Peanut Butter-Molasses Granola Bars

Cutting calories is hard. Really, really, really hard. Our bodies just don't like giving up the weight and, through trial and error, I found the best way to keep from going on a hunger-fueled eating binge is to always keep something in my belly and always carry a snack on me if I'm not hanging around the house. Seriously, the hungrier I get, the more I just want to open the fridge, stick in my head, and shovel everything into my mouth.

Granola bars are a great snack to keep around because they travel well, but those store-bought ones have so many weird things added to them, not to mention the cost (which keeps going up). This past weekend I experimented with making knock-off mocha almond chocolate chip bars based on a certain large "health-food" company's product, but that didn't go so well. They just wouldn't hold together and now I have a giganto bowl of granola hanging around, which isn't a bad thing, but still not convenient for on-the-go snacking. So today I decided to try making a different type of granola bar and see if maybe some peanut butter might glue things together.

Final verdict? It worked and they taste AMAZING! I think I'm going to keep on tinkering and see what other flavors I can come up with using this recipe as a base. I will figure out those darned mocha almond bars one of these days.

Peanut Butter-Molasses Granola Bars
Yields 24 bars at 119 calories a piece

1 cup crispy rice cereal
2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup unsalted peanuts
1/2 cup raisins
A healthy dash of cinnamon
1/4 cup molasses
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup natural unsweetened peanut butter
1/4 cup peanut oil
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1. Grease a 9x13 baking pan and line with waxed paper.
2. Stir together the rice cereal, oats, peanuts, raisins, and cinnamon in a large bowl. Set aside.
3. In a high-sided pot combine the molasses and sugar. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and cook for 2-3 minutes. Stir in the peanut butter, oil, and flour. Cook for an additional 2-3 minutes.
4. Pour the sugar mixture over the oat mixture and stir well using a wooden spoon. Make sure all the crumbs get mixed in. Turn out into the baking pan and press it in. I put a layer of waxed paper on top and pressed another pan on top of it to get it evenly distributed.
5. Refrigerate for 15 minutes, remove from pan, and cut into 24 bars.

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Random Kitchen Tips

This is where the magic happens *

I love making fancy yet healthy gourmet meals. While they're lots of fun to make, they can get awfully time consuming and sometimes I just don't have time to spend the entire day in the kitchen. Apparently Alexander thinks I need to pay attention to him or something (totally sarcasm). Today I thought I'd list some of my favorite time-cutting methods.

Like I mentioned in another post, I always keep a container of my homemade seasoned salt in my spice cabinet. The main components are sea salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and sometimes red pepper flakes if I'm feeling spicy. It's a great way to add a lot of flavor to something without having to get out all the different bottles of spices.

If you have a deep freezer and are making something that holds well when you make it ahead of time, make double and freeze half of it. I don't have a deep freezer at the moment, but one day I dream of having a well-stocked freezer for days I don't feel like cooking. For now, I'll just be content with the freezer I have and just be thankful that I can at least fit a few bags of frozen veggies and some meat into it.

Speaking of a well-stocked freezer, I always try to make sure to have a few things in my freezer that I can pull out and whip up into a quick and healthy dinner. I like to stock up on frozen ravioli when they're on sale, along with uncooked chicken tenderloins and uncooked peeled frozen shrimp. Frozen vegetables are great to have on hand, too. I can make any of those into something edible in just a few minutes and it keeps me from resorting to takeout.

Invest in a few good sets of measuring cups and spoons. When I say I measure out everything I eat or drink, I'm serious about that. I have two sets of cups and spoons so that I can always have a clean set ready to go. The dollar store is not the place to invest in good kitchen equipment if you want stuff that will last you a lifetime.

So there are just a few tips on how I roll in the kitchen. There will be many more to come as soon as I think of them. Feel free to leave your favorite kitchen tip in the comments!

*Please excuse the mess, but I'm in the middle of making dinner and 150 wedding cookies, in addition to surfing the intertubez. Yeah, I multi-task like that.

