Peanut butter oatmeal bars

Yet another recipe found on pinterest. I love this one for many reasons. One, it’s so quick and easy to put together. Two, it’s a great snack, breakfast food with fruit, or as a source of protein in the kids lunch. Some of my kiddos aren’t huge sandwich fans, so this is nice to put in there lunch As a sandwich alternative.   This is very rich. You won’t want to eat a big portion at once. I had a very small piece with a smoothie for breakfast this morning.

1 cup of peanut butter

1 cup honey

3 cups oatmeal

combine all together and press into 8×8 pan. Cover and let sit overnight. That’s it! Oh- and from now on I am going to add flaxseed also. Not sure why I didn’t think of doing that this time. 🙂

Banana Oatmeal Breakfast Muffins

Adapted from here, and I’ve made them probably 4 times in the past month. The boys LOVE them.

2.5 cups old fashioned oats
1 cup plain low fat greek yogurt* (see substitution note!)
1/2 cup honey or agave nectar*
2 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3-4 Tbl ground flax seed
1 tsp vanilla
3 large ripe bananas, mashed with a fork
2/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 400. Line 18 muffin tins with liners (the muffins will stick to the liners right out of the oven, but after they cool, they’re fine!).

Put the oats in the food processor and pulse until fine (you want it flour-like – some small pieces remaining is fine, though). Add all remaining ingredients EXCEPT CHOCOLATE CHIPS to the food processor and blend. My food processor is small, so I always do the oats first, dump them in a bowl and add the dry ingredients to the bowl. Then, I put all of the other ingredients in the food processor to mix, then add to the bowl and mix by hand. Stir in chocolate chips.

Bake for 15-18 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

*I don’t always have Greek yogurt in the fridge, but I almost always have Dannon Lowfat Natural Vanilla. If I use the Dannon, I only put in a couple of tablespoons of honey or agave since it’s already sweet. I’ve also done half Greek, half Dannon and they’ve turned out great!

Peanut Butter Apple Roll-ups

This is a quick, delicious lunch or snack that I can’t believe I haven’t posted before now! I’m not sure where I saw it…maybe Tiffany’s blog years ago? Anyway, I just quick put these together for the boys’ lunchboxes yesterday.

You need:

Flour tortillas
peanut butter
honey
apple slices
Sprite or similar if you’re making them to be eaten later (like school lunch)

Lay out the tortilla, spread some peanut butter down the middle and drizzle on a little honey. Cut the apples into large slices (1 large apple makes 2 roll-ups) and put them in a bowl with some Sprite for a minute if you’re serving them later, so they don’t brown. If you are serving them immediately, you can skip this step.

Roll them up, cut them in half, and you’re done!

Really easy and my boys gobble these up.