Pear-Sweetened, Ginger Lemonade and Chewy Oatmeal Granola Bars

My little pirate was in control of the camera in order to show you what I've been up to today. That's me in the grey pants and yellow sweatshirt.

My husband got me a juicer for Christmas. I had always wanted a juicer. And so I'm on the look out for some delicious recipes...and I'm very thorough about trying to find recipes that use the ingredients I already have at the house. (Although, that doesn't work out all the time, because I once made my family eat no-tomato pasta sauce with spaghetti...the sauce called for beets to make it look red like tomato sauce...and that was just plain gross.)


Well, I made this pear-sweetened, ginger lemonade suggested by Healthy. Happy. Life. It's good...but I think I'll put less ginger in mine next time. My chunk was probably 1.5 times the size of my thumb. Too much...even for 6 pears and 3 lemons (tripled the recipe, since we have triple the people the recipe makes for). At any rate...YUM!!! And I'm excited to try the frosted version in summertime.

THEN...I made these so very delicious granola bars suggested by Laeroport, only I used raisins instead of chocolate chips (because that's what I had on hand; any add-ins would be tasty). She is absolutely right that these are so much better than store bought granola bars, as well as being completely correct with her instructions about cooling and cutting and cooling completely before handling. I had every ingredient in my house for this recipe...but now have added "honey" and "brown sugar" to my shopping list for later this week, because for a very convenient reason, I had exactly the amounts of those two ingredients in the cupboards. Odd how life works that way! This is a great recipe to make with your children. 

Enjoy!