Chocolate Revel Bars

When I typed this title, the auto-fill filled it in. So I must have posted about these yummy cookies before. But I can't find the post, so I'm going to do it again. These are really, really good cookies, and I made them yesterday. The recipe calls for sweetened condensed milk, which I do not have in my cupboards, so I made some following Crystal's recipe*. It worked out just fine. I will never buy sweetened condensed milk again.

1 cup butter or margarine

2 cups brown sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon soda

a teaspoon salt

3 cups quick or rolled oats

Mix above ingredients and press 1/2 in a greased and floured 11x17 pan (see Hint, below). Mix and heat up until melted:

1 can sweetened condensed milk*

1 12 oz. package chocolate chips

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons margarine

Add 2 teaspoons vanilla and 1 cup nuts if desired.

Pour over oatmeal mixture. Crumble other 1/2 of oatmeal on top. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

*Sweetened Condensed Milk in a Blender

In a blender combine for several minutes until very smooth:

1/2 cup hot water

1 cup non-instant powdered milk OR 2 cups instant powdered milk

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon butter

Hint: When pressing the mixture into the pan, I use a piece of wax paper to keep the dough from sticking to my fingers.

Creamy Oatmeal

I'm sure I saw this recipe and a picture tutorial for making it on a blog somewhere this week, but now I can't find it. And soon after I saw that, I came across the same recipe in one of these food storage books that I have. But now I can't find it, either. However, that didn't deter me from trying it this morning. The recipe is simple, and it turned out good. I think this will be my new way of making oatmeal on the mornings that we have it.

1 part oatmeal (1/2 cup per person)

1 part milk (see proportion, above)

1 part water (see proportion, above)

Put this in a pot, add a shake of salt and a handful of raisins if you like, and turn the heat to medium. Stir it every two or three minutes, keeping the heat on medium, until it begins to bubble. Still keep the heat on medium and keep stirring it every couple of minutes, until it thickens up and looks nice and creamy. This takes about 15 minutes or so, I think. While it was cooking I ironed Jim's clothes for the morning and checked my email (gotta set a timer for that one so I don't get lost in my own world and let the oatmeal burn!).

Serve with whole wheat toast and butter, milk and a little sugar and cinnamon if you like.

Keeper!

Granola yummmmmm!

I finished making the granola, and it turned out pretty well. I was interested to read on that other site, that I referenced in my previous post, that the thing that makes granola clump together is the oat flour. I wonder if wheat flour serves the same purpose? Because the recipe that I used calls for wheat flour. This granola that I made does have some clumps in it. Maybe if I were to use a mixer and mix it together more thoroughly next time it would clump even more. But, whether or not it clumps, it does taste good, and it is crispy-crunchy. They were right--as it cooled it got crispy. I do recommend that simple little recipe. As for the coconut, I haven't really even tasted it in there, so I think it could be optional. I was not able to find freeze-dried apples in my food storage stuff after all, so I didn't put apples in; just raisins and almonds. I hope to acquire some dried apples sometime in the near future, and when I do, I'll use them.

This one is a keeper.

We started a wish-list of things we'd like to buy. Topping that list is a food dehydrator. The mini-orchard that we planted year before last will be producing soon, and, in addition to bottling fruit, I would love to dry apples, peaches, pears and plums. Yummmm!