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It’s 4-H Day! That was the happy exclamation I was greeted with, this morning. Our nine-year-old is just beside herself about being able to participate in 4-H this summer. I was in 4-H throughout elementary and high school and our two older daughters participated in a local homeschooler’s 4-H club when they were young. I [...]
It’s 4-H Day! That was the happy exclamation I was greeted with, this morning. Our nine-year-old is just beside herself about being able to participate in 4-H this summer. I was in 4-H throughout elementary and high school and our two older daughters participated in a local homeschooler’s 4-H club when they were young. I love the skills and confidence that 4-H fosters and I wanted our nine-year-old to have that experience, but as a one-car family with a craa–aa—aaaaa-zy schedule, I wasn’t too excited about trying to juggle transportation and other people’s schedules to make it happen. Solution? We started our own, small 4-H club with three of our daughter’s friends from church. It has been the absolute perfect solution to my dilemma.
Print the recipe for this healthy, tasty snack at the bottom of this post.
We meet every Friday afternoon, at our house, and spend two hours learning things like how to run a business meeting (parliamentary procedure), how to cook and how to sew. Since the focus of our group is cooking and sewing, we picked the name Pots and Pins for our club. Being a 4-H leader is crazy fun! I’d forgotten that. My older girls were involved with an established group that already had leaders, so I didn’t do much with the meetings back then. But, back in high school, I was a Jr. Leader. I think I taught knitting. (lol I don’t think I can knit any more. Maybe it’s like riding a bicycle. 
) Anyway, I love watching the enthusiasm as the girls discover that they are capable of doing things they didn’t think they could do. I get to see dozens of those “light bulb” moments AND they are having fun. No one is making them do it and they WANT to come back. Cool!
We were missing one of our members for our first meeting, but these three were enjoying the fruits of their labor - pizza pockets.
At our first meeting, we talked about the food pyramid and then the assignment was to make something that would include items from several of the food groups at once. No one had a problem with the dairy, grains or meat, but I wish you could have seen their faces when I mentioned vegetables. Do you believe that NONE of them liked vegetables? lol We decided to make pizza pockets and I promised them that when they were done, if they didn’t like them, they didn’t have to eat them. Refrigerated biscuit dough made quick work of the necessary 5″ dough circle needed. We spread out a wide variety of toppings that included the pizza sauce, mini pepperoni, ham, bacon, sausage, grated mozzarella and parmesan, broccoli slaw, diced butternut squash, diced onion and diced red bell pepper. Everyone had to include at least one vegetable. Amazingly, they each selected at least two and one brave experimenter used all four — yup, butternut squash! No one was more pleased than me to see the smiling faces at the end of the project. Not only had they made them all by themselves, but they liked them — veggies and all.
Proud display of a homemade pizza pocket. Please note the little green pieces of broccoli slaw!
At our meeting, today, we finished up our unit on the importance of nutrition in cooking and making good choices about the things we cook and eat. We learned about energy-boosting carbohydrates and the best sources for them. Then we mixed up some absolutely yummy granola bars, to reinforce the lesson. We started with the recipe from the 4-H manual and then learned about “doubling” (yay, fractions!!!) and how to make substitutions and variations in a recipe (we added coconut).
- We used 7 cups of rolled oats in our granola, so everyone had a turn at measuring. We learned the difference in the tools we use to measure wet and dry ingredients and how to measure accurately.
- More oatmeal measuring. Note our nut chopper diligently performing her duty in the background.
While the granola bars were baking, we also studied Vitamins A & C, what they do for our bodies and the foods where we can get them, naturally. We had a wide selection of yummy fruits to select from and made delicious fruit kabobs. Of course I forgot to even pick up my camera during the process, but they were beautifully colorful, full of nutrition and absolutely delicious! We used chunks of fresh pineapple, strawberries, kiwi, cantaloupe, green grapes and chunks of banana. Delish!
- Leveling off a teaspoon of salt with great concentration and lots of moral support.
