Summer Snacks

Yesterday I made some snack bars from neglected cereals and nuts in the pantry. I’m the first to admit I am a serial cereal hoarder – I decide one day ‘Ooh I’m going to be healthy and start eating cereal!’, but this mindset is short-lived and often the cereal is left neglected in a Tupperware container in the pantry. It was time to make use of the neglected cereals, it was their time to shine! Here’s my take on how to make them, I completely winged it so excuse the vagueness, although that’s part of the beauty of this recipe, you can use what ever you want. It’s a fantastic way to use up the ingredients taking up space in your pantry, and gives you a healthier option than snacking on chips and chocolates (that’s what I do at least!).

Ok so here goes…

INGREDIENTS

Like I said though, this recipe will work with so many different combinations and all measurements are approximate. Try it out yourself mix it up a bit and let us know how you go. Our batch made approximately 16 bars and one cup of crumbles we used as granola in yogurt.

• 4 cups of Cereal – you can use a mixture of different types, or just one depending on what you have in your pantry
• 1/2 cup of chocolate buttons
• 3 tablespoons of honey
• a pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup of macadamia nuts
• 1/4 cup of peanuts
• 1/4 cup of desiccated coconut
• 1/2 cup of raisins or sultanas

Some of our ingredients

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius
2. Line oven tray with baking paper (I’s say have the baking tray at least 6cms deep… ours was about the size of an A4 piece of paper)
3. I put all the ingredients inside a mixing bowl except the honey and salt
4. Then I got a small pot and put the honey in with the salt and heated on the stove top until runny
5. Drizzle honey mixture on the dry mix and stir through – The honey binds the ingredients together. If you feel there isn’t enough feel free to add some more.

1. Pour the mixture into the backing tray and spread out evenly
2. Get another sheet of baking paper and place over the top of the mixture. Use your hands to push down on the mixture which will make it nice and compacted and avoid them crumbling.

The mixture compacted in baking tray

1. Place tray in oven and cook for 15 – 20 minutes for chewy bars and 25 minutes for crunchy bars
2. Take tray out and immediately place in fridge for 10 minutes
3. Take tray out and cut the bars into rectangles or squares using a pizza cutter
4. Place tray back into fridge for an hour or so
5. Remove tray from fridge and lift mixture out using the baking paper
6. The bars should be able to snap apart along the lines you cut earlier
7. Place in Tupperware container in fridge or pantry
8. Any crumbles made can be used as granola to have with yogurt. Yum!

Hope you enjoyed our recipe! Do you have any low-cost healthy snack ideas? Snack bars in the supermarket can work out to be over a dollar each in some cases, this was much more cost effective and soo yummy! If you try this out please don’t hesitate to let us know how you go 🙂

Little Pop xxx

Australia Day

G’day!

Today was Australia Day. 
For me Australia day (AD) has mixed connotations, it brings out both the best and the worst in people. It makes me both proud and not-so-proud to be Australian and I wish it wasn’t like this. There are a small majority of ‘Australians’ who take the goodhearted patriotism of AD and turn it into a nightmare by partying way too hard. The media has put on a good front trying to discourage excessive drinking and racism fuelled violence, but it still happens. Victoria Police say there are more assaults in the state on Australia Day than any other public holiday, most of this is non-family violence fuelled by a mixture of booze and racism. I feel like a small majority of people think it’s ok to hate on those from other nations on AD… as if they’ll receive a ‘pardon’ for their completely inappropriate behaviour and ‘F&$K Off We’re Full’ social media campaigns. I don’t even understand where this kind of racism stemmed from – don’t these people realise that once upon a time we were the outsiders? Indigenous Australians are the real ones who should be celebrating, the land is rightfully theirs. AD is a perfect day to spend with your family and friends, have a barbecue, go to the beach, listen to the Hottest 100 or just sit at home and have a cup of tea, because that’s the beauty of this country – we are free to be who we want, and to celebrate in what ever way we want.

 

I celebrated by making a list of 10 things which make me proud to be an Australian citizen

1. Pavlova (need I say more?)
2. I have always found it pretty cool that our country takes up a whole continent. 
3. Our unique mix of flora and fauna – 80% of Australia’s plants and animals do not occur anywhere else
4. We have a really good gun-control system… certainly better some than other countries. 
5. We are the lucky country! Australians have so many opportunities throughout their lives.
6. WIFI & Google Maps – believe it or not Australians played a large part in the development of these two nifty technologies.
7. The beaches… We have a beach house on the Mornington Peninsula and I’ve gone there ever since I was a kid. The air is crisp just as the sound of the waves is soothing. Nothing beats munching on $3 worth of chips whilst watching the sun set on the beach.
8. The slang: bloody oath! Fair dinkum! I’m Nackered!
9. We have a pretty good voting system… it’s not perfect but everyone gets a say.
10. I like the mystery that Australia holds to other nations… do we really ride kangaroos? Are drop bears a serious threat? What about cute cuddly Possums and Koalas, they couldn’t possibly hurt a fly could they?

So Happy Australia Day fellow bloggers, I hope celebrated safely and found time to soak up everything that makes this country great. 

Ooo Roo!

Little Pop

 

Fashionably late

Many appologies for our absence… Basically to sum up, we’ve been inexcusably lazy!
But not to worry we have many BNN storys saved up, and can’t wait to share them all 🙂

Here’s a snippet of what’s been going on:

the veggie garden we wrote about in a previous post during winter when we planted carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, beans and garlic did reasonably well (for amatures like us anyway!) The carrots were the most successful… I would say we ended up with just under 100. They weren’t very big, or straight (this was due to our soil being a bit clay like) but they tasted like carrots and that’s all that matters anyway 🙂
This is a pretty accurate photo of what they looked like… Too bad I didn’t get a photo at the time 😦

Photo courtesy of Hazels-homegrown
Unfortunately the broccoli and beans got eaten by birds… So now we know to put some kind of netting up to prevent this reacurring.

We had a period of time where we struggled with gifts for peoples birthdays, especially as this year was little pops and most of her friends 21sts. But we have always found ways around this by donating to charities on others behalf, making something ourselves, finding an antique collectable of some kind or even the cliche of giving someone a big key for their 21st which lucky enough are a relatively affordable find at antique stores.
Hmm this sea of gifts has got me feeling rather christmassy, save this spot I think I’ll make a thrifty gifting post for Christmas 🙂

We have had the sewing machine out alot and have had many successes and a few failures along the way. But we have definitely figured out how to alter clothes when they become too small, big or you simply want to change them up a bit and bring them back to life.

We have found a fantastic op-shop (actually it’s more like an antique warehouse) in Glen Waverley of all places. This place is seriously big and if you want to have a really good look through everything I would recommend setting a few weekends aside as I cannot explain the size of this place.
Check out their facebook page here you will not come out empty handed I assure you.

Other than that we have been just doing the same old thing, work/study/sleep repeat.

Anyway we will return shortly with our promised gift post!

Happy Monday!

Little Pop xx