Sometimes a kid needs to wear a superhero cape. Maybe it’s to fight crime, and maybe it’s o go grocery shopping. We purchased a cheap, red cape which was destroyed within weeks. My mom, being the super-grandma she is (is there a cape for that?) made my kids more durable capes.
Even though I really do feed my kids regular meals (Really! I swear!) My kids constantly proclaim to be starving. When i try to explain to them what it actually means to be “starving,” they look at me like I’m crazy and then once again profess that if they don’t get food soon they’ll surely die. This means, we need a lot of easy snacks in our house. The problem is, fast and easy often means processed, junk-filled food I don’t particularly want my kids eating. So while the solution is homemade snacks, as busy moms, we don’t always have a lot of time.
These homemade granola bars are extremely easy to make, very healthy and make me feel like Mother of the Year when I hand one to my kids. That warm feeling last all the way until they start fighting in the middle of the condiment isle of the grocery store and break a bottle of salsa. Small victories really do count.
Let’s compare the ingredients in our homemade granola bars to the very popular Quaker Chewy Granola Bars. The Quaker peanut-butter chocolate chip bars contain artificial coloring, corn syrup, sorbital, artificial flavoring, and several other ingredients I can’t pronounce. In total, these bars contain 7 grams of sugar each and have over 30 ingredients. My granola bars have no added sugar (aside from the small amount in the dark chocolate bits) and contain 9 ingredients, all of which you’ve likely heard of.
Start by combining the oats, coconut, ground flax, almonds, dark chocolate and cinnamon in a bowl. If you can’t do almonds, just up the flax or coconut. No big deal. You can also replace them for another nut or seed you like better.
Once you mix this together, stir in the coconut milk, peanut butter and vanilla. I finally gave up with the spoon and went in with my hands. It may be a git gooey, but it saves a lot of time. This just goes in a 9×13 pan and into the fridge to set.
Even after I cut these into bars, I keep them in the fridge. They stay fresh and and stay set that way. But I will take one out, wrap it in plastic and put it in my purse for a trip to the grocery store. They will stay set for an hour or two without refrigeration.
Try them out. I guarantee you’ll have that Mother-of-the-year feeling.
Eating healthy is a lot easier if I have healthy food on hand. Here are my top 10, healthy kitchen staples.
I don’t understand people who say they’re not breakfast people. How can you not be a breakfast person? After not eating since dinner, doing a workout, taking the kids to school, and having to do a very picky 4-year-old’s hair, I’m starving. Breakfast time is pretty much the best time of day. So I don’t want to waste this fabulous meal on a sugary, processed cereal. I want something healthy and delicious that will give me the energy to make it through the rest of the day. This hearty stir fry is the key.
Start by heating up some avocado oil in a large skillet. I use avocado oil because it performs great at high temperatures and is good for you. Brown the onion and garlic first. Add in the pepper, zucchini, mushrooms, cauliflower and saute until the veggies are tender but still have a bit of crunch. Make sure to season your veggies with plenty of salt and pepper.
Add the halved cherry tomatoes last and cook them until they are slightly shriveled and have released some of their juices.
Because I’m lazy and don’t want to dirty extra dishes, I just push the cooked veggies to the side before adding the eggs. I like to keep the two separate for a while so I still have distinct pieces of veggies and eggs. If you just toss the eggs in and mix it all together, it’s a bit mushy and just not as good.
Once the eggs are cooked, stir it all together for a bit.
This recipe is easy to customize. Add any seasonings or vegetables you like. Leave out any you don’t like. Even add leftover chicken or sausage. Either way, I’m sure this recipe will make anyone a breakfast person. If not, go ahead and make it for lunch.
