After what seemed like a down payment against hunger, but actually was the purchase of a raw snack bar from a local café for $4.00, I was fed up with wasting money on trivial snack foods. But the truth for anyone who tries to live on a healthy, moderately non-processed food diet is, you can’t just grab any afternoon snack. Aside from eating plain raw almonds (to which I recently discovered I’m allergic), carrot sticks (empty carbs), or a piece of fruit (extra sugars), other options are heavily processed and contain more ingredients than are necessary.
Even at the local organic and health food markets, I was unable to find dried cranberries without added sugar and safflower oil. Sure it’s organic sugar cane, but why can’t I find plain old dried cranberries? After three strikes, as luck would have it, I was able to find plain dried cranberries at a different Whole Foods location. Oh but the price! Wouldn’t you know; the price for plain ol’ wrinkly cranberries left to dry in the sun and thrown in a bulk bin completely unprocessed and un-packaged was considerably higher than for the packaged and processed cranberries with the added sugar and oil! This article isn’t about problems with food markets in this country. I’ll save that for another story. But disheartening, it is.
With Vin leaving for 4 days to help build a workshop in upstate New York, I was nervous that he would not have a healthy and hearty snack to help him get through the day. I wasn’t about to send him off with a case of granola bars, so I decided to make my own gosh darn snack bars, packed with protein and energy, and it was spectacularly easy!
I never thought I’d say this but I seem to have inherited my mother’s “just toss it in the pot” cooking style, which had bugged me as the picky eater I was in my childhood. But my tastes have changed, and unfortunately I didn’t take notice of how much of each ingredient we used; I just tossed it all together. I’ll pay attention to quantities in the future. For now, this is the recipe, but interpret the quantities loosely and use ingredients that you enjoy.
Ingredients:
- 1 bag raw almonds
- 2 cups cranberries
- 3/4 cup flax meal
- 1 cup flax seeds
- 1 cup millet
- 4 tablespoons almond butter
- 1 cup shaved coconut
- 1/3 cup agave nectar
- 3/4 cup water
Prep Work:
Grind the almonds in a blender or food processor. Make sure the almonds are in little pieces rather than a powder. They de-materialize quite easily so grind small portions at a time and pay attention. The unavoidable end result will be a mixture of almond powder and pieces.
Mix the water and flax meal together to get a creamy but not watery consistency. Note: flax mixture acts as the coagulant. If it looks like your mixture is not sticking together, add more wet flax meal to the mix.
Mix ingredients together and put a thin layer (1/4 – 1/2 in. thick) in a greased pan. Put in 350-degree oven for 10 min. Let cool. Keep refrigerated and enjoy!
The ingredients of these bars do appear to be expensive, but for $40 worth of ingredients and a yield of around 24 bars, they run under $2.00 a bar which is undeniably a good price for a wholesome hearty snack.
