Peanut butter oatmeal breakfast bars

I got home from work last Friday without any plans, and when I saw this recipe by Emily from Sweet to the Soul, baking sounded like the perfect thing to do with my Friday evening.

I've now made these breakfast bars twice, and both times they were great!  I didn't have any dark chocolate chunks either time, so I used semi-sweet chocolate chips instead.

The second time I made this recipe, I decided to try a mashed banana instead of the applesauce to add some banana-y flavor to the already great combination of peanut butter and chocolate.  The blending of the three flavors is awesome.  And if you haven't had a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich with slices of banana in between, you should go try that right now.  It's great, as are these cookies, I mean, breakfast bars!

Yogurt or Cream Cheese Frosting Filled Strawberries

The other day ChocolateCoveredKatie posted a very simple recipe for Yogurt Filled Strawberries that would be great for a dorm room!  This recipe only requires a few ingredients and tools and is very quick to make.


Tools:
knife
plastic bag
scissors

First, I set out all of my ingredients.  I decided to try both yogurt and some leftover cream cheese frosting as fillings and cocoa powder and cinnamon as toppings.

Then I washed the strawberries.  I like doing this by soaking them in a bowl of water, but you can just as easily rinse them under running water.

My lunch plans are boring.

I basically eat from the same set of options each week.  Sometimes I'll have a salad.  I'll have sandwiches with meat and cheese and sometimes tomato or mustard several days of the week.  And of course sides of whatever fruit/chips/other snack-y items I have that week.  And that's pretty boring.  I don't care, but it's not really worth talking about.

What I do enjoy talking about are the special things I do each week.  For example, last weekend a friend and I made pizzas!  We bought pre-made crusts for simplicity and topped them with spaghetti sauce, cheese, pepperoni, and some leftover tomato slices I had.  And of course we added garlic and basil to both pizzas and a small about of crushed red pepper flakes to a small test section.  Yum!  Simple cooking fun with a friend!

And then sometimes I come up with new ideas to make my life simpler/easier.  Usually I buy fruits and vegetables on the weekend and then prepare them when I want them.  So for my first sandwich of the week, I might wash and slice a tomato and store the remaining slices for the rest of the week.

But I don't always have enough time to both prep and eat lunch, so I would just skip on the tomato on Monday...and again on Tuesday...and so on.  So it might be Thursday before I start enjoying some (or most) of the food that I had bought the previous Saturday.  And sometimes food goes bad. :(

So this week I did something different.  I prepared everything on Sunday night.  This mostly involved washing and chopping.  I chopped up my peach, nectarine, and mango and put them in single serving containers.  It was so easy to just grab one of these to eat in between classes!  I also prepared my cucumber and tomato for a cucumber, tomato, and feta salad.  And I chopped the bad ends of the beans so that when I wanted to cook them later in the week it would require less of a time commitment.  And they were so good!

But this method does have a major drawback: sometimes produce isn't quite ripe enough when one buys it.  And even though my mango wasn't quite ripe, I decided to prepare it.  That was not the best decision.  Some of it was good.  But most of it was crunchy.  Yuck.  So, I might have to amend my plans for this weekend.  But the general idea still turned out to be a good one for me.

What ideas have you tried to make your cooking simpler/easier?  How did they work out?

Homemade Peanut Butter Bars

I found this recipe for peanut butter protein bars on Chocolate Covered Katie's blog and it sounded wonderful.  It has only a few ingredients and very simple directions.  I was looking for something like a granola bar, not a protein bar.  Also, I don't have any special protein powder.  So instead I replaced the protein powder with chocolate-flavored Carnation Instant Breakfast.  I haven't put the full recipe on this page per Chocolate Covered Katie's request, but here is the recipe and below are pictures and notes about my experience making these yummy peanut butter bars.  Next time I make them, I will try covering them or mixing in them mini chocolate chips and/or crushed pretzels.


Tools:
-two bowl
-spoon(s)
-knife
-gallon-sized plastic bag
-rolling pin (optional, as you could flatten it with your hands...or a textbook)
-1/4 and 1/2 cups
-1/4 teaspoon
-1 tablespoon

I first gathered the necessary ingredients and tools.