Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Day 107 - Crunchy Granola Girl

Giving Up Boxed Cereals

OK, I'll admit, I'm not sure what, if any, ill affects boxed cereals present, but Hot Damn! homemade granola just tastes awesome! Also, after flipping through the Omnivore's Dilemma, I'm now a little freaked out by all the corn syrup solids my family consumes. This winter will find us dining on Old Fashioned Oats with brown sugar and momma's homemade granola.

Here's my yum-tastic recipe, which is a tweaked version of what sister Heather gave me (thanks, H!):


Dry Ingredients
4 c. Rolled Oats
1/2 c. Crunched Up Pecans
1 1/2 c. Shredded Coconut
3/4 c. Raisins
3/4 c. Dates
1 c. Sliced Almonds
1/4 c. Wheat Germ
1/4 c. Flax Seed Meal

Wet Ingredients
1/4 c. Coconut Oil
1/4 c. Honey
1/4 c. Brown Sugar


Put all the dry ingredients into a big bowl. Take the wet ingredients and nuke em up together until the coconut oil is all melted. Mix them well and dump the wet stuff over the dry stuff. Mix it all up and spread it out on a couple cookie sheets. Toss it into the oven at about 300 degrees for 20 - 30 minutes (stir it a couple of times while it's in there) until it gets golden brown. Remove from oven, let cool, and store in an airtight container.


Savings:

Um, a cardboard box and plastic bag every single week. The downside? I'm using several plastic bags for the ingredients. But since the granola batch lasts at least two weeks, and I don't use an entire bag of anything in one batch, I think I'm ahead of the game. What I SHOULD do is hoof it up to the health food store and buy all the ingredients from the bulk bins. *sigh* It's just so far :-(


Difficulty Level: 1 out of 5

The kids LOVE to help me make the granola and maybe one day they'll actually TRY IT.

5 comments:

M.e. said...

ah but what're you storing things in when you get them at the health food store in bulk? I struggle with this!!

Burbanmom said...

Dude, that's easy! You bring your own reusable Ziplock baggies. Sure, it's plastic, but you can reuse those freezer ones forever! Bonus? You can label them (ie: almonds, pecans, coconut, etc.) and put the little codes on each bag so you don't have to rewrite it everytime you go. :-)

Anonymous said...

Be gentle on yourselves, Sisters of the Granola. We cannot be totally perfect and without some plastic.
The fact that you are aware of how much plastic we wantonly use as a society puts you way ahead of the curve.
I applaude what is being done here.
Long live the burbanmom and her sisters in Granola.

Anonymous said...

You can do it! Yay bulk bins! Just bring your reused plastic bags with you to the store so you don't have to take new ones.

OR bring cotton produce/bulk drawstring bags and transfer the ingredients to glass jars when you get them home. That's what I've been doing more and more. You can get the cloth bags at ecobags.com.

Anonymous said...

Or! Or! You sew, right? Make your own little cotton drawstring/zipper bags to use! I put a basic recipe on my Make A Bag blog (linked to my name). I'd love to see what you come up with and share it on Make A Bag.