Back on Track and a Cereal Bar

You will have to overlook the smudged photo. Not sure what happened!

Well I feel a bit better after ranting about dieting on Friday and you all left many great comments for me. Obviously, I'm not the only one thinking this way. I guess what I'll be doing is trying to eat a bit healthier with smaller portion sizes and LOTS of exercise. As I said, I despise using a treadmill but that is all I've got unless I want to freeze my patooty off in this cold weather.

(By the way, we are on our second day of 2 hour delays for school. Yesterday was for flooded roads and today is ice/snow. You may ask, Why does that affect me since I homeschool? The answer would be because my oldest son does go to public school.)

We did get a break on Saturday with sunny skies and warm temperatures so I put my sneakers on and hit my favorite walking route. A 3 mile trek throughout our town. I took Sunday off and then hit the exercise bike again yesterday and it's on my to-do list for later today.

Now to the cereal bar!

I tried this out a few weeks ago and thought someone else may like it. It was simple to make and I had all the ingredients at home. At the end of the post I will include the fat and calories that I added up as I made them but keep in mind that you could switch out a few ingredients and reduce the numbers even more. I thought the walnuts were a bit high (yet still healthy for you) so next time I may substitute something else or just leave them out. Either way it was a good basic recipe to start from. Lots of possibilities!

Granola/ Cereal Bars

1 cup oats

1 cup shredded wheat cereal

1 cup walnuts

1 1/2 to 2 cups dried fruit (your choice)

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. salt

2 eggs

1/3 cup honey

1 tsp. vanilla

Spray or grease an 8x8 pan.

Place oats, shredded wheat, walnuts, fruit, cinnamon & salt in a food processor and chop finely.

In a large bowl, beat together eggs, honey and vanilla.

Add oat mixture and stir well.

Place in greased pan and flatten out with hands.

Bake 18 minutes at 350°.

Cool & cut into bars or snack size bites.

Here are the totals for the whole pan so you will need to cut the bars into the sizes that you prefer and then divide the numbers that I give you by the amount of bars you have to get an amount for each serving.

Calories = 3,160

Fat = 159

Fiber = 42

Carbs = 394