A few weekends ago Mr. E and I had family in town and decided to check out the local wineries up north.  Now we don’t live in wine country, in fact we live in Arizona, but had heard that there were some wineries up in Jerome which is a few hours drive.  So we packed up the fam and headed up early Saturday morning. Being the over the top planner I am (and eating being a focus of most things I do), I had already looked up the different restaurants on the way there. While there were a few places that sounded good I knew I wouldn’t be eating until we reached our destination and even then only after having visited a winery.  When I realized this my first thought was “What 3 hours without eating????!!” This wasn’t going to do at all.  So I immediately started thinking about what would be a good snack, somewhat breakfast-y, a bit healthy and easy to eat.  While lots of things popped in mind I decided on homemade granola bars.

 Source: Foodnetwork.com, Barefoot Contessa, Homemade Granola Bars

The original recipe is from foodnetwork.  Of course I’ve made a few changes…Click here for my modified version.

Street in Jerome    Jerome is an old mining town that died out and has been reborn as a sort of artsy community with 3 wineries, lots of cute shops, galleries and a great Mexican restaurant called quinces…the enchilada stack Christmas style (red and green chili sauce) is awesome so is the guacamole!

 We visited two of the wineries there, Jerome Winery and Bitter Creek and then one on our way home Alcantera Vineyards.

 In keeping with the wine theme, for dinner that night we shared a few bottles of Pinot Griogio and made our own meat and cheese platter served with warm French bread.  A delicious ending to a wonderful day!