Breakfast Bars - Makin' them Myself....

It's amazing how much money you could spend on a box of granola or breakfast bars in comparison to how much oats, raisins, and few ounces of fruit costs! We (Ray and I ) are trying to make sure we eat a healthy, low-fat breakfast every day and not have to buy individual money-wasters or worse yet, donuts on the way into work.

It's also not fair when we're trying to do something good for ourselves, like eat breakfast, and Quaker or Nabisco or whatever store brand that had the best price decides to sabotage us and throw in excessive sugar, fat and salt to our nutritious morning fuel up.

I decided to take matters into my own hands... I found a few good recipes and tonight I tried one from Cooks.com called Awesome Breakfast Bars. Now I know there is ALOT of sugar and fat and honey in this one, so this is what I did... I reduced the sugar to 1/2, increased the peanut butter by 1/4 cup and totally pretended chocolate chips don't exist! Then I took a bag of puffed rice cereal (read: hardly ANY calories, NO FAT) and threw about 4 cups into the mix. I basically diluted the recipe with the puffed rice... same amount of crunch and volume, 1/2 the calories.


I tasted the stuff after I smooshed it all down into the cookie sheets, yes, I made twice as much (read: LESS MONEY), too! It tasted pretty good, I used granola with raisins and added a little nutmeg for zing. It's a little bland but great for morning. If you paired a granola-bar sized piece with a piece of fruit, you'd get a good morning metabolism booster, a nice dose of vitamins, fiber and minerals!

If you have any healthy, lower-fat idea for breakfast bars that you are willing to share, I'd love to hear them. I am also going to start experimenting with some healthier salad dressings, possibly playing with unflavored yogurt. Any suggestions?