A while back, I realized I was buying a lot of granola bars. Generally, there were 6 in a box, and they cost about $2. The ingredients featured things like corn syrup, palm kernel oil, artificial flavor, and several items I couldn’t pronounce. Surely, there was a way to make healthy homemade granola bars.
I searched online, and ended up fiddling with various recipes until I found one we liked.
Healthy Homemade Granola Bars
1 1/2 cup peanut butter
1 cup honey
3/4 cup olive oil, coconut oil, whatever fat you like
3 cup oats
1 cup cereal (whatever kind you like; Cheerios/Kix/Chex all work well
1 cup crushed pretzels
1/3 cup ground flax seed
2/3 cup mini chocolate chips
Melt peanut butter in microwave and mix with honey and oil. Stir in other ingredients and put into a 9 x 13″ pan.
You can substitute various items you like: coconut, sunflower seeds — whatever your kids will eat. As you can see from the picture, these go fast at our place — I don’t believe a pan has yet lasted over 24 hours.
Try some and see if your family doesn’t like them better then store-bought granola bars!
Here’s our menu plan for the week:
Monday: Chicken Parmesan – a family favorite, and EASY!
1 jar marinara sauce
4 chicken breast halves
2/3 c. shredded mozzarella
1/4 c. bread crumbs
2 T. olive oil
noodles
Pour marinara sauce in bottom of ungreased 12 x 8 dish.
Place chicken over sauce.
In small bowl, mix cheeses, bread crumbs and oil. Sprinkle evenly over chicken.
Bake at 350 30-35 min.
Serve over noodles.
Tuesday: Pizza and homemade bread sticks — store-bought pizza due to an insanely busy evening
Wednesday: Southwestern Chicken – new recipe; looks good.
Thursday: Fish (boxed kind; sorry) and rice, and a veggie
Friday: Bean soup (bag of bean soup mix), also bread machine bread. I got an electric knife for Christmas and love how nice and thin I can cut the slices with it.
