We're coming into the time of year where we spend a lot of time on the go - at parks, on hikes, biking, canoeing, wherever -and it all goes that much easier if we have some food on hand. When W was a toddler I tried all kinds of recipes for granola bars; I felt that most of them had far too much sugar or too much fat to be considered a "healthy" snack. Then I came across Laurel's Kitchen cookbook (oh how I love this book, mostly just for the introduction called The Work at Hand by Carol Flinders). The book includes a recipe for raisin bars that are quite delicious as is, however I found that they would end up crumbled into a granola like mess when we had them in our backpacks. I played with the recipe a bit over the years and ended up with a fairly sturdy, no-sugar (yet very sweet), low-fat bar. They are a whole food bar made simply with oats, whole wheat flour, walnuts, raisins, dates, applesauce, some oil, water, and salt. That's it.
And since the boys helped me shell a box of walnuts (grown on our backyard trees), I thought I would make a triple batch of these bars to see us through the next few weeks. They also freeze well.
BTW, if you have a walnut tree then that nutcracker pictured up top is the one to have. They work so amazingly well that they are even worth buying new...and that says a lot coming from me. ;-)
6 comments:
That is one nice looking nutcracker! What kind is it? We still have a big bag of nuts from the Gellatly Nut Farm that I need to do something with but our nutcracker is sadly lacking. Those bars look great! Do you think you could make the bars with almonds instead of walnuts? Apparently walnuts make hubby's throat itch.
Curse you, non-recipe person!!
Rebecca :)
Ditto to what Rebecca said!
Would you please, could you please, post the recipe for us non-slapdash bakers :-)
Pretty, pretty please with Alan on top :-)
Yum! they look delicious! would love to try making them.
j
Hi Joanne, I don't know the brand name of the nutcracker (I have two and they were gifts) but I can bring them and show you sometime. They are especially good for hazelnuts which are very difficlut to crack using the old kind of nutcracker that I used to have, we would always end up pinching our fingers. E prefers to use a hammer and crack our walnuts in the driveway but that is Not! my preferred method. :-)I don't see why you couldn't use almonds, the taste would be quite different but I think they would be very good.
OK, OK, you two, I will come up with the recipe. Samantha I think you wrote down the raisin bar one before, didn't you? I just add applesauce in place of some of the water and then I grind up dates to add in place of some of the raisin amount; sometimes I add some cinnamon too. Mostly I just mix stuff in until I get a texture that looks like it will hold together well. :-) Forgot to say that I added ground flax seed to this batch too.
I gave up on nutcrackers after breaking so many of them on my walnuts. I just use a rock now...
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