baking)
Yum! Granola.
No way could I have that much granola in my house at one time.
This is going to sound odd, but I did not know you could make granola!
That being said I JUST HAD a Sweet and Salty Nut one – ALMOND…. I love it.
My mom fed us too much crap as snacks while growing up so I am a true junkie although I have come a long way.
I now drink water and eat some vegetables, that should tell you how bad it was.
I am so with you on this one. I make a batch a week and finally had to put them in little measured containers because I couldn’t keep my fracking hand out of the jar!
Granola & chobani. Every morning.
I love the Sweet and Salty Pretzel from Cascadian Farms.