Apple Blueberry Oatmeal Bars

I thought that for my first recipe I post on here, I'd use one that I've made several times and know is super easy.

If you look at the ingredients on most granola or cereal bars you buy at the store, they are often made with enriched flours, sugars, corn syrups, oils, isolated proteins, preservatives, and a whole list of other stuff that doesn't need to be in there.

This is one of the healthy alternatives that both tastes good and is good for you!

What you'll need:

(makes 16 two-inch squares)

2 cups old fashioned oats

2 med-lg ripe bananas

1 apple (your choice what kind - I used Fuji today)

1 cup blueberries (I used frozen today, but have used fresh before too)

1/2 cup raisins

1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds (without shells)

2 tbsp ground or milled flax seed (*if you didn't know, always store in the frezer to keep fresh)

2 tbsp pomegranate juice

How it's done:

Preheat the oven to 300°F. Mash the bananas in a mixing bowl.

Peel your apple and chop it into very small bits. If you don't have a Vidalia Chop Wizard, you need one! They're $20 at most stores and will save you tons of time. I use mine ALL the time.

Combine all the ingredients in the bowl with your mashed bananas except for the oats. Then add in the oats, making sure everything is getting good and moist.

Once everything is thoroughly mixed, press the mixture into a lightly greased 8x8 inch baking dish.

Bake uncovered at 300°F for 30-35 minutes. Allow to cool completely before cutting into squares.

I've found several sites that calculate the nutritional information of a recipe for you after manually adding in the ingredients, measurements, and number of servings. So far there are a couple that aren't too bad, but I haven't found one yet that has all of the ingredients I want to search for and provides a pretty wide range of nutritional information for you once it's calculated. I'll get back to you on that, but for now, here are some ballpark figures I've come up with from punching this recipe into a few different online calculators:

(per 2" square)

calories: 100

fat: 2g

cholesterol: 0g

sodium: 1mg

potassium: 175mg

carbohydrate: 19g

fiber: 3g

sugar: 8g

protein: 3g

I won't list out all the rest of the information this way, but one square also contains between 1-10 percent of your daily values of vitamin B-6, vitamin C, vitamin E, calcium, copper, folate, iron, magnesium, manganese, niacin, pantothenic acid, phosphorus, riboflavin, selenium, thiamin, and zinc. (Based on a 2,000 calorie diet.)

Here we go!

Welcome to the beginning of my blog.  :)  It's mainly going to be recipes, but with little health and nutrition bits thrown in as well.

I honestly don't expect that many people will read this blog, but I'm doing it both for the few that may and also so I can have a place to keep track of information, pictures, and recipes as I learn more and make more things.

But first, some history.

Before I got pregnant, I was having all kinds of health issues. I had endometriosis that kept me out of work at least one day every month. I had to give multiple urine samples and have cyctoscopies for unexplained blood in my urine, not to mention the pain that came with it. X-rays showed that my joints were swollen and looked like early rheumatoid arthritis. I had upper GIs and EKGs to try and figure out why I kept getting such a bad sharp pain in my chest. I was tested for lupus and Lyme disease, among others. I got frequent sinus infections, stomach bugs, and colds. My body always seemed to have pains and issues, but doctors could never seem to figure out what was causing them. I knew I wasn't making up all of these ailments, but with no diagnosis for many of them, I just felt like I was going crazy.

Then, a year after we got married, I got pregnant. This seemed to help some of those things (the endo and the blood in the urine, mainly), but I still felt like I wanted and needed to be healthy, especially now that I was growing another little person inside of me. So I started reading and researching online and began to learn about the link between what we eat and how our body functions, and not just in relation to the GI tract. I was hearing (and/or paying attention to) a lot of this stuff for the first time and I was just at the very tip of the iceberg. To be honest, I really didn't eat healthfully during my pregnancy. I've always loved almost anything containing cheese and/or sour cream. I have never been a huge red meat eater, but would eat a pretty decent amount of chicken and deli meats. I adored pasta and breads. I would polish off a box of cereal and a gallon of milk by myself every week. I could probably also go through a whole carton of eggs myself in a week if I wanted to. And I had a killer sweet tooth. I've always loved fruit, but didn't eat much veggies, beans, nuts, or seeds in my diet at all. But that would begin to change.  :)

Not long after Asher was born, I heard about Dr. Joel Fuhrman, both from the Joe Cross film Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead and through my mom. At first I thought he might be something hokey - just another one of those diet guys who was all about weight loss and had a really restrictive plan to follow. But once I went to his site and started reading, I realized that what he said actually made a lot of sense. His approach wasn't just about losing weight; he focused on having good health. He talked about preventing and reversing ailments and diseases and looking and feeling your best. I liked the way he explained why certain things are good for you and why others aren't. I liked that there were no restrictions on portions and that there were vast options of everything you could/should eat (even if they weren't things I was used to eating at the time). I wanted to find out more...

So I did. I read the books Eat to Live, Super Immunity, and Disease-Proof Your Child. I watched documentaries like Food, Inc., Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, Forks Over Knives, and Crazy Sexy Cancer. I found numerous web sites and blogs that talked about nutrition and health and just became a sponge to all this information. I began to realize I had more control over my health and my body than I had thought. And I realized that I wanted my son (and any future children) to grow up knowing these things and living well -- because it's not necessarily the same as what mainstream society tells you is healthy.

Now we don't buy cow's milk or cereal at all anymore, with the exception of plain cheerios as the occasional treat for Asher. We very rarely purchase any cheese, yogurt, pasta, meat, or sweets. The only bread we buy is organic multi-grain bread or whole wheat pitas (sometimes I make my own too), and we don't eat tons of it. No granola bars, crackers, chips, or other packaged, processed foods. Nothing in the freezer besides fruits, veggies, and milled flax seed.

But I really don't like to focus on what we don't eat... The point of "nutritarian eating", as Dr. Fuhrman calls it, is focusing on what you do eat -- the clean, whole foods that God gave us that are super beneficial to your body and make you feel great! There are so many of them, and you really can learn to cook filling, satisfying, delicious meals without adding in much or any meat, dairy, oils, sugars, flour, etc. I'll also add that I'm definitely not "there" yet. I'm still learning and still trying to eat more of the way I should, and sometimes it's hard on a busy schedule or a tight budget. But it can be done. It's just like anything else -- we end up accomplishing our true priorities. 

Oh, and if you are wondering about how changing our eating has affected our health, my endometriosis has stayed away (so far). I no longer have all of the bladder issues, although I've noticed if I do stray from my healthy eating for more than a few days it will get a bit irritated again. I don't have the joint issues, the chest pain, the abdominal pain, the feeling crappy all the time. I have more energy. Aside from something irritating my allergies, I've only been sick three times since December of 2009 - I had a fever for one day, a stomach bug (or food poisoning?) for one day, and a minor cold for a few days... BIG difference from how it used to be!!

I breastfed Asher for 14 months (exclusively for the first 6) and have fed him a nutritarian diet his whole life, and he's only been "sick sick" a couple times, and those were only for a day, two at most. We've never had to give him antibiotics. The few times he has caught a cold, it's been nothing but a drippy nose or minor cough for several days with no other symptoms. So from my experience in our own family, eating this way really works! It doesn't mean we never get sick, but it seems to happen a lot less for us and be a lot less severe. Plus the benefits for our bodies in the future are great!

I'll stop there for now, but that gives most of the background on why I'm doing this and how we got to where we are. I hope other people who may look at this blog can learn how to be healthier too and find some new foods and recipes that they really enjoy as much as we do!