Jan 19 2012
Credit Crunch Bars: Better Than Store-Bought

Energy bars are big business nowadays. Long confined to the pages of cycling catalogs and the shelves of health‑food stores, these pricey descendants of Space Food Sticks and granola bars can now be found in almost every HyperMart. And the range of products has proliferated astonishingly as the market for them has grown. You can buy bars tailored to the needs of women athletes, bars to sustain you through a long workout, even bars to help you recover from your exertions. But what you can’t buy — at least in my experience — is bars that taste good. A case in point: I recently found myself on the receiving end of a sample package of Clif Bars. (I don’t usually accept product samples, but these were a gift from my brother, who’d picked them up at a bike race he covered.) Two of the bars were labeled “Chocolate Brownie”; the third was “Black Cherry Almond.” That got my attention. I love chocolate brownies, and I’m very partial to cherries and almonds, too. How could I go wrong? Judging by their wrappers, these were the bars I’d always been waiting for. Or so I thought.
Reality soon intruded. I’d tucked the Black Cherry bar into the handlebar bag of my amphibious bike, while a Chocolate Brownie bar went into the snack pocket of my rucksack. And not long afterward, I found myself sitting in a chill drizzle on the shore of a local beaver pond. I needed quick energy, so I reached into my pack pocket and grabbed the Chocolate Brownie bar, congratulating myself on my foresight. But a string of disappointments followed hard on the heels of self‑congratulation. The first letdown came just as soon as I’d peeled away the colorful paper wrap. To my eye, this particular Clif Bar had a rather off‑putting appearance. In fact, it bore a close resemblance to raccoon scat. Still, I was hungry, and looks aren’t everything. So I took a first tentative bite. Disappointment piled on disappointment. The bar’s texture was as unappetizing as its appearance, suggesting nothing so much as crumbled chalk embedded in tar. And the flavor? Well, I’m happy to say it didn’t taste anything like raccoon scat. At least, I assume it didn’t. (There are limits to my curiosity. I draw the line at eating raccoon scat.) Unfortunately, it didn’t taste like any chocolate brownie I’d ever eaten, either.
I decided then and there that I could do better. So when I returned home I went straight to the test kitchen and began experimenting. And my efforts ultimately proved successful. I’ve now added a number of flavorful, nutritious bars to my repertoire of fast foods for the backcountry. I don’t call them energy bars, though. Because cash is tight in these rather austere times, and because my DIY bars deliver good taste at a low cost, I call them Credit Crunch Bars… Read more…





