Day 319 – Homemade granola

3

I’m not much of a breakfast person, I’ve been trying harder lately. Kirk on the other hand, is definitely a breakfast person, and he loves cereal. I started making granola shortly after I started making yogurt regularly, they sort of go hand in hand. I have a basic recipe that I start from and add variations depending on what’s currently in the granola ingredient jars.

It goes something like this:

6 cups old fashioned large flake rolled oats
~1 cup chopped nuts (walnuts, pecans, almonds, or some combination of these or others)
pinch cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla
~1 cup dried fruit (cranberries, raisins, chopped dates, apples, pears)

Mix the oats, nuts, cinnamon, and salt together well. Mix the honey with the maple syrup and blend well with the oat/nut mixture. Spread this out over a couple of lipped baking sheets and bake in the oven at around 300C until golden and toasted. When it reaches this stage, pull the sheets out and toss the chopped dried fruit in with the hot oat mixture. Allow it to cool and store in an airtight jar.

Variations:

I usually add in any or all of the following without a whole lot of close measurements:

~1/2 cup of oat bran or wheat germ
~1/2 cup of flax meal or flax seeds
~1/2 cup of sunflower seeds
~1/4 cup of sesame seeds

It’s pretty flexible and you can change it up to make it different every time.