A few weeks ago I saw a commercial for a women’s wrestling show. Rather than showcase their strength, physical ability and years of training it took to get to that point, the commercial showed these amazing athletic women in men’s dress shirts in sexy poses, showing more cleavage than a turkey on Thanksgiving Day.What bothered […]
I eat green salad at least once a day. So the other night when I set out a green salad for dinner, my four year old threw her head back, groaned and shouted to the heavens with arms outstretched, “Why do we always have to have salad?!” Since I don’t want my daughter to decide she hates vegetable because she’s sick of salad, I decided we needed another fresh veggie side dish. This is even easier to make than a green salad and has an ingredient that makes everything better: CHEESE!
Chop your tomatoes, cucumbers and cheese to roughly the same size. This makes it easier to taste all the flavors of the salad.
I like to use an organic Italian salad dressing mix which I make with olive oil and apple cider vinegar, but use what you like best (balsamic tastes great also). Just make sure it doesn’t have added sugars or bad hydrogenated oils (canola oil, vegetable oil, etc).
Just mix everything together and serve.
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” You don’t have to go from krispy kreme to kale overnight. Here are some small, simple steps to get you started on your own personal health journey. Adopt all 10 or start with one at a time. No matter what, any healthy change you […]
Whenever my daughter and I are having one of those rough days where we butt heads and can’t agree on anything, we need something to help us unwind and have fun together. For us, that’s an episode of Pioneer Woman on the Food Network. It doesn’t always stop the fighting, but for half an hour, we agree on something. Sometimes, that’s priceless.
A few weeks ago, we watched her make Mulligatawny soup. It looked amazing, but had a few ingredients I’m not okay with including in a week night dinner. I came up with a healthy variation which our whole family loves.
The entire dish comes together in one pan which is my kind of meal. It cooks really fast but is packed full of flavor.
Start by cooking the chicken. Then add the onion and garlic and cook it all together.
Add the curry, broth and coconut milk and cook just to heat it up. Then add the chopped apple and cook for another five minutes. This will cook the apple but keep it from getting mushy.
Top each serving with some chopped peanuts. This adds more great flavor and crunch.
I love this dish because it’s a great,warm soup for winter but the freshness from the apple makes it great for any time of year.
Vacations open the door to a lot of spending and eating foods we wouldn’t normally allow. While it’s fun to get ice cream on trips, there are some things you can do to keep your family eating healthy without spending a ton of money.
Growing up, there was a Village Inn about two miles from our house. Sometimes on Saturday mornings, my BFF and I would walk there for breakfast, indulge in a sweet breakfast pastry (aka pie) and then walk back to my house. We felt like we were so healthy, walking the four miles it took to make the round trip. Little did we know, we were packing on enough sugar and bad carbs to require us to walk about 50 miles to break even.
Even with the knowledge I have now, I still have that taste for delicious pastries branded in my brain. Luckily, there’s a much healthier way to indulge.
These scones are sweetened only with dried fruit, cinnamon and orange zest; and made with a combination of almond flour and coconut flour. This keeps the protein high and the processed carbs low. These scones have less than 5 grams of sugar each.
This easily comes together in a food processor. This is my ancient food processor my grandma found at a garage sale for $10. It’s one of my favorite tools and even though it’s death will mean I get to buy a newer model, I hope this one lasts forever.
Combine everything but the cherries in a food processor. Let everything process until the dough forms a ball.
Add the dried cherries and process again. These are the only dried cherries I’ve found without added sugar. This is one of my pet peeves. Fruit is so full of natural sugars, why do we feel the need to sweeten them. I found these at Walmart of all places.
I like to let the cherries process for a bit to break them into small pieces. This distributes the sweetness throughout the scone. If you like bigger chunks of cherry, mix these in with a spoon.
I bake these in my awesome scone pan, but you can pat this in a round disk and cut into eight triangles, cut them into squares, or roll this out and cut them with a circular biscuit cutter.
These bake quickly so you don’t have to wait long. Rather than top these with frosting, we just drizzle melted coconut butter over the top. The kids think I’m the cool mom giving them frosting for breakfast. They’re such lucky kids.
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