A War on Convenience Food - Snacks part 1

     Before you get frightened that I'm going to have an unbroken string of snacks, I'm not. I just thought that the majority of the money that we spend on pre-made stuff is the stuff we keep in our cupboards and give our kids when they need a snack. You know what I'm talking about: cereal bars, crackers, cookies, etc. I'm going to do several parts on snacks that we buy, but I'm not going to do them all at once. Instead, I'm going to split them up and do one every few weeks with other convenience foods mixed in.

     When my daughter comes home from school or gymnastics and says to me, "Mommy, they're allowing us to have snacks now, but only healthy ones," I want to punch a wall.  Though I totally agree that schools should allow kids a snack when they're hungry, the first question that always jumps to my mind is, "What's healthy?"
     It's a valid question.  There are "health foods" on our shelves with corn syrup, chocolate, and salt packed into them as well as people who will assume that anything that looks like health food is healthy.  Do I go buy one of those cereal bars that are packed with marshmallow creme?  Do I send her with trail mix that most likely has M&Ms in it and risk some kid with nut allergies getting ahold of it?  Is this one of those people that considers popcorn healthy? (Note: The last school teacher was)  Apple slices go brown and soggy unless you put lemon juice on them, then they taste like lemons.  Whole fruit takes too long to eat and makes a lot of noise and/or mess.  Worst of all, if I make a bag of carrots and my daughter forgets about them, I find a baggie of brown goo at the bottom of her backpack a month later.  Gross.
     I like the idea of energy bars, but I have a difficult time finding any of them that my daughter will eat that aren't packed with chocolate and corn syrup and soy (I'm really going to talk about that soon) as well as about four other kinds of syrups I've never heard about.  Heck, Fiber One bars have both Corn Syrup and High Maltose Corn Syrup listed in their ingredients, and they're haled as incredibly healthy.  (Maltose is a more complex sugar than fructose, but it's still not great.)  They're also covered in chocolate 90% of the time.  Add the fact that they're store-bought, non-fresh food to the mix, and you have a combination of things I think I can do better.
     So, I went down to my local grocery store and stood in the "convenience breakfast" aisle with my magic notebook of prices and wrote down the price of every different brand of energy bars that are made without fruit in the middle or marshmallow creme.  In other words, I looked at the "healthy" bars.  They ranged in price from $2.50 for 8 bars (31¢ each) to $3.99 for 5 bars (80¢ each).  I also should mention that the low end bar had three different types of corn syrup (corn syrup, low fructose corn syrup, and high fructose corn syrup).  Admittedly, the more expensive the bars, the better the ingredients, but I still don't know what they all are.
     So, I did some research and I made my daughter her own energy bars that are endlessly customizable for your family.  In the notes about ingredients section, I'll tell you some substitutions that you can use to make these work for you.  I'm putting those in because there's no telling if you have family members allergic to peanuts or tree nuts or if you're vegan.  I have some options for those.

Equipment you'll need
Saucepan, cookie sheet, 13"x9" pan, mixing bowl, rubber spatula

Makes 10 bars

Ingredient	Amount	Cost
Peanut butter	1/2 c.	$0.43*
Honey	1/2 c.	$1.39*
Oatmeal	1 c.	$0.18*
Puffed Rice Cereal	1 c.	$0.66*
Slivered Almonds	1/2 c.	$1.60*
Raisins	1/3 c.	$0.72*
Total		$4.98
* Based on price per package divided by amount used.

Price per plate =$0.50  Notes about ingredients:

If you're allergic to peanuts, you can substitute almond butter.  If you're allergic to both peanuts and tree nuts the internet promises me that you can use sunflower seed spread

As many health benefits as raw, local honey may have, buy the cheap stuff for this recipe.  You're going to cook it anyway

Vegans can use agave nectar instead of honey.

If you've got tree nut allergies in your family, use 2/3 c. of chunky peanut butter to give it that crunch.  If you've got tree and peanut allergies, get some hulled sunflower seeds to add.

You can substitute the 1/3 c. of raisins for literally anything - miniature dark chocolate chips, dried cranberries, chopped dried apricots, etc.

Prep Instructions:

Spread the oats and almonds (or sunflower seeds) out on a cookie sheet and put them under your oven's broiler for 5 minutes or until slightly browned and toasted.

Instructions:

1.   Put the peanut butter and honey into a small saucepan and allow them to melt together over low heat.  When they're melted, they'll stir together smoothly as a liquid.
2.   Pour the peanut butter mixture into a bowl with the oats, almonds, raisins, and rice cereal.
3.   Mix all ingredients together until they're all the same color.
4.   Oil your pan with some canola oil and press the mixture into the pan.  Press as hard as you possibly can so that the mixture will stick together.

5.   Put the mixture in the fridge for about an hour then cut into separate bars.

6.  Wrap each bar in wax paper to have at a later time.

My experience with this recipe is that they taste amazing.  However, they're very gooey.  I'm having to keep the wrapped bars in the fridge to keep them solid.