I am in LOVE with the library. I go about once a week even though I could never go through my giant, leaning tower of random books I checked out just the week before. I am especially partial to cook books. I like to try before I buy. I checked out Ina Garten's (the Barefoot Contessa) , 'Back to Basics', and Martha Stewart's Cooking School. Both I believe I will be adding to my own library very soon. I am very bad at following any sort of direction thus I love a pretty picture to accompany my recipe to help me visualize the end result. I saw the homemade granola bar recipe in Miss Ina's tome and knew that I was going to be whipping up some of those bad boys. I don't like commercial granola bars they are always so teethe chipping hard, or too soft, too sweet, too blah, you get the picture. I of course didn't follow Ina's recipe perfectly. I omitted a lot and added my own take. I am pretty good at the ol' cooking improv but this is where I went awry---Listening to a BOY, not just any boy my Fancy! I was all ready to spread these beauties out on my cookie sheet and had visions of how I would package them, dole them out at the office and to complete strangers, they were to look like this: Humph, well I listened to the Fancy who stopped me and suggested I put the granola mix in our square casserole thus creating a thicker granola bar. I considered this and then shrugged, 'why not?'. I will tell you why not! The casserole is too deep to cut these suckers out. They weren't coming out for nada. After trying for 15 minutes of sawing at the bars, the Fancy asked "Should I put them in the microwave?" "Do whatever you want!" I pouted. I went to work and about 2 hours later got this text, "the granola bars are FREAKIN' AWESOME!" I knew they would be if we could only get them out of the casserole thing. I didn't even want to know what he had to do to get them out but hoped that the damage wasn't too bad when I got home.
These bars are super easy to make and when you figure out the cost to make them it is soooo much more cost effective than buying those yucky commercial versions. They could change your life, people will be in awe of your cooking prowess and you will be in awe of your prowess because it is very, very difficult to mess up this recipe, unless you are me and thank your lucky stars you are not...