- Chopping peanuts to perfection. We used three kinds of nuts in our granola bars — peanuts, almonds and pecans.
Our final lesson in the nutrition unit was a science experiment, the results of which will be discovered when we meet next Friday. To understand the importance of calcium in our diet and the important job it does for our bodies, we placed two chicken leg bones into quart jars — one in each jar. The control jar had 2 cups of water added to it and the jar with the variable, 2 cups of vinegar. It will be a dramatic illustration of the importance of a calcium-rich diet. The girls were also surprised to learn of all the non-dairy places they could get calcium in the food they eat, like kale, celery, almonds, spinach, sesame seeds, broccoli and others.
- Our chicken bone – calcium experiment. The lavender ribbon identifies our control jar.
And last but not least, the finished granola bars. These were REALLY good and we’ll be making them again, for our family. I’m also very confident that just spreading the mixture loosely across the cookie sheet to bake it, and stirring it once during baking, would result in delicious granola cereal. The girls were delighted that they had created these yummy, soft and chewy granola bars all while learning the finer points of the chemistry of baking.
- This won’t be the last time our family makes these yummy granola bars.
| Chewy, Homemade Granola Bars |
Recipe Type: snack, cereal, grain
Author:
Prep time: 30 mins
Cook time: 15 mins
Total time: 45 mins
Serves: 48
Yummy, soft and chewy granola bars that are simple to make. The nine-year-olds in our 4-H club breezed through this recipe. (This is our variation by the way, doubled and with coconut, so it makes a ton — really, two jelly roll pans full.)
Ingredients
- 7 cups of rolled oats, toasted
- 2 cups of chopped nuts
- 2 cups raisins
- 1 cup shredded coconut
- 1 2/3 cups butter, melted
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 3/4 cup honey
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
- To toast the oats, spread them across two cookie sheets and bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned. Toasted oats have a nutty flavor.
- Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl.
- Divide the mixture evenly between two lightly greased, 15x10x1 jelly roll pans.
- Spread the mixture evenly across the pans, pressing firmly to help it start holding together. (If you’re going to use it for cereal, just spread it lightly across the pans and stir it once, during the baking process.)
- Bake in a 350 degree oven for 12-15 minutes.
- Though they will smell absolutely wonderful, resist the urge to cut these while they’re warm. It will cause them to crumble. When they have completely cooled, you will be able to cut them into bars.
Notes
Prep time includes the time for toasting the oats.
These are soft and chewy granola bars. You won’t be able to stack them on top of each other for storing, without first individually wrapping them in plastic wrap.
The yield will depend on the size of bars you cut, but you should easily get 24 bars per pan and more if you cut them smaller.
This post is linked to It’s a Keeper Thursday and Grocery Cart Challenge.
It’s finally here! Can you believe I have been bending your ear with this blog for a year, now!!?? I can’t tell you how fun it has been for me to “meet” all of you along the way. To celebrate, I’m kicking off our new series, A Homemade Holiday. We’re going to start with some [...]
My review package of King Arthur products. Sorry about the crazy lighting. I'm still trying to adjust to flourescent lighting in my new kitchen.
It’s finally here! Can you believe I have been bending your ear with this blog for a year, now!!?? I can’t tell you how fun it has been for me to “meet” all of you along the way. To celebrate, I’m kicking off our new series, A Homemade Holiday. We’re going to start with some delicious recipes and fantastic kitchen products. We’ll move quickly into Thanksgiving and Christmas projects to decorate your home and holiday tables, gifts you can make simply and frugally and continue with delicious recipes to make your meals, celebrations and entertaining a smashing success. There will be picture tutorials for each project and I hope you will all find ways to make your holidays about family and fun, without stressing the family budget. An investment of your time and heart will save money AND build memories. I’m looking forward to sharing in your homemade holiday!
