In my life, I’ve eaten a lot of granola bars. They’re quick, easy, and  perfect for snacking on the go. The Nature Valley Chewy Trail Mix Bars were my absolute favorite. And my inspiration.

For the past few months, I’ve been on a granola bar making kick, and I’ve combined a few recipes to come up with my formula for moist, chewy, customizable granola bars. It’s a great way to use up leftover pantry ingredients.

BEST HOMEMADE CHEWY GRANOLA BARS

3 cups quick oats (the base)
1 (14 ounce) can of sweetened condensed milk (the glue)
1 cup shredded coconut (the crunch)
1/2 cup wheat germ (the health boost)
PLUS
3 cups of anything like nuts, dried fruit, or chocolate chips
… and a little bit of butter for greasing the pan

For these bars, we used what we had:
1 cup sliced almonds
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup mini chocolate chips (the happiness boost)

Preheat oven to 350. Line a 9 x 13 pan with parchment paper, leaving an overhang so that the granola bars are easy to lift out of the pan. Grease the paper and sides of the pan with butter. In a large bowl, mix together ingredients with your bare hands until they’re all blended. (That’s why this is fun for a toddler to make! It’s messy and sticky! And Sonya gets to use her one-cup measure to scoop most of the ingredients, too).

Bake for 20-25 minutes until they’re just browned on the edges. Cool, lift out of the pan, and cut into bars.

They’re fantastic. Not quite Nature Valley. But they’re the tastiness of home. Sonya and I love them. Drex and Leena have never commented on them, but they’ve eaten their fair share of my granola and granola bar experiments.

This is fennel. Our new, eclectic friend.

He smells like licorice and looks like a cross between celery and an onion. He goes into Leena’s favorite Beet and Fennel Soup. {Seriously try this recipe! It’s delicious! Instead of kefir, I use a cup of plain Greek yogurt}.

The beets make the soup turn out a rich jewel tone pink, somewhere between ruby and magenta. It tastes creamy and tangy and wonderful on a wintry afternoon.

Unlike Sonya at this age, who would only eat about 2 tablespoons of lunch on a good day, Leena reliably gobbles a cupful of this soup! She leans forward after she’s done chewing and swallowing, opens her mouth like a tortoise, and sticks out her neck towards the spoon. So adorable— makes it very satisfying to feed her. Even if it means the kitchen floor being a disaster afterwards.

Ordinarily, we only make one kind of cookie in this kitchen— chocolate chip. In my opinion, all desserts should be a vehicle for the enjoyment of chocolate. However, from time to time, I’ll make allowances. This afternoon, we stamped sugar cookies with our fancy new spring-loaded Cars cookie cutters.

I have no talent for making sugar cookies. I’m no good at flouring the counter or rolling out the dough. Probably sensing the lapse in leadership, Sonya decided to take the rolling pin into her own hands and spearheaded the entire sugar cookie baking effort. These cookie cutters are terrific and easy to use!

Sonya is currently obsessed with cars. Specifically a rookie hotrod named Lightning McQueen. In addition to these cookie cutters, she got a lot of other Cars-related Christmas gifts.

Yesterday evening, after dinner and a tubbie, Sonya got to watch Lightning McQueen compete for the Piston Cup. It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen the movie― I’m just as excited about watching another fifteen minutes tonight! I don’t remember what leads up to Lightning getting stranded in Radiator Springs.

For sugar cookies, these taste really great, especially with a mug of peppermint hot chocolate, and Sonya proudly and accurately got to proclaim, “Look! I do this all by myself!”

{This recipe} Eight apples, peeled, cored, and coarsely diced into chunks and tossed in a tablespoon of lemon juice to keep from browning.

Put into a large pot with a half cup of sugar (a little less for Leena’s batch) and a cinnamon stick.

Along with a cup of nice apple cider. Don’t worry, moms— the alcohol boils off.

Twenty minutes later, I left the sauce fairly unmashed, so there’d be interesting textures.

We tried the first batch, warm and fresh off the stove, before making another one. The apple sauce was fabulous.

