Granola: Chocolate Chip, Coconut, and Peanut Bars

I made these last week and they are so good! Very easy and with ingredients I always have on hand. Perfect for treats to add to a sack lunch.

Prep: 10 minutes
Yield: 20 bars

2 1/2 cups crispy rice cereal
2 cups old fashioned oats
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2/3 cup honey
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt (optional)
1/4 cup packed coconut
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips
1/4 cup peanuts

In a large bowl combine the rice cereal and oatmeal. Grease a 9x13 inch pan.

Mix brown sugar, honey and peanut butter in a small sauce pan. Stir over medium heat until just boiling. Add to cereal mixture along with vanilla extract, cinnamon, salt, peanuts, coconut, and chocolate chips.

Press into the prepared pan using a spatula. Set aside to cool, then cut into bars. (I put the pan in the freezer for about 20 minutes before cutting.) Bars can be individually wrapped and frozen, or store in an airtight container.

Fun with Sandwiches and Bento

I found this site today, with all sorts of creative ideas for sandwiches. No more boring school lunches! Check it out!

Insanewiches.com

If you liked this, you will probably also enjoy the feature we did last year on Bento lunches.

Backpack Snacks

I found these delicious looking home made granola bars over at Mennonite Girls Can Cook. Click here for the recipe.

Bento!

Have you heard of the new trend in packed lunches for school? Bento Box lunches are a traditional Japanese packed lunch, designed to be both delicious and beautiful. Crescent Moon has given me permission to post her ideas for Bento lunches for her kids.

She started by decorating the plain plastic lunch containers she got for each member of her family. She started out with these new Fit&Fresh lunch boxes.

Then she used stickers and glow-in-the-dark acrylic paint to decorate them, then painted over them with clear nail polish, so she could wash them without ruining the stickers.

This is the lid of hers:


This one is for her DH:


She gave DS a Cars theme:


Her DD has a sort of pirate theme:


And here are some of the lunches she has prepared:

The first day of school Bento:




Breakfast for lunch:




Fall Bento #1:




Fall Bento #2:




And some Pirate themed Bento lunches because Talk Like a Pirate Day was this week:





There is no picture of today's full lunch, but it contains this pirate pizza:



Are you doing something special for your kids' lunch? We would love to see your ideas! Leave us a comment with a link to your post, and if we like your idea we may include it in a future post.