Homemade Granola and Such

'Ello! Hope you had a lovely Halloween, mine was super lame due to A) working and B) no trick or treaters because our apartment building is locked. However, Riley and I carved pumpkins Sunday so I guess I celebrated early!

Speaking of celebrating early... the silly folks over here in Des Moines and most of the suburbs do Halloween a day early, the 30th, and call it Begger's Night. No joke. From 6 to 8 PM all the children trick or treat, and they either have to do a trick or tell you a joke before you give them candy. How crazy is this?! I had never heard of it until last Friday when someone asked me if I was ready for Tuesday night. I was all "um, is something happening Tuesday night?" and they filled me in! I guess Des Moines just rewrites holidays like its nothing ;) teehee. There's your random information for the day. Back to pumpkin carving!

We were super pumped when we picked out our pumpkins, but 3 minutes into carving realized we only had memories of pumpkin carving being "fun" because we never did the real work at age 7. Its hard! My extreme lack of fine motor skills and dwindling patience resulted in one ill-planned slice too many and BAM! Suddenly my bunny had lost its mouth and the bottom of its face. Despite my attempts to make it unnoticeable (which required precarious balance and the Earth to stand still), it looked pathetic and just plain bad. I've never claimed to excel at anything in the art area, so I'll share the sad picture of the ruined pumpkin (as you'll see, I was unimpressed by my efforts).

Riley's turned out really good, shaming me and my desperately-needs-glue pumpkin even further, but that's okay :) Enough of my carving sorrows!

I wanted to try to make my own granola bars after sighing in the grocery aisle for the thousandth time, wondering why granola bars can't have more nutritional ingredients than most do (with the exception of most made by Kashi, that is), so try I did! It turned out more like granola chunks, but I decided perfection in granola bar making is not what I was striving for and called it somewhat success! :) The nice things about these are 1. no added sugar! Just a bit of agave nectar 2. you can sub in almonds or whatever you want to instead of peanuts, I had just ran out of almonds so had to settle for the double peanut action. 3. They are full of the good fats you should eat, plus a serving (again, the chunks make it hard to be specific, but approximately 1/6 of the pan) has 5 grams of protein. That's more than you get from a tablespoon of butter spread on your toast! :)

Peanut Butter & Oat Granola Pieces
serving: 1/6 of the 9x5 loaf pan
calories: 159
fat: 9 grams (all from the peanuts, PB, and oats!)
protein: 5 grams

Ingredients:
1/4 C peanuts (about 60)
1/2 C old fashioned rolled oats
1/2 C pretzel twists (about 13)
1/4 C unsweetened raw coconut flakes
1/4 C natural peanut butter (I like Smucker's because it has no added sugar), somewhat melted
1/2 Tbsp agave nectar (you could probably use honey instead!)
parchment paper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Put everything except the peanut butter and agave nectar into a small food processor (if you don't have one, just put it all in a big bowl and let the crushing begin!) and pulse on low 3-4 times, until everything is crushed into smaller pieces without being minced. Pour into a large bowl and add the somewhat melted peanut butter and the agave nectar. Stir with a wooden spoon (not that much stuff sticks to the wood) until the peanut butter is evenly distributed with everything else. Put some parchment paper in the bottom of your 9x5 loaf pan and pour the granola into the pan. Take another piece of parchment paper and place on top of the granola, then lightly press down all over until the granola is even in the pan. Take off top piece of parchment paper, then put in oven. Bake about 10 minutes, then take out and let cool. Granola will be sort of stuck together, but not fully. Take out in chunks, or just dump it all into a container if you don't care about the size of the chunks. Eat it on top of yogurt or a smoothie, with some milk on it, or just by itself! :)

Yum-o!

Let me know if you make any changes and it turns out scrumptious! I'm off to bake some bread (why pay $3.99 a loaf when I can whip some up on my own, right?), enjoy the rest of your sunny day by taking a walk or going for a run outside! Or at least peek your head out the door for a few moments to take in the fresh air. :)

--KQ