There you stand, in the grocery store, wishing that you had enough money to get you some of those crazy expensive protein bars. Sadly, you turn away, lamenting your puny muscles, wishing that there was some way to get protein bars without all the extra packaging and high prices. Well pay attention, for here is how to…

Make Your Own Protein Bars

Thanks to Krista’s protein bar recipe, I was able to make some protein bars of my own. Follow along with this picture essay, and you will learn the secrets of how to make some cheap, homemade protein bars.Here are the ingredients. If you want to use some eco-friendly protein powder, or organic bananas, or what have you, then by all means do. I opted for the cheapest ingredients for this demonstration.

• Banana
• Whey protein
• Oats
• Peanut butter
• Raw Peanuts (optional)

The whey protein, oats, and peanut butter will be in a 1:1:1 ratio. As for the nanner, I just used one. Measure out your oats.Grind up them oats in a blender or food processor. Sadly, I have no food processor, so I was forced to use this blurry blender to make some oat flour.Voíla. You should now have some oat flour. Mix the oat flour with your whey protein powder, using a 1:1 ratio. Hopefully it’ll look like this:Plop some peanut butter down into the oat flour, and try your best to mix it in. Since I used a cup of oats, I’m using a cup of peanut butter also (remember the 1:1:1 ratio).Go ahead and blend up that nanner. If you want to save some electricity, you may mash the banana by hand or foot.Mix the mashed banana into the whey protein powder/oat flour/peanut butter mix. Here I had to use a fork AND spoon to mix this all together.Wash yo’ hands, because it’s about to get messy up in hur. Lay some wax paper down in a pan, like so, and begin spreading your mixture onto it:Pat it down, hit it with a fork, whatever it takes, until you have a good, (sort of) even layer:You can stop here if you want, or you can take it one step further if you dare. I dared, so I pushed some raw peanuts into the protein bar batter to give it some extra *crunch*.Put this bad boy into your freezer for a few hours. Wait ’til it gets nice and cold and firm, then take it out. It is now time for the FINAL PROCESSING. Slice your frozen square of mess into homemade protein bars. I used a pizza cutter and it worked like a charm.When you’re done, you can wrap the protein bars individually, using that same wax paper, or just put them in a tupperware container. Either way, put them in the freezer when you’re done.Congratulations, you are now the proud owner of some cheap, homemade protein bars. Remember, you can customize the taste (with cinnamon, honey, cocaine, etc.), so if they taste like crap, then change it up.EDIT:  Taste – My first bite was no good, but either they got better with time, or the taste grew on me.  It tastes like peanut butter, with some graininess.  Next time I might add in some other flavors…