Health Bars
Where other people would munch on crisps and chocolate, R snacks down on health bars. We are both quite keen on avoiding unnecessary fat and sugar in our diets, and very keen to avoid ultra-processed foods.
This makes this type of bar – I am describing the usual Kit-Kat sized snack made out of a combination of oats, fruit and a variety of other things an exercise in reading the packaging very very carefully. This is because they vary hugely from R’s usual Stoates bars which are actually reasonably health, to others which are so packed with sugar, fat and additives that if you buried them in a pyramid and dug them up 3000 years later you would be able to eat them.
R and I have walked down the aisles selling these things and not come away having bought anything because there was nothing that did not have sugar (in some form or other), or fat (in some form or other) or both, in the top five ingredients. And then if you move to “diet” bars, the contents get worse and worse, because instead of the sugar and palm oil you have other “things”, strange gums and extracts and chemicals with unpronounceable names.
So long and short of it, yesterday I made some.
They are basically porridge oats soaked in milk with an added egg. To this you can add what dried fruit, nuts, seeds and spices you fancy. Then you bake the mixture on a tray and cut it into strips. They were actually pretty good – they were not crisp (though I think that was because I added too much milk), more a chewy consistency but very tasty – and no added sugar or fat.
They won’t keep for more than a couple of days, but freeze fine. Also, as I mentioned above, when things keep for long periods of time, you have to ask yourself why that is so. Supermarket white bread keeps over a week and is still pretty much as it was when you bought it – my homemade bread is great on day one, toast on day two, and going out for the birds on day three (if there is any left which is unlikely). This leads me on to the fact that it doesn’t matter how long they keep because if R likes them he will have eaten them all by then.
