Healthy Home-made Protein Bars
It’s been a great day! No gym workout today. Instead I got my cardio and lots of bodyweight squats putting in my beautiful Rainbow Swiss Chard plants and mustard plants as well. We have had beautiful weather the last few days, even up in the 70’s, but today was a different story. My fingers were numb by the time I finished planting my greens. It’s worth it, because now I will have beautiful freshly-picked greens for my smoothies. I planted seeds for other plants, but they are just now starting to grow at all. The squirrels kept digging them up burying acorns. Frustrating, but the squirrels are so cute with their little antics that I enjoy them anyway. We have dozens and dozens of them, because of all the oak trees in our yard.
My husband’s mother, Sarah, is coming in tomorrow night to stay with us through Christmas. I am so excited! Yes, it’s unusual, but I love my mother in law. She is the sweetest, kindest, most generous person you could ever hope to meet. We are planning to go over to my family’s farm in Georgia for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We have our main dinner on Christmas Eve and then open the family gifts. Then my sister and her family will go home, so my niece and nephew can wait for ‘Santa Claus’ to deliver his gifts for Christmas morning. We will all go down to her house on Christmas Day to see what ‘Santa’ brought, and then have a nice Christmas luncheon!
I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas. Good luck on the final preparations for the big holiday. Remember to slow down and enjoy this holiday time. Don’t stress too much. It will all get done, and it’s all good. If you put love into everything you do, others will feel the love and it will return to you many times over. As I was making my dishes tonight I kept that in mind, and tried to put lots of love into each dish, because I love making delicious food to share with my dear friends and family. And I want the energy to be positive and powerful to nourish body and soul.
I have been making delicious food all evening. I didn’t really plan it this way, but almost everything I made was green. I made my world-rocking guacamole (see Defiant Recipes), Spicy Lime Cilantro Soup (one of my all-time favorites by Alissa Cohen), and Spirulina Pie. I hope Sarah likes all my green things! 
I also made a batch of awesome Sun Warrior Protein Bars, and I wanted to share the recipe with you. They are high protein, but certainly not low-carb. They have plenty of energy in them, from the huge amount of superfoods, and can easily substitute as a light meal. You will need a dehydrator for this. I highly recommend the Excalibur dehydrator.
Sun Warrior Goji Bars
- 1 cup dried Black Mission Figs, soaked until soft, reserve soak water
- 1 cup dried Regular Figs, soaked until soft
- 1/2 cup Sun Warrior Natural Flavored Protein
- 1/4 cup Raw Maca Powder
- 2 Tbl Sun Warrior Activated Barley
- 2 cups raw almonds, soaked and drained
- 1 cup raw pumpkin seeds
- 1 cup Goji Berries, soaked for no more than 15 minutes
- Juice from 1/2 large lemon
- 3/4 cup raw honey
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 1 tsp Celtic Salt–may add more to your taste
- 1/4 cup soak water from figs
De-stem figs. Process figs in food processor until smooth and creamy. Transfer to very large mixing bowl. Process almonds and pumpkin seeds until coarsely ground. Pour into mixing bowl with figs. Add protein, maca, barley, lemon juice, and honey. Mix vanilla and Celtic Salt with the 1/4 cup date soak water and pour into bowl. With a wooden, or other strong spoon, mix all ingredients together until uniformly distributed. This will take some muscle. See you’re building muscle already!
Add 3/4 of the goji berries and stir to evenly incorporate. Line a small cookie sheet pan (that will fit in your dehydrator) with wax paper or parchment paper. Spread the mixture evenly, to the same depth as the sides of the cookie sheet, being sure to get into the corners. This may take more than one pan. Alternatively, just form into a large rectangular shape about 1/2 inch thick on a Teflex sheet. Sprinkle the remaining goji berries on top and gently press into the dough with your palms.
Dehydrate for a few hours until you can cut into bars. Spread the bars out a bit on Teflex sheets so air can circulate around them and continue to dehydrate for a few hours longer, checking that they don’t become too dry. Enjoy!
