No Bake Granola bars and keeping fresh herbs, FRESH

A good friend of mine recently told me about no bake granola bars she makes for her family on a regular basis.  She raved about them because of a) how good they taste b) how much money she saved not having to buy granola bars and c) there is no baking involved! 
I have to admit c) is what piqued my interest the most, since I can't bake very well at all.  So if I can just mix up some ingredients, put them in the refrigerator over night and eat in the morning then I am definitely there.
I tried it out and they are amazing.  The best thing about this recipe is that it's so flexible that you can put really anything you like in them.  :-D I'm not keeping track of how many wins these bars have tallied up so far, but it's A LOT!

All you need is:
1cup of peanut butter

1/2 cup of honey
3 cups of oats

Then from here it's all up to you.  My last batch had almonds, cranberries, walnuts, flax seeds, sesame seeds and cinnamon.

This current batch has Chia seeds, flax seeds, sesame seeds, walnuts, almonds, chocolate chips and cranberries. 

Threw it all in my stand mixer and mixed until it was blended, because I am lazy.  She suggested heating up the honey and peanut butter to make it easier to mix by hand.  If you don't have a stand mixer or just want to put some extra love into it, then go for it. :-)




I put it in a non greased glass pan, packed it down and left it in the refrigerator over night.  As soon as morning arrived, I cut it into rectangles and enjoyed!  I hope you will too :-)

Counter top garden can also utilize all
the extra jars and containers that you
are done with too!

My apologies for the picture quality.  I admit I took these picture with my phone because of my above mentioned laziness.  My camera was upstairs and yeah...

On a different note all together I wanted to show you my "counter top garden".  If you buy fresh herbs to use in your cooking then you probably already do this, but for those who don't, give it a try.  I never really bought fresh herbs because I didn't like how fast they would go bad.  Finally it occurred to me to treat them like flowers!  Bring them home, cut a bit off the stems and put them in water, switching out the water every other day.  I also keep trimming the stems if they are darkening at the bottom.  I have read that some people add a drop of bleach into the water to help the stems from getting "infected" which reduced their ability to suck in the water.  I haven't done it though.  With cilantro, I do this and put them in the refrigerator and they last for weeks.  With Basil, I left it on the counter and it actually grew roots! ROOTS!  There is no window in my kitchen, or the fridge for that matter but that doesn't seem to matter to the herbs, because they just keep on living. :-D  Give it a shot and you can have delicious fresh herbs to use until they are completely used up.