Alton Brown's Granola

We're driving to California in three days and I just spent the afternoon baking snacks for the road trip. Cooling now are granola bars from Good Eats' "Power Trip" episode. Next time I'm going to see if I can make this less expensive (and drop the butter for margarine to make it vegan) but I wanted to do the math to see how expensive my endeavor was. (And I'll comment on the taste later... once I've had a chance to taste a bar.)

Amount	Ingredient	Cost
8 oz	rolled oats	$0.25
1.5 oz	raw sunflower seeds	$0.26
3 oz	sliced almonds	$1.83
1.5 oz	wheat germ	$0.83
6 oz	honey	$1.25
1.75 oz	dark brown sugar	$0.22
1.25 oz	unsalted butter	$0.15
2 tsp	vanilla extract	$0.60
1/2 tsp	salt	$0.00
6.5 oz	dried fruit*	$3.25

For a total of $8.64
*I used half apricot, a quarter cherries, and a quarter blueberries.

The best I can do in describing the taste of these granola bars is "a better tasting Quaker Chewey Granola bars and without the chemical aftertaste." So I'll use that as my comparison:

The recipe yielded 29 oz of granola bars, the equivalent of 34 and a half Quaker Chewey Granola Bars, which would clock in at $8.11 over at Amazon. So... not thrifty today. I saved -6.5%.

On my next pass I'll try replacing the dried fruit with rasins, which should bring me close to the taste of Quaker's bars while also saving me $2.08 for the batch. That would be 19% savings, putting it into the "thrifty" category.