Darienne

Just thinking to myself...gosh, I used to love Ak Mak crackers but haven't seen them in years. Tried Mary's Crackers. Loved them. My S-i-L said: are you crazy? You can't eat those kind of crackers at your age! She was right. Broke a tooth. Obviously the tooth was not a well tooth, but maybe it could have lasted a few more years. End of eating Mary's crackers. DH used to love Stoned Wheat Thins but says they have changed the formula and now they are a disappointment. We are ISO a replacement favorite cracker for him. I usually eat the softest variations of the WASA and Ryvita crackers. And they are not put out for company. Too large and too healthy!

They get saved for DH's best production: Macaroni and Cheese from his Mother's recipe.

From NYT: "...now popular with mainstream shoppers, including dieters and the elderly..." Nothing more was said about the elderly. Good heavens, I am the elderly and here I am eating energy bars. lol. Thanks rotuts. I think I am actually having fun doing this...

I'll check it but seeing as I use it every day in a pre-breakfast and not yummy drink, I don't think it could be. I didn't keep a list of the nuts I used but sometimes the walnuts are a bit off. I'll check those too. OTOH, DH liked them and now with chocolate coating, he's eating them with relish. (little joke here )

I should ask my library if they have a 'request' link. Mind you, they got the Power Hungry book for me in about 4 days. I think the librarian must have gone into the local Chapters and picked it up. Chickpea Bars ingredients: oats, a combination of nuts & seeds, a combination of dried fruits, flax-seed meal, low-fat milk (subbed whole fat), nut/seed butter (peanut butter), dates, sweetener (maple syrup), cinnamon, sea salt. Can't imagine any of these ingredients setting me off. Maybe it was the chickpeas???

cookingofjoy, definitely your recipes are from the book. I checked them out. You've made more bars than I have and are obviously having fun with them. Glad for any insights you can share if you make more.

Well, I love chickpeas beyond belief. The recipe says that you won't be able to taste the chickpeas in the recipe and I tend to believe that. Like making brownies with black beans in them. Nope. It must be something else. I'll take a closer look at the recipe. Post the ingredients for you.

Rotuts, your brownies sound wonderful. And this too is my subversive action for my library ( and vet, and eye doctor, and furnace guy, and dentist, etc, etc) Never hurts. I love making the stuff. Then I need to get it out of the house before we eat it all. Alex,we've never actually eaten much in the way of commercial bars, but I am glad to make them at home. Most of the commercial ones, besides being exorbitant in price as you noted, are just too sweet. I took some of the Chickpea Bars to a meeting today for folks to try and report back and they were met with enthusiasm. Then I tried another one of them. I still don't like them and am going to put a chocolate coating on the rest to see if I can eat them that way. Put one coat of chocolate topping on a couple of pieces. Ed said it needed another coat. Second coat applied. Ed said: good. I thought it tasted like an unpleasant power bar with a delicious chocolate topping. Ed says he will eat them all eventually. But not for breakfast with a substantial chocolate coating on them. No, I won't even bother making them again.

BeeZee, I think you are correct. When I make them again, I'll cut down on the honey. Of course, Saulsbury isn't suggesting that they are 'breakfast' bars. As for the Date-Sweetend Quinoa Bars, I didn't use only walnuts in them but think they'd be fine with only almonds. ...didn't use almonds at all come to think of it. Right. No chocolate chips for breakfast! Next I'm going to try from the book the 'Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Bars', p.110. I should add that no one could find fault with the ingredient list that Saulsbury posts. All stuff from a health food/ bulk food store with no sugar, no white processed items, no preservatives, etc. She adds that almost all the ingredients are regularly found items. And lists Ingredient Sources in the back. I can't say that I like her index...but then how often is an index really useful in any cookbook?

Next installment. Made two recipes out of the book today as the rest of the bars from last week were gone. Chickpea Champion Bars, p.80. Subbed whole milk for non fat; used maple syrup. They were baked for 18 minutes, although I really can't figure out why. Nothing in them needed baking. RESULTS: Not a winner. Honestly I didn't like them much. DH liked them just fine. Something to me tastes wrong, but I know it wasn't the chickpeas. As noted in the recipe, their taste just disappears. Could try them again with different variations. Oh well. Chocolate Hemp Protein Bars. Seemed like a good choice as we grow Hemp hearts on our farms. In fact, I used our very own hearts to make this. Subbed sweetened coconut. Used one cup of Spiru-Tein Cappuccino rice, pea and soy protein powder for the base. Can't get it in Canada...have tried...and so can't duplicate this recipe until I return to the USA. Had to add more liquid to get the batter to stick together: first 2 tablespoons of melted coconut oil, and then an unmeasured slurp of milk. My protein powder is VERY old....? RESULTS: very yummy and yet not too sweet. I think I like pretty much anything with chocolate in it.

