Veatable Savoury Snack Bars are a new chewy, savoury snack from Crendon Foods that you keep in the fridge, unlike most crunchy, sweet snack bars that you keep in the cupboard. They’re one of your 5-a-day, only 99 calories per bar, high in fibre, suitable for vegetarians (obviously, otherwise they wouldn’t be on this blog), gluten and wheat free, and free from artificial flavourings, colourings and preservatives.

That’s where the good bit ends.

I got sent all three flavours to try: Tomato Pizza, Thai Sweetcorn, and Sweet Roast Vegetable. Being a complete pizza lover, I eagerly ripped off the wrapper from the Tomato Pizza variety and thought, ugh.

Not very appetising is it? Still, who cares what it looks like, it’s going to taste of pizza, yay.

Did it heck. It tasted like, oh, I don’t know what. It was flipping horrible though. So horrible I couldn’t get further than one bite. One bite that was full of grit. The rest went immediately into the bin.

I was too scared to try the other ones for a few weeks, but then I decided to be brave (OK, I admit it, I was out of crisps). Not being a huge fan of sweetcorn in stuff, I gave the Sweet Roast Vegetable flavour a try. This time I didn’t even get as far as one bite. Well, I did, but it didn’t get swallowed as I spat it out into the bin.

Inedible.

If this hasn’t put you off, I’ve still got the Thai Sweetcorn one left, if anyone’s brave enough to try it. If so, just leave me a comment and I’ll post it off to you.

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I did a lot of exercise last week (running, cycling, cardio machines, gym classes) and wasn’t eating enough calories to keep me going, so I thought I’d better make something healthy to snack on and give me energy.

Anita Bean’s Food for Fitness is always the book I turn to when I want to make something tasty, but healthy. It’s primarily a sports nutrition guide, but it also contains over 200 recipes; not all of them are vegetarian but there are plenty that are.

Anita Bean has written numerous sports nutrition books and although I read somewhere that she’s a lifelong vegetarian (with a name like ‘Bean’, you’d have to be really, wouldn’t you?), she hasn’t written a completely vegetarian sports nutrition book which surprises me, as there’s a definite gap in the market there.

Still, this isn’t a sports nutrition blog, so I’ll get on with the recipe for the muesli bars.

Muesli bars (makes 12)

175g oats
75g muesli
150g dried fruit mixture, e.g. raisins, dates, apricots, figs, apple, pineapple
3 heaped tsp honey
2 eggs whites
175ml apple juice

Combine the oats, muesli and dried fruit in a bowl

Warm the honey in a small saucepan until it is runny. Add to the bowl

Stir in the remaining ingredients

Press the mixture into a lightly oiled 18x28cm baking tin. Bake at 180C/gas mark 4 for 20-25 minutes until golden. When cool, cut into bars.

Per serving (1 bar)
Energy 141 kcal
Protein 3.4 g
Fat 1.9g
Carbohydrate 30 g
Fibre 1.9g

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After all the interest in my giveaway of Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar (see blog post below: hello all you freeloaders from the Money Saving Expert forums), I thought I’d make something out of it and having all the ingredients for the peanut butter blondies in the cupboard negated any need to go to the supermarket. Result.

These are very easy to make but as I’ve never had a blondie before, I’m not sure if they came out properly. They’re very soft and sweet and sugary; almost too sugary, but this is probably because I didn’t have enough brown sugar and so topped it up with white sugar.

Peanut butter blondies

3/4 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup oil
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup non-dairy milk
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup peanuts

Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Lightly grease a metal 8 x 8 inch baking dish.

In a mixing bowl, use a fork to vigorously mix together peanut butter, oil and sugar. Stir in the non-dairy milk and vanilla. Stir in the flour, salt and baking powder. Once you get the flour somewhat mixed in, it’s easier to just use your hands to knead the dough until soft. It will be very very thick and won’t spread on its own. Transfer dough to the baking pan and press it into place. Sprinkle on the peanuts and lightly press them into the top.

Bake for 22 to 25 minutes; the blondie edges should be just barely darkened. The top will appear soft, and that’s okay. Remove the blondies from the oven and cool completely before slicing. 

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I don’t make a lot of bars or cakes or flapjacks or things like that, but as I was flicking through my new Easy Vegan cookbook, I came across these peanut butter bars and thought I’d give them a go. The book doesn’t contain any nutritional advice, but I would imagine although they’re probably quite high calories, they’d also be good for pre- and post-exercise, with the oats giving slow release energy and the peanuts being good for recovery. In other words, forget the calories and enjoy!

These were incredibly quick and easy to make and as I had all the ingredients except the golden syrup in the cupboard, sort of free. Result.

Peanut butter bars (makes 8 bars)

4 tablespoons organic crunchy peanut butter
4 tablespoons light corn syrup or golden syrup
1 1/2 cups/100g whole rolled oats
1/2 cup/50g golden raisins/sultanas
1 tablespoon whole-wheat/wholemeal flour, preferably stoneground

A non-stick cake pan/tin 6×9 inches/23 x 15 cm

Preheat the oven to 375F/190C/Gas 5

Put the peanut butter and corn syrup in a saucepan and heat very gently until melted, about 3 minutes. Add the oats, golden raisins/sultanas, and flour and stir well until thoroughly mixed and the mixture has the consistency of breadcrumbs.

Pour the mixture into the cake pan/tin and press in with the back of a spoon. Bake in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes (the original recipe says 15 but our oven does them quickly, so keep an eye on them). Score into bars or squares with a knife while still warm, then allow to cool before cutting through and removing the bars from the pan/tin. Once cool, the bars can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

Credits:
Peanut butter bars
Recipe by Rachael Anne Hill, Easy Vegan, Ryland Peters & Small

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As I’ve recently rediscovered crumpets, I thought I’d have a go at making my own as, although they only cost 57p for 8 in Tesco, I don’t like the huge list of ingredients you get on packaged things and after scouring the internet for a crumpet recipe, found out I already had all the ingredients in the cupboard.  Result.  The only thing I didn’t have were rings to cook them in, which was easily resolved by a trip to the local hardware shop.  Although with two rings costing £4.25, I’m going to have to make a lot of crumpets to break even.

So, on with the making of crumpets.

First, I got stuck when I re-read the recipe and it said dried yeast.  Is that the same as fast action yeast?  I tried Twittering but got no reply so re-scoured the internet for another crumpet recipe using fast-action yeast but they all looked a bit of a faff, so I decided to risk it and use fast action yeast in the recipe I’d already found.

Ingredients (makes 6 – I halved the original recipe)

4 oz strong plain flour [the other recipes said plain flour so I got confused again but I used strong white flour, the type you use for making bread].

1/2 level teaspoon salt

1/2 level tablespoon dried yeast [I used fast action yeast]

1/2 teaspoon caster sugar

1/4 pint milk [I would have used soya milk to make them vegan but didn’t want to open a new litre carton just to use a tiny bit of it so used the moo juice that was in the fridge]

1 fl oz water

Equipment
Cooking rings [I bought the kind used for making poached eggs]
Frying pan

Preparation

Heat the milk and water together in a small saucepan till they are ‘hand hot’.  Then pour into a jug, stir in the sugar and dried yeast and leave it in a warm place for 10-15 minutes till there is a good frothy head on it [it’s November and therefore not very warm but it did go frothy].

Meanwhile, sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl and make a well in the centre.  When the yeast mixture is frothy, pour it all into the mixing bowl.

Slowly work the flour into the liquid with a wooden spoon.  Beat well at the end to make a perfectly smooth batter.

Cover the mixing bowl with a tea-towel and leave to stand in a warm place for about 45 minutes – by which time the batter will have become light and frothy [once again, I had trouble finding somewhere warm and I don’t know about light and frothy, but it did change appearance].

When you’re ready to cook, grease the insides of the cooking rings very well and add a little oil to your frying pan before placing it over a medium heat.

When the pan is hot, arrange the rings in the frying pan and spoon 1 tablespoon of the batter into each ring [1 tablespoon is nowhere near enough.  I used about 3 or 4].

Let them cook for 4 or 5 minutes: first tiny bubbles will appear on the surface and then, suddenly, they will burst, leaving the traditional holes.

Now take a large spoon and fork, lift off the rings and turn the crumpets over.  Cook on the second side for about 1 minute only.  Re-grease and reheat the rings before cooking the next batch [I used a bit of tea-towel to lift the rings off, they slid off easily.  I didn’t re-grease the rings as the first two crumpets I cooked were quite greasy.  The crumpets were quite brown underneath; I don’t know if I cooked them for too long?]

I ate one as soon as it had been cooked and while the taste and texture were pretty much identical to shop-bought ones, they were a bit greasy and really not worth all that time, effort and mess to make, so Tesco will be pleased to know its profits won’t be dwindling by 57p a week after all.

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Not like a cow out in the garden because we’ve run out of food but with the box I got delivered from graze.com today.  You can design your own box for when you get an attack of the munchies and want something healthier than a KitKat (or in my case, a Nutrageous bar, man those things are good!) or let them choose and you can tell them what you do or don’t like or are willing to try.

It turned up in the post today just like they said it would and it’s in a nice neat box

and I open it to reveal what they’ve sent me and I’ve got a nice big amount of cherries, a milkshake mix which is white chocolate, strawberries and sun-dried bananas.  I’m not keen on dried fruit, but I told them I’d give it a go but to make up for the dried bananas and strawberries, they’ve sent me some hot chilli cashews. 

If you’d like to try a box for free, with the second half price (you can cancel your order at any time), go to www.graze.com and enter the code HQTGF3G.

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