Vegan (or not) Nut/Seed/Chip Bars

Hope you are enjoying the weekend so far! I wanted to share a fun bar recipe with you. If you’ve been reading Itzy’s Kitchen for a while, you know that I am always making adjustments to my bar recipes to come up with new creations. This one is a Vegan Nut/Seed/Chip bar. I call it Vegan (or not) because if you add chocolate chips that contain dairy vs. no chips, non-dairy chocolate chips, or carob chips, its obviously no longer vegan ;).

Ingredients:

• 2 cups dry oats
• 1/4 cup unbleached, all purpose flour (or whole wheat)
• 1/2 cup flax meal
• 1 cup seeds, nut & chocolate or carob chips (your choice, any combination)
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• ¼ cup vegetable oil ( you can sub this out….but I think this small amount of oil does good stuff for these bars)
• ½ rounded cup apple sauce

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. Spray (somewhat heavily) a baking pan with non stick spray(I used a Pyrex dish)

3. Combine first 5 ingredients, break up any chunks of brown sugar

4. Add in wet ingredients and mix until well coated

 

5. Spread mixture into pan and press down with the back of a spoonula/spatula

 

6. Bake for ~30 minutes

7. Let bars cool and cut!

 

Asian Black Beans & Rice

Thank you all for telling me about your favorite substitutes. Here are a few of your suggestions:

• Stephanie substitutes white vinegar for traditional household cleaners
• Erin adds turmeric to most dishes to replace or in addition to cayenne or paprika
• Anne Marie likes to replace breadcrumbs with oatmeal
• Winterjade uses banana instead of eggs in her pancakes

And the winner of the Substituting Ingredients book is…Megan D of the Oatmeal Diaries- wahooo! Congrats! Email me at Itzyskitchen at gmail dot com and I will get your book to you.

The rest of my week has been a lot more easy/peasy! I’ve been having to take Frank for his walks early in the morning (5 or 6 AM) due to the heat! Even at that time, its still almost 80 degrees and humid. I love it…Frank does not:

I did manage to get a nice run in on Wednesday. It was cloudy so the heat wasn’t too bad. I set out to do 50 minutes and ended going a bit over, but covered about 6.3 miles:

Wednesday night, I used inspiration from No Meat Athlete to make a new take on beans and rice. The dish doesn’t look gorgeous but tasted great! 

 

  I adjusted Erin’s recipe just a bit:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup cooked brown rice
• 1 15 oz can reduced sodium black beans (drained & rinsed)
• 1 small container pineapple tidbits (juice reserved)
• 1 small container water chestnuts
• 3 large carrots, cut into strips
• 2 tablespoons reduced sodium soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon Chinese 5 spice powder

Directions:

Mix 5 spice powder in with cooked rice and set aside.

Heat vegetable oil. Add carrots and red pepper and cook for a minute or two. Add beans and water chestnuts and cook until carrots are cooked through but still crunchy (as Erin noted :)). Remove from heat. Add soy sauce, 1/3 the reserved pineapple juice and pineapple. Place on top of rice.

I’m off to meet my friend Jill for some brunch and then its work time! Weekend plans??