Larabars

The neighbors purged their garden late yesterday because they heard we were about to get our first freeze of the winter, which we did, and they gave us a nice crop of celery, leeks, and a variety of mild peppers (in photo). I picked up the butternut squash at a farm last weekend. Now to think of what to do with it all!

I told you I would try Larabars based on the great rating they got on Rate Your Plate Food Scores. I’m really excited about these. Besides that they’re gluten free, dairy free, soy free, non-GMO, vegan, kosher, AND filling and taste good, look at these entire lists of ingredients (four examples from about 20 choices):

• Cashew Cookie – cashews, dates
• Cherry Pie – dates, almonds, unsweetened cherries
• Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (most decadent-sounding bar) – cashews, dates, chocolate chips (unsweetened chocolate, sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla), sea salt
• Blueberry Muffin – dates, cashews, blueberries, blueberry concentrate, lemon juice concentrate, vanilla extract

I purposely picked blueberry muffin because I’ll never forget when I first read a blueberry Pop-Tart ingredient list and realized there wasn’t any blueberry in it. That put it on my top ten ‘never again’ list, where it remains although now, Pop-Tart boxes are advertising that they’re “Baked with Real Fruit!” What a concept. But here are the ingredients in these new blueberry Pop-Tarts – I’ll leave out the stuff in parenthesis so you don’t fall asleep: enriched flour, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, dextrose [note: that’s three sugars in a row], soybean and palm oil with TBHQ, sugar, cracker meal, wheat starch, salt, dried blueberries, dried grapes, dried apples, cornstarch, leavening, citric acid, corn cereal, gelatin, partially hydrogenated soybean oil*, modified corn starch, natural and artificial blueberry flavor, modified wheat starch, soy lecithin, tricalcium phosphate, xanthan gum, caramel color, color added [?], natural and artificial flavor, turmeric extract, red #40, vitamin A palmitate, niacinamide, reduced iron, blue #2, blue #1, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, thiamin hydrochloride, folic acid. *There are trans fats but if you only eat one (a serving size) they don’t have to list it in the ingredients.

The best-selling granola bar in the United States by far last year was Nature Valley^[1] (General Mills). Here are the ingredients, for comparison, in the Nature Valley cranberry and pomegranate trail bars (I tried to pick the healthiest-sounding option): whole grain oats, high maltose corn syrup, rise crisps (rice flour, sugar, barley malt extract, salt, calcium carbonate, mixed tocopherols (added to retain freshness), sugar, almonds, honey, dried cranberries, fructose [Note: that’s the 4^th sugar], canola oil, maltodextrin, dried pomegranate arils, soy lecithin, salt, baking soda, natural flavor.

Larabars are 99 cents when they’re on sale, which is often, and you can also find coupons online. They will not work for you if you’re allergic to dates; but if you just think you don’t like dates, you may not notice them in a key lime pie bar.