“Try it Leena Leena,” Sonya said. “Good apple sauce, Leena Leena.”

“I think Leena Leena needs a bib,” I said.

We made a second batch so we’ll be able to enjoy this as a snack all through the week. 10 cups of tasty tasty homemade applesauce.

Sonya wanted to add a little flair to the photography.

“Moose climbing tower. Oh no! Here comes fish. Hi, Moose!” Sonya said.

Yup, she’s becoming very good at stringing together sentences and expressing ideas. Very exciting.

The other minor accomplishment of the day includes organizing my kitchen measures while the apple sauce was cooking on the stove. (I used these hooks). Then I practiced opening and closing the cupboard quickly to see if I could send a teaspoon flying. Nope. They stay put. Excellent.

Ah, life’s simple pleasures. In the summer heat, I didn’t want to be near the stove. Now that the days are colder, it feels good to be in the kitchen with a pot simmering. Just hanging out. The Ruths Girls. Waiting for Daddy to come home tomorrow.

Basically, I spent most of Labor Day afternoon in the kitchen with the oven on. Clockwise from upper left:

Apple strudel muffins — my all-time hands-down favorite muffin recipe. Moist and delicious with a cinnamon crumb topping

Lady Red apples, freshly picked

Homemade granola — old-fashioned rolled oats, sliced almonds, shredded coconut, sunflower seeds, and drizzles of maple syrup toasted in the oven. Dried cranberries and raisins get mixed in afterwards.

Chocolate chip peanut butter cookies — first time making these! definitely going to repeat! I had a lot of dry-roasted peanuts in my pantry that were growing slightly stale, so I put them to good use.

In the center — homemade wood blocks by Drex. To be blogged soon.

Two weeks ago, I left Sonya and Leena in the kitchen to find my iPhone. I’d made pea soup for lunch (very Québécois) and it was cooling in bowls on the table. I came back, answering a text from Drex on the way down our long corridor.

“Hi, Mommy,” Sonya said nonchalantly.

Setting my iPhone on the countertop, I noticed Leena giggling. She burbled some pea soup onto her chin. I didn’t know it was pea soup. I went to wipe her chin before sitting down at the table. Meanwhile, Sonya dipped her spoon in her pea soup bowl.

“Look, Mommy,” Sonya said proudly. She brought the soup up to her lips. “Hot, very hot. Blow it.”

Then she held out the spoon towards Leena. “Here, shisher,” she said. “Like it?” Leena chewed on the end of the spoon. “Leena like it Mommy pea soup.”

So… Leena’s first solid food was a few spoonfuls of pea soup with a drizzle of maple syrup on top (that’s the way we Canadians eat it).

But earlier this week, we “officially” began rice cereal for one meal a day as we approach the six month mark. Leena doesn’t really like the rice cereal, but she does like being fed by big sister.

“Do you like taking care of Leena?” I asked Sonya.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Same Flynn Rider.” Read more about that here.

Well, this is what happened last Thursday afternoon when I did some clandestine baking. It became a one-tier disaster and a two-tier salvage operation. I wanted the top-secret blueberry-lemon cake to be baked, cooled, assembled, decorated, and dropped off at our neighbor Martin’s house. Then the kitchen needed to be cleaned and dinner had to be prepared before Drex got home, so he wouldn’t suspect anything.

Fortunately, the cake tasted great, and didn’t look too bad after I decorated it with tangy lemon cream cheese frosting. Unfortunately, Sonya kept saying, “Suh-pies cake? Please Mommy please suh-pies cake!” because she wanted to eat a piece of the surprise cake.

Luckily, Drex didn’t figure out what she was talking about.  He just assumed that she’d baked up some imaginary cake in her wooden kitchen.  After all, she’s often bringing us invisible things to eat.

Meanwhile, I managed to keep my mouth shut.  A whole two weeks! I’d organized a surprise birthday party for Drex. All the guests were going to gather at our neighbor Martin’s house downstairs on Saturday morning.  I told Drex that Martin had invited us to brunch.