King Arthur Flour has long been my “go to” place to shop for supplies and for information, recipes and tips when it comes to bread baking. Ingredients that I was not able to find in my local small town stores were easily available from them, online and were delivered right to my front door! Woohoo! Over the years, more and more King Arthur products have shown up on the shelves in our stores, so I can pick them up on a regular shopping trip, but I still shop online for their unique specialty products. I’m so excited that they have agreed to participate in our A Homemade Holiday series and I know you are going to be, too!
Everything from grain to specialty flours, quality spices to baking mixes, kitchen tools to bakeware can be found at King Arthur Flour. Gluten-Free Multi-Purpose Flour is one of their newest products! I love how they see a need and then strive to meet it. Are you in the market for a grain mill, bread machine or a stand mixer? You can find them there. You can also learn about specific ingredients — what they are, how to use them and how they will work in a recipe. Recipes are kitchen-tested and cover every baking category you can imagine. You can even subscribe to The Baking Sheet, a fantastic 24-page newsletter that’s published six times per year or take advantage of their many online education opportunities to fine tune your skills in the kitchen and learn new techniques.
When a King Arthur catalog shows up in my mailbox, I have to do some pretty fancy footwork to get to be the first to read it. It’s chock-full of fantastic kitchen gadgets, recipes (with pictures) and products that make you want to get out to the kitchen and create a flour cloud! My husband is a fan of gadgets of any variety and insists a cookbook isn’t really a cookbook without pictures, so if I’m not quick, I have to wait until he has finished with the new catalog before I can pour over it. I love the information and tips I can glean from it and often the gift items and kitchen tools are so unique, I have not seen them anywhere else. You could literally polish off your Christmas list, even the hard-to-buy-for people, with some unique and inspiring presents that will be practical AND fun!
I received a magnificent sampling of King Arthur products to review and share with you, plus I will be highlighting many of the King Arthur products already in my kitchen. The review package (and the set that a Busy-at-Home reader will receive) contained:
5 lbs. King Arthur Unbleached All Purpose Flour – This is an unbleached, unbromated flour with 11.7 % protein. Unbromated means that it has a higher than average amount of protein and contains no potassium bromate. It’s an excellent choice in all your typical baking projects.
5 lbs. King Arthur Unbleached White Whole Wheat Flour – My family normally eats just about anything. I have never had a problem with finicky eaters, however, my husband flatly refused to eat whole wheat bread until I switched to King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour. The flour is milled from hard white spring wheat and is ground more finely than other whole wheat flours. This means that the finished product has a lighter color and smoother texture, both of which won my husband over. Now, I can provide the nutrition he needs from whole grain, in products that taste delicious! For bread baking, the only thing that would switch me from this flour would be the magical appearance of a Nutrimill Grain Mill in my kitchen , so I could grind my own fresh white spring wheat flour. Since that is not currently in the budget, I can still have the best flour for my family using King Arthur Unbleached White Whole Wheat. It’s perfect for us!
2 lbs. King Arthur Unbleached Cake Flour Blend – Bake high-quality, moist and delicious cakes, without the added chemicals and bleaching of many other available brands.
6 Bake and Give Wooden Bakers – I love these wooden baking pans! Bake in them, wrap the cooled product and decorate with a ribbon or a ruffle and have a wonderful gift that looks better and saves the cost of purchasing a gift bag. These are not the tiny little mini-loaves that we are used to. Each basket measures 7″ x 4″ x 2 ½” and can hold up to 2 ½ cups of batter, though I personally had better luck with about 2 cups. Bread bakes up into beautiful, generous loaves that are smaller than full-sized but large enough to be a welcome and substantial gift. They are made from poplar wood and assembled with heat resistant glue. The pans are not reusable for baking, but I have a few project ideas that they will be great for, even after they have outlived their baking usefulness!
Set of 24 White Tulip Papers – These cupcake/muffin tin liners add a dainty, dressy feel to your baking. Add a narrow ribbon bow for a quick gift or to create pretty favor cups for a wedding or bridal shower.
