Energy Bars

I love these! They're such a treat, but you can sneak anything into them! These are jam packed with all kinds of good stuff! I got the idea for the recipe from the "Cool Cooking" cookbook series by Lisa Wagner, but I modified it a bit to make them even more healthy.

1 Cup Chocolate Chips
1 1/2 Cups Rolled Oats
2 Cups Crisp Rice Cereal
1/2 Cup Flaked Coconut
1/4 Cup Sesame Seeds
1/2 Cup Flax Seeds
1/4 Cup Sunflower Seeds
1/2 Cup Walnuts, Almonds or Peanuts
3/4 Cup Peanut Butter
3/4 Cup Brown Sugar
1/2 Cup Honey
1/2 Cup Maple Syrup

1. Put the chocolate chips, oats, cereal, coconut, seeds and nuts in a large mixing bowl and mix them together.

2. Mix the peanut butter, brown sugar, and maple syrup in a saucepan over medium heat stirring until everything is blended and the brown sugar has dissolved.

3. Pour the hot mixture over the dry ingredients and stir until everything is completely blended.

4. Pour the mixture in to the prepared baking pan. Use your hands to pat the mixture into the pan.

Then you are supposed to refrigerate for 3 hours, but that is totally not going to happen at my house!

Chile Con Limon

Ok, No this isn't a recipe, nor does it have anything to do with cooking (besides putting the bag in the microwave), but I just had to share this little beauty with everyone. In 2004, Ty and I went to Puerto Vallarta. In their local WalMart, I found this wonderful bag of goodness. I bought a box to try it out and became immediately addicted. When we were leaving to come back home, we made a special trip back to the WalMart so I could get another box. If I had only known how difficult it would be to get my hands on it again, I would've bought out the whole store. Back at home, I googled it, I searched for it, but it was nowhere to be found. I even went so far as to contact the "ACT II" company begging them to ship it to my house or my state or at least my country! Their response? "Sorry, it is only available in Mexico". I would've paid any shipping price, so I didn't understand that at all, but I'd come to an impasse and had to move on with life. I thought about it, I told others about it, but ultimately, I came to accept the fact that I would have to wait until we made it down to Mexico again someday. Imagine my surprise when I opened my birthday present from my little brother and his wife this year (6 years later) and found this inside! They had found this popcorn available on a website (that probably didn't exist when I was looking for it) at My Mexican Pantry. I have been enjoying this delicious popcorn again and loving every bite. Every bite brings me sadness though, knowing that I'm coming closer to the end of my precious box. Yes, it's available on this website, but at $2/bag, I do have to go easy on it. Just wanted to share this joy with all of you. Please do let me know if you taste it!

Fruit Roll-Ups

I didn't even know this was possible without a food dehydrator, but I found out how to do this in an old book I've been reading called "Today's Tips for Easy Living". It's a great book even though the "today" referred to in the title was in 1988!

All you have to do to make these is puree whatever fruit you want in the blender. Add about 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice per quart of puree to keep the fruit from browning and as a preservative. After blending them, pour onto an inverted cookie sheet covered in saran wrap. Put them in an oven set at 175 degrees and leave the door open a couple inches (I assume so the moisture won't remain in the oven?). You have to leave them in there for several hours, but you can tell when they're done because they don't look "wet" anymore and when you try to peel them they'll be pliable.

For mine, I used strawberries, oranges and bananas. They all tasted great. Also, I dried my strawberry one out so much that it was brittle and I was just cracking pieces off of it. I put it in a ziplock bag with a few drops of water and the next day it was just as soft as the others.

I'm looking forward to trying this with all different kinds of fruit. What a healthy treat! Enjoy!

Tangy Fruit Salsa with Cinnamon Chips

I'm trying to think of fun recipes for summertime that you can make to bring to parties or just different ways to use all the readily available fruits and vegetables during this time of year. I am a huge fan of any kind of chips and salsa, definitely my weak spot, but I like knowing that at least the salsa is packed with vitamins and nutrients. Here's a unique one that I just love. In this recipe you make your own chips and they are baked, so it's fairly healthy.

1 Tablespoon Sugar
1/4 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
4 (7 in.) Flour Tortillas
1 Cup Raspberries (fresh or frozen)
2 Peaches, peeled and chopped
2 Kiwifruit, peeled, sliced and quartered
1 Lime
1 teaspoon Sugar

Cinnamon Chips:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. In a flour/sugar shaker, combine sugar and cinnamon.
3. Using kitchen spritzer, lightly spray tortillas with water; sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar mixture.
4. Using pizza cutter, cut each tortilla into 8 wedges; place in single layer on flat baking stone. Bake 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned and crisp. Remove to nonstick cooling rack. Cool completely.

Fruit Salsa:
1. Place raspberries, peaches and kiwifruit in 1 qt. batter bowl.
2. Add zest and juice from lime.
3. Add 1 tsp. Sugar and mix all ingredients gently.

Cucumber Dip

This is one of my favorite dips during the summer. I make it all the time. Every time I bring it somewhere I get requests for the recipe. It seems like it wouldn't have a lot of flavor because there aren't many ingredients, but it really does. I got this from my friend, Natalie, several years ago. I did make one adjustment to the original recipe and that is that I added the garlic. If you're not a big garlic fan, just take it out because it didn't originally call for it anyway.

1 Pint Cottage Cheese
1 Pint Sour Cream
1 Cucumber, peeled & shredded
3 Green Onions, sliced
1 Clove Garlic, finely chopped

Combine all ingredients and serve with Ruffles potato chips.

I decorated the top with green onion and a little bit of chili powder, just for garnish.

Poor Man's Queso

I was thinking that one of the problems for me on this blog is going to be the fact that I really don't have "recipes" for some of the things I come up with on my own. So I had a couple of choices. I was trying to decide if I should make each recipe and pay careful attention to how much I put into it so I can give you an exact recipe or I can just tell you the method and you can make it to your own taste. I liked the second idea better. Sometimes just learning a method rather than following a recipe makes it easier to be flexible and adjust things if you don't have the exact right ingredients. So, here's one of my favorite snacks. My sister-in-law, Trish, came up with the name tonight.

Take a couple of handfuls of whatever kind of cheese you like (I usually use cheddar) and put it in a saucepan over medium-high heat on the stove. Sprinkle in a bit of flour. This helps to both emulsify and thicken it. Pour in a little bit of milk and stir until it's melted. Rachael Ray would tell you it has to be stirred with a figure 8 (I'm not sure why, but I do it because she says so). Keep adding milk until it's at the desired consistency. Then throw in a can of your favorite chili. Mix together and serve with tortilla chips. It's delicious!