Breakfast Oatmeal Power Bars

One of the things we face as parents is counter balancing popular culture. The kids are inundated with advertisements and messages constantly, 'buy this', 'wear this', 'act this way', 'say this'... It becomes more present as the kids get older, realizing that the world is bigger than the backyard. My husband and I want to raise children that realize that the world has far more to offer than what the T.V. does. For this reason, PBS is primarily the only station we watch. We try to keep the focus on what money can not buy rather than what it can.

School lunches are no exception to this inundation. You know, all the kids at school have cool snacks with cartoons on their yogurt cartons and other special, cool packaging. I only hope that one day they will realize that homemade beats out manufactured almost anyday. Not that some of that is okay because it does have its place. So I took extra special care and wrapped each granola with some deli wrap paper and placed a sticker on the outside. Yes, I know these are religious stickers but that's only because there uncle had been collecting all the stickers he could find for them. (Some of them had Harry Potter) They came in handy. They held the wrapper on quite nicely.

Breakfast Oatmeal Power Bars
Lori's Lipsmacking Goodness

4 ounces butter, unsalted, room temp
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons Lyle's Golden Syrup or corn syrup
1 teaspoon salt (optional)
2 2/3 cup quick or rolled oats
1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds, hulled (pepitas)
2 tablespoons sunflower seeds
1/4 cup coconut, preferrably unsweetened

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a 13 x 9 pan with parchment paper and butter the paper.

In a bowl combine oats, apricots, cranberries, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and coconut. In a heavy bottomed saucepan combine butter, brown sugar, syrup and salt. Heat until all the butter is melted and everything begins to boil. Remove from heat and pour into dry ingredients, stirring until everything is moistened and combined. Press into the 13 x 9 pan. Press down with a back of a rubber spatula, evening out the mixture. Bake the mixture for about 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and score into bars. Let cool completely and finish cutting into bars.

*I went through all that trouble you know of wrapping them and they didnt liek the little bits of fruit in them. Good gats. So I did this same recipe, omitting all the fruit and nuts, keeping the coconut and adding 1 cup of chocolate chips. They were yummy. Gone, in a flash.