Cereal Bars

I generally spend a little bit of time on Sunday getting ready for the week ahead.  I pack my gym bag, and pack a lunch (sometimes two or three!) and make my breakfast plans for the week.  During the week, I'm up between 4:30 and 5 a.m. to meet Melissa at the gym, and I go straight from the gym to work.  And I have to have breakfast every day - preferably 400 or 500 calories worth of protein, fiber and complex carbs.  This is challenging, because I tend to eat that breakfast in the car on the way to work

This week I found a link to this cereal bar recipe on Lifehacker.  Now, the recipe calls for corn flakes and we never have corn flakes in the house.  But I had some Nature's Path organic cereal (to which I added some organic trail mix from Earth Fare for extra texture) and some natural peanut butter.  I substituted honey for the agave nectar called for in the recipe.  I also cut the recipe in half, because I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in the house who will eat them.

The result? Twelve bars with approximately 286 calories, 6.5 grams of protein and 11 grams of fat each.  Not bad for breakfast - if I add 12 ounces of skim milk that puts me in the caloric range I'm shooting for. If I skip the milk I could have two bars and I'd be just over my caloric goal.  I'm hoping that the combination of complex carbs, fat and protein will be sufficient to hold me until lunchtime on a normal workday - approximately 5 hours.  We'll see!

Update: These bars taste like a complex peanut butter cookie, and even better with a big glass of milk. Hubs ate one bar and youngest son ate two. So much for having them all to myself! "This is the best healthy breakfast you've ever made!" The last time they said this was when I made breakfast burritos using Melissa's recipe - I'll see if I can get her to write that recipe up for you one of these days.  Anyway, I think the cereal bar recipe is a keeper!