Snowy Day Recipe for You AND Your Kids! (or just you)

On snowy days like today, you can fight off boredom, give your kids an interactive and fun activity AND enjoy a tasty treat that will last you days with the following recipe.

They are Homemade and Healthy Granola Bars that use only the ingredients pictured here. That's it!!! I didn't even have to run to the store! I had this all in the pantry so it cost me NOTHING! If you were to buy these ingredients, it'd probably cost you about $10, but it would give you ingredients to make several other things or several batches of granola bars!

These are way cheaper, healthier and tastier than store-bought bars. Here's how you do it. Oh and **PARENTS** please let your kids do this. They can and should get their hands dirty with this recipe! Also, this is just a base recipe-make it your own. Mix in things you love to enhance and change it to keep it interesting!

Ingredients

2 ripe bananas-use what you've got, but they need to be soft so they can be mushed

2 cups of old fashioned oats-they can be rolled or steel cut JUST NOT QUICK

shredded coconut

dates, pitted and chopped

vegan chocolate chips (or if you dig regular ones use regular)

walnuts, chopped

cinnamon

nutmeg

***Notice there is no sugar added to this recipe!! This means you and your family can enjoy the natural sugars found in the real fruits used for these bars. Refined sugars are bad because they cause blood sugar level spikes that can make you tired and hungry faster, when you actually aren't. They also offer little value nutrition-wise but cause you to pack on pounds. With fruit, you get the natural sugars packed with nutrients AND fiber which allows you to feel full, absorb the nutrients and flush out (pun intended!) the toxins in your body. Win-win here!***

The above picture is of pitted dates. You find fresh dates in the produce section of your grocery store. They are a fruit, so they come with pits. Make sure they are somewhat soft to the touch when you buy them because then they are more easily incorporated. These will be your most expensive ingredient. If you don't want to use them-simply substitute a little applesauce (with no added sugars or weird things in the ingredients) to keep the sweetness up. Dates are great for any recipe, smoothie, whatever, where you need to add sweet flavor without sugar! In my eyes, a pantry staple!

Method

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Put all ingredients in a large bowl. Mix them up, by hand, until all the oats are coated with the banana. It should be a mushy, wet-ish mixture. See below.

Then spread into a casserole dish that you would use for something like brownies. You'll spread them in the pan as you would brownies too-flat and even and covering the bottom.

Pop in the oven for about 30 minutes. The cool thing with this recipe is that there is not raw meat or dairy in it so LET YOUR KIDS LICK THEIR FINGERS! Let them eat some of the "batter" if they want. These bars only need to cook to keep them together so just when you start smelling them, check on them and they can probably come out. Mine were done today in about 20 minutes. It just depends on how thick you make them. Also note, in the picture to the right, how much cleanup work this recipe takes. WOW, washing that one bowl and spatula is going to be tough. LOL.

This is a no brainer! Once the bars come out-let them cool for about 5 minutes so they are more easily cut. But if you can't wait-go at it-they just won't be pretty. This recipe takes only 10 minutes of active work, which you can draw out with your kids if you want-but then the rest is oven time. Awesome huh?

And just for kicks-let's analyze a popular granola bar favorite that appears to be healthy shall we? Yes.


Ok so forget the Nutrition "Facts" for now because I haven't been able to chat with you about how to read that yet and let's focus on the ingredients.

The first ingredient is great-oats. Ok, then...well, sugar. Not good. Then, canola oil-a fatty, nutrient-less food. Then, corn flour-a binder perhaps? Unecessary and certainly void of nutrients because of how processed it is. Then, OH LOOK, more sugar-this time it's brown which means the white sugar was mixed with molasses.

Still no nutrients or flavor-just sugar.

At this point you can stop hoping for some type of real food ingredient because the top 3 to 5 ingredients are the ones that count-they are the ones that make up most of the food. And as we can see here, these "granola bars" are just sugar in bar form. Lovely.

Instead-how about feeding your body and your kids' bodies something nutritious that was made at home and is packed with real food like oats, bananas and dates. Worth it? Yes.