OK. I bought the book yesterday after looking at our library's copy for a few days. Seemed like a good bet. Before I bought the book, I made three of Saulsbury's recipe from her blog. It seems that I never have all the ingredients needed ahead of time for a recipe, and we live so far from a town, that I just sub what I think might work. Sorry about that. 1. No Bake Oatmeal Energy Bars with Cherries and Almonds: subbed black-strap molasses for regular, whole milk powder for non-fat, a variety of dried fruits for cherries (allowed). RESULTS: delicious, very simple to make. Alas too sweet for breakfast, but perfect for a snack or dessert. (Well, I try not to snack. ) 2. Date-Sweetened Quinoa Power Bars: also non-bake. Followed recipe exactly (wow!) RESULTS: acceptable, but not sweet enough for the DH. Could have skipped the chocolate chips...they simply didn't fit (for me). 3. Lucy Bars (knock-off Lara Bars): was also in book, p. 48, Carrot Cake Bar variation, p.51 RESULTS: just fine. Saulsbury instructs to make dates more pliable using warm water: much easier to use the microwave. Next to start in the book. Oh, and buy a few missing ingredient type items. Photos were not taken, and actually they don't look very exciting in photos...they all tend to 'look' alike.

All the various grains and suchlike (quinoa) are used in her recipes. I've made one...have to get organized now...with raw old fashioned oats. Wondered about eating raw large oats, but it worked perfectly. There are even recipes using chickpeas and black beans.

Just catching up: I am red meat intolerant. A childhood of nightly overcooked steaks...and I do mean nightly...did it. Both parents were vegetarians but the paediatrician refused to take care of me unless my Mother fed me meat. I get nightmares if I eat too much red meat. Porthos: would you share your recipe for baked brown rice please? Or does someone else have such a recipe which they like. Meredith380: skipping breakfast is supposed to be the worst thing you can do to your digestive and other systems. But then...you already knew that anyway, Mommy. I have just started this morning another topic on Power bars for breakfast from a new cookbook which has 30 recipes for same, ranging from knock-off versions to fairly esoteric recipes. I'm going to make the entire book and comment on each recipe. And hope that someone else joins me. I am determined to find suitable breakfast foods for myself.

Breakfast has become a problem at our house. We no longer get up at the same time and we no longer eat the same things every day for breakfast. So I have been searching for power/nutrition/energy/granola/health/power/etc bars to make for me to eat. DH doesn't eat them. Well, not at breakfast anyway. Recently a new cookbook, Power Hungry: The Ultimate Energy Bar Cookbook by Camilla V. Saulsbury has come out and I have started making a few of the bars in it. Some are excellent, some not wonderful, others way too sweet for me. The first section contains recipes for well-known "knock-offs". The only commercial bar we've tried is a Clif bar and both thought it was awful. I suspect that most of them are too sweet for our personal tastes. (To generalize wildly: Canadians are less addicted to sugar than Americans...more addicted to salt.) The book includes recipes for vegans and for folks who can't tolerate gluten. Lots of variations given with each recipe. I am proposing to go through the entire book of 30 recipes, making one after another, to find the ones which suit me. I'll report back on this. (Give me a purpose for surviving this horrible cold winter. ) Maybe someone else has the book, has tried some recipes, and is interested in this. Saulsbury also has a blog, http://powerhungry.com/ , in which she has posted some bars which are not in the book. I haven't figured out exactly which ones are repeated in the book yet. Should have added Europeans generally like less sugar than do Americans. Don't know about Aussies or other countries...

I apologize for my error. Yes, new to me as of just last month.

Here's one I like which is fairly new. http://www.closetcooking.com Closet Cooking by a young man in Toronto.

And they, chickadees, have a mega-range in North America. And it's been that cold in a lot of North America recently...

Interesting about the balustrades. It might depend upon how old the deck was. We live in a (more than a) century farmhouse and our balustrades upstairs are wider than 4" by some. Ed is going to replace them.

Thermometers purchased in Canada seem to show both Celsius and Fahrenheit scales. Of the two which are outside our kitchen windows...one to the west and one to the north...one shows the Fahrenheit number in bigger and bolder and the other one is the opposite.

It's been a long time since we had an orange with seeds in it, but as for the seedless Navel oranges...I would really like to know how to pick one that is tasty. They range from delicious to about as bland as you can get without being real cardboard, and how to tell which is likely to be which seems impossible. Is this a result of there being no seeds in the oranges???

Second-hand building stores like Habitat for Humanity/ Restore. DH has found amazing bargains while renovating our house. Restaurant and institutional cast-offs abound. We found 10 dining room chairs for about $5.00 each...living room occasional chairs...kitchen cabinetry...the list is endless. We bought our kitchen cabinets from a factory outlet years ago. Too long to remember. But then we live in a century farmhouse and are not very au courant in our tastes.

The traditional ploughman's lunch can work very nicely and serve folks with different tastes and dietary restrictions, which old guys, like us, often have. (Skip the ham for me...I have an aversion to ham. ) Add salady items. And I usually have a freezer with meals frozen in it which defrost well and can be served over some grain like rice or quinoa. And ice cream in the dog freezer.

I hope that your friends brought lovely gifts for you or that you are independently wealthy, because feeding all those people all that food must have cost a goodly sum...besides all the work involved. Or did they clean up and do the dishes? Wonderful photos. Delicious entrees. Would that we lived near and were friends. I would have brought desserts.

A website which might interest you, PanaCan.http://www.wilton.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=6&threadid=134772

I know it's late for New Year's Day, but I did make Judiu's Johnny Mac's 4 can salad for supper tonight. Had to sub one or two ingredients, but we did enjoy it nonetheless. Thanks, Judiu.