You can play around with this recipe too. Add raw cacao nibs, use vanilla or chocolate Sun Warrior protein instead, use different nuts, add cinnamon or other spices–it’s up to you and your taste buds!
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I hope you enjoy this recipe, which I just came up with tonight because I wanted to have healthy snack food around the house for the next few days. Please let me know how it turns out for you. The maca, seeds, gojis and nuts have lots of protein as well, so these are quite high in protein. Since I literally just created them tonight, I have no idea of the actual nutritional content. But if you always use raw, whole foods, nature gives you exactly the correct ratios of nutrients to nourish your body to optimal health. Don’t worry about percentages!
Defy all those commercial protein bars filled with all sorts of artificial ingredients and inferior proteins. Make your own and be healthier! Everybody wants to look good on the outside, but if you don’t look good on the inside too, then all is for naught!
Be Defiant!
Lots of Holiday Love,
Christy
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[...] Healthy Home-made Protein Bars « Defiant Health! [...]
I’ve got an alternative homemade protein bar recipe for – it’s really fast and really healthy and tastes great (but maybe not as good as yours!):
http://worldfitnessnetwork.com/2009/02/worlds-best-tasting-fastest-healthiest-homemade-protein-bars/
Thank you so much for your comment and contribution!
Sorry, Darrin, I can’t agree with you that there is anything ‘healthy’ in these bars. I can’t eat a single one of the ingredients, and I would strongly suggest that they all should be avoided.
The cottage cheese and whey protein are pasteurized dairy, which are extremely detrimental to health, are acid-forming in the body, and contribute to loss of bone calcium. Please visit http://www.notmilk.com for information about how pasteurized dairy products are devastating to health. If nothing else, read the autopsy report of Florence Griffith-Joyner. The peanut butter is OK, but most peanuts (even ‘organic and natural’ ones) still carry fungus and aflatoxins, so they are not safe to consume. The oats do still have some semblance of health benefits left in that they still contain fiber, but they are most likely steamed and heat-processed, so they do not carry live enzymes and are thus a dead food. I have nothing against oats—I do eat RAW oats, which are soaked and sprouted to be the peak of nutritional power.
Unfortunately, these are the types of ‘foods’ that are being touted as healthy by the mainstream media and all the big food and supplement companies with their clever and underhanded marketing. Most people in the health and bodybuilding fields have bought into these lies for years. I did too. I was right there a few years ago, until I started asking questions and thinking defiantly and independently. I have ‘food’ in quotes, because my definition of food is “Something that you ingest that nourishes all the CELLS of your body, without harm or future detrimental effects.” Just because something is edible doesn’t mean it is ‘food’. And by that definition, sunlight and oxygen are foods because you ingest them through your skin and lungs and they nourish your cells!
Your bars are a great idea, and I especially love the ‘quick, cheap and easy’ part. And I am sure they taste great, but they are destroying your internal organs and your health as well. That can’t be good!
Let’s make your great idea into a TRULY healthy bar:
1 lb raw cottage ‘cheeze’ made from sprouted living nuts (like almonds, Brazil, macadamia, etc.) OR RAW dairy cottage cheese
4 Tablespoons RAW Almond, cashew, pecan or hazelnut butter (or it’s NOT cheap, but raw jungle peanut butter is awesome! Jungle peanuts are true nuts, not legumes like what we call peanuts, and they taste delicious with tons of nutrients.)
2 cups of sprouted RAW oats
3 scoops of Sun Warrior RAW vegan brown rice protein, chocolate flavor
Process all together in a food processor. (Definitely not as easy as yours by simply stirring, but you will need it for the raw oats)
Now this does sound pretty good. I will have to try it. You could also throw in some nuts, seeds, raw cacao nibs, etc to jazz them up a bit. Give it a try!
Thanks again!
Christy, aka “Defiance”
I feel that Nutrition Bars are an essential part to a good diet. It’s hard to find good tasting health food. nutritional bars bring great taste to a healthy type of food. I found this great website that offers many options that offers various types bars. http://www.n101.com/nutritionalbars
Wow! Good prices! Thank you!