Apple and Pear Oat Bars

It feels like our book How to Feed a Fam­ily has been out for­ever but it hasn’t. Our lovely book is still just a baby, only on the shelves for four months. If it were an actual baby we’d be pray­ing for it to sleep through the night but instead we just hope it helps fam­i­lies get through their evenings. (Well, we really hope it gets you through all your meal times not just din­ner.) Since the book has launched, one of my favourite things to do is read the cus­tomer com­ments on ama­zon. I always kind of hold my breath when I go to read them though. When I click through I never know if there is going to be a mile long com­ment from some­one who the book has failed mis­er­ably. Hon­estly, it would make me sick if I were to read some­thing like that. We mostly have lovely, glow­ing com­ments but there are a  few so-so ones. They make me won­der: Why didn’t they like the recipes they tried? Did some­thing go wrong? Could we have said more to help? The book is so per­sonal to us. It has our recipes, our sto­ries and our fam­i­lies in it. And since it’s so per­sonal, it’s hard not to have the chance to make it right by those folks.
Another thing I often do when I think about the book is kick myself for not mak­ing a recipe sooner. Like this one. This would have been a per­fect inclu­sion for the snack sec­tion. Immune boost­ing apples, oats with their juicy phy­to­chem­i­cals and the nat­ural sweet­ness of maple syrup. There’s also a lit­tle pear hug in them since I used Ontario’s Own Pear Puree. I love the company’s purees since they add nat­ural sweet­ness and elim­i­nate a step in prepa­ra­tion for me. If you don’t have any pear puree on-hand apple sauce would surely do the trick.

I hope you give these healthy bars a try and maybe you’ll even take the time to swing back to the site and leave your com­ment about them. After all, you know how I love the comments.

pho­tos by Maya Vis­nyei