The bar we chose to make was on page 138 of Raw Energy, “Get-up-Go Apple Walnut Bars. It looked like a lot of work, but I thought it would be worth it to get and make our own bars. Oh, there were warning signs, such as that for all the work, we would only get 12 bars out of it, or that we had to leave them in the dehydrator for 24 hours.

And it was hard work, we had to grind up the apples, grind up the walnuts, and then mix them all together. The book said the mixture would be wet, it was sopping wet. I squeezed a lot of the juice out of the bar, as I made them into bars to put in the dehydrator. We put aside all the juice, and figured we would do something with it later, though we weren’t quite sure what, it had an odd taste.

a sample bar

The bars did not turn out badly, as you can see here, but they were a meal in themselves, not a snack, and we never go around to eating them all, and it has been a couple months since we made them. We still have the apple juice, too. I suppose at some point we should thrown that out too.

We have not made any more energy bars, instead eating the raisins, apples, nuts separately, what a novel concept.

In the early evening after i had oddly enough finished my homework i was looking for a recipe. i stumbled across my moms book Raw power or something like that and found one on a banana and honey bar. it was just what i wanted and it was the only other bar recipe that didn’t call for a dehydrator. Course i didn’t see the “must keep stored for 24 hours for flavors to meld and blend.”

There was no friken melding or blending it just stayed there in the same mixture, NOT BLENDING!  So i followed the recipe and yelled to my mom at certain points and I’ll point it out here and now. 1) i could not see the granola 2)it looked like uncooked brownie mix. Now maybe some of these things should’ve been sure waring signs saying “oh god LEAVE US” or “THIS IS THE END!” But my mom i both agreed that it will look better after 24 hours in the freezer.

WRONG!!! It still freaken looked like uncooked brownie mix and it tasted not at all like it. The next task said we had to keep it in the freezer so i did that. Unfortunately every time i wanted a piece of a “granola bar” i would follow these basic instructions. Step 1 get tin out of freezer. Step 2 hack at the part you want to eat. Step 3 if that doesn’t work pry at the cut pieces with fingers until they are to numb. Step 4 repeat steps 2 and 3. when you finally have your granola thing the least you could do to make it less painful would to imagine your eating frozen brownie mix.

As one can see this granola bar thing ( which by the way i saw no granola) was horrible and at a certain point i gave up and just left it there freezing until my mom threw it out recently. my lesson? don’t make bars without a dehydrator, which we got..now

What happened with the frozen energy bars

Admin amendment: They were truly horrible. And we hoped, that once we got a dehydrator, things would go better.

But then, I read, well, I read Michael Pollan, especially In Defense of Food, but a lot of Food Rules, and I realized that I had to change my eating habits, and one of the things he talks about is not eating anything processed that has more than 5 ingredients. (Well, that, and don’t eat anything that your grandmother would not recognize).

So, I took at look at the Nugo Bars and realized I really couldn’t eat them anymore.  Here is what the gluten free bar has in it:

Rice Protein Crisp (Rice Protein Concentrate and Rice Flour), Crisp Rice (Rice Flour), Crystalline Fructose, Tapioca Syrup, Walnuts, Brown Rice Syrup, Organic Agave Syrup, Chicory Root Fiber, Icing (Sugar, Invert Sugar, Tapioca Syrup, Water, Flaxseed Oil, Salt, Microcrystalline Cellulose), Raisins, Rice Protein, Water, Dried Carrots, Organic Acacia Gum, Cinnamon, Natural Flavors, Baking Soda, Salt, Almonds.

All good, well most good, by themselves, but more than 5 ingredients. Cartoonist and I kept wracking our brains. There must be a recipe for energy bars, or would we have to come up with something ourselves.

And then, I found the Raw Energy Cookbook, and I thought my problems were solved.

But, and there will be more on this tomorrow, we discovered to make the stuff we wanted, we would have to get a dehydrator. Argghh.