Breakfast Oat 'n Nut Bars

I love homemade granola bars and like my passion to make new chocolate chip cookies every week, I also like to try new G-bar (as we call them) recipes. This is one I cut out of a health store magazine called 'Alive'. I had forgotten about it until this weekend. Yum....it is all nuts and dried fruits and healthy...except maybe for the condensed milk. However, it sticks together marvelously and the colours are great and what can I say...the boys had them all week in their lunch and loved them!

Very Easy Ingredients
(mix and match)

• 3 cups old fashioned oats
• 1 cup shredded or flake coconut
• 1 cup dried fruit - (chopped if using apricots or dates). I used 1/2 cup cranberries and 1/2 cup chopped apricots for colour and variety
• 1 cup unsalted pumpkin seeds
• 1 cup unsalted chopped almonds - or other unsalted nuts
• 2- 8 oz cans of unsweetened condensed milk

1. In a cookie sheet spread out the oats and pumpkin seeds and toast under a 350 to 375 oven for about ten minutes...don't burn.
2. Turn oven down to 250.
3. Warm the condensed milk in a pot.
4. Mix all dry ingredients in a big bowl.
5. Slowly stir in condensed milk and stir until all coated.
6. Pour into a lined or greased cookie sheet with sides.
7. Pat down with greased hands until even firmness.
8. Bake in oven for 1 hour.
9. Using the handy dandy bench scraper Lovella talks about...cut into bars lunch box size after fifteen minutes.
10. Leave in pan and cool completely...I mean completely.
11. Remove from pan and re-cut on cut lines made earlier.
12. Store in cookie tin lined with wax paper or wrap each bar in wax paper or put in Ziploc(s) and pop in freezer to take out as needed.