Blueberry Breakfast Bars

Here's a recipe for some breakfast bars I've taken from Dr. Fuhrman and modified a bit to my own version.  They make a great healthy snack!

1 medium-large ripe banana
1 small apple, peeled and finely chopped
2 madjool dates, pitted and finely chopped
1 cup frozen, thawed blueberries
1/4 cup raisins
1 cup old fashioned rolled oats
2 tbsp ground or milled flax seeds
1 1/2 tbsp raw sunflower seeds
1 1/2 tbsp finely chopped, raw walnuts
1 tbsp chia seeds
1/8 cup 100% pomegranate juice
olive oil or non-stick spray (if you need to grease pan)

Mash banana in a mixing bowl. Add pomegranate juice, nuts, seeds, and oats.  Mix thoroughly.  Add remaining fruit.  Mix thoroughly.  Press into greased or non-stick 8x8 inch baking pan.  Bake at 350°F for 25-30 minutes.  Cool on wire rack.  Cut into 8 large or 16 small bars.  Store in refrigerator.

At last...

I feel like I now have something interesting (to me, anyways) to blog about.......

Food!

In the last couple months, I've become really interested in food - not just how to prepare it, but the effect it has on our bodies and our health as a whole.  If you've ever heard the phrase "You are what you eat," it's truer than most of us probably realize.  I've been experimenting with recipes from all sorts of diets - some raw, some vegetarian, some vegan, and some with meat and dairy too. What I'm trying to do is to feed our family a diet that is overall high in nutrients, low in bad fats/ sugar/ salt/ etc, that contains as many natural and as few processed ingredients as possible, and, of course, tastes good.  And it's actually been pretty fun!

I've never really enjoyed preparing food before now.  It always seemed so intimidating.  I think preparing homemade baby food for Asher is what first got me interested and experimenting, then I moved on to "regular" food.  I realized it was kind of silly for me to breastfeed Asher for nearly 14 months, give him a super healthy diet of natural ingredients for several months, and then just switch him over to the typical American diet of nutrient-deficient, processed foods.  And while me and Matt's diet wasn't absolutely terrible, it still wasn't that good either.  We weren't just eating everything out of a package or anything - I just wasn't cooking things that were as healthy as they could have been.  We were eating too much meat, starches, breakfast cereals, etc, and not as many vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds as we should have been.  I knew that as Asher got older, he would want to eat what Matt and I were eating, and that we couldn't force him to eat something that we weren't eating ourselves.  Plus Matt and I want to be healthier for our own good too.

Anyways, the more recipes I've tried that have turned out well (especially when I stray off the path a bit and get creative), the more confidence I've gained in wanting to try more things.  I want to start making posts with some of the successful recipes I've tried, as well as any good natural health/ nutrition related information I come across.  Feel free to comment if you agree, disagree, have something to add, etc!  I'm still pretty new to this, and it's all about researching, learning, and experimenting as I go.  =)

I'll try to get my first recipe on here by the end of the week!