M-Bars: Mandy's Energy Bar Recipe

by Mandy Hosford

---

I'm not a baker, or a registered dietician, or an experienced concocter of energy foods. However, I modified an oatmeal bar-cookie recipe to come up with these and I think they're full of things that I both like and recognize as food. Plus, Matt ate 'em whilst riding a mountain bike for 142 miles and he didn't go bad. So that's a small experiment, but a good one. Any questions on the recipe...call my friend Shannon. She's the real baker.

Oatmeal bars disguised as performance food. Call 'em what you will....

Mix well until fluffly...

1/4 c veg oil

3/4 c ground flax meal

3/4 c brown sugar or cane sugar

Add the following...

1 egg (If you're vegan, you can leave out the egg. I doubt that it would be catastrophic)

1 1/2 t vanilla

1/2 t salt

Now for the rest...

1 c whole wheat flour

3/4 t baking powder

1/2 c granola (any kind, really) or 1/2 c toasted wheat germ for a slightly lower fat option

3/4 c rolled oats

3/4 c raisins

3/4 c chocolate chips

1/2 c chopped walnuts or pecans or toasted sunflower seeds

*You can pretty much add anything here including ginger pieces, coconut flakes, other nuts, banana chips, other dried fruit, etc...

And now to get it all ready for the oven...

By now it's probably sort of dry so add 1/4 up to 1/2 cups of apple sauce such that it gets moister and can be spread in a greased (non-stick spray or butter) baking dish (I opted for a glass baking dish).

Bake at 375 deg F

Keep em in the oven until the kitchen starts to smell really good and a knife (not a finger) inserted into the center comes out clean. Time in the oven depends on the size of the dish you've used and how thinly the batter's been spread.

I Like To Share

"every bite of food we take is an investment we make in our bodies -- or a debt we take out."

great read on grist for parents on eating organic. a couple of quotes i liked:

"A few years ago I did a study with the Environmental Working Group where we measured umbilical cord blood in babies. We found an average of 200 different industrial chemicals in their cord blood at birth. Of the total 287 chemicals we detected, 180 are known to cause cancer in humans and 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system. So I realized that what's "out there" is in us -- even in the most inner sanctum of the womb."

"I'm working most on the food front, and my reasoning is that every bite of food we take is an investment we make in our bodies -- or a debt we take out. It's a vital and immediate impact. And it also impacts our air, land, streams, and global warming. If just 10 percent of our food supply were organic, it would be the equivalent of taking millions of cars off the roads. On farms, about 40 percent of the oil use comes from the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides that are all oil-based."

---

i'm currently reading jack daniel's running formula. i ran into this race pace calculator from his book online. all you need is one of your race times and it will estimate how fast you would run other distances.

---

an episode of keeping up with gouchers (nike distance runners) where the gouchers talk about purservering through injuries. adam had a double hernia as well.