chocolate covered granola OR not enough protein at lunch

They say that necessity is the mother of invention.

And there was definitely some inventing going on in my kitchen today. But I'm not sure how much necessity played into the inventing–unless you count a necessity for chocolate, or a necessity to use up the chocolate that was melting in my microwave.

I did not start out planning to make chocolate granola. I started out planning to make this simple peanut butter fudge-ish recipe that I have been making since high school.

I unwrapped the chocolate, started its slow melt in the microwave, started melting a little bit of butter in the pan and went to the kitchen table to get the new container of peanut butter out of my Target bag…

Apparently I didn't bring home the bag that was carrying my peanut butter, a packing envelope and two cans of soup.

Can I pause for a small tirade, just for a second?

It really bugs me the way Target checkout people don't put your bags in your cart for you. The minute they hand you a receipt they start on the next person in line. Leaving my stack of bags to get muddled in with the next person's stack of bags and before I know it, in the hub-bub of getting my two older girls away from the gift registry computers or the tubes of candy that have spinning fans on the tops, and my toddler slipped back down into the straps of the shopping cart and back into her coat and hat…I've somehow lost track of how many bags I should be leaving the store with. Could you please, just put my bags in my cart for me? Or give me ten more seconds of attention before you move on to the next person so you know I know where all my bags are?

(Or maybe I could have just remembered my reusable bags so that I recognized which bags are mine.)

Anyway.

No peanut butter. At this point, I begin to think that God must be saving me from myself and doesn't want me making a recipe that begins with chocolate, peanut butter and butter….but I also don't want to waste the expensive melted chocolate that is sitting in my microwave.

I begin to literally walk from cupboard to cupboard, opening the doors, looking inside and trying to determine what I could possibly coat with chocolate.

I considered pretzels. But felt it was too time-consuming.

I considered cereal, but didn't like the ones I had to choose from.

I considered uncooked pasta. Though not for long.

Then I saw the large glass jar of granola sitting on my counter. I love granola. I like chocolate. How would they be together? I will confess to having a momentary daydream of how this was going to make a great story when my instant-success chocolate granola home-based business was featured on the Food Network.

I lined a baking sheet with parchment paper, poured about two cups of my granola into the melted chocolate and spread it out in a thin layer on the baking sheet.

Then, crazy woman that I am, I added sprinkles. (For the enjoyment of my children, of course.)

I let it cool, broke it into chunks, tasted a piece, bagged it up and stuck it back in my cupboard.

The results–pretty good. Nothing to write home about. (though obviously something to blog about). I think it has potential though. I'd prefer a better granola to chocolate ratio. As in more granola, less chocolate. But I really like the idea of it. And the sprinkles just look happy. I feel like this could have some good gift-giving potential, if I could figure out my ratios. I could see it wrapped in little parchment lined boxes.

I'm not sure what it is with my kitchen wackiness lately. First the paper-punch crackers. Now chocolate granola. I think tomorrow I'll do something really traditional, like make chicken noodle soup and a loaf of bread, just to get my feet back on the ground and my head out of the clouds. That and have some more protein at lunch, so I don't find myself in the kitchen at three in the afternoon trying to figure out what to cover in chocolate.