That morning, Leena and I dropped off quiches, watermelon, boxes of juice, plates, napkins, and plastic cutlery without Drex noticing anything.  Obviously, Sonya was in on the whole plan.  She begged Daddy to take her to the playground to keep him busy.

At 11, like clockwork, I got a text from Martin telling me that all the expected guests had arrived.  Now came the tricky part. Drex decided to wear his oldest pair of jeans that morning. These jeans look like they were ravaged by wolverines.

When I suggested he should change before we went downstairs, he  looked at me like I’d gone crazy. Ordinarily, I don’t care what Drex wears, but some of his colleagues were going to be at the party, and I figured he might want to look presentable.

Finally, he got changed. We went downstairs right away. By the time we got there, the sparklers on the cake had almost burnt to the icing.  Drex looked at the cake with tremendous confusion.  People shouted SURPRISE! and it finally dawned on him that he was in the midst of a surprise party in his honor.

{photo courtesy of Chantal}

He was surprised. Then the fire alarm went off from the sparkler smoke. And we carried all the food out to the park.

Tried some new recipes. (1 & 2) Roll-Your-Own-Taco Night. Poached chicken. Salsa cruda. Roasted-tomato salsa. (3) Watermelon salad with mint leaves and feta cheese. (4) Mangosteens! Found them at the grocery store! Almost felt like I’d won the lotto! They were flown in from Sri Lanka, where I first ate them. A wonderful, unexpected, rare treat. (5) Like these decadent chocolate chip cookies. They hide a secret: an Oreo baked in the middle! I finally decided to follow through on some inspiration from pinterest.

Summer means fresh berries. To showcase them, like Sonya’s favorite boobreeze, I recently bought myself a nine-inch tart pan. I’ve been making, serving, and eating chocolate-berry tarts with fiendish delight.  I found this great recipe. It’s so easy. As easy as pie. Or as easy as tart. Anyway, it’s really easy. Other than berries, you just need six ingredients.

For the crust, you need 8 ounces of chocolate wafer cookies (I’ve been using Loacker, which I found at Provigo), 2 tablespoons of sugar (hey, not bad), 6 tablespoons of unsalted melted butter (hey, not bad, either), and a wee bit (a half a teaspoon) of salt. That’s it. Blend it all up in your mini food processor.

Press the crumb mixture into the tart pan. Bake for twenty minutes at 350. When the tart crust is done, put it on a cooling rack. On a stove, warm up 1 and a quarter cup of heavy cream until it just starts to bubble, then pour it over 1 and a half cups of semisweet chocolate chips in a bowl. Stir, stir, stir until it’s all ooey and gooey and pour it on top of the baked tart.

Put it in the fridge. Cool it off. Let it set. Then pack as many berries on top as you can! Try it! You’ll love it! So simple and quick to prepare, yet it looks so fancy and tastes so great!

If you’ve never seen one of these machines before, you may wonder what this is. What you are looking at is a work of sheer simplicity and genius.

What do you do with it? Well, first you start by making sure the suction base doesn’t move around.  Then slide the handle all the way to the right. Center an apple on the prongs. Here we have a beautiful, ripe Cortland.

Then you turn the crank, and the apple gets peeled. So fast. So effortless. I don’t know how I lived without it. Especially with a little one who absolutely must have her apples peeled.

But that’s not all. You get the apple peeled, cored, and sliced. That’s right. It does all three. That’s why this thing is called Pomme Magique.

With this handy dandy device, it’s easier than ever for us to enjoy one of our favorite local fruits and bake them into muffins and crumbles and other desserts.

The great thing is, not only does it work for apples of all shapes and sizes, but it’s so fun for Sonya to play with the apple spring while she snacks.

Since I bought this machine, Sonya definitely gets an apple a day to keep the doctor away— savored one ring at a time.

Want one for your kitchen? Montrealers, there’s an apple peeler/slicer/corer sale at Stokes right now. Or you can get one online here. Life-changing. So many zen moments turning that crank, watching the peel come off in one continuous spiral, and enjoying the sweet, crisp, cleanly cut aftermath.