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The Importance of Support

Alright, this post might get a little mushy (by my standards). For those of you that know me, you know that I'm one of the least mushy people you'll ever meet. I'm the sort of person that doesn't like hugging people that I'm not either married or closely related to. Yeah, that's me.

Anyway, here it is: I don't think I'd have been able to stick with this life change if it hadn't been for my husband, Anthony. He supports my decisions, eats whatever I cook, and even keeps a straight face when I put a plate of mystery food in front of him that tastes like I scraped it out of the bottom of the garbage can. The man doesn't even flinch when there are tentacles sticking out of his dinner (I like squid) and he's never once complained about the lack of snack food in the house.

So today I just want to thank my amazing husband for joining me on my voyage to a healthy life. If it wasn't for him, I'd probably be sitting on the couch with a bag of potato chips right now.

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A Day in the Life

My first ever post was just the condensed version of my transformation. The truth of the matter is that it took a lot of time, a lot of planning, and a lot of research. Oh, and a very patient and understanding husband. Thanks, Anthony! What really sped up my weight loss was realizing the importance of portion control and one handy little app.

We had already started the switch to healthier eating after the little man was born, but I wasn't really bothering to keep up with how much of it we were eating. Even so, I was still slowly losing weight. It wasn't until I discovered MyFitnessPal somewhere around last March that things really took off. Thanks to that handy app on my phone, I was able to really look at what a day's worth of my eating truly looked at and just how nutritious my diet really was (or wasn't).

I will readily admit that I blew out my calories for at least the first month of tracking my eating, but I persevered. Sometimes I considered just sneaking some food and not tracking it, but what good what that have done? I was the only one that even knew what I was eating, anyway. Maybe I thought the app was judging me? Who knows? Anyway, it took me some time, but I eventually got my eating under control.

Soon I discovered all the neat little tricks the app could do for me, like programming in my recipes so I could use them again. That involved having to *gasp* measure everything I ate! It was tedious, but it works. Now measuring out everything I eat or drink is second nature. People may look at me like I'm bonkers when I count out exactly seven crackers from the box, but I know exactly how many calories I'm getting and that gives me warm fuzzies.

And then I found the bar code scanner built into the app! All that slow typing stuff into and searching, gone! Later, I realized I could look up food I was about to eat to see what the damage was and it made me think twice about even bothering. It's amazing what a little information can do. Cookies don't look so appetizing when you see how many calories, fat, and sugar you're about to ingest.

It takes time to cut back on the calories. Go cold turkey and your body puts up an unholy ruckus of rumbling bellies, headaches, and the like, but if you cut back slowly, your body doesn't quite realize what's going on. You know, like that frog in the pot with the boiling water. Anywho, I digress. I went from eating 2200 calories a day to around 1400, and yet I was still satisfied at the end of the day. And without further ado, a sample menu of my average 1400 calorie day. (I do eat more on days when I exercise, but we'll get to that another time).

Breakfast

222 calories

Steel-cut oatmeal with a tablespoon of raisins, no sweetener added (I add the raisins before cooking so they naturally sweeten my oatmeal)

A giant cup of coffee with half a cup of unsweetened vanilla almond milk

Morning Snack

100 calories

Banana

Lunch

315 calories

Grilled cheese on whole-wheat sandwich thins with 75% reduced fat cheese

One serving of baby carrots

Half a pear (I usually split fruit with Alexander)

Two squares of very dark chocolate

Afternoon snack

102 calories

12 raw almonds

Another big cup of coffee with half a cup of unsweetened almond milk

Late afternoon snack

60 calories

Reduced fat cheese stick

Dinner

400 calories

Shrimp tacos with 1/3 of an avocado

Romaine salad with homemade balsamic vinaigrette

After-dinner snack

220 calories

1 cup of diced melon

One serving of popcorn popped in peanut oil on my stove

Daily total

1419 calories

So there you have it. Just an average day.

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Created by MyFitnessPal - Free Calorie Counter

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