Day 27

Happy Valentine's Day! 

In honor of Valentine's Day my grocery store was selling heart shaped burgers this weekend.

So all the girls are having heart shaped burgers for lunch today.  M has her burgers with snowflake rolls, cheddar cheese slices, tomato hearts, pickle slices, homemade granola bar, grapes and strawberry filled shortbread cookies. D's snack is the same granola bar and shortbread cookies.

D and A have burgers, tomato heart, carrot sticks and ranch dip.
The granola bars are kind of a mish mash of recipes.  My kids love Nutella.  Who wouldn't?  I can't send it to school with D because she is in a nut free class room.  I had seen a few recipes for homemade nuttella, peanut- nutella and almond- nutella.  Well I tried making soy nut- nutella.  It's pretty good, the kids liked it....it's no Nutella brand nutella, but it's still pretty good.  Then, many of the homemade granola bar recipes you see on the web contain peanutbutter again...useless to me at this point.  So after I made the soy nutella I decided to use some of it to make granola bars.   This version is more like a protein bar.  I used Kashi Go Lean Crisp instead of rolled oats then with the addition of soy butter it's pretty protein packed!

Soy Nutella
I used half of a 18 oz jar Soy Butter
1/2 C unsweetened cocoa powder (I used ghiradelli 60%)
1 C confectioners sugar
flavorless oil to thin (I used about 1 1/2 tsp grape seed oil)

I put it all in my food processor and whizzed it till it was all smooth.  I transferred to a mason jar and store it in my fridge.

Granola bars
3 C Kashi Go Lean Crisp (large chunks broken up)
1/2 c wheat germ
1/4 c sesame seeds
3 T agave syrup
3/4 C soy nutella

In a sauce pan heat agave syrup and soy nutella until combined and smooth.  Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl.  Add in nutella mixture and stir until all combined.  Press mixture into a greased 8x8 inch pan and bake in a preheated 350 oven for 20 minutes.  Cut into bars while still warm, but leave in pan to cool completely.