Treats

 This post was supposed to go up last Tuesday but we had an emergency.  Jeff came home from work early with chest pain and was afraid it was a heart attack.  We spent the day in the emergency room and then in cardiac observation.  We were so lucky it wasn't his heart, they told us his heart was in tiptop shape and the doctor told him to get out and start hitting the gym whenever he was ready.  The culprit was inflamed cartilage from having a cold a few weeks back.  I'm so grateful for something so minor (painful still but minor).  Jeff was very grateful for the Homemade Granola bars that I had made the day before.  He couldn't eat them before the stress test but he gobbled them up afterwards. 
    This treat came from watching Pioneer Woman on Food Network with Jack this weekend.  I was honestly hoping for a cereal bar type knock off.  This isn't it by any means but it is very delicious and everyone enjoyed eating it up.  The recipe is Strawberry Oatmeal Bars here at the Food Network site.  We had some homemade CherryBerry Jam down in the basement and used that instead of the Strawberry she used.  I would definitely make these again but they weren't quite what I was looking for so I guess I'll start experimenting to see what I can come up with. 
  Have a great week I'm off to the hardware store to get some taps for the Maple Trees wish me luck! 

Jam Failure

First off please forgive the amount of crap on my kitchen counters, I could make excuses but really we just know that it just happens sometimes right?  Please let me not be the only one....   Anyway Jeff and I had our first batch of failure to seal jam.  This is the batch that was made at my jam making class, if I had to guess it would be because they were moved before they cooled completely.  But that's totally a guess.  You could tell these just weren't right because the strawberries had oxidized and it was just an off tint.  They smelled fine though but we just were not going to take chances.  Have you ever had a batch go bad?