Maple Cranberry Granola Bars

Wowza! My last 24 hours have been a whirlwind! Last night we went to a local bar to watch two talented Canadian country artists: Gord Bamford and Aaron Pritchett. If you've never heard of these two and you love country music, look them up ~ they're both doing really well on the country scene and they put on a darn good show! The venue was awesome, we were there with great friends and we had a great time. Unfortunately, it was a really late night and I got about 4 hours of sleep before I had to get up and get moving for work this morning. I am slowly coming to the realization that I'm not 21 anymore and 4 hours just ain't gonna cut it when I'm expected to be a functioning adult for an entire day. I love being in my 30s, but there are some things about getting older that I just can't come to terms with :-)

When I got home from work today, I decided to try my hand at homemade granola bars. I saw a recipe on Kris's website earlier this week and I've been thinking up my own recipe ever since. This is my first attempt and I think I did a pretty good job. There are so many variations you can do when making granola bars; I'm already making notes on an apple granola bar that I am going to try in the very near future.

Maple Cranberry Granola Squares
I made 8 bars, but next time I will be making them into 12 squares. This recipe makes very dense granola bars and I found the bars to be more than what I would want in a serving.

2 c. oats
1/4 c. walnuts, finely chopped
1/3 c. dried cranberries
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tbsp ground flax seeds
1/3 c. almond milk
1/3 c. maple syrup
1/4 c natural almond butter (or your favourite nut butter)
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, mix together the oats, walnuts, cranberries, cinnamon and flax seeds.

I grind my own flax seeds. I decided to add flax at the last minute and it was a perfect addition!

It was already looking pretty promising!!

In a separate smaller bowl, mix together the remaining ingredients. Add to the dry ingredients and mix well.

Let your mixture sit for 5 - 7 minutes.

Transfer your mixture to a flat surface that you can cut on. Press the mixture out into a square. The bars should be approximately 1/2" thick.

Cut into 12 squares (like I said above, I did 8 bars but because these are so dense, I found them to be too big for one serving).

I like my kitchen tools to be able to multi-task. A pizza cutter works great for cutting the bars.

Transfer your squares to the baking sheet. Bake for 16 - 18 minutes. You will want to gently flip the bars after 10 minutes of baking so that both sides get nice and golden brown. I like a granola bar that is crunchy on the outside but a little chewy inside. You can adjust your baking time to suit your tastes because these are good crunchy or chewy. NOTE: The granola bars are soft & chewy the next day. They still taste great, but I am going to do some work to see if I can't master a crunchy bar.

Remove from oven and let cool.

When I tasted my first bar, I thought they were a little boring on their own, so I decided to fancy them up with some chocolate glazes (doesn't everything taste better with your fave chocolate ~ I certainly think so :-)!

I drizzled some with dark chocolate (can you say yum?!) and my absolute favourite was a white chocolate glaze sprinkled with unsweetened coconut. They were delish!! I have a feeling a chocolate nut butter glaze would also rock these bars....see what I mean, the possibilities are limitless!

I am super-excited to pack one of these bars for my post-workout snack tomorrow. I just love delicious, homemade snacks ~ don't you?

What are your favourite type of granola bars? Do you have a favourite mix-in? What about topping?

Now I'm off to catch up on my beauty sleep, so I wish you all a good night!

Andrea

Baked Nachos

Happy Wednesday!

Tonight I had dinner at my grandparents' house and I was so sad to realize that I forgot my camera. We had a couple of really awesome new dishes tonight and now I'm going to have re-create them so I can share them with you! There was one vegetable dish that you are going to love!!

After I had dinner, I went to a dog training class - have I mentioned that I moonlight as an assistant dog trainer? I'm planning to dedicate some of my blog posts to my poochies and their favourite things like clicker training and dog treats...but that will be someday down the road.

When I got home I had the munchies but wanted to make sure that my snack was something healthy and satisfying, so I made us a really easy and tasty treat . You've gotta believe me that you can still have delicious and fun while being healthy and nutritious!! This week we are trying to clean out the fridge and pantry, so this snack incorporated 1/4 of a leftover avocado, some corn tortillas that have been in the freezer for way to long and some hot salsa that has been in the fridge for several weeks. I hate wasting food, so recipes that can use up all the leftovers make me very happy :-)

Baked Nachos
6 corn tortillas (6")
1 - 1.5 tbsp olive oil
sea salt (I used spicy Herbamare) to taste

Preheat oven to 350. Using your kitchen scissors cut the tortillas into wedges. I made 8 wedges per tortilla.

Spread the tortilla wedges out onto a baking sheet. Using a basting brush, brush each wedge lightly with olive oil. Sprinkle the wedges with sea salt or spicy Herbamare. Bake in the oven for 7 minutes making sure to flip the nacho chips halfway through.

Serve & enjoy!

We are huge fans of Mexican food ~ especially guacamole. I didn't have the motivation or ingredients to do an authentic guac, so instead I mashed up some leftover avocado, squeezed in some fresh lemon juice and seasoned with spicy Mrs. Dash and sea salt. There are no set amounts for this; you just need to adjust the seasonings to your tastes. We like a little tang (the lemon) combined with some heat (spicy Mrs. Dash - you could use Frank's Red Hot for a kick too!). As a second side, we had a hot salsa.

This was great snack ~ Derek even said it was great (he said it with some surprise in his voice ~ now what's up with that?!)

I also like to bake up some of these chips and serve as a side with a veggie soup or chili. I used to have bread on the side but these are lower calorie and still very satisfying.

Healthy snacks are the best aren't they? I can watch what I eat and still eat my chips - that makes this girl really, really happy!

What is your favourite healthy snack??

I hope you had an awesome Hump Day --- two more days and then its the weekend!

Andrea

PS - don't forget to check out my new Facebook page! You can keep up with all of my recipes and my day to day shenanigans!!