Granola bars...

I was watching Good Eats a couple weeks ago and the show was about making healthy alternatives to commercial snacks/energy bars. I don't eat protein bars anymore because the ingredients can be sketchy and they just sit in my stomach like a rock, and most granola bars I avoid because even if they aren't held together with high fructose corn syrup they're loaded with other sugars. And both types of bars have a shelf life of like 1000 years so, how much nutrition are you getting really?

So I decided to try the recipe given for homemade granola bars. The ingredients were really simple:

• Rolled oats (2 cups)
• Sunflower seeds (1/2 cup)
• Sliced almonds (1 cup)
• Wheat germ (1/2 cup)
• Honey (1/2-3/4 cup or, 6 oz.)
• Brown sugar (1/4 cup)
• Butter (2 tablespoons)
• Vanilla (2 teaspoons)
• Salt (1/2 teaspoon)
• Dried fruit, chopped (3/4 to 1 cup)

Toast the oats, seeds, nuts and wheat germ at 350F. Melt the honey, brown sugar, butter, vanilla and salt. Pour the toasted stuff into the melted stuff and add the dried fruit. Stir it up, pour it into a buttered 9x9 pan, and bake at 300F for 25 minutes.

I left out the almonds & wheat germ (on my budget you go with what you have). The sunflower seeds came out a little bit burnt, though. And the bars are pretty dense and chewy. Not sure if I or my fillings will like them. They're also not super-sweet like a commercial granola bar, but that's fine with me.

There was also a recipe for homemade soy protein bars but I haven't tried it yet.

__________________
"Pain can be a great teacher of compassion and humility."~ Unkotare-san

"Whatever the case, it proves that countless disasters can be prevented by simply assuming everyone you're working with is a moron." ~ Adam Brown, 5 Tiny Mistakes...

Looks good.

You should try Nature Valley granola bars, all natural and they taste delicious.

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Oh THAT'S how that works!

Kashi makes some awesome granola bars too. They don't slow me down.

Nature Valley -- awesome but has high fructose corn syrup.
Kashi bars -- also awesome but pretty expensive.

They're probably the best on the market. But my goal with the homemade stuff is to control the amounts of sugar, salt & fat, avoid HFCS, and spend very little money overall. The honey & vanilla are probably the most expensive ingredients in the recipe above but, breaking down the amounts used, the entire batch cost less than $1 and made 8 big granola bars.

The core ingredients are the oats, seeds, honey, brown sugar, vanilla and salt. The nuts and dried fruit can be just about any kind. I didn't use any nuts in the test recipe, and raisins for dried fruit. One could also substitute M&Ms for the fruit or in addition.

Making them chewier means adding more syrup (honey/brown sugar mix). Although I might take a page out of the Kashi ingredient listing and add some puffed brown rice.

__________________
"Pain can be a great teacher of compassion and humility."~ Unkotare-san

"Whatever the case, it proves that countless disasters can be prevented by simply assuming everyone you're working with is a moron." ~ Adam Brown, 5 Tiny Mistakes...

“	Originally Posted By: Mei Hua Looks good. You should try Nature Valley granola bars, all natural and they taste delicious.	”

CHOCK FULL With filler. Contains soy so people like me (Soy allergy) can't eat it.

See, didn't know that.

The first batch of granola bars were a little too crunchy/chewy whatever, but when I broke them up and poured milk over they were fantastic after soaking for a couple minutes. If I was hiking I might appreciate them better because gnawing on something distracts me from aches, pains, boredom, hunger, etc. But I'm still gonna work with the recipe to find consistency that works.

__________________
"Pain can be a great teacher of compassion and humility."~ Unkotare-san

"Whatever the case, it proves that countless disasters can be prevented by simply assuming everyone you're working with is a moron." ~ Adam Brown, 5 Tiny Mistakes...

ALWAYS read the ingredients. Do it BEFORE the nutritional content. Smoothies say they contain a lot of sugar. Drink it down anyway. Its a bloody SMOOTHIE! I could eat a bowl of chocolate cereal that says its only got a trace of fat in it, then walk away from it with cancer :P.

I've always gone for the Jordan's bars. The ingredients are reasonable (the bulk - oats - is good quality, the filler not too bad in the quantities I eat). You can buy them all over. They come in seperate foil wrappers so they can survive swishing about the bottom of a kayak. You can hike for days on a daily diet of four bars plus a few handfulls of nuts and dried fruit, a couple of chunks of cheese, and a few digestive biscuits.

Making your own is good but it's tough to get the consistency without using more butter than I'm happy with. Once you've made them it's tough to package them well and they don't tend to keep as well.

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Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you
High mountains are a feeling
I don't need to sell my soul, he's already in me

I'm curious to hear the recipe for the soy protein bars - you tried them yet?

Not yet -- have to pick up some good soy protein powder & "good" often means costly. But if anyone has any recommendations...

__________________
"Pain can be a great teacher of compassion and humility."~ Unkotare-san

"Whatever the case, it proves that countless disasters can be prevented by simply assuming everyone you're working with is a moron." ~ Adam Brown, 5 Tiny Mistakes...

No Recommendations dut the Granola Bars sound good. I would try reducing the cook time to 20 minutes next time. You can always add more time but you cant take away.