Made it through

We made it through the weekend, celebrating our anniversary with making Ray watch Twilight with me and through Father's Day by grilling out. I got Ray a new mouse pad for his computer at work for Father's Day with the girls' picture on it. Luck have it, I was in Walmart on Saturday grocery shopping and the store called to tell me it was in. That will never happen again.

Ray's take on Twilight? Remember, he did not (and will not) read the books, but he thought it was sooo sloooowwwww. I get that, and can understand by not having read the books. I have him slightly convinced when they make the 4th book into a movie, he should totally go see that one.

We have a short week this week. Friday, we are leaving for the Outer Banks of North Carolina for a long weekend. We are using more of our Hilton points and staying at a Hampton Inn there. Ray and I are excited because we used to spend a week there every summer with my Dad and Stepmom and her family, and we miss it.

I have a few food related posts coming this week (Stove Top challenged me, and I took them up on their challenge, details later this week!). I thought I would throw in some food related goodness now.

With Ashley in various camps this month, and us enjoying the pool every minute that we can, snacks have been a big deal in our house these past few weeks. One snack item my kids love are granola bars. You see where this is going? I scoured several food blogs last week and random recipes sites to try and find a good compatible granola bar recipe for me to make at home that would taste a lot like what I buy in the store.

And no, I am not going to pretend I am doing this because I don't want my kids eating all the various preservatives that are in the store bought ones, because a lot of the posts I read about homemade granola bars toted that. And yes, it would be nice not to have corn syrup and such, but I was positive my kids would not eat the really, really good for you granola bars (aka the ones without the corn syrup, sugar, or whatever).

I settled on a recipe I found in All Recipes, and changed it up a little bit. And these things are so freaking easy to make, I am pretty sure I won't be buying any store bought ones anytime soon. I made this batch, cut them up into individual sizes, and stored them in snack bags and threw them in our snack drawer. It made 20 granola bars!

Gobble Up Granola Snacks

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups crispy rice cereal
2 cups quick-cooking oats
1/2 cup raisins (I omitted these, I don't like raisins)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter (I used honey instead since my kids don't like peanut butter)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

I also added in chocolate chips, about 1/2 a bag of chocolate morsels.

Directions:
1. In a large bowl, stir together the rice cereal and oats. Set aside. Grease a 9x13 inch baking dish with cooking spray.
2. Combine the brown sugar and corn syrup in a small saucepan over medium heat. Heat just until boiling, then remove from heat and stir in peanut butter and vanilla until smooth. Pour over the cereal and oat mixture, and mix well. I waited a few minutes for it to cool a little, then added the chocolate chips.
3. Press into the prepared pan using the back of a large spoon. Allow to cool, then cut into squares.

These were perfect. The chocolate melted a little bit, but that actually helps me because Ashley has been known to remove and eat the chocolate chips first.