I had a pretty successful challenge day. Today was day 2 of being without my favorite coffee creamer. Ugh. Yesterday I used milk. Yuck. Today I found a box of single serve heath coffee creamer in the cupboard and used that. Better, but still not what I wanted. I don't think I can hold out anymore. Grocery shopping tomorrow!
My son asked if he could pack his lunch today. What did he want to bring? Leftover tortellini (with yellow squash hidden in the homemade spaghetti sauce!). Yay boy! For lunch, I finished up the rest of the leftover 'soup with no name'.
Yesterday when I dug in the cupboard to find the raspberry dessert mix, I saw that there was a small portion of cocoa crispies that had gotten shoved into the bottom where we couldn't see it. Hmmmm. I also have a small portion of quick cooking oats left. I looked up a recipe (on www.twopeasandtheirpod.com) for homemade granola bars. My kids love love love granola bars. Breakfast or snack they don't care. Surprisingly, I had all the ingredients. 1/4 cup unsalted butter (I used regular margarine), 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup honey (I used local), 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 2 cups quick oats, 1/2 cup crispy rice cereal (I used cocoa crispies), 3/4 cup chopped pretzels, 1/4 cup mini chocolate chips (I used mini cinnamon, lemon, and butterscotch). Uh oh. I only had 1 1/2 cups of oats but I had exactly 1/2 cup extra of the cocoa crispies. Ok, that should be fine right? Melt the first four ingredients in a saucepan. Cook two minutes after it bubbles. Remove from heat, stir in vanilla, and the oats/cereal/pretzels. Spread in pan. Sprinkle baking chips on top and press into pan. Put it in the fridge for 30 minutes before cutting. The lady on two peas and their pod stated that she keeps them in the fridge and they stay good for a week. For the pretzels, I had leftover single serve packs from when my son took snack to school for his class. How did the granola bars turn out? Amazing! They taste almost like a no bake cookie. I would eat them for dessert too. At first I felt bad putting 1/4 of brown sugar and honey into it, however, I looked at some cookie recipes and they had 2 cups plus of sugar. Ok, so maybe these aren't so bad. Next time I may try to reduce the sugar a little and see if it makes much difference in taste.
I pulled some leftover turkey out of the freezer (thank you Thanksgiving!). I needed a quick meal because I have to bring the kids to three different activities tonight. Yikes. I just made a rice a roni and steamed broccoli to go with our turkey.
The real standout of my day? Not the awesome granola bars....As I made my grocery list and checked what was in my freezer, I happened to look above the ice cube/water dispenser in the door. Guess what I saw? A shelf that I had completely forgot about! Guess what was inside? Three bags of blueberries from our farmers market! Score. I had been wishing I had blueberries over the past few weeks. I saw so many good looking recipes calling for them and I kept thinking to myself, man I wish I had frozen some from the farmers market. Ha. Time to get searching for those recipes again.
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