Homemade Triple Berry Oatmeal Bars

These homemade triple berry oatmeal bars are a staple in our home. They are that good. I've made them so many times now, I could make them in my sleep. We eat them as a quick snack, added to the kids' lunches, or as an after dinner treat. You can make them with any variation of berries (as I have), but my favorite tends to be raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries....heavy on the raspberries! :) My latest batch had blackberries added into the mix, as well as two cut up plums. Yummy. 

You can use fresh or frozen berries (or a combination of both), making this a great way to use up berries that are past their prime, or fruit you have sitting around in the back of the freezer that you've forgotten about. 

These are also freezer friendly! I usually leave a few out for us to eat that day, then bag the rest up for the freezer. They are delicious fresh, thawed on the counter, zapped in the micro for a 20 seconds, or dare I say, still frozen and gnawed on! 


Triple Berry Oatmeal Bars

Ingredients: 

2 1/4 cups quick oats
2 1/4 cups flour
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
4 cups fresh, frozen (or mix of both) berries
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp corn starch


Directions: 

Preheat oven to 350*, spray a 9x13 pan with non-stick spray.

1. Combine oats, flour, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt. 
2. Melt butter and pour over dry ingredients. Stir until all ingredients are thoroughly combined with the butter. Mixture will look crumbly. 
3. Pour 2/3 of the oatmeal mixture into your pan (reserving the final 1/3). Firmly press into the pan (Seriously....the better pressed, the better the bar!). Set aside. 
4. Mix berries with sugar and cornstarch. Toss until coated. Pour berries into pan. 
5. Evenly sprinkle remainder of oatmeal mixture on top of berries (I go ahead and press more, just because.)
6. Bake at 350* for 25-30 minutes (I go 30-35) or until golden brown (I like to go until I just start to see/hear bubbles). 
7. Let completely cool. Cut into desired size bars. Freeze in an air tight container or a ziplock bag (I place on cookie sheet to freeze for an hour, then transfer them to ziplock bag). 


I've noticed sometimes my bars will be gooey or more wet when cutting, even when left to cool completely. This happens moreso when I use my frozen blackberries. If yours are more gooey, it really is no big deal. Either just be more careful cutting and getting them out (though my rule is if I break a bar, I have to eat it - haha!), or toss the whole pan in the freezer for a bit before cutting. They are delicious no matter what fruit combination, no matter gooey or not gooey. Mmmm. 

With love,
Mama Hauck

Kitties, 11 Weeks Old Already!

Eeek! The kittens are 11 weeks old now! How the heck did that happen!!! 

They are fun, and spunky, in to everything, and totally little shits.....as all kittens are! They are in your way and underfoot, they climb up and claw things, they bite your feet at the end of the bed through the blankets, and they make tons of noise in the night playing with each other and their toys. 

BUT....they are kittens. Cute and snuggly kittens. And we love them!! So their annoyances are dealt with, lol. 

Their eyes have all now completely changed from blue to a gorgeous green color. They are adorable. 

About 5 weeks back, we introduced them to wet cat food, made into a slurry with some kitten milk replacements (KMR). At first they were like wtf is that? But Mama kitty was all about it, and from watching her, they learned it was tasty. Soon there was no need for the KMR, they were good to go with the chunky wet cat food. We gave them some to putz around with 1-2x a day, just so they could experience something other than nursing. Shortly thereafter, we noticed them starting to drink from the water bowl and take a liking to the dry kitten food. Hooray! Progress! Now they are totally good to go on the dry kitten food, and we are working on mixing 1/2 kitten and 1/2 regular cat food so we can completely make the switch over to regular cat food soon. 

We've also worked on getting the food and water out of our bedroom and moved to a better place. That wasn't an issue at all. Kitties will follow the food! Following the theme of reclaiming our bedroom, the kitty litter just had to be moved as well. They were all litter trained by 5 weeks, so all we had to do was get it out of our bedroom. We ditched the huge cardboard box that housed the littler box, got a new litter box with a lid and flap door, and moved it into the bathroom closet. I thought all those changes might be an issue, but it wasn't. 2 accidents on the floor where the box use to be, and that was it. Cats wise up pretty quickly.  

