These low-fat chewy granola bars are so quick to make and they taste great!

1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 egg
2 Tbsp ground flaxseed
2 cups old-fashioned oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup raisins

In a small bowl, combine apple sauce, maple syrup and egg. In a larger bowl, combine dry ingredients, then add in the wet ingredients and stir until fully combined. Bake at 350F for 15 minutes.

I adapted this recipe from a clean eating blog that I really enjoy, called Emily Eats Clean. Every day she writes posts with photos of what she’s eating. I love getting little glimpses into her life, even if it makes me feel like a huge couch potato to hear about all her vigorous exercising. Anyway, here is her post on these Baked Bars if you’re interested.
Most often I make them with Rogers Porridge Oats instead of old-fashioned oats, and when I do I don’t put in the ground flax seed because the porridge oats already have flax in them. This recipe is really fast to throw together. I can have them ready to go in the oven before the oven is even finished heating up. The first time I made these we ate them in the car on the way to the pool, and the car was filled with ‘yum-yum-yum’ sounds from the boys all the way there. I like that they’re a bit chewy because that’s how I prefer my granola bars to be. I really love them smeared with almond-butter, and Cole likes peanut butter on his. The next time I made them I used mini-chocolate chips instead of raisins, just to change things up, and the kids went nuts for them.

In non-granola-related news, I was in a rush tonight and threw together a lazy meal of Kraft Dinner shells with broccoli and hot dogs. When Tony was eating dinner he said how much he loves the dinners I make and that I have such great ideas and I seem to always seem to make exactly what he’s craving that night.  Wow, I don’t know how such an uninspired meal brought that on, but I like it!  There really have been big changes in my cooking since starting this blog. I used to see making meals as an inconvenient and time-consuming process and I hated trying to come up with things to make, but now I love searching for new and creative meal ideas. There are so many amazing food blogs out there that I had no idea about before I started food blogging myself.  Thank you everyone for all your wonderful comments (Tony too!). You motivate me to continue to try new things and to actually enjoy cooking.