Set of 12 Bake and Give Mini Round Pans with Lids – These ingenious little paper baking pans are 4″ in diameter and perfect for a mini cheesecake, single cinnamon roll, personal fudge brownie — you get the idea. They come with their own clear, snap-on, plastic lids to let the happy recipient see the beautiful gift inside. They would also be a simple way to serve perfectly portioned individual desserts at a get-together. Just like the wooden bake and give pans above, they make a great gift presentation and the recipient never has to worry about returning dishes or bakeware.
The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion Cookbook - This beautiful, 500-page, hardcover cookbook is a cookie-lover’s dream! Whether you love the traditional or like to experiment and try something more exotic, it has recipes for every taste and skill level. Beautiful color picture insets sprinkled through the book, portray many of the sweet goodies and the cookbook is loaded with illustrations and diagrams, tips and information that will help you be successful with any recipe you try. The text is divided into nine categories of cookies : chocolate chip, sugar, oatmeal, molasses, peanut butter, shortbread, biscotti, brownies, and decorated cookies. A comprehensive index at the back of the book makes finding specific recipes quick and easy. Do you like your chocolate chip cookies soft and chewy or crisp and crunchy? Find recipes that accommodate both. How about ginger cookies? Are you a “snap” kind of person or chewy? Ever tried biscotti, but been afraid it was too difficult to make at home? From drop cookies to rolled and cut-out cookies for the holidays, you’ll find the perfect treat to tame your next cookie craving.
Because of King Arthur’s amazing generosity, one Busy-at-Home reader will be baking right along with me, through this series, using the same marvelous products, I listed above. The recipes are coming very soon, in separate posts, but the giveaway begins, today!!!
Giveaway Rules
You must reside in the United States and be 18 or older to enter. The mandatory entry must be completed before any additional entries will be counted. Deadline to enter is midnight (CST) on Sunday, November 7. Winner will be selected by random drawing utilizing random.org.
Mandatory Entry
Visit King Arthur Flour, find a product, baking tip or ingredient that you weren’t familiar with before and would like to try. Leave a comment and tell me what it is. (Warning: this website is addicting to hard-core kitchenistas
Optional Additional Entries
- Visit King Arthur Flour and find a recipe you would like to see demonstrated step-by-step, here at Busy-at-Home. Leave the recipe title in a comment, below.
- Like King Arthur Flour on Facebook. Leave a comment below with your Facebook Name to let me know you’ve done it.
- Follow King Arthur Flour on Twitter. Leave a comment below with your Twitter handle to let me know you’ve done it.
- Tweet this giveaway (maximum of 1x per day, please). I’m entered to win a fabulous King Arthur Flour kitchen products set from @KingArthurFlour & @busyathome. http://ow.ly/2XlMI #giveaway Leave a comment below with a link to your tweet.
- Post this giveaway on your Facebook page. I’m entered to win a fabulous King Arthur Flour kitchen products set from King Arthur Flour & Busy-at-Home. http://ow.ly/2XlMI Leave a comment below with a link to your post.
- Follow Busy-at-Home on Twitter. Leave a comment letting me know you’ve done it.
- Like Busy-at-Home on Facebook. Leave a comment letting me know you’ve done it.
- Follow Busy-at-Home on Google Friends Connect. Leave a comment letting me know you’ve done it.
- Subscribe to the Busy-at-Home Newsletter with this link or in the right-hand sidebar. You will receive an email confirmation with a link that must be clicked to confirm your subscription. Once you click the email link to confirm your subscription, leave me a comment to let me know you’ve done it.
The fabulous assortment of King Arthur Flour products one Busy-at-Home reader is going to win!
That’s ten opportunities to win some fabulous gifts for your kitchen! Be watching for the first baking projects using some of them. I’m going to add Pumpkin Bread, Zucchini Bread and Chocolate Banana Swirl Bread to your recipe boxes!
I received the set of products listed above in order to conduct reviews, now, and in upcoming recipe posts. A positive review was not required and no monetary compensation was received. As with all Busy-at-Home reviews, the views and opinions expressed are wholly my own.