They still nurse from Mama every now and again, but I'm assuming at 11 weeks, it's not out of necessity, just out of love and convenience.  

Mama kitty sure is something else. She has started to want the kittens to go outside with her. I'm not so certain that's a great idea yet. I don't want something to happen to them!! She is very persistent though, and they are getting curious....rushing the door when it's open and trying to get out. A few times now she has caught something....a bird...a mouse....and meowed excessively at the door, to the point of driving me mad. There was no way in hell I was letting her inside with a dead bird for the kittens! So I let the kittens out onto the porch, long enough to check out her dead catch, then put them all back in. Oreo is a good Mama, bringing her babies food and wanting to teach them about outside. I know I need to let them out and explore with her, but I don't trust nature to not kill my kittens, hahaha. *sigh* 

Sadly, we are nearing the time where we need to figure out what we are doing with them. We will be keeping two. But what two? We can't decide. I didn't realize it was going to be so hard!! I know who I want to keep, but it doesn't match up with who Sam and who the kids want to keep. UGH! So then I thought what the heck, keep them all, but that would mean they have to go outside now because I can not do four kittens in the house over the winter. Not to mention I hate doing kitty litter....and their little claws are an issue. But I don't want that either! It's getting cold out, and they are still so little, and we have always kept our kittens inside during winter, and let them out in Spring. Ooooo what to do, what to do.   

 Daphne

Ace

Chloe

Bear

We will think on it this upcoming week, and then really need to get on with things. Decision day is coming, little ones! 

With love, 
Mama Hauck

Hitting our Groove

We are now a little over a month into the school year, and all the kiddos are doing great! We've done well to find our back-to-school groove and get back into the swing of things! Of course, there's always some bumps and hiccups along the way (like being late for soccer practice because of road construction, or forgetting Tim's homework at home so it's a day late to be turned in, or just figuring out what in the hell is for dinner tonight when we have to leave in 30 minutes!?....) but, for the most part, we're doing just dandy!


It's been really fun watching Timothy adjust to school. He's taken a liking to two boys at school, and it makes me cry tears of joy to hear him come home and talk about playing with them on the playground. We are so proud of him for opening up and participating in regards to his peers! He really just continues to blossom. 

He's also loving his homework! Haha! He comes home and gets right to it at the kitchen table. I love that! He's so proud of his work, too. He always shows me his papers from his back pack, and tells me exactly what he did. It's adorable watching him. He has nothing but nice things to say about his teachers and class time. All is well and it's just a huge relief for this Mama's heart! 

What a good little school boy!! 

Molly has, of course, aced every spelling test she's taken so far, including the challenge words, and zipped through 5 books already. She's our little book worm for sure! We've learned that she has to work a bit at math, which ruffles her feathers a bit, but I told her it's good to have to work hard at something. If things always come easy, you don't learn what it means to work for it and feel the pride that only comes when you've tried your damnedest to do something. You can't be great at everything! She's not a fan, but it's good for her to struggle, lol. She'll get it.    

Anthony is doing smashingly well in 5th so far. They have more self responsibility and self accountability in the middle school, but so far he's doing just fine. No forgotten assignments, comes home with the right homework and gets it completed, asks for help when needed, and talks to the teacher when something needs to be gone over or clarified. We are very proud of him! There is an online system that I can log into whenever needed to check on grades and assignments (he can do this too!). I think that's great. I can keep up with his grades and work and "check in on him" without having to verbally ask him and be in his face all the time about stuff.  I think this works to put more of the responsibility on him in a controlled manner, but less nagging from me. ;) 

Great work, kiddos! Keep it up! We are so proud of you all! It feels great to hit our groove. 

With love,
Mama Hauck