Turkey Ragu and Homemade Breakfast Bars

You Know I Read it in a Magazine, Oh Ho

Where I work, even though it's Brooklyn, once I'm in the building there is no finding alternate food or snacks. It's like food prison lockdown. We have one vending machine that carries the usual suspects and a couple of trail mixes, breakfast bars. I get them. 75 cents. Not too bad but it does bother me to do this. I try to think ahead and bring Trader Joe nut sacks or I'll buy a box of the lesser-of-the-evil bars at PathMark and pack them in my biker bag. But still this bothers me. It was time to start making these damn things myself so I could control what is in them, like everything else. I'm perfecting the ingredients list. Lots of good suggestions lately from magazines and newspaper recipes and on the web. The binder has been the toughest element. Not enough will make them fall apart. For us occasionally these need to become meal replacements so I tried peanut butter as the binding agent. You need enough natural peanut butter with just enough of it's own oil to melt down and become silky along with honey. This helps penetrate ALL the oatmeal and pieces so that it can stick together. The other important step is to press down with all the firmness of choking someone to death. You have to really get in there and compress. I like the idea of a toasted taste so I put mine in the oven for about 10 minutes. So far one time I